The most fearsom player in the world

[Noy]

if you come here primarily to work on Wesnoth, you'll soon see that, in addition to being good for working on Wesnoth, these forums are hilarious...

In other words: If you aren't a developer, you can f*** off. If you are a developer, welcome!

So nicely put.

No thats not it at all. There are a numbers of wesnoth players who come on here and enjoy the community. And they do have a positive effect. Balancing on the mainline units could not have happened without the strong mainline community. We have no problems answering questions for new players, or trying to welcome them into the community.

This all changes when people start making "suggestions." Many of these long term players and contributors took the time to learn about the basis of wesnoth, before making constructive criticism. Some of us have been working on this game for 4 years, we've probed every aspect of the game play and game design. Because of the length of time, the game design is alot more polished than many commercial games. Coming and playing two weeks of campaign ect, then telling us about how all this stuff is bad without understanding the basis for the design doesn't help us at all. Its forgivable the first time, but when the same people come in and repeatedly give us their ideas without taking the time to learn, its annoying to say the least, and its not helpful at all.

So going out and complaining about luck and telling us that "deep down inside you know it needs to be fixed" actually amounts to a slap in the face among us. It shows to us, you aren't serious about learning about the nature of game development, and refuse to get off your high horse. If you want to argue it, fine I'll listen and argue with you. I've done that numerous times. Yet we don't appreciate comments like what you or fosprey say, when you don't even make an argument but just attack an idea without understanding it. I didn't write page after page about uncertainty in war just because I'm trying to cover up something. Its because I, and the developers believe in it. If we didn't, we'd almost certainly change it.

Maybe you should think about that.

[Noy]

...is someone who have all the heaven's luck bestowed upon him...you won't be able to laugh at me when you have a single Elvish Archer kill 8 of your unit AND your commander(and it wasn't even in forest--it's just in my castle!)

I know luck is a factor of this game, and I appreciate that as it makes this game really interesting, and allows me to blame my loose on it, but is there any specific actions can one take to lower the influence of luck to the game?

Design a better strategy. If uncertainty management is the core of this game, then making sure an attack has the greatest probability of succeeding is critical. That means doing the mental math to calculate whether you have over an 60 to 80% chance of succeeding. Also you need contingencies. If your first attack doesn't go well, don't send in more units, maybe protect your special units by placing a fighter or two beside it so that it can only be attacked from one hex or something. Stuff like that. Its all about figuring out what is the likely probability of an attack succeeding and going from there.

[Iris]

if you come here primarily to work on Wesnoth, you'll soon see that, in addition to being good for working on Wesnoth, these forums are hilarious...

In other words: If you aren't a developer, you can f*** off. If you are a developer, welcome!

So nicely put.

Most of us were not developers nor intended to be when we came here. See, I joined on november 2006 and I just became a developer on October 2007, after starting to work on developing Wesnoth on September. And I was still welcome in my original condition of mere user. You seem to be falling on the hasty generalization falacy.

It does pisses me off that they see non-developers as a lower class/rank and a typical regular newbie, even if it is so,
they shouldnt treat them as trash and think he's a target to try to act cool and fit with the ''Elites''.

Sorry, it is just that trying to impatiently enforce your ideas won't work in an open-source project. You are not paying us. We all are volunteers and do our work on Wesnoth for our love to it. Restless complaints are not what we want to hear. We want friendly suggestions from you, and if possible, help.

I strongly recommend that you read scott's quote in my signature, btw.

[Sorrow]

but is there any specific actions can one take to lower the influence of luck to the game?

Yes there are many ways. Noy gave his opinion on the matter which I agree with, but I would like to give specific examples.

I think the simplest way you can reduce luck is to have your army be more boring. By that I mean recruit more of the same reliable units.

Two armies for example:
1) 2-3 Elvish fighters/2 archers/1 mage/1 shaman
2) 4 Elvish fighters/2-3 mages

If army 1 gets unlucky its going to fall apart at the seams. Depending on what gets unlucky it will have: no healing, no firepower, no mainstay(fighters/archers). Its true its more flexible, but its not as reliable.
If army 2 gets unlucky, it can still organize an orderly retreat and pose a significant threat with the remaining mages.

