Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Feedback for the mainline campaign Descent into Darkness.

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WanderingHero
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Location: Uk, London

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by WanderingHero »

I wonder if its relevant for me to post in these threads? Sorry if this is considered Necroing, I find the campaign intriguing, enjoyable and original, but rather lacking in polish (still one of my favs, maybe my outright fav) so I thought it could use the most feedback.

(1) Easy
(2) 2 Spam zombies, overun Orcs. Normally I think this is too easy, but it makes sense from a storyline prespective, and it works well for a first scenario
(3) Kill orcs. Pretty simple
(4) Well..... It was interesting but a number of things weren't clear and it kind of shows in the campaign. Why was Malin kicked out (you find out later and I still wonder if that was worth expelling him)? Why is Necromancy so taboo, that it will get you kicked out even if you use it to save lives? Why doesn't Malin's sister speak up for him? A prologue would have been good, explaning things and make us bond with the characthers. Also something unclear throughout the campaign, is the use of Necromancy slowly corrupt Malin's mind or is it because he was exiled and bitter?
(5) None
(6) 7 Extremly easy but setups up the campaign nicely
(7) I guess I MIGHT have added more orcs, maybe some level 2s. And made the dialogue clearer
(8) Stupidly leeroying Malin in to get more experience. It was my first intermediate campaign......
Giraffemonster
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by Giraffemonster »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

Played on Neophyte (Normal), which is the easiest difficulty. Version 1.9.7 on Linux.

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

3, keeping a few level one orcs at the river was pretty easy. If you fail that, you can hold them long enough to let Drogan's troops take over, which are more than able to slaughter the orcish troops.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Sort of clear. The objectives tell you to hold the river ford for two days, but they don't tell you about killing the orc leader. Shouldn't there be an alternative objective, "Defeat the enemy leader"?

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

For the most part, I liked it. I liked to read it. When I killed the orc leader though, it seemed way too simple. Dialogue copied from the .cfg file.

"The orcs are broken, dead or fled."

If you look above the orc leader's death event, you can see a comment line which reads, "This is very unlikely, but just in case..."

While It did take me 13/15 turns on Easy, that doesn't exactly mean it's very unlikely. I think this part should be expanded instead of using some placeholder text, as I found it a bit more likely to happen than the developer may have. Also, I think a better statement would be,

"The orcs attacking Parthyn have all been routed, or killed."

Then maybe some dialogue could be added in afterwards, like Malin saying, "Foul beast, never again will you terrorize our people!" or something like that.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Keeping Malin alive while giving him some experience.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

It's quite fun for the first while, but then either you get bored of using walking corpses, or Drogan's troops march in and do all the work for you.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

More gold for the orcs, and more gold for the player. Maybe you could give Malin some more starting units, so that he could have more control over the situation than Drogan does.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

Nope.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?

I read through it, and perhaps the comment I mentioned before, "This is very unlikely, but just in case..." could be modified to, "On the event that the player manages to kill the orcish leader, unlikely on higher difficulties."

The rest is pretty well commented. Good campaign too. Also, I noticed that Drogan's portrait looks a bit weird. A part of his helmet is transparent/missing.
podbelski
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Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by podbelski »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.9.6, Hard, no reloads

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
Probably "1" for an experienced player. You just have to carefully hold the orcs in the river till reinforcements arrive. After that, I almost had not opportunity to fight the enemy :) My allies killed the Orc leader.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
quite fun, probably "5"

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
as is, I don't see how can you lose w/o making terrible moves and/or being very unlucky. Maybe weaken your ally a bit? At least they say almost no defenders in a town atm, so how the hell those ally guys come to crush the orcs?
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ayearhasgone
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Joined: October 28th, 2010, 5:36 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by ayearhasgone »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Medium, 1.9

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
1. Extremely easy.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Interesting, this is one of my favorite campaigns as far as story and dialogue go.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
None.

