thoughts after a few days of wesnoth

[jdodson]

first off i want to thank everyone for contributing to such a fine game that is free(as in freedom and beer). even the moderators(being a mod on the ubuntu forums i know it can be quite a chore):)

i have some honest feedback, however keep in mind i have not been with wesnoth for that long, i would say only a few days at most.

first off the learning curve for wesnoth was pretty steep. yesterday it occurred to me that you dont need to have a unit stay at a village to keep getting gold for it. that made the missions much easier as i was leaving a unit per village..... that is my bad, though after reading all the docs, i still didnt get it. i am not knocking the docs, i just didnt get it. now i do, the game is much simpler.

i started with the .7.1 version in ubuntu(my main os) and yesterday i upgraded to .8.8, wow nice work i can tell the difference already. the smoke from chimneys adds something nice to the game.

i am playing on easy and find the game to be very challenging. i am on the 3rd campain, the island one and have had to restart it a few times. beating it in the specified turns makes it tough as i like to take my time. it is good to not dally around as it makes your think harder and mess around less. this is something i am not used to, but a good thing.

i know you can turn off the AI moving around, but can you turn off seeing them do anything? personally its kinda a hassle to have to watch all of that and i really don't care much as a quite scan around the screen can get me all i really want. then again i am VERY green and the uber leet awesome players might find this feature invaluble....

this game really reminds me of playing KOEI games on NES and SuperNES. are there any plans to add a world map and a way to control countries and have a world/global domination style addition to the game? that would be pretty cool. if not i dig, game is great as is, keep it coming.

i looked all over the site and didnt see a "future plans" or "goals" section. do you have that stuff documented? i am just curious.

blizzard has a philosophy that is "easy to learn hard to master" it seems to me that wesnoth is "hard to learn and even harder to master." i wonder what the developers are trying to accomplish? i respect it if they are trying to build a tough game, its a unique stance as far as i am concerned and respect that position if that is the case.

in the end i like the differences i outlined and enjoy the game, even if it owns me:) keep up the good work, we need more good, free games. oh, and thank you for the gnu/linux port too. many free games are only for windows..... that is pretty lame.

-jdodson

p.s. special thanks to that guy in irc who promted me to post here.

[Dave]

i know you can turn off the AI moving around, but can you turn off seeing them do anything? personally its kinda a hassle to have to watch all of that and i really don't care much as a quite scan around the screen can get me all i really want.

There was an option to do this a while ago, but it was a maintenance hassle, and not that many people seemed to use it, so it was removed.

are there any plans to add a world map and a way to control countries and have a world/global domination style addition to the game?

There have been a few vague suggestions of this, but I don't think anyone's working on it. I think the development team prefers linear, storyline-oriented play.

I liked KOEI games too, but they did tend to get to a stage where the number of battles just got plain tedious.

i looked all over the site and didnt see a "future plans" or "goals" section. do you have that stuff documented? i am just curious.

We have a bugs and features request list at http://bugs.wesnoth.org

Mostly we think the game has enough features, especially in single-player mode, and are 'polishing' it up to try to make a complete 1.0 version.

blizzard has a philosophy that is "easy to learn hard to master" it seems to me that wesnoth is "hard to learn and even harder to master." i wonder what the developers are trying to accomplish? i respect it if they are trying to build a tough game, its a unique stance as far as i am concerned and respect that position if that is the case.

Well, firstly I think the Wesnoth ruleset is relatively easy to learn for a turn-based game. Learning the controls is really simple: you can recruit units, you can move units, you can attack. On scenarios after the first, you can recall as well as recruit.

Sure, exactly what makes some moves good and others bad is kinda complex, but for a turn-based game, Wesnoth is actually very simple compared to most modern turn-based games that are around.

I think the thing you're running into is simply that all the campaigns we distribute with the game currently are rather....difficult. We want Wesnoth to be challenging, although I think this has reached a stage where it's simply too hard. There are plans to tone down some of the campaigns a little in difficulty.

We still want the game to be challenging though. Wesnoth is a community developed game, and I think most people in the community like tough games.

in the end i like the differences i outlined and enjoy the game, even if it owns me:) keep up the good work, we need more good, free games. oh, and thank you for the gnu/linux port too. many free games are only for windows..... that is pretty lame.