Another thing you can do is to not rely on high % defenses. Like thieves/footpads/assassins, they can be pretty godly if they get lucky, but on the flip side they can get decimated by melee units with just 1 turn of bad luck, which is bound to happen sooner or later. Use them more for secondary purposes like grabbing enemy villages while you are on the offense. On the other side, if you absolutely need to hold a village or your going to lose don't stick a outlaw there. Stick a heavier unit there that can survive bad luck.

Last thing I'll mention. You can't do this one all the time, but try to when you can: have a backup plan even when things that "should" work don't. Thats pretty important, you shouldn't have to say "damn I wish that had worked now i'm screwed" instead it should be "would have been nice if that had hit times but i can just focus my attention over here instead.


On Isars cross though, you are the victim of luck no matter what, its just too small to disengage/recover.

[sam_waz_here]

Sorry for the thread hijacking earlier chibi.

Anyway if you want to out do luck then get tankers: woses, trolls and dwarven guardsmen. Regenerate means that you can screen the woses and trolls preventing death and high resistances means that no matter the luck damage will always be minor. But you won't do too well against ranged units.

[anakayub]

Last thing I'll mention. You can't do this one all the time, but try to when you can: have a backup plan even when things that "should" work don't. Thats pretty important, you shouldn't have to say "damn I wish that had worked now i'm screwed" instead it should be "would have been nice if that had hit times but i can just focus my attention over here instead.

This is the most important part of Sorrow's advice (based on my experience), and is the same thing Noy stated in his post.

[Jozrael]

Wow. Leave a thread alone for a day or two and all sorts of unpleasantness erupts.

Wesnothian, I honestly had a higher opinion of you. You just lost a ton of respect points for your crass, unprovoked rudeness in this thread.

It starts here:

Jesus christ please read my post clearly before you comment on it, it's incredible how some people can be ignorant, it's something that grinds my gear.

He said nothing offensive to you. And while he cut out some of your message when he summed it up with 'do it', his message is correct. You basically told the Wesnoth community "This should be changed", and had no response to their standard answer of "When can we expect your patch for testing". These people have been playing the game for many years: your suggestion has come up many times before, they thought about it, and dismissed it. When you bring it up again, they don't even think about it, but instead of just dismissing you, they tell you that they'll think about it when you do the work. They've already decided not to, after THOROUGH investigation.

Wesnothian, don't worry about it. This is perhaps the most elitist game i have ever played. If you arn't a dev or a contributor you might as well just accept that you are in a lower caste than them and nothing you say matters. It makes the game only marginally less fun.

While I won't argue with you about the elitism specific members of the forum have, I can't blame them either. Month after month they encounter the same threads and they get worn out with it. I expect the second and third times someone demanded a luckless mod they were more generous with their explanations. And I've seen several forum members, looking at you Noy, take the time out of their day to carefully explain their positions to you, with more or less grace included in the posts. Also, I've seen that politeness is heavily rewarded in these forums: even if an initial response might be rather gruff to you, if you respond back with kindness, the response softens considerably. They've had to deal with so many posters who were simply downright rude and demanding. I'm not calling anyone out or referring to anyone with this remark.

It continues here:

And I thought a great game would have a great community but I guess I'm wrong.
It does pisses me off that they see non-developers as a lower class/rank and a typical regular newbie, even if it is so,
they shouldnt treat them as trash and think he's a target to try to act cool and fit with the ''Elites''.

I was wrong, this isn't a very friendly community afterall.

I find this community very friendly with the odd thread such as this that erupts into flamewars. If you look around, theres plenty of great discussions going on.

It's not that the community is elitist it's just that no one here is laid back; in these forums everything has to be productive. I back this statement up with the off topic forum which is devoid of a joke thread and forum games, the closest thing being a rant thread.

I'll agree that our OT Is sadly lacking in games: help us remedy this! Start a couple up. I guarantee I'll join in ^^.

