Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Feedback for the mainline campaign Descent into Darkness.

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Mawmoocn
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by Mawmoocn »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?

1.14.13, Summoner (Difficult)

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)

No rating
(because it really depends on how long you want to play it)

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?

Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?

The ending
Spoiler:
is really nice.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?

Trying to use Dread Bats without deaths but no I'm stupid and let it die.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)

7

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?

None?
Human Malin!
Ah, maybe number the replay accordingly to how long you have been killing them, since they will override the old replay. It probably isn't required.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

Dead bats...
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mal_shubertal
Posts: 93
Joined: December 1st, 2018, 6:58 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by mal_shubertal »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.16.6 Summoner (Challenging)
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
1. Super easy. The undead dragon is very cool but also just overkill.
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear. I like how the scenario objectives change on the third iteration to let the player know that Malin dying is intended as one of the ways to 'win' the campaign. I remember years ago when I played this for the first time I just kept playing it over and over and got very bored/frustrated before realizing this was the intended ending.
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I like it. I think the new ending where Malin basically gives away the book and fakes his own death is clever, and makes sense given that he apparently shows up in some later add-ons (I haven't played them yet, but I've seen it referenced in the forums). I'm glad they keep the option for the old ending too, which really beats you over the head with the tragedy of the hopelessness Malin's evil path has led him to, until the player is forced to basically have him choose to die to escape the curse of pointless eternal life, for maximum moody dramatic flair.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
none. ridiculously easy
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
1. very cool story, but a snooze-fest gameplay-wise because it is WAY too easy.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Just making it harder would make it more fun. In Alone at last, you were fighting loyalists who had access to lvl 3 paladins, but 2 scenarios later the loyalist Foolish Heroes can only recruit up to lvl 2 units, with no paladins, despite specifically going to fight a lich? The last scenario of the campaign should be HARD, especially if the goal is attrition and Malin slowly getting worn down over the centuries. So just giving all the Foolish Heroes access to some lvl 3 units, and even more gold from the outset. I know that the enemy gold increases every turn, but if they only recruit up to lvl 2 it just takes way too long for them to get enough gold to be an interesting challenge. You could make it even better by having each Foolish Hero have a recall list of his faction's best anti-undead units only, which would make sense for a hero specifically going on a quest to kill a lich. For example, the loyalists would recruit all paladins, HI-types, and white mage types. The elves would recruit all woses and sorceresses. Etc.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
no, too easy.
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egallager
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by egallager »

mal_shubertal wrote: January 15th, 2023, 10:27 pm (1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.16.6 Summoner (Challenging)
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
1. Super easy. The undead dragon is very cool but also just overkill.
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear. I like how the scenario objectives change on the third iteration to let the player know that Malin dying is intended as one of the ways to 'win' the campaign. I remember years ago when I played this for the first time I just kept playing it over and over and got very bored/frustrated before realizing this was the intended ending.
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
I like it. I think the new ending where Malin basically gives away the book and fakes his own death is clever, and makes sense given that he apparently shows up in some later add-ons (I haven't played them yet, but I've seen it referenced in the forums). I'm glad they keep the option for the old ending too, which really beats you over the head with the tragedy of the hopelessness Malin's evil path has led him to, until the player is forced to basically have him choose to die to escape the curse of pointless eternal life, for maximum moody dramatic flair.
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
none. ridiculously easy
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
1. very cool story, but a snooze-fest gameplay-wise because it is WAY too easy.
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Just making it harder would make it more fun. In Alone at last, you were fighting loyalists who had access to lvl 3 paladins, but 2 scenarios later the loyalist Foolish Heroes can only recruit up to lvl 2 units, with no paladins, despite specifically going to fight a lich? The last scenario of the campaign should be HARD, especially if the goal is attrition and Malin slowly getting worn down over the centuries. So just giving all the Foolish Heroes access to some lvl 3 units, and even more gold from the outset. I know that the enemy gold increases every turn, but if they only recruit up to lvl 2 it just takes way too long for them to get enough gold to be an interesting challenge. You could make it even better by having each Foolish Hero have a recall list of his faction's best anti-undead units only, which would make sense for a hero specifically going on a quest to kill a lich. For example, the loyalists would recruit all paladins, HI-types, and white mage types. The elves would recruit all woses and sorceresses. Etc.
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
no, too easy.
It gets harder the more iterations you go through; I think having the first cycle be easy is fine
mal_shubertal
Posts: 93
Joined: December 1st, 2018, 6:58 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by mal_shubertal »

[/quote]
It gets harder the more iterations you go through; I think having the first cycle be easy is fine
[/quote]

I get that. Still, if it's TOO easy then it stops being interesting and fun, imo. It's no fun just casually squashing a very inferior opponent.