All that is necessary is to clog the ford with WCs. No need to worry about gaining XP, just mindless attack the orcs as they come. I was able to besiege the orc keep before Drogan's reinforcements could even make it across.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I think it would be a more interesting tactical challenge if Drogan's forces attacked your WCs, but considering this is the first scenario, perhaps that would be too difficult.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
n/a
SBak
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Joined: October 8th, 2011, 1:36 am

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by SBak »

Content Feedback wrote:(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.8.5 Easy
Content Feedback wrote:(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
Maybe 2 or 3.
Content Feedback wrote:(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear.
Content Feedback wrote:(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I used the walking corpses, which gave it all an interesting twist.
Content Feedback wrote:(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Getting to use the bowman and spearman.
Content Feedback wrote:(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
I give this a 9 or 10. Coming into this after some experience with elves against orcs it was payback time for the wolf riders (for all the elvish shamen). I discovered to my joy that walking corpses can be quite effective and those wolf riders that jumped into the river returned back as zombies. Great to see them turning on their colleagues 'urr!!'.
Content Feedback wrote:(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
No not really.
Content Feedback wrote:(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No.
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taptap
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by taptap »

You can win this level without any recruiting at all (even on hardest difficulty by sacrificing your loyal units). When you do, the dialog in this scenario is adapted, but the storyline and the dialog in the next one doesn't make sense. (You don't have to convince the people to let you back, when you didn't yet raise undead.)
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
WanderingHero
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by WanderingHero »

taptap wrote:You can win this level without any recruiting at all (even on hardest difficulty by sacrificing your loyal units). When you do, the dialog in this scenario is adapted, but the storyline and the dialog in the next one doesn't make sense. (You don't have to convince the people to let you back, when you didn't yet raise undead.)
The creator once posted acknowledging the sequence breaking joy of this, but said that if you did it, you would have to explicitly go out of your way to get this, and thus it should be treated as an easter egg and not a real part of the story.
And really, if you think about it, if Malin didn't repel the orcs with Necromancy he would either 1: get kicked out later for using necromancy 2: Go on to live a normal life, which wouldn't be much of a campaign (i'd personally have given people who beat this scenario the "and Malin goes on to live an uneventful life. The end" ending but hey).

Fun fact, in early verisons, I hear you could recruit vampire bats in the first scenario, before it was removed for obvious plot reasons
podbelski
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Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by podbelski »

WanderingHero wrote:And really, if you think about it, if Malin didn't repel the orcs with Necromancy he would either 1: get kicked out later for using necromancy 2: Go on to live a normal life, which wouldn't be much of a campaign (i'd personally have given people who beat this scenario the "and Malin goes on to live an uneventful life. The end" ending but hey).
I guess there should be another "Endless Night"-like scenario, where Malin has to guard the village from orcish runs :) As a human of course
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Ninjuri
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by Ninjuri »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
normal 1.10.2
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
2
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
100%
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
This was pretty good, when i first saw the 3 loyal units i was like, "okay, so i'm going to be recruiting basic human soldiers..." but then the recruit screen came up and there were corpses. I was thinking "what? won't they get pissed if start raising zombies out of nowhere?" and they did. I wonder what would happen if i just used the 3 starting units... hmmm.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Fighting with the ally for kills
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
none
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
no
Fate is against me.
Zlob
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Joined: July 6th, 2012, 5:51 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by Zlob »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
--- Summoner (difficult), 1.10.1
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
--- 6
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
--- 100%
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
--- Interesting enough to make me defend Parthyn without using the undead. :wink:
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
--- Nothing
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
--- 8
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
--- It's good as it is.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
--- Nope
(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
--- I will leave it unanswered.
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devavrata
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Joined: August 30th, 2012, 8:59 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by devavrata »

Content Feedback wrote:A review of Saving Parthyn - the starting scenario of Descent into Darkness

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Battle for Wesnoth 1.8.3, Easy/Medium/Hard
Content Feedback wrote:(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
8
Content Feedback wrote:(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear. Also, it is possible to win without recruiting undead.
Content Feedback wrote:(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Clear, simple. Also, it has two different endings.
-Recruiting undead, Malin bets banished from Parthyn by Drogan.
-Without recruiting undead, Malin is told that her sister is seriously wounded and might die, so he decides to leave in order to avenge her. Drogan allows for him to leave, but without his blessings.
Content Feedback wrote:(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Holding the fort for the first few turns with only four units is difficult, after the arrival of allied troops it becomes easier.
Content Feedback wrote:(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6
Content Feedback wrote:(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
-
Content Feedback wrote:(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No
Content Feedback wrote:(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
-
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flammstrudel
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by flammstrudel »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.2 Summoner (difficult) – no reloads

