About Wesnoth

[TrashMan]

Love the game. Love it.

But there's two things that grate me about it very much so.

1. One is the Slow ability. It's counter-intuitive, since it acts more like Weaken. It lowers the damage the enemy unit does per attack. If it's name is slow, shouldn't it lower the number of attacks and move points of a unit? Or at least lower the chances to hit in melee(slower blows easier to dodge)?


2. Luck factor. I don't mind luck being a factor, but in BoW, it's sometimes too big of a factor.
When the loyal unit you've been building up for so long dies easily, despite everything...it sucks.
Sometimes it's the map that's to blame (maps with unadvantagious terrain everywhere, or maps with funnels, where you have to have your strongest unit in front or you'll die, and the enemy keeps attacking with high level units), but for the most part, it's the ease with which units can die. The HP difference and damage done by units doesn't scale that well.
IMHO, higher HP on average and lesser differences in damage might alivate that.

I'm usually a staunch proponent of realism in games, so thousands of HP's and battles that last for an eternity is something I hate, but the other end of the spectrum grates me just as much. There's nothing worse than the player setting everything up, everything looking cool, only to see the unit fall from full HP to zero from 2 enemies. When the warning comes, it's usually too late to do anything other than reload.
Or maybe it's just the feeling I've been getting lately....

[thespaceinvader]

1: Slow halves MP already.

2: Been discussed SO many times already. Go read one of those, we're not going over it again here. One of the projects in our new experimental fork is trying out altered luck effects.

[Velensk]

Slow doubles the mp cost to move rather. It used to decrease the number of strikes rather than halve damge however this was found to be unbalanced so it was changed. By abstraction it does decrease the 'chance to hit' however this is not represented by the game mechanic.

[Hulavuta]

1: Slow halves MP already.

2: Been discussed SO many times already. Go read one of those, we're not going over it again here. One of the projects in our new experimental fork is trying out altered luck effects.

Yes it has. There are a million topics of people bringing up luck, about one every weeks, and I'm glad yours wasn't a rant with many exclamation points and capitalized letters. Here's one of the many topics that seeks to explain it.

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29308

[artisticdude]

No more luck threads, please. I mean, in the first 4 or 5 of 134 pages of this forum:

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=21317

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29572

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29308

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29289

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=29302

...not to mention those scattered throughout the rest of the forums

[Sangel]

1. One is the Slow ability. It's counter-intuitive, since it acts more like Weaken. It lowers the damage the enemy unit does per attack. If it's name is slow, shouldn't it lower the number of attacks and move points of a unit? Or at least lower the chances to hit in melee(slower blows easier to dodge)?

As others have noted.

Originally, Slow did lower the number of attacks a unit could make. Unfortunately, this was differentially effective on different units, which turned out to be unbalanced in multiplayer. Given that some units have an odd number of attacks, others even, there was no way to resolve the issue while focusing purely on number of attacks. So Slow was changed to lowering damage instead. It might not be as intuitive, but the end result is better game balance. Coincidentally, it also reduces the influence of luck.

Speaking of luck, the topic has been discussed to death. While the main team has no current plans to change such a fundamental game mechanic, there are a number ongoing projects to experiment with different approaches in the recently established Experimental Corner. If you're interested in the issue, I'd wander on over and take a peak - discussing the issue in the User Forum has a sad tendency to devolve into flame wars.


With that out of the way - welcome to Wesnoth! I wish you a long and productive stay.

[Zerovirus]

I always thought of it as counterintuitive as well. My solution? Rationalize it.

Mages have their arms grabbed onto, so that they can't use somatic components of spells as easily. Melee is obvious- their attacks are entangled and slowed. Ranged units have their equipment clogged up with growth. Everything else can be extrapolated from that.

Slow's strange effect doesn't confuse me anymore.

[GOKK0MXp]

Love the game. Love it.

I just registered on the forum just to say that This game is freaking awesome.

[edgar55]

1: Slow ability means less damage as it reduces enemie's capality of atack and mobility;

2: The luck factor has presence in all RPG's: it's part of the game.

[Sangel]

Please don't dig up old topics. In particular, please don't dig up three-week old topics that deal with controversial issues only to offer perfunctory rebuttals that have been more fully handled back when the thread was young...