There's one thing we really hate of this game.

[Magister]

Isn't it way too much random sometimes?

Yesterday my elf friend launched an attack to my position with 3 elfs for a whopping 9 attack. He hit my 70% defense bandit just once. Next turn again he attacked a bandit with 70% defense and again he it way less than 30%. Sure, in the long term it probably rebalance itself but it's silly when you lose a dwarf berserk which had an estimated 89% won probability, and it's sad when you win making big strategies and people tell you that's just luck and you can't tell them wrong because a couple time you really had luck.

It seem to me that the game is balanced quite well but i would rather prefere a more deterministic combat engine, i mean if i attack 3 times a 40% to hit enemy i *do* expect to hit him at least once and it really upset me a lot if it doesn't especially if the enemy was at 1 hp.

I like strategy games but there's not much strategy value when you get unlucky in the bad moment, and it doesn't appeal me that probably dice will rebalance itself later, because probably later will be too late.

I would rather prefere a deterministic system, it wouldn't be too much hard to implement, same attacks, same damage, same defence, but when calculating results it add up the potential damage and the damage done is the correct share of the full pool.

Why not?

[JW]

FPI

Also, try a search on "deterministic" or "Sauron"

[Magister]

Ok sorry, i will read posted stuff

[La_vie_en_Wose]

It is sad when the wheather news speaker told you it had to be shiny today despite it rains.

[JW]

Ok sorry, i will read posted stuff

Yeah, this is pretty much the biggest downside to Wesnoth IMO. I even referred to it as "Dicenoth" in my last tournament game. But hey, it's what we have to work with here - it ain't gonna change.

Sauron created a mod that is less random, hence why searching his name would be a good place to look.

-edit-

It is sad when the wheather news speaker told you it had to be shiny today despite it rains.

Why do you post random stuff like this where it's entirely useless?

[Chris NS]

Why not? Because this shapes the stratgey of the game. The more often you take risks where there's a few% chance you will lose a valued character, the more likely it is this will happen. Solution? Avoid taking these risks in the first place, and the better you plan your attacks, the less often you'll need to take these risks. And if something doesn't go to plan, you need to adjust your plans quickly.

[Eleazar]

but it's silly when you lose a dwarf berserk which had an estimated 89% won probability.

Sure it's frustrating, but do you realize the important difference between a 89% chance to win and a 100% chance?

[Blarumyrran]

It is sad when the wheather news speaker told you it had to be shiny today despite it rains.

Why do you post random stuff like this where it's entirely useless?

its not really random, its an example about being disappointed in prediction, which was likely but didnt happen, from real life.

but whats really angering is how some people tell in the end-game: "look your EV, u had normal luck, u still lost, ur suchanoob", while it really doesnt matter if it evens up later, because its important in early game whether you get those central villages & good terrains or not. if you dont, it really doesnt matter if you get a little lucky later - in the long run, the one who got lucky in the beginning will still win because of now having better income & defence positions & more units.

[Magister]

What i believe here is that whenever bad luck hits you at the bad time, no strategy can save your game. You can make your strategy as good as you want, but if the dice don't fit, you are done.

And it is silly that some of you says "Oh, come on, if you have been unlucky this time you may be lucky next" because actually i get fed up when i lose AND when i win by luck, because whenever luck win, strategy lose.

My two cents is that this game *may* be a good balanced strategy game, but as is half games ends by luck, not by strategy. Maybe i'm not your base player. I was searching for an addicting multyplayer strategy game, then i saw exagon, numbers, and your site and told me, that is.

I played it for a while but reading around in this forum i now realize that it has not been thought as a multiplayer strategy game but rather as a single player campaign game with multiplayer added later as a feature. Single player side is nicely done but only a few, really a few, titles get to addict me as a single player game, and this one is not among those. It may be addicting as a multiplayer but luck, both ways (i've won a lot by luck too) imho, ruin many matches.

Someone said "Hey, Risk and Backgammon are luck based and are good strategy games". I did played both, i don't like backgammon at all and i enjoied risk much only until i realized how much first three turns are important in the game. I do prefere Chess and Diplomacy. Much more strategy there. Maybe i'm not your base player.

Coding myself? I may do that as i have the programming skills but actually i don't have the skills at choosing the right engine and balancing al the stuff, as i realize there are a lot of variables in the systems and most of the possibilities (full deterministic system, more attack but less damage, 100% to hit but variable damage and so on) change things not directly related.

Now i'm just asking that. Sure, as Dave stated this game *was born* as a single player campaign system but as it is now, the majority of gamers play or would like to play it as a single o multiplayer? If it's singleplayer, then no more word, but if the player base prefere a multiplayer strategy experience, i would rather say that the game whould go for less dice and more strategy. As is strategy often lose against luck.

