Bad Campaign Elements

[Crow_T]

Certain things happen in campaigns that probably shouldn't. I'm not trying to be negative here, only offering constructive crits.

The Bottleneck: This is seen in THoT in The Underlevels- basically you have a situation where one or two of your units have their chance to attack (usually a well defended unit) while everyone else is jammed in the rear doing nothing. This is just a turn burner at the mercy of the RNG, not much fun at all, nor very strategic.

The Massive AI battle: Here you have a battle on many fronts, AI allies and enemies, and after you play your turn you hit ctrl-space and proceed to start dinner or read a chapter of a book while the computer fights itself. The bad part is that you need to see what is happening in the battle but its so drawn out and boring you cease to care. AI allies are fine but they should only be about 25% of the battle max.

The Surprise Recruit: I've seen this a couple of times- you start a scenario, recruit to the max for a couple of turns, then a character comes in saying you can now recruit X awesome unit. The only issue: now you have only 4 GP and are making 2 GP per turn, so you can get halfway to beating the scenario before you can even afford a new unit. Oh boy let's restart from the beginning with this new knowledge.

Losing Sweet Recalls: DM is guilty of this, as are some UMCs. The player takes a lot of time and effort to level up some units only to never be able to use them again. There should be ample warning saying the units in a scenario are disposable and temporary.

[doofus-01]

Losing Sweet Recalls: DM is guilty of this, as are some UMCs. The player takes a lot of time and effort to level up some units only to never be able to use them again. There should be ample warning saying the units in a scenario are disposable and temporary.

For story reasons, it can be difficult to give such a warning without spoiling things. What would you propose to solve that? Maybe the units in question can just have little chance for advancement, either because they are already level 3 (or whatever) or they are special units that can't advance?

The Surprise Recruit: I've seen this a couple of times- you start a scenario, recruit to the max for a couple of turns, then a character comes in saying you can now recruit X awesome unit. The only issue: now you have only 4 GP and are making 2 GP per turn, so you can get halfway to beating the scenario before you can even afford a new unit. Oh boy let's restart from the beginning with this new knowledge.

Would just giving the player one of the new units be enough to avoid such trauma?

[zookeeper]

I think most of the developers would agree that those (and a bunch of others) are examples of poor scenario design and would be good to fix whenever possible, but as usual it's more a matter of getting someone to actually take the time to design, implement and test the changes.

[wobbly]

The Bottleneck: This is seen in THoT in The Underlevels- basically you have a situation where one or two of your units have their chance to attack (usually a well defended unit) while everyone else is jammed in the rear doing nothing. This is just a turn burner at the mercy of the RNG, not much fun at all, nor very strategic.

A quick comment, I like the bottleneck when it's part of a wider strategy. e.g. your fighting on another front, while holding a bottleneck. It's only irritating when you have to push through the bottleneck. I'd add HTtT Siege of Elsenfar(not sure I've got the name right) - the one with the undead leader at the top & the orcs occupying the city in the centre, as another culprit. Cracking the undead leader's fortress is 1 on 1 with most of your troops stuck behind.

[Anonymissimus]

The Bottleneck: This is seen in THoT in The Underlevels- basically you have a situation where one or two of your units have their chance to attack (usually a well defended unit) while everyone else is jammed in the rear doing nothing. This is just a turn burner at the mercy of the RNG, not much fun at all, nor very strategic.

I like this scenario. If you aren't careful you can still lose your front units.
The point of many bottleneck fights is to lure the enemies out onto bad terrain and/or open ground to be able to surround them. (as in Siege of Elensefar, see also http://gna.org/patch/?3899)

[taptap]

Certain things happen in campaigns that probably shouldn't. I'm not trying to be negative here, only offering constructive crits.

The Massive AI battle: Sometimes annoying but accelerated speed helps a lot. OR even Skip AI turn: ON

The Surprise Recruit: Yes, this is bad. But where exactly does this happen? And isn't it often just meant to be for the next scenario?

Losing Sweet Recalls: This is absolutely necessary for balance with all these overlength (>10 scenario) campaigns. Either losing recalls or increasing xp requirements to 200% or both.

