Wesnoth is too hard!!!

[Roots]

Does anyone else think that Wesnoth is really hard? Seriously, on medium difficulty I am barely able to put up a decent fight on the fifth level of the first campaign. Now don't get me wrong, I think having a challenging game is a good thing, but I'm getting raped by orcs and the undead and it seems like there's nothing I can do about it except play the game on the easiest difficulty, which makes me feel incompetent.

I haven't even tried the hard difficulty level yet, and honestly I'm afraid to. If I can barely survive the first few maps by the skin of my teeth on medium difficulty, I don't want to imagine what horrors I would be subjected to on the highest difficulty.

Does anyone else feel the same way? I know its unlikely, but I'd like to see the difficulty level of medium toned down enough that I don't break into a sweat when trying to get thru the fifth map in the first campaing. Just my thoughts.

[Circon]

We know. Wesnoth is hard. It gets designed by developers and playtested by same. Medium difficulty means "challenging to those who have played the game enough to know enough finesses to make campaigns".

Look at Elvish Pillager's Location for a side comment.

[Elvish_Pillager]

I wasn't very good at Wesnoth either until I tried playing in Hard difficulty... I suggest you try it. Play Son of the Black Eye in hard mode until you can beat the first scenario, and you'll probably be a better player afterwards.

OT: I'm a bit stuck on the Seige, because of the level 2 enemies that can kill a level 1 unit in one attack. Fighting in daylight is very important if you don't have disposable cannon fodder, I guess...
And the location could be confusing, because 'losses' could be easily misinterpreted... changing it.

[dms]

Yes, I agree the game is hard. I haven't even tried medium yet - easy is challenging enough for me.

[Mkgego]

The first time I played Wesnoth was with Version 0.6.99.5 !!!
There I played HttT in medium difficulty...Found it really hard but I reached Scepter of fire scenario...there I always got defeated...
Since Version 0.6.99.5 till today I have tried several times to even reach that scenario...I cant ^^

Yes Wesnoth is hard and is going harder ^^

[Shade]

The first time I played Wesnoth was with Version 0.6.99.5 !!!
There I played HttT in medium difficulty...Found it really hard but I reached Scepter of fire scenario...there I always got defeated...
Since Version 0.6.99.5 till today I have tried several times to even reach that scenario...I cant ^^

Yes Wesnoth is hard and is going harder ^^

Yes. It's just not that Wesnoth is 'hard'. It's that it tends to get harder all of the time. The big jump was with the 7.10(?) AI... With a slow climb after that as that AI was refined...

[Breeblebox]

Play Son of the Black Eye in hard mode until you can beat the first scenario...

..and allow yourself several days to do it =]

[Gafgarion]

Does anyone else think that Wesnoth is really hard? Seriously, on medium difficulty I am barely able to put up a decent fight on the fifth level of the first campaign. Now don't get me wrong, I think having a challenging game is a good thing, but I'm getting raped by orcs and the undead and it seems like there's nothing I can do about it except play the game on the easiest difficulty, which makes me feel incompetent.

I haven't even tried the hard difficulty level yet, and honestly I'm afraid to. If I can barely survive the first few maps by the skin of my teeth on medium difficulty, I don't want to imagine what horrors I would be subjected to on the highest difficulty.

Does anyone else feel the same way? I know its unlikely, but I'd like to see the difficulty level of medium toned down enough that I don't break into a sweat when trying to get thru the fifth map in the first campaing. Just my thoughts.

Wesnoth is not your average game, it's meant to be a challenging game and is quite a refreshing experience for those of us that want to play a game that was originally designed to be challenging.

[quartex]

and it seems like there's nothing I can do about it except play the game on the easiest difficulty, which makes me feel incompetent.

Roots, it's okay, I've played the game since 0.6.1, and never played above Easy, I find Easy quite challenging enough. They really should rename the difficulty levels: Normal, Hard, and Insane. Playing on easy does no mean you're a weenie. This game is supposed to be challenging at best. I agree though that playing on medium and hard would probably force me to be a better player (to take less risks and use every trick, like good terrain and the day/night cycle] to my advantage) but if you aren't having fun in Medium, play easy. Wesnoth isn't supposed to frusterate you. It's a computer game, it's supposed to be fun!

