Return of the Fleet scenario - difficult hard - FUN

[enclave]

I was few of money in the start of the compaign.
So i hardly could manage to kill all leaders, except hiding and being lucky.

---luck factor = fun factor ---
i killed 2 leaders and reached the last leader with 2 units.
1) my king 3hp health
2) some halfling girl about 20hp

the leader was full health 60+ hp
he was surrounded by 3lvl trolls and orc shooters 2lvl and a lot more units coming.
they catched me in the corner, in the mountains, enemy leader and a troll.
About 7 save/loads and they all missed, while i did 1x14 damage to enemy leader.
Then about 5 save/loads before i hit the leader 4 times in a row 4x14 while he missed his 3. and a halfling finished him

so, in a totaly impossible situation, i was saved by the luck and just about 12 save/loads. if units would do at least one hit 100%, that would never happen. So basicaly, if you wanna win any compaign on any level, all you have to do is 1000 save/loads and all your units will finish it healthy

an interesting fact.. you can miss 2 hits of 4 even if you have 90% chance of success. i wonder if computer plays fair no offense, just FUN.

some other scenarios i will try to recruit all spear-horses and reach the leader to assassin it

[JW]

I.......don't get it?
ps, that pic is huge. Shrink it down?

[Clonkinator]

Bah. Winning by save-loading is not very fair. Really good players shouldn't do that.

[CIB]

Bah. Winning by save-loading is not very fair. Really good players shouldn't do that.

Huh? It's a game. You can save/load as many times as you want in SP, it's your time.

[energyman76c]

Bah. Winning by save-loading is not very fair. Really good players shouldn't do that.

games are about fun and choice. If he wants to save-load to have fun, it is his choice.

I am guilty of that too - not to that extreme, but very often I forget something or did something stupid - no harm done, just reload. It preserves my fun. And so it is justified.

[Aethaeryn]

If you want to waste hours saveloading a billion times to beat hard campaigns, that's your thing.

If I wanted to beat UtBS on Nightmare by cheating, for instance, I'd probably just debug
and get myself a skeletal dragon, fire dragon, and/or yeti (or just give myself lots of gold).

I think it's more fun when you do it without excessive saveloading
(if you lose a loyal, really high lvl character, or a gameloss character, it's okay to give the past few turns another try)
or debug mode cheating (yes, excessive saveloading is cheating), even if you have to beat a lower difficulty level.

Sometimes I even sacrifice a high lvl character for the win (especially toward the end)
instead of trying for a half hour to save him with saveloading.

You've got to learn how to play properly or you get destroyed in the real challenge: multiplayer.

Oh, and please make smaller images so I don't have to break lines
to make it readable for those of us with normal (not wide) monitors and resolutions.

Yes, Wesnoth is hard, but that's because hard on Wesnoth is really hard to do without cheating.
Show me a replay without cheating and I'll be impressed.

[thespaceinvader]

Also: whatever gave you the impression that jessica's a halfling? She's a human princess o_O

[enclave]

the secondary reason of the post was about fun, i used saveloads to win it the impossible way. Because 40 turns of thinking is quite long to replay them when you tried it 4 times already. So when i got to the leader i decided, i lost all of my high level units, i played it for too long, so i will kill this **** leader and im ready to saveload it forever untill he is dead. no more replays.

But the general reason of the post was actually to show the meaning of luck factor.. 12 save/loads to win in impossible situation.. its like to throw the dice with 12 options.. and get 12.. not that small of a chance.. its like you have 2 armed knights in real life and 1 peasent against them.. then the knights both get crazy and kill each other. it looks same real as this was real..

it is very imbalanced when you can get 2 totaly different results of 1 simple action.. it is the same as throwing a coint into the water and find that you got 5 dollars missing in your wallet.. the result should have been simple.. in game i would lose. and then some luck and i win.. such happens in multiplayer as well..

but i like luck factor actually, it makes this game more strategic than any other strategical game.. you have to think too much before doing any simple action, or you risk too much.. you need to make sure you kill somebody when you attack it, so you put 5 units to do it. and many many more..
i really like luck idea.. it has too many advantages.

but the problem is, that in reality, it makes the game lose it's strategical balance, it has too big importance..

if unit's second hit was 100% done (or at least if it was modified so that unit's second hit had 70-80% chance of success, not depending on the terrain or whatever) it would decrease the importance of luck at least a little. 70-80% chance wouldnt change the game much, wouldnt change tactics. but it would add the reality to the game which lacks it..

it could be also like if you have 50% chance or more, then you get your second hit 70-80% chance. if less then you get it 20-30%.. why second? because there are units with 1 hit of a type.. and if only second hit gets more reality, then it would have no affect on 1-hit units.. many options to think about.

i didnt want to repeat the idea of luck factor, but i tried multiplayer and i loved this game more than before.. and when you feel you like something, but when you see Imbalance.. real imbalance.. sometimes even tough experts lose on small maps, coz of luck. and it is an obvious imbalance.

so when you feel like you like something, and you want to help to improve it.. to see it improved.. and what i mentioned is an obvious thing of imbalance.. i only wonder why nobody wants to understand that something, at least very small, should be made to improve this. Something small would never hurt and never change the strategy of the game.. something small could only help.