The rudeness again continues:

In short words: They aren't Elitist but they just won't chill down, they are being hyper active nerds?

And that's where the difference is, although you are in your own words "friendly"; you are not here to make friends. It's all work and that's when Jack or in this case Wesnothian becomes a dull boy....(I know my other posts are somewhat less serious but this deserved it so this time i'm full cereal!)

I loved the april fools joke, but more seriously: theres plenty of fun going on here. Yes, if you post something about the upcoming elections in the ideas forum it'll get deleted. Theres a place for work, and theres a place for fun: Off-Topic, and, to a lesser extent, the Users Forum. Other places should pretty strictly be about their subjects, tho the odd bit of levity I'm sure is appreciated ^^.

Again with the rudeness -_-

In other words: If you aren't a developer, you can f*** off. If you are a developer, welcome! So nicely put.

Honestly, Wesnothian, when you treat the devs like this, how can you expect them to react? They're treating you FAR better, and you're acting like this.

I don't mean to be all judgmental: lord knows I've had my share of rudeness, but just look at the image you're portraying to the forums of yourself. This is now what I know you as, and I'm sure several others: it wasn't the image I had of you when you first started posting.

[Wesnothian]

Jozrael, there are so many stuff you've got wrong right there on the spot, probably unnoticed by all exept me,
but I'm not going to respond to them because I know I'm right and I have a hard time speaking English correctly, this might seem ''OK'' for you, but it's not because I take a pretty long time to respond because I have to find the correct words/grammer. I can quote everything you said and can counter it with what I can say, but I'm not because I'm tired of this, the community is different then I expected, I take a long time to make a post because of my English, It pisses me off
how people (not calling their names) just won't understand me and won't read my post CLEARLY before quoting it, I know that I'm right and everytime I read such an ignorant post or someone quoting something that I said, I'm making a reply in my own head and I see that I end up being the one that's right, no I don't always want to be the winner, but that's basically how it is. Enough of this, I can make a long reply and explain everything but it won't work, because I've seen some other topic where a innocent guy tries to discuss something and ends up making large reply and posts, but ends up being 10 vs 1 that guy and it ends up that the guy needs to shut up or be banned (or something similar) so it's not going to work, end of discussion, I won't look into this thread again. If you reply to this see it as if you were talking to a wall because I won't discuss this anymore. Send me a PM if you want, I might speak further on PM's, but only if its going to
be a clear and good PM, if it's ignorant and looks like you haven't read my posts clearly, then I won't respond. I'm doing this because I don't want to be pissed off, so remember from now of on your talking to a brick wall.

[anakayub]

I think everyone can make their own judgement of what happened based on what they saw; let's return this thread back to the OP.

[Aethaeryn]

Wesnothian, we understand you, we just disagree. There has probably been dozens of people who have argued about luck before. It's not that you're wrong, it's that the game developers have made a conscious decision after weighing both sides of it. Neither side is wrong, really, it's a matter of taste in a major issue game design, and I'm sure after the 10,000th time the developers are sick of it coming up, which is probably why they might have come across as impolite.

Maybe some members of the community are elitist sometimes, but they kind of have a right to be when people with join dates of several months ago claim to have more knowledge about the game than the people who actually made the game. Even if they act wrong, you need to show you're the better person by not taking a well-intended post the wrong way. Show you're the better person, right now you just seem arrogant.

I'm going to assume you had good intentions. But to a neutral regular like myself, your post pretty much sounds like, "I'm right. You guys must not understand me because I know I'm right in my head and I'm always going to be right. I just don't feel like arguing to prove it. By the way, don't bother to respond because I'm ignoring this thread but PM might work."

Please take a step back and realize how arrogant you sound to everyone else. Maybe you are right, but saying you're right and keeping the reasons in your head sounds like you're saying you're wrong but coming up with an excuse, even if you have good intentions.


This thread is a good example of why the community in general doesn't like threads on luck - they usually don't end well.