For the sake of the journal, the 89% berserk who died wasn't mine, my last berserk i used correctly survived his attack against an ellf archer, badly wounded, and then, during his turn, he survived against any chances, the counter attack of his elf warrior (my friend told me he was something like >95% win for the elf, the berz was injured) and went back to heal with 16 xp in two turns.

[zookeeper]

What i believe here is that whenever bad luck hits you at the bad time, no strategy can save your game. You can make your strategy as good as you want, but if the dice don't fit, you are done.

True, of course. No matter how much you use good strategies to minimize the influence of luck in a single attack/move, the game is still decided by single attacks/moves, and if you get unlucky in enough of those, no amount of strategy can save you. I find it hard to estimate, however, how low can you drop the chance of losing due to bad luck by just playing well. 30%? 15%? 5%? Of course you can't give exact numbers for something like that, but still, it's not something I have a strong gut feeling about.

Someone said "Hey, Risk and Backgammon are luck based and are good strategy games". I did played both, i don't like backgammon at all and i enjoied risk much only until i realized how much first three turns are important in the game. I do prefere Chess and Diplomacy. Much more strategy there. Maybe i'm not your base player.

I think many if not most of Wesnoth players (myself included) would enjoy a similar but deterministic strategy game. A spin-off or a sequl of sorts of Wesnoth would be cool (using the same graphics and base engine as Wesnoth, most likely), but unfortunately I don't think there'd be enough people to develop it and keep such a project running. If it was MP-only, then I suppose it could even be feasible, but a small group of dedicated people to start it would still be needed.

[Mythological]

Yeah, this is pretty much the biggest downside to Wesnoth IMO.

and

And it is silly that some of you says "Oh, come on, if you have been unlucky this time you may be lucky next" because actually i get fed up when i lose AND when i win by luck, because whenever luck win, strategy lose.

This is exactly how I feel about this matter. True, randomness has some positive effects on the game as well but the negative ones often overshadow them.

Anyway, the poeple who made this game and who make the decisions about it have long ago desided that the random ( luck ) factor is going to stay and that's it. The determinism in Wesnoth is almost considered a heresy - so Magister's or mine or the opinion of the people posting in the forums about this issue dont realy matter and aint goning to change anything.

So there is no point in debating this issue to death for the Xth time

[Magister]

That's sad.

I would like to know if each and every developer agree with this line or there are developer/designer who would enjoy a less random gameplay system but doesn't work on it because management took another direction.

[Chris NS]

Backgammon is a good analogy. A single game of backgammon is very much luck-based. Pit a world champion against a reasonably good player and the odds of winning will still be about 50/50. However, when you introduce doubling, it becomes hugely skill-based. When a player with the upper hand wants to double the stakes, the other player must make a very careful calculation on whether it is possible to turn the game round, and assessing the odds is a very advanced tactic.

A similar analogy exists with Mah-Jhongg. No amount of skill will influence whether you are dealt a good hand or a hopeless hand. But a skilled player will know whether to go for an easy low-scoring win, risk a harder high-scoring win, or forget about winning and try to force a draw. Whoever wins a single hand of Mah-Jhongg tells you very little about who the better players are, but look at the scores over a tournament and you'll find the best players win with high scores and mitigate their losses when dealt rotten hands.

Wesnoth, I think, should be ideally heading for the balance that most war-games have - there is luck in it, but only the biggest fluke should allow an unskilled player to beat a skilled one. Now, I perfer single-player campaigns myself, so I can't comment too much on multiplayer, and there is a debate to be had on whether the game is too chancy. But expecting Wesnoth to be made into a deterministic game is like expecting randomness to be introduced into Chess.

[Magister]

But expecting Wesnoth to be made into a deterministic game is like expecting randomness to be introduced into Chess.

Well, I don't think full deterministic is necessarily good.

Full deterministic is usually good only if the game is perfectly balanced, perfectly mean perfectly, if not the system would create deterministics exploits who can bring to a deterministic victory, and that's bad.
A perfect balance is difficoult to achieve in such a game.

But i still think the game is "chancy" and I would probably be happy if the game is just made less random. A much smoother chances curve would be really good, may be with more hits less damaging or with variable damage.

[elricz]

Another analogy on the board games is Carcassone. Some people complain about the luck involved in turning the tiles, so they create alternative rules to minimize the effect and play with them, and also some of that people play with the out of the box rules when playing with a different group or want to introduce non-gamers to the game.
The point is, this game is designed so the luck plays a part on it, and many people (me included) is fine with it, and enjoy it. The game is open to tweaking, either on the code or by WML, and some work has been done on mods to reduce randomness, so if a group of people wants less randomness, they can use and improve the existing modules, and gather together to play by those rules.
I personally like board games, and I agree that Wesnoth would be considered "casual" for the hardcore gamers, but that doesn't mean that it needs to evolve to a "serious" game, in my opinion.