But what about:

The tomato surprise - the spawning enemy reserve. People always agree that they are bad, but many campaigns have them nonetheless.

Triggered events - or the reason why you shouldn't scout in dungeon crawling campaigns.

Static guardians

[Lord-Knightmare]

Thanks, I can use this to improve TLB.

The Bottleneck: This is seen in THoT in The Underlevels- basically you have a situation where one or two of your units have their chance to attack (usually a well defended unit) while everyone else is jammed in the rear doing nothing. This is just a turn burner at the mercy of the RNG, not much fun at all, nor very strategic.

I have only one scenario like this, but I fixed that.

The Massive AI battle: Here you have a battle on many fronts, AI allies and enemies, and after you play your turn you hit ctrl-space and proceed to start dinner or read a chapter of a book while the computer fights itself. The bad part is that you need to see what is happening in the battle but its so drawn out and boring you cease to care. AI allies are fine but they should only be about 25% of the battle max.

Why? I have plenty of this sort and my latest masterpiece - scenario 53 - is the KING of this sort of scenarios....(16 sides + heavily detailed gargantuan map, 15 of which are AI-controlled)

The Massive AI battle: Sometimes annoying but accelerated speed helps a lot. OR even Skip AI turn: ON

Nah, tried it at 16x speed and skipped AI turns, doesn't help a lot. Still an half hour goes by on five turns...

The Surprise Recruit: I've seen this a couple of times- you start a scenario, recruit to the max for a couple of turns, then a character comes in saying you can now recruit X awesome unit. The only issue: now you have only 4 GP and are making 2 GP per turn, so you can get halfway to beating the scenario before you can even afford a new unit. Oh boy let's restart from the beginning with this new knowledge.

Nah, I give warnings about saving gold in some levels.

Losing Sweet Recalls: DM is guilty of this, as are some UMCs. The player takes a lot of time and effort to level up some units only to never be able to use them again. There should be ample warning saying the units in a scenario are disposable and temporary.

Losing Sweet Recalls: This is absolutely necessary for balance with all these overlength (>10 scenario) campaigns. Either losing recalls or increasing xp requirements to 200% or both

Nice point. I will make some edits about temporary troops.

And, I would like to add another bad element:

Godlike Units:- Some UMC campaigns offer units that are insanely powerful and nearly un-killable. I hate this sort of things, and it's the reason why I never finished LotI (a great campaign, BTW) and ASoF (actually, I lost my save files on this one....but the campaign story was extraordinary)

[Dugi]

Bottlenecks: the easiest to remove, but sometime people just don't want to remove it.

The Massive AI battle: Sometimes annoying but accelerated speed helps a lot. OR even Skip AI turn: ON

I have this problem too. I am dealing with it by suppressing the advancement popups until the start of the player's turn (so that he could check facebook during the ai turn and then choose what to advance to), but it is not always enough.

Godlike Units:- Some UMC campaigns offer units that are insanely powerful and nearly un-killable. I hate this sort of things, and it's the reason why I never finished LotI

Continually working on making them superior, but not immortal. Not an easy job, through. I suppose you are dealing with it by making your protagonist, supposed to be the greatest hero ever, by making him a hero rather by deeds than by power.

[revansurik]

The Massive AI battle: Maybe when such kind of battle is too frequent or too large... when it comes at only certain point in a campaign, I think it gives a momentous feeling to the story.

Losing Sweet Recalls: I agree with taptap that it is necessary for overly long campaigns, but still, the player must be left with at least some of the powerful, experienced units. I hated it when DM stripped me of my Arch/White mage duo, returning them to me only in the last scenarios

Godlike units: Um, I think I like them... Having a godlike unit in my army when facing a godlike enemy makes way for some cool single combat

[Lord-Knightmare]

I suppose you are dealing with it by making your protagonist, supposed to be the greatest hero ever, by making him a hero rather by deeds than by power.

Yes, you have guessed correctly. The protagonist of my campaign series makes himself known to the world by accomplishing quests, exploring the unknown and slaying monsters.

The tomato surprise - the spawning enemy reserve. People always agree that they are bad, but many campaigns have them nonetheless.

