Cool game, but not great. Here's why. (Please debate)

General feedback and discussion of the game.

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Noyga
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Post by Noyga »

Also 70% defense is probably not as good as you tend to think.
It's 70% to be missed per strike, but since the units usually have several strike, even units with 70% can expect to take some damage. And the resistance/HP of those units is not usually great, so they really get hurt when they are hit.
There is also some kind of unit that negate this defense, those with magical or marksman weapons (and half the factions do have a recruitable unit with those).
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Post by Dave »

The Drakes highlight one of the interesting parts of Wesnoth. They are different.

It would have been easy for us to make six different factions that are all very similar. Each faction gets a flying unit, each faction gets a 'tank' unit, each faction gets a scout unit, blah blah. The differences are minor, and mainly aesthetic.

Instead, we developed different factions with different abilities. The Drakes are very different; playing with them or against them requires a whole different type of strategy. Yet they are not overpowered! Rather, they are well balanced with the other factions.

This is one of the things that makes Wesnoth so interesting. It's very well balanced out, and there is so much diversity in terms of different factions one can play.

Also, I would like to point out, no-one is forcing you to play a symmetrical scenario. You could play a scenario that lasts for 20 turns, where one player has an advantage, but is expected to win in 20 turns. The other player has to play defensively. Then, when that game is over, you switch it around for the next game.

If you play the same old map over and over with the same settings, of course it is eventually going to become drawish.

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Des
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Post by Des »

Shadow Master wrote:Deciro, you at least could reply to what the developers here (Dave, Noy and Yogi Bear) have said on the subject. Also, about people leaving: as Noy said, most of us play the game to have a break from mundane life, and get some fun without going too far from real life, so you can't expect all of us to have a fixed schedule and a 100% probability to finish a game; we all have things to do, and it may happen that new tasks arise in real life.

I fully intended to reply back. I'm not here to simply bash the game...I want to learn about it too and from people who have more experience with it. :-D

I said in my first post that I could be totally wrong...and you guys have done a good job illustrating that I am.

The thing is: I wanted to be proven wrong. And I was.

After hearing what Noy had to say and reading two of the previous threads he posted, I looked at the replay I put up again...this time turn by turn.

I saw that there was definitely a lot more going on than just the defense winning. One thing I underestimated was the day/night advantages, resistances and magical attacks.

Another thing I discovered in the replay was that the players didn't stay defensive or offensive. The night/day cycles can turn a defense into an attack in a single turn and vice versa.

I guess I was just turned-off to play a game that would cater to defense only and wanted to check with more experienced players to see if this was true before investing more time into it. But as most of you have pointed out, this is not the case.

Thank you.
Last edited by Des on November 10th, 2007, 4:40 am, edited 4 times in total.
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Re: Cool game, but not great. Here's why. (Please debate)

Post by Des »

Mr Alf wrote:
Deciero wrote:I'm just calling into question why most of the units of a single race get to fly around, enabling them to easily reach tiles with low hit percentage- a critical part of the game.
I'm feeling you don't understand an aspect of the game. Just to be sure... Drakes have always like 40 or 50 % chance to be missed ( while, for example, elves have mostly 60% 70% chances to be missed ).

Drakes can own mountain or forest but they don't take advantage of it ( though they steal some good defense spot for their enemy ).

I don't master drakes tactic but I see it expands possibilities of confronting your enemy ( their chance to be hitted is always high ! ).

Thank you Mr Alf for pointing this out as well. This is also something I overlooked.
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cool evil
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Post by cool evil »

I like the game as it is, there is no obvious game flaws like missing features or major bugs. The quitting on multiplayer happens on almost any other games, players don't have time to continue or noobs afraid to lose.

IMO, wesnoth is a very good game even if it's commercial software. But it's not :P
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Re: Cool game, but not great. Here's why. (Please debate)

Post by scienceguy8 »

Deciero wrote: - I'm not sure how many songs there are, but it seems like one of them only play when I'm in a game. Just gets kinda repetitive. Is there a way to make the game play a custom rotation of outside songs?
My favorite way is to run Wesnoth in windowed mode, disable music in the Preferences pane, and run iTunes in the background. A more seamless, yet much more complicated, method, would be to tear apart the Wesnoth package, remove the current songs, select the songs you want to hear, convert them to .ogg format, rename them as the songs you removed, and place them back into the Wesnoth package (not recommended for new players, or anyone for that matter). The third, and most complicated, way would be to write a patch that allows Wesnoth to control an outside player like iTunes or Windows Media Player, then submit the patch to the Wesnoth Developers so that we can all enjoy your hard work and congratulate you for it.