If you compare this scenario with Alone at Last, your power increases because Malin becomes an ancient lich AND you get a free dragon, while the opponent's power decreases because they lose access to lvl 3 units. Also, it's underground which gives undead an advantage against all non-chaotic opponents. Players only need to actually win this battle twice, by the third iteration 'Malin dies' becomes one of the victory conditions. All of this combines to make the first two iterations of this scenario one of the easiest fights in the campaign, which feels very anti-climactic.

The older version of this scenario, without the book option and with (If I remember correctly) the misleading victory conditions that encouraged you to beat every new Foolish Hero, seemed like it was intentionally designed to be frustrating/boring so you could empathize with Malin's meaningless/tormented eternal life. The initially very easy but slowly increasing stream of opponents makes sense in that context. But now that players are more clearly prompted to opt out on the third iteration, I think it would make sense to make the first two iterations more challenging/engaging in their own right.
JL42
Posts: 66
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by JL42 »

What difficulty levels and game versions have you played the scenario on?
v. 1.16.10
Summoner / Challenging
How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
5 – It gets slightly harder over time, but by leveling the right units and honing the strategy it really does feel like the player could keep wining this forever. I think that's a good thing, because, well first of all I think it's fun and relaxing to wipe out endless hordes of enemies, but also it really gives the player a sense of Malin's predicament. I remember the first time I played this (several versions ago) and when I realized how it was going to endlessly loop into boringness I was just blown away.
How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Mostly clear. The description was slightly murky about what it means to "take the book," but I was able to figure it out. (An enemy unit has to end its turn on the book tile.) I do like the addition of the optional book ending to give Malin a somewhat less bleak future.

I found the cuttlefish mildly frustrating because apparently you can never actually zombify it like Malin says he wants to do. Even if you kill it with a plague unit the response is still the same "she evaded me." I spent a fair bit of time trying to figure out how to turn it "into a pet," but there doesn't seem to be any way to do so.

There's a monolith here that gives the usual reflection-style message, but doesn't provide an XP bonus like the ones earlier in the campaign. Not sure if that is intentional or not.
How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Most of the writing is just awesome, and so is the general concept of the repeating scenario. I particularly like how Malin can eventually go back to the reflecting pool (blue orb) and commune with his demons (janky dialect and all). My theory is that when Darken's image eventually shows up and starts saying things that are so *completely* at odds with how he behaved and spoke earlier, that Malin *finally* gets it, understanding that the self-recriminating voices in his head that drove him down this path are fundamentally false. To me, that's a happy ending because he finally understands himself, and I think it's really cool that it is included.

The dialogue around letting a foolish hero take the book didn't seem quite as good, and some aspects were confusing. Apparently they try to burn the book, and Malin says "Aaargh," and then the foolish hero says "Still, it seems to be hurting the lich." That "still" doesn't make sense. It feels like something is missing, like it should be, "The book is undamaged, but it seems to be hurting the lich." The narrative in that place doesn't indicate that the book survived being burned.
What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
This is just a straight-up defensive fight against swarming enemies, so the challenges are about considering the terrain and choke-points, deciding which units to use, etc. With the right strategy you can hold them off indefinitely.
How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
10 – This is just an insanely fun scenario, particularly because you can continue to level up your units and hone your strategy over time. ("One must imagine Sisyphus happy.")
What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
(1)
After a while the bottom of the map opens up and you have to fight two foolish heroes at the same time. But this is not particularly hard with the right strategy. There are more cave tunnels going off to the west, so I was excited that maybe eventually those would open up too and you'd have to fight like 4 foolish heroes at the same time. Epic. I was kind of hoping that might be where it was going, but at least by round #16 (I know) it was still only two enemies.

I guess at this point Malin has pretty much depopulated all of Wesnoth, or at least its silly adventurers. (With Frost Nova and my 400 HP, health-draining dragon, they'd better be glad that Malin doesn't want to come out of this cave.) But it does feel like there's an opportunity to make it even cooler through further map expansions.

(2)
The ending with giving away the book is a really great addition, but it might need polishing a bit. As noted above there seems to be some dialogue glitches here. Beyond that, however, some aspects seemed a bit cheesy and unbelievable. Like him screaming theatrically and then the hero is like, oh let's just retreat. Also, if Malin can bring down the cave entrance, why didn't he do that a long time ago to rid himself of the pesky heroes? There's also the issue that the book is kind of obscure / hard to see on the map. And figuring out how to get an enemy to stand on it feels kind of gimmicky. Also, if you *don't* want to give away the book yet, then it really limits your combat options, because you have to avoid situations where an enemy might accidentally stand there. Overall it just felt a bit awkward.