[Qes]

Two things:

When I joined the forums about 9 months back, I did notice the sort of 'curt' nature of the forums. There's a trick to working out well, humorously, and generally amiable with everyone: Be cynical.

I'm only partially jesting. Cynicism and wry humor go a long way on the forums, as does self-deprecation. This was discussed all those months ago, and I know many of the Forum-Guru's tended to agree.

Silliness is the opposite of Cynicism. Randomness is not. Silliness gets little respect, because it's often just juvenile. Randomness or absurdity gets a lot of 'win' because it requires a bit of forethought to understand, or, in the best examples, no amount of thought can ever accomplish understanding the joke - and that's the joke. That is often misinterpreted for silliness here, but really it's just very dry absurdity.

These types of humor get good responses, and will, when needed, always give you a way to soften and express yourself (even your frustrations) without the Developers and Forum-regulars taking it personal. After all, they get insulted a lot for something they do for free and for fun.


The other thing:

Speaking of randomness, I think some time ago people were discussing the virtues and vices of the RNG, and specifically whether or not it should be on a bell curve. As I understand it right now, there's no bell curve. 70% chance is a straight 70% chance, and 30% chance is a straight 30% chance. What affects these numbers (for one good hit) is how many strikes an attacker/defender possesses. I dont, off-hand, recall what the reason for why the bell-curve was dismissed - but I remember that it was, and when someone explained it to me, for a good reason.

For clarification, a bell curve would weight probability towards the middle of the random number generator. It'd be less random.

Think of it this way. A 20-sided die, has a 5% chance to roll any specific number on it's face. There are 20 numbers, 20 different possibilities. Therefore, if you think of percentage. A 60 percent chance to hit would be 1-12 on a 20-sided die (or 8-20 if you think bigger is better). However, if one used 3 6-sided dice, your possible options would range from 3-18. However there'd be a significantly larger chance of rolling 10's and 11's (in total) rather than 3's or 18's. Which I think is 1:256 in odds, if im not mistaken. Something about there.

So you can see that getting a 20 with a twenty-sided dice is always gonna be 5% chance, but getting an 18 with 3 D6 is going to be much, much tougher. The 3D6 bell-curve idea was rejected, as I stated earlier. And I think it had something to do with being honest about chances to hit.

If you see someone has 70% in forest, or 50% on hills, or 20% in swamp - each of those should reflect the REAL chance you have for hitting. Thusly, if you've got 10 strikes, you should hit close to the proportion alloted. Bell curves would change the nature of the truth value (if I'm remembering correctly) of the defensive numbers.

Bell curves would be more reliable, but less truthful. If that makes sense. (Someone please correct me if I remember falsely)
-Qes

[TobiasParker]

If a thread has already been discussed Xmillion times than the mods should lock it instantly instead of letting the devs tear a new player apart.

EDIT: Also maybe the "Ideas" forum should be deleted and replaced with "Developers discussion" since none of the ideas matter anyway unless the person is able to code it themselves.

[Aethaeryn]

If a thread has already been discussed Xmillion times than the mods should lock it instantly instead of letting the devs tear a new player apart.

Most of the time that happens. And then people complain about that way too, calling them rude.

EDIT: Also maybe the "Ideas" forum should be deleted and replaced with "Developers discussion" since none of the ideas matter anyway unless the person is able to code it themselves.

Not really, most developers talk about things in places with less noise already. It's their game, they develop it. The Ideas forum is designed to be the place where all the fan ideas go for a reason - to keep the rest of the forums clutter free. Sometimes good ideas rise to the top of the mess, but most of the time the threads go nowhere. And a legitimate use is to inspire user-made-content makers, who are more accepting of new ideas in general. Just because the vast majority of threads there go nowhere doesn't mean that the forum itself is useless, I'd rather have the threads there than in the User's Forum and Multiplayer Development where some already are misposted.

[TobiasParker]

Then Devs shouldnt be allowed in the ideas forum since they destroy all of the Ideas at the first opportunity.

[turin]

Then Devs shouldnt be allowed in the ideas forum since they destroy all of the Ideas at the first opportunity.