Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

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Inky
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Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

Post by Inky »

I think the current mainline campaign feedback forum is far from ideal for both players and the campaign developers. I've read a lot of the scenario feedback threads and there's actually some very valuable feedback pointing out valid issues in some of them, but it tends to get lost in the sea of less than helpful feedback posts.

The first issue is the survey format, which is full of superfluous questions like "Are the objectives clear?" (99% of the time the answer is yes and if not the player will say so without being asked), and questions which tend to get useless responses (rating the difficulty and fun from 1-10; most people just put a number and nothing else). A lot of posts are literally just one word responses to all the questions (you'd think it was one of those surveys they got paid to fill out). I think the survey thing should get abandoned entirely, that way more players would post and the posts would not be full of useless info.

The second issue is that many players (I confess to being one of the culprits), lacking a better place to do so, use the feedback forums as a place to discuss the scenario strategy and share replays. While this is interesting and helpful to other players (I often consult these threads when I get stuck on a mainline scenario), it just adds to the noise which makes actual feedback get lost.

Maybe there could be a separate forum in Strategies and Tips for users to discuss the mainline scenarios amongst themselves, so that the Gameplay Feedback forum could be reserved for pointing out concrete issues to the maintainers? The official feedback forum is terrible for having discussions - I've often wanted to comment on someone's post or replay, but don't because of the structured nature of the forum. I think having a place for users to openly discuss mainline scenarios may help with the campaign walkthroughs on the wiki too - some of them are a real mess (seriously, just look at this one, it's like a forum thread on its own - http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Liberty#Glory) of edits upon edits of advice of varying quality because people are afraid to edit the original entry.

As for the Add-On Feedback subforum, I don't see the purpose of this forum besides making duplicates of threads that are already in the Scenario and Campaign Development forum, which generally end up with no replies (probably due to the survey format again).
SigurdFireDragon
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Re: Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

Post by SigurdFireDragon »

Inky wrote:... The second issue is that many players (I confess to being one of the culprits), lacking a better place to do so, use the feedback forums as a place to discuss the scenario strategy and share replays. While this is interesting and helpful to other players (I often consult these threads when I get stuck on a mainline scenario), it just adds to the noise which makes actual feedback get lost.

Maybe there could be a separate forum in Strategies and Tips for users to discuss the mainline scenarios amongst themselves, so that the Gameplay Feedback forum could be reserved for pointing out concrete issues to the maintainers? The official feedback forum is terrible for having discussions - I've often wanted to comment on someone's post or replay, but don't because of the structured nature of the forum. I think having a place for users to openly discuss mainline scenarios may help with the campaign walkthroughs on the wiki too - some of them are a real mess (seriously, just look at this one, it's like a forum thread on its own - http://wiki.wesnoth.org/Liberty#Glory) of edits upon edits of advice of varying quality because people are afraid to edit the original entry. ...
I've had similar concerns with my recent efforts to use the feedback forum and look for replays. I went through AToTB & AOI again recently and am currently playing HttT, and have found there are not that many current replays for me to view to get an idea of alternate strategy. It's a good thing I still had 1.10 on my desktop computer to be able to view most of the recent ones that are there. Also with my recent AOI feedback posts the main thing I wanted to do was post a replay (as there really isn't a better place for it at the moment), and found sticking to the feedback form in that case a bit tedious.

I think a separate forum for posting of replays & strategy for campaigns is a great idea, as it would encourage more replay sharing & strategy discussion among players, and leave the feedback forum more for what it is intended.
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Inky
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Re: Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

Post by Inky »

SigurdFireDragon's post sums up my thoughts exactly. I also still have Wesnoth 1.10 installed for the sole purpose of watching older replays from the forums, since almost no one has posted replays for 1.11/1.12. I've learned a huge amount by watching other people's replays and wish more people posted theirs. Most of the time I just wanted to share my replay/strategy, and the Gameplay Feedback forum is where players generally do so. I think there are still some issues in mainline (e.g. I think LoW's Human Alliance is ridiculously easy now, not to mention tedious, LoW as a whole is unbalanced, and EI's Weldyn Besieged is just unfair), and I and other players have posted about these in the feedback threads, but I cannot blame the devs for not noticing these particular posts when the feedback forums are such a mess.

p.s. to SigurdFireDragon: A while ago I posted recent replays of HttT and AOI in the Strategies and Tips/Campaign challenges thread (that thread was awesome, wish more people posted there too).
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tr0ll
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Re: Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

Post by tr0ll »

If people posted more replays that would be great but it isnt always easy for new players to find the replay file on their computers.
The replay contains the Wesnoth version number inside it, so you dont know if it will work or crash the game until you try to load it.
It would be nice if:
1) feedback survey asked for Wesnoth version number (and Add-On version number where applicable)
2) replays contain Wesnoth and Add-on version numbers in their filename
3) the game itself made it easy to post the replay to the appropriate forum or repository.
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josteph
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Re: Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

Post by josteph »

tr0ll wrote: October 16th, 2018, 4:10 pm If people posted more replays that would be great but it isnt always easy for new players to find the replay file on their computers.
In 1.14 one can click the "i" button on the title screen to see the path to the saves dir, and with a second click open that directory in their file manager. Maybe this needs to be better documented?
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Iris
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Re: Thoughts on the Gameplay Feedback forum

Post by Iris »

There is also a button on the bottom left of the Load Game dialog that takes you right to the saves folder, since version 1.13.14.
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