At one time, before stopping my Wesnoth development work, I had proposed a metric for specifying difficulty levels based upon the AI's ability to play a scenario. Unfortunately, I never did finish the work I was doing to make it easier to have the AI understand scenario objectives, but I still think that the principle holds. Under my scheme, Easy would be defined as the AI can win the scenario with the minimum gold and no recalls. Normal would be winnable by the AI based upon the gold and recall lists from previous scenarios beat by the AI on Normal level (in other words, the first level would almost always be the same on normal and easy). Hard would be, well, hard. The AI might not be able to beat it.
There are two main advantages of this system. First it is an objective measure of difficulty. Second, if a player is struggling to beat a scenario, they can have the AI play the scenario for them, thus showing them how to win, not just giving them extra money or units from which they learn nothing. This will make them a better player (hopefully). I do support the idea of implementing a UI for changing a scenarios level in game. Obviously, it is trivial to do by editing the save file, but making it easier for people who fear doing such things is not a bad thing. I do think that having the players have to make complex decisions is a good thing. -J McNabb aka DarthFool ------------------------------------------------------------------- "In theory, theory and practice are the same, but in practice they're different." --Unknown "In the constrained vision, each new generation born is in effect an invasion of civilization by little barbarians, who must be civilized before it is too late." --T.S., 'A Conflict of Visions' ------------------------------------------------------------------- John W. C. McNabb ------------------------------------------------------------------- On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 15:37, Isaac Clerencia <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 8:29 PM, Gabriel Morin <[email protected]> wrote: >> 2012/1/26 Isaac Clerencia <[email protected]> >>> >>> > Am 26.01.2012 08:10, schrieb Gabriel Morin: >>> >> Ultimately if you have campaigns you need to have a slippery slope, the >>> >> alternative being that your skill at getting lots of gold and powerful >>> >> units doesn't have much of an influence. I don't think that having to >>> >> restart a few scenarios is to be viewed as The Ultimate Evil(tm): >>> >> happened >>> >> to me, I was happy to find the way to play them better, and I'm still >>> >> alive >>> >> today! If you worry so much about poor newbs getting scared, why not >>> >> provide automatic loyal reinforcements or gold on easy difficulty, >>> >> whenever >>> >> you detect that the player is starting a scenario with insufficient >>> >> resources/army to win? The rest of us with minimal experience and/or a >>> >> brain will manage. >>> >>> I think this idea is the most reasonable approach, and it won't ruin >>> the game for anyone, but ideally it should be brought to the attention >>> of the player and be opt-in, so players who like the challenge don't >>> get automatically opted-in into some help didn't ask for. >>> Something like: >>> "Your current gold and army strength doesn't seem enough to beat this >>> scenario. Do you want to start with XX gold and get reinforcements?" >>> If we go this way, it'd also be good to actually count the times you >>> asked for help during a campaign, so at the end of the campaign, your >>> result is 'You have beaten the campaign XXX at difficulty YYY, using >>> help ZZZ times', and thus there is an extra achievement in not using >>> the help. >> >> >> While I can see your point about not forcing them on the player, I don't >> like much the artificial aspect of it, and was thinking more along the lines >> of what Ivanovic described: reinforcements that come with some excuse within >> the bounds of the scenario: wandering mercenaries, merchants and what not. >> >> I was thinking that at the lowest difficulty, we'd make clear that the game >> helps you - it'd be the safety net for the poorest players, so to speak -, >> so you'd opt-in when starting the campaign, or when reverting to that >> difficulty between scenarios if we develop that option. >> >> If we go with your proposal, though, I propose we try to word the messages >> about help coming as "in-game" as possible, stuff like "A powerful Lord took >> pity of the sorry state of your army, and is proposing in a haughty letter >> to send reinforcements. Do you step on your honor and accept his help?". >> Then we'd compute an honor score for the campaign based on how many times >> you accepted help. > > I definitely think that those are very useful improvements over what I > proposed. > > Thanks! > -- > Isaac Clerencia > [email protected] > > _______________________________________________ > Wesnoth-dev mailing list > [email protected] > https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev _______________________________________________ Wesnoth-dev mailing list [email protected] https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