[anakayub]

Who do you mean by experts losing on small maps from luck? You'd might like to post replays of those.

And...luck & imbalance...? Let's just say that you'd might like to ask the good players who aren't dev's. I'm sure they'd say that luck is not imbalanced. 50% is 50%, just as 30% is 30%. There's a chance for both something or nothing to happen, its not absolute. a part of wesnoth is that you'd want to maximise that probability factor. And even in real life, you can't deny the presence of luck (ugh, I'm almost quoting Noy's sig...). It's simplistic and incomplete, but my point is that you might want to rethink your statement. Be a better player first (e.g. beat campaigns on Hard (with minimal saveloading), play with players much better than me on MP), and you'll realize that luck not that big a factor, but the overall quality of your play.

[enclave]

1) tell me the names of the experts you want to see replays of, and i will start searching and saving replays. coz i know i can prove my point of view.

2) luck presents in real life and its true, you can go killing the fly and get the heartache, but dont you think it's too lethal? and if all games had that kind of luck factor, wouldnt be good. Would you play wesnoth if there was a chance to get armaggedon during the battle? so the game could end for you any time, and people would say "you got unlucky, sorry, armaggedon happens, like in real life".

3) i like luck factor, i really do, im NOT fighting for removing it, im trying to tell the people that something is wrong and it must be improved.. not rejected like its not true at all.. I played the game where my mermin had 90% chance of success and he missed 2 of 4 hits. Do you find it real?
The luck calculation must be adjusted somehow, to become more real.
Do you think you could miss the computer start button 2 of 4 times?

4) if somebody of developers understands it, i will post loads of ideas on how to improve it, coz i have too many of them. Some of them could fit any developers brain.

5) im not going to mention it in every thread, i just want this thread to be not locked, where i could say what i want to say. Its not important to me to see the changes, more important to me is to see that people in charge understand that the luck factor is to be corrected somehow, at least a little. No point in locking it. If developers dont want to listen to me then they should not observe this post, and shouldnt lock it as well.

6) The game is great, the authors are great people, they put so much into making this and this game is a real fun and a real strategy, i like it very very much. Thanks for letting people play such a game.

7) dont forget to post the names from point 1 mentioned above. if you are so against the positive changes. im ready to make everybody understand my point of view, step by step.

[JW]

If this thread is actually going to be discussed, then either you or a mod needs to delete/shorten that freaking image above. It makes this page impossible to read and your ignoring people's requests to do so makes you seem like you don't care about others' wishes, which in turn will make them less likely to care about yours.

Crop/remove the damn thing please.

[thespaceinvader]

AdBlock FTW on that score =D

[enclave]

the image is decreased, so hopefuly done.. coz with my resolution it was looking just fine.. not even close be huge or maybe it was all about your/mine browser/s

[Chris NS]

I've said this before but I'll say it again ...

Bad luck happens to everyone in Wesnoth. There's no getting round it. However, one of the things that sorts the good players from the bad players is the ability to manage this risk.

Take your merman example. 90% chance to hit, missed two times out of four. For a start,the chance of that happening is about 4.8%, probably higher than you think. But what's important is what sort of risk you are taking by doing this. Before you do this, you should be thinking what might happen if your merman misses. The merman dies? Probably an acceptable risk. You lose a high-level unit? That's pushing your luck. You lose the scenario (which might happen if your merman is a hero)? You really shouldn't be making that sort of gamble unless you have to. And if you play well, you should never find yourself in a situation where you have to risk the game on something that only has a 95% chance of success.

This is the same with lots of games: they are games of luck to bad players, but games of skill to good players. Why? Because good players make the odds work for them and know when to takes risks. Backgammon is one example: whether you win a single game is largely a matter of luck, but if you are playing with the doubling rule, a skilful player can work out when they are likely to win or lose in advance and manage the stakes accordingly. In Mah-Jong, it's bad luck if you are dealt a hopeless hand, but if you can recognise this you can play to force a draw. In Poker, it's out of your hands whether you get a pair or a royal flush, but the good players always win in the long run through bluff and counter-bluff.

Don't underestimate the skill needed to play Wesnoth well. There's a good real-life saying that appies here: don't put all of your eggs in one basket.

[JW]

Thank you for decreasing the image. Some good players to observe are:
noy
Becephalus
Soliton
Dragonking
Pietro
Mythological
and myself, JW.

There are many more experienced players, but to name them all would be a difficult task (don't get offended if I didn't list you please). This is a good place to start though.