Positive and negative traits?

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Hermooz
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Positive and negative traits?

Post by Hermooz »

I find the "personalization" of unit obtained with traits one of the most peculiar aspects of wesnoth.

I was thinking: could it be considered "acceptable" to game dictators :P to extend even further this mechanism?

Actually each unit gets two random traits. All of traits are beneficial, even if there is embrionally some sort of balancement (i.e. quick units get less HP).
What i'm suggesting is this: give each new unit THREE traits, of which two are beneficial and one is an handicap. This would extend the randomization of statitistics, so you could indeed have some very good units (you get two useful "good" traits and a not-so-bad handicap) and crappy ones (you get to almost unuseful bonuses and a crippling handicap), but as far as I've understood wesnoth is all about randomization :-)

the trait list should not get much longer then the actual one. I guess the "positive" trait list should more or less be the same (but of cource "quick" would'n have the "innate" balancement).
The negative traits list could be something like
"weak", "slow", "stupid", "avid"
or something like that (the effect of the trait should be obvious: i'm simply thinking of reversed "good" traits), or even being something completely different, so you could avoid the effect of contradicting traits, like if a unit gets both "quick" and "slow" traits.
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Pythagoras
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Re: Positive and negative traits?

Post by Pythagoras »

Hermooz wrote:I find the "personalization" of unit obtained with traits one of the most peculiar aspects of wesnoth.

I was thinking: could it be considered "acceptable" to game dictators :P to extend even further this mechanism?

Actually each unit gets two random traits. All of traits are beneficial, even if there is embrionally some sort of balancement (i.e. quick units get less HP).
What i'm suggesting is this: give each new unit THREE traits, of which two are beneficial and one is an handicap. This would extend the randomization of statitistics, so you could indeed have some very good units (you get two useful "good" traits and a not-so-bad handicap) and crappy ones (you get to almost unuseful bonuses and a crippling handicap), but as far as I've understood wesnoth is all about randomization :-)

the trait list should not get much longer then the actual one. I guess the "positive" trait list should more or less be the same (but of cource "quick" would'n have the "innate" balancement).
The negative traits list could be something like
"weak", "slow", "stupid", "avid"
or something like that (the effect of the trait should be obvious: i'm simply thinking of reversed "good" traits), or even being something completely different, so you could avoid the effect of contradicting traits, like if a unit gets both "quick" and "slow" traits.
I like the idea, however, I think its already hard enough to keep track of the two fold traits of a dozen plus units, adding this might increase the amount of stuff to remember/figure into the equation.
AT
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Post by AT »

Myself and (I belive) the other devs generally think negative traits are an interesting, but bad idea. I'd elaborate, but instead, im trying to find the thread where a bunch of people already did.
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Post by Dave »

The main thing to consider is that negative traits create so much variety for a unit that it'd make it very difficult to balance units. For instance, if units can potentially be both 'quick' and 'slow', then a unit with a movement of 5 could actually have movement between 4 and 6. This is a rather large range.

David
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mmHg
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Post by mmHg »

The main thing to consider is that negative traits create so much variety for a unit that it'd make it very difficult to balance units. For instance, if units can potentially be both 'quick' and 'slow', then a unit with a movement of 5 could actually have movement between 4 and 6. This is a rather large range.
Then would it be possible to add a development tool that disables the effects of traits for the purposes of campaign balance? The world is neither fair, nor balanced, but the idea of a large random variety of units adds realism and forces commanders to consider units based on individual merit rather than an abstract mathematical statistic.
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turin
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Post by turin »

mmHg wrote:
The main thing to consider is that negative traits create so much variety for a unit that it'd make it very difficult to balance units. For instance, if units can potentially be both 'quick' and 'slow', then a unit with a movement of 5 could actually have movement between 4 and 6. This is a rather large range.
Then would it be possible to add a development tool that disables the effects of traits for the purposes of campaign balance? The world is neither fair, nor balanced, but the idea of a large random variety of units adds realism and forces commanders to consider units based on individual merit rather than an abstract mathematical statistic.

WINR.*


Deal with it.

*: Wesnoth is not realistic
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Post by Elvish_Pillager »

My Resilient, Strong, Sluggish Grand Knights, with 96 HP, good resistances, 6 moves, and 13-4 swords, would own the day every time.
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AT
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Post by AT »

If you need to justify it with 'realism', wesnoth commanders discriminate against dumb, slow, whatever troops. Its not that much of a streach to think that maybe they wouldnt allow troops that were bad.
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Post by Darth Fool »

I believe that traits should only have positive effects*. From a realism perspective, you can consider it the case that units who do not meet certain minimum requirements to be a dwarvish fighter(or whatever) are never given that title. From a gameplay perspective, I want to know that a unit I recruit will have certain minimum stats.

*yes, I know that some current traits have both positive and negative effects, but I think that they should be fixed.
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Post by Dave »

Darth Fool wrote: *yes, I know that some current traits have both positive and negative effects, but I think that they should be fixed.
Only 'quick', and it has the negative hitpoints thing because it's thought to be a rather powerful trait. Removing that would make it too powerful.

David
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Post by romnajin »

Yes, but what is the real purpose of this, as in realistic purpose. In this post, I realize that WINR :lol:
Sorry for the meaningless post
Hermooz
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Post by Hermooz »

First of all, thanks to you all for your comments. I'd like to stress that I was not suggesting the introduction of negative traits for "realisticism" reasons (yep, I know WINR :)); I was aiming more at a diversification of units' stats. After all, each wesnoth unit already has a given name, so it's perfectly reasonable that each have a distinct character sheet, so to speak.
But I can see what Dave says: since a +- 1 modifier can do quite a difference, balancing could become difficult; moreover, the system could be exploited too easily, as EP suggests, I think.
I withdraw quietly my suggestion :-)
But be prepared, I've got some other buzz in the head to submit...

bye!
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Post by martenzo »

But WCBR (Wesnoth Could Be Realistic). It's not said anywhere outside the the forum that Wesnoth is or has to be unrealistic. If it's realistic, it doesn't have to be 'bad'. Mabye there should be an optional mod that makes the game realistic
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Post by Sangel »

martenzo wrote:But WCBR (Wesnoth Could Be Realistic). It's not said anywhere outside the the forum that Wesnoth is or has to be unrealistic. If it's realistic, it doesn't have to be 'bad'. Mabye there should be an optional mod that makes the game realistic
Sounds good - and you're highly encouraged to make it. As of right now, however, the developers would prefer to work on getting the current version of Wesnoth to 1.0; as such, there won't be much assistance for side-projects at this stage.
"Pure logic is the ruin of the spirit." - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
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Post by Dave »

martenzo wrote:But WCBR (Wesnoth Could Be Realistic). It's not said anywhere outside the the forum that Wesnoth is or has to be unrealistic. If it's realistic, it doesn't have to be 'bad'. Mabye there should be an optional mod that makes the game realistic
At the moment in Wesnoth development, we try to put gameplay above all other factors, most particularly 'realism'.

If there was a 'realistic Wesnoth', presumably it would put realism above gameplay, or at least on par with it.

My personal opinion on this is that when designing a game, you must put gameplay first. I personally would only want to play a game in which the designers put gameplay first.

Though anyone is free to try to make their 'realistic' mod of Wesnoth. I don't think I would play it personally, but maybe many other people would...

David
“At Gambling, the deadly sin is to mistake bad play for bad luck.” -- Ian Fleming
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