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
2/10

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Very clear.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Feeding kills to the hero.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7/10 Zombies are fun.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
A little bit more gold for the orcs. As of now it's just one wave and once your ally arrives you just crush 'em. The “defensive mood” doesn't arise.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
No.
RaustBD
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by RaustBD »

1: 1.10.7 normal (easiest difficulty)
2: 2, reasonably easy beginner level, I reserve 1 for scenarios it's virtually impossible to lose since you didn't list 0 among the options.
3: Reasonably clear, but the line the enemies weren't allowed to cross wasn't exactly clear. I would've marked the first spaces they mustn't cross with those crossed sword objective markers, or if it's where I think it is, rephrased it to "Orcs reach your side of the river". "Break through the river fort defenses" implied that it's some southwest line drawn hex-straight behind the last castle tile in your fort.
4: Great, very clear and interesting, though I find it odd that the villagers used NONE of the good arguments against necromancy, like the actual immoral consequences like enslaving souls. Are you intentionally avoiding drawing attention to that so that Malin Keshar's "descent into darkness" is more believable?
5: None really.
6: 6. It wasn't particularly interesting, but at no point was I bored, which is what the lower 5 ranks are reserved for for me.
7: It's not too big a deal, and I can't think of any way to fix it without drastically altering the level's difficulty/play, but for all of the map's size, the effective battlefield is spectacularly cramped. At least half of the battlefield will never be fought on, a half or so of the remaining is river, and then you'll usually only get to, at most, a half of what remains because of the army you'll meet that you aren't likely to rout.

Also, for the record, I am not fond of Malin Keshar's new mainline standard portrait. I played this campaign a year or two back and liked that one much better. It more befitted a descent into darkness, he looked like a nice, normal, even a bit wide-eyed young man. I understand the need for a consistent art style for the mainline campaigns, but even so, that is not the portrait of a character like Malin. It looks more like a psychotic vagrant/hermit.

And speaking of playing it a year or two back, on that occasion I tried to see if it were possible to win without the undead, and I managed it, and I was pleased to see that you actually had an excuse to move the story forward regardless.
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Maiklas3000
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) Level, version? Hard, 1.11.15
(2) Difficult? (1-10) 4.
(3) Objectives? Clear.
(4) Dialog? Good, but I still have the same criticism as my previous review.
(5) Challenges? Giving your leader some XP without getting him killed is the main challenge.
(6) Fun? (1-10) 7.
(7) Changes? Consider weakening the ally on hard.
(8) Restarts? I replayed the scenario from start to try to win without recruiting Walking Corpses. I was not able. I had to use my leader to defend the stronghold one turn, and then if I had used him again in defence he would have had a 13% chance of dying, so I had to recruit a Walking Corpse. I recuited 2 total, and so I finished with more gold than before, and about the same XP for my leader (he killed a L2.) My leader was blocked from getting the killing blow on the enemy leader by allied peasants and other riff-raff(!)
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Inky
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 1 - Saving Parthyn

Post by Inky »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.10.4, hard (Summoner), (automatic 70 starting gold)

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
3 - quite easy, just spamming WCs.
But I had no idea before reading previous posts that there was a different ending for not using walking corpses! I went back and tried it that way; the difficulty is about 9.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
It's not clear. I thought "defend the river fort" meant orcs may not step on dry land across the river, but a wolf rider made it onto land without incident. It needs to be marked where exactly the orcs may not cross.
In addition "kill the orc leader" should be added to the winning objectives.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Interesting dialog when you first recruit a WC.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Getting xp for Malin.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
5- It's okay, not much to it.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Increase income and then make the 3 loyals nonloyal so player knows they are expendable.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
with WCs: No restarts/reloads.

without WC: restart because I retreated to the south forest and and an orc ran to the west to attack Drogan's troops so I lost automatically. Again the line they can't cross should be made clear.
Won the second time by sticking everyone in Malin's keep and praying they survived. No reloads (but I think I was relatively lucky).
If you don't use undead, the objective of surviving and your powerful ally both make sense. I wish there was some reward for doing it this way though; otherwise the easier way is much better since you can actually get xp for Malin.
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