Thanks for posting

The GNU/Linux port isn't really a 'port', since Wesnoth was originally written for GNU/Linux, and then ported to other OSes such as Windows and MacOSX.

David

[jdodson]

thanks dave, i appreciate the reply.

i agree the game has enough features, i just wasnt sure if you had anything else planned.

rock on.

[Disto]

are there any plans to add a world map and a way to control countries and have a world/global domination style addition to the game?

There have been a few vague suggestions of this, but I don't think anyone's working on it. I think the development team prefers linear, storyline-oriented play.

I liked KOEI games too, but they did tend to get to a stage where the number of battles just got plain tedious.

This could happen but Wesnoth needs finishing first.

[AkitoScorpio]

Well i'm not a Koei gamer.... but I do play a spot of domminions 2 from time to time, I think captureing villages is kinda like that really.

[Viliam]

yesterday it occurred to me that you dont need to have a unit stay at a village to keep getting gold for it. that made the missions much easier as i was leaving a unit per village.....

When I started playing Wesnoth, I did the same mistake. I could not even win the tutorial (then, it was not the same tutorial as is there now).

It probably should be more emphasised somewhere.

[Elvish_Pillager]

It probably should be more emphasised somewhere.

I do this in the tutorial I've been designing, which may or may not ever be finished.

[Kirdan]

it seems to me that wesnoth is "hard to learn and even harder to master."

I wouldn't agree with that. Wesnoth is very easy to learn, but very hard to master. I honerstly don't understand how you could get the wrong impression of when you get gold for villages, but sure, once in a while we all make such mistakes. I think it's pretty intuitive with the small flags on the villages.

Btw: I'm in no way related to the wesnoth team. I'm a user, just as you who recently discovered Wesnoth.

[Fortify]

it seems to me that wesnoth is "hard to learn and even harder to master."

Most of the mechanics of Wesnoth are familiar to me from other Turn Based Strategy, not all computer based. But unlike most games wesnoth's learning curve with it's unforgivingly good AI.

Easy to learn
Hard to be competent
Very Hard to Master

The learning curve is consistant, I LOVE IT!

Cheers,
Fortify

[Temuchin Khan]

Hey, somebody mentioned KOEI! I was a big fan of Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf, back in the day. Although, having beaten it with every country in every scenario, I have nothing more to prove. My best moment: once, I was playing the Capetian Kingdom, and I had a son whose stats where better than any other character in the game, including Genghis Khan himself. Best part? I had already named this character after myself, long before I had a chance to see his stats.

[Aethirry]

Just finished HTTT in the latest release (8.9), and have to say it's very satisfying to round out a game with this plain-old good storytelling.

Had to kluge-edit a map with connecting tunnels between the pockets of "sides" in the Sceptre of Fire scenario, which I read is currently a "known bug" - easy enough to do without peeking as to where the sceptre'd been placed (and still challenging to fight through! Found it with Li'sar on the second to last turn anyway).

I'd agree with the notes above, that the game is medium-easy with plenty of fiddly bits in the learning curve - it took me the longest time to 'get it' that there were time-of-day bonus modifiers, which just pleased me no end when I did discover it. Later versions have more clues on details like this: mouse over the various portions of the information area to the right. New folks who want to take in all the "gimme" information can read the tips and hints abounding here and there from the game itself to the scenario descriptions in the wiki.

to learn basics: pretty easy
to become facile with the details: medium, and a while
to master it: well, of course a good challenge takes time and practice and effort!

That's what makes a good game Great. And this is one of the greats.
Thank you, David and all the team!

It's also fun to see the artwork develop over time.

[jdodson]

Hey, somebody mentioned KOEI! I was a big fan of Genghis Khan II: Clan of the Gray Wolf, back in the day. Although, having beaten it with every country in every scenario, I have nothing more to prove. My best moment: once, I was playing the Capetian Kingdom, and I had a son whose stats where better than any other character in the game, including Genghis Khan himself. Best part? I had already named this character after myself, long before I had a chance to see his stats.

i still own that game. it was soooo good! i had kids that were pretty good as well. that game seemed very stacked in favor of the mongols though. anyways, it was well worth the money for the hours i spent playing it