This is rather fun, especially at the middle of any campaign. More troops means more XP for my army.
Showdown of Northern Rebirth could use this, it gets kinda boring to bring my entire horde of drakes on defenceless orc leaders...
Battle for Wesnoth of Heir to the Throne could also use something like this.

Godlike units: Um, I think I like them... Having a godlike unit in my army when facing a godlike enemy makes way for some cool single combat

Reminds me of After the Storm battle scene of Zhangor vs Elynia and Elyssa duel.

[Crow_T]

Losing Sweet Recalls: This is absolutely necessary for balance with all these overlength (>10 scenario) campaigns. Either losing recalls or increasing xp requirements to 200% or both.

But what about:

The tomato surprise - the spawning enemy reserve. People always agree that they are bad, but many campaigns have them nonetheless.

It could be an interesting campaign element to lose the bottom 50% or so of the recall list each time there is a certain amount of travel- historically large armies lost massive amounts of people during non-battle travel due to disease, starvation, or mutiny.

If by spawning enemy reserve you mean a constant flow of enemies I agree, but it can be done reasonably too.

[A Guy]

This is rather fun, especially at the middle of any campaign. More troops means more XP for my army.
Showdown of Northern Rebirth could use this, it gets kinda boring to bring my entire horde of drakes on defenceless orc leaders...

However, Old Friend does it terribly. Not only is there absolutely no warning that stepping on a certain tile range will spawn 42 Goblin Knights and give the leaders a huge gold boost while staying just one tile off makes the scenario infinitely easier, it also makes the game very laggy.

[Chief_Chasso]

The Surprise Recruit: I've seen this a couple of times- you start a scenario, recruit to the max for a couple of turns, then a character comes in saying you can now recruit X awesome unit. The only issue: now you have only 4 GP and are making 2 GP per turn, so you can get halfway to beating the scenario before you can even afford a new unit. Oh boy let's restart from the beginning with this new knowledge.

Also, how about the Surprise No Recruit. You can only recruit a certain unit type on a certain scenario(s), with no indication that you won't be able to recruit this unit type in later scenarios. A classic example is "Clearing the Mines" in NR.

[sur.nhm]

The Bottleneck is sometimes annoying (again, THoT's The Underlevels) but it's sometimes a lifesaver too; in the same level, I blocked a whole army of Shadows and Wraiths from slaughtering my poor Dwarf Lords by positioning Ratheln, by that time a Great Time, in a bottleneck and fireballing all who came near.
The Massive AI Battle: Oh, gods, no. Those make the game so slow. I tend to browse TvTropes when those happen because it's not interesting to see the computer fighting itself - when I play a game, I want to play it, not to sit and twiddle my thumbs while the computer redraws the screen.
Static Guardians aren't a problem in my experience; in fact, they make some otherwise-impossible scenarios possible (I'm looking at you here, Liberty's The Grey Woods).

[pauline]

Dear experts,
At the risk of spoiling this interesting thread of knowledgeable people,
I can't help posting my opinion here:
[The tomato surprise – People always agree that they are bad ... ] ?
Not correct. I don´t. Never.
I actually enjoy campaigns that have lots of them and feel even more challenged.
I don’t mind if my strategy is ruined, if I have to retreat or regrouped my units,
not even to start all over. That´s what happens in real life, too.
[ Personally I can´t see how one can have more fun if all becomes as expected
and everything goes according known circumstances.] (from the thread "Luck in Wesnoth")
The same goes for ALL the other things that [happen in campaigns that probably shouldn't ].
I suppose it´s for the fact that I’m not very experienced (playing Wesnoth for only 2 years) that
I´m not supersaturated with e.g. watching "Massive AI battle", although I like the rarely used
"Player may change the behavior of an allied side’s AI using a context menu brought up
by clicking on the allied side’s leader"-option more (Legend of Wesmere/S7 Elves Last Stand).

No bad feelings, surely I´m not the only one with such a queer view.
Hopefully it will take ages to "improve" the game "to avoid trauma" !
Thanks for all your work anyway !!!
pauline

PS:
I read this too : Favourite' suprises in scenarios - http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... 0&start=15
Very funny !!! But I don´t change my mind.