[ott]

I agree that Wesnoth is too hard for most players. To increase the appeal of the game, I think we need an easier Easy mode. Many people have said the same thing, but it has yet to be implemented.

I suggest some should-be simple changes to bring this about: change the 80% retention of gold to 100%, and change the default minimum gold from 100 gp to 200 gp, while keeping everything else the same from Easy. Don't touch Hard, maybe look at some intermediate changes on Medium (90% retention, 120 gp minimum), but I'm happy with Medium being quite challenging.

I only play Hard, but then I have lots of time to do so.

[Rhuvaen]

Well, playing on Medium per default, I see Wesnoth as a game where every unit's move could make a difference between winning or losing a scenario. It's not a game where you just generally rush your opponent with your troops... you need to look at the situation at hand first and then decide on a strategy. The HttT and TRoW campaigns enforce a slightly different approach with each scenario - that is just so fabulous! A lot of this depth will be lost if you switch to easy to be able to get away with strategic slackness (although admittedly, easy isn't sooo easy).

Multiplayer is a different story - I see most people play these FFA's that just involve a mad rush of units with little or no grouping of units etc.

I think the appeal of Wesnoth is this depth of strategy, combined with the excitement on a tactical level, that makes each scenario different (in the best campaigns, anyway). I think we should encourage people to appreciate this, rather than try to cater for the more RTS oriented players . (but then again, I'm someone who doesn't see the point in most of those Warcraft-style games )

[Roots]

I started playing the game on easy, and its way too easy for me now so its not fun at all. It seems like these are the difficulty choices I have now:

* easy - hard - impossible *

Easy I can beat, but its not very fun. Hard (medium) is more fun, but it can be really frustrating.


And one of the worst things about the difficulty is even if you barely manage to survive a level, the next level is going to be next to impossible because you probably lost a lot of your more experienced units in the last battle. I think that easy should be kept where it is and medium should be toned down a bit (don't ask me about hard, I fear it). I mean I'm just getting annihilated by two enemy leaders who like to recruit every unit they can every turn.

[miff009]

Thats my idea about da 3 diferent lvls:
Hard
Insane
Impossible



XD

Heehehehhe.If u r new nd wanna win play with me!im sooo bad...

When 8.8 will be downloadable for mac?i can only download 8.7!

[Old_Cat]

IMHO (Имею мнение - хрен оспоришь! - in Russian ) BfW NOT hard, but beateful Thanx developers for nice work, for nice game.

From Russia, with ... buttle "Smirnoff" vodka

Vovan The Terrible (joke).

[Invisible Philosopher]

medium should be toned down a bit

Lots of players, like me, will object to that. (although making only HttT easier is another matter.) We want our challenging Wesnoth!
BTW, if we didn't have the "Hard" difficulty level, some people might complain about Wesnoth being too easy.
Basically it seems that in Medium, an experienced player can make a few small mistakes and survive. In Hard, the player has to make a negative amount of mistakes to win (or more accurately, exploiting the AI and/or getting lucky). However even in Hard there are some scenarios that aren't quite as hard. In Easy, you can look at it one of two ways, depending on your skill:
1) You can make lots of mistakes/be careless, as long as you don't take ridiculous risks, or
2) You have to pay some attention to strategy/tactics, especially getting levelled units, to get through a whole campaign.

Looking at it from (2), the inexperienced player's perspective, I think it's reasonable for a game that's supposed to be challenging rather than trivial to force the player to learn some tactics. However I don't see anything wrong with adding a "Trivial" difficulty level, if the campaign designers don't mind. Remember, for experienced players, Easy is usually easy, so when they want something easy they can use that difficulty level instead of having to play some ridiculously trivial level.

As Dave has said, HttT will be made somewhat easier, and since most difficulty complaints seem to refer to that campaign, that will probably help the complaints.

Perhaps the no-bonus bug has something to do with why people find it difficult. Does anybody know why some people aren't getting bonuses for most levels in HttT and maybe other places? The default behavior for defeating all enemies is supposed to be getting a bonus, and that's what happens for me (in 0.7.7-0.8.7 MacOS X, Sithrandel's builds, which is from when I started playing Wesnoth up to the current version I have gotten, there has always been a bonus for those levels). If it doesn't happen for other people, please submit a bug report with pertinent information!