(Edit: if you go the third route, don't forget support for a Linux-based player.)
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Re: Cool game, but not great. Here's why. (Please debate)

Post by Des »

scienceguy8 wrote:
Deciero wrote: - I'm not sure how many songs there are, but it seems like one of them only play when I'm in a game. Just gets kinda repetitive. Is there a way to make the game play a custom rotation of outside songs?
My favorite way is to run Wesnoth in windowed mode, disable music in the Preferences pane, and run iTunes in the background. A more seamless, yet much more complicated, method, would be to tear apart the Wesnoth package, remove the current songs, select the songs you want to hear, convert them to .ogg format, rename them as the songs you removed, and place them back into the Wesnoth package (not recommended for new players, or anyone for that matter). The third, and most complicated, way would be to write a patch that allows Wesnoth to control an outside player like iTunes or Windows Media Player, then submit the patch to the Wesnoth Developers so that we can all enjoy your hard work and congratulate you for it.

I actually thought about doing this, but your post put me to action. I downloaded some Final Fantasy Tactics/Final Fantasy 6/Zelda songs for the game. I already changed the menu song :-D I didn't have to unpack or pack anything...just converted to ogg, put it as the menu file name and it worked. Good stuff.

BTW, does anyone know what the rotation of battle songs is and how many songs rotate in a multiplayer and campaign game?

I want to have, say, 3 or 4 songs from Final Fantasy rotate while playing a multiplayer game. Which files do I replace for this?
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Post by scienceguy8 »

Some of the senarios call up specific tunes rather than select a music file at random. You will have to go into each senario .cfg file and modify them to play the music you want. I told you this was not recommended for anyone. It can be done, but will most likely invoke feelings of frustration, especially if you "fix" all the files only to realize you misspelled a single name.

As for the multiplayer, I have yet to see the file that points the engine to the appropriate music, but it most likely works on a similar system as the senarios.
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Post by Jami »

In 1.3.7 the sound util's file is in the Data\Core\Macros and is named sound_utlis (For windows anyway)

Nearly all of the MP maps (They really are just scenerio CFG files) use the default playlist listed there.
#define DEFAULT_MUSIC_PLAYLIST
# A macro to define a standard playlist suitable for any level. The
# music is defined twice to catch instances where music is changed in
# a story and not set back.
[music]
name=knolls.ogg
ms_before=12000
[/music]
[music]
name=wanderer.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=battle.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=main_menu.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=revelation.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=loyalists.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[event]
name=prestart
[music]
name=knolls.ogg
ms_before=12000
[/music]
[music]
name=wanderer.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=battle.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=main_menu.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=revelation.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[music]
name=loyalists.ogg
ms_before=12000
append=yes
[/music]
[/event]
#enddef
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Post by Cackfiend »

old thread but i just saw it...


since my early days in wesnoth i recognized something pretty quick

if you play defense you sacrifice time of day advantage

if you play offense you sacrifice defense in order to utilize time of day


playing defensive can definitely be a great thing when played well, in fact many of the best wesnoth players have made a name for themselves by playing majorly defensive (pietro, noy, ereksos to name a few).

but imo, playing defensively is BORING and makes game last very very long. Its one of the main reasons I stopped playing wesnoth for about 5 months this year, all the top skilled matches were all about defense.

Thats one of the reasons I also dedicated myself to becoming a good Drake player. Theyre the only purely offensive race, they have no good defensive unit. Saurians only get 60% defense in their best terrain and they have VERY low hit points. Drakes can be very fun to play and make a game that would normally take 3 hours take only 1 or 2.

id also like to point out that there is an advantage to playing as 1st player and an advantage to playing as 2nd player, but i'll let you figure out what that advantage is :)
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Post by Noy »

I'm not a defensive player, by any stretch of the imagination...

Except when someone revives a long dead forum thread for no reason but to tout how great he is.

Stop it for eff's sake.

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