Here's one possible idea. Instead of putting the book on the map, just add a signpost (after the first couple of iterations) where Malin can move to trigger the "fakes-his-death" ending. This could be explained in the pre-scenario narrative – in addition to thinking about the book on the shelf, he can also be thinking about how he might trick a hero into taking it, and mention the goal of faking his own destruction so that they will no longer hound him. A good place for the event marker might be at the edge of the chasm, with the implication that Malin flees from the foolish hero and throws himself into the abyss. The hero can say something like, "Well, I guess that is the end of Mal Kashar and his reign of evil. Surely not even he could survive such a fall." Then a hero-assistant might say something like, "Hey, he dropped this book in his hasty flight, perhaps it is something important!" And the foolish hero says, "Be careful with that, there's no telling what dark magic it contains! We should take it back to the head mages at Toth [or to our wise men in general for different factions] ... they will know how to deal with it." And then it ends in a similar fashion with the foolish hero leaving with the book secured in his pack, and over the years the memory of Malin Kashar fades ... but sometimes during battles the orcs are massacred at night for unknown reasons.

Basically I just think something along those lines might help to smooth out the current awkwardness of both writing and game mechanics around the book ending, and make it more satisfying to complete.

(3)
The leveling system for unique units. This is incredibly awesome, to the extent that I found myself wishing every campaign had something similar (though probably it wouldn't work for all of them). It's a great enhancement to the fun when you can build out your characters and chose their abilities and see them becoming massively powerful over time. That said, there were also aspects of it that I found frustrating.

The biggest issue is the inability to know the big picture or have a sense of what options are coming up next. This makes the choice feel very random and it's hard to plan out a consistent goal in the decisions. One of the worst aspects is that some of the leveling options continually reappear, but others seem to only appear once and if you don't take them they are gone. And you don't know which ones are which! So when two good abilities appear, you might take one that you could have also gotten at the next level, and skip one that is never going to appear again. This is also worsened by the fact that some abilities start out not-so-great but can be later improved (which you would never know if you didn't take them).

Furthermore, the descriptions are often confusing and incomplete – there's a lot of things going on in terms of how many HPs you get with an ability, whether or not you heal when leveling, how many XPs are required for the next level, what exactly the abilities do, etc. Currently it's borderline impossible to figure all those things out. For example, taking the "Consumption" ability reduces Malin's arcane resistance by 10%, but this is not indicated anywhere in the description. Competing abilities also have a resistance reduction, and those *are* listed in the descriptions, so the player is mislead in the comparisions. Sometimes the options just lists a completely new ability, like "impetuity," with no indication whatsoever of what it does (it's not in the help screen either). All this makes it very hard to feel good about the decision process.

I'm not really sure what the solution to all that might be, but at the minimum some better descriptions for the leveling options would be useful. Probably an online guide summarizing the full buildout options across all levels would also be a good approach to let people better plan, since it might be hard to integrate that extent of information into the game itself. It's just kind of frustrating to have to decide about the leveling directions and perks without knowing what exactly they do and what the possibilities are going to be in future levels.

The option for "Max HP bonus +3, Max XP +20%" is also particularly confusing; not really clear what those terms mean. It appears to just give +3 hit points and nothing else – what is the "max XP" benefit?

The "Soul Rend" ability for Malin appears to be positioned as a top-level skill, and eventually it was offered over and over again at every level. But it actually seems like a really poor choice, not remotely worth the constant, severe health loss over time. I found myself wondering if that ability might be "improvable" later, or if there were other aspects to it that I didn't see, but ultimately I didn't want to take it because it seemed almost like a trap. I would suggest maybe removing the health loss completely from that ability, which would make it more beneficial. In general, constant health loss is a really massive penalty that I tried to avoid – though at one point the only available options were two abilities that both had health loss, and no particularly good benefits for my build – maybe there should be a "none of the above" option?

Another frustrating aspect of the current implementation is that at certain points the characters just lose their previous abilities. This kind of makes sense for Malin after his major transformation, but it's still a bit disappointing. (Would be better if he could retain at least some reminders of his previous build.) And it happens in other places too. For example, when the Spectral Servant moves to level 2, its melee weapon changes from "touch" to "blanebade," and the damage is set to 6(4). If you've previously taken melee boosts then they are just lost. However, the ranged attack is still "wail," and previous ranged improvements are kept. So basically you are getting screwed over if you take the early melee boosts.

I haven't checked Malin's attacks, but I suspect that something similar might happen when he moves from "magic blast" to "chill wave." Also, when Malin hits level 3 his melee attack gets a random -1 penalty from wherever it was before. (And the description says the sword is getting "rusty" and isn't used much, which doesn't make sense in my build because it's his main weapon.)

All of these aspects are probably related to changes in the base unit when it moves from tier 1 to tier 2 etc. Perhaps it might be better for units that use the expanded leveling to just stay at the same base type, and set it permanently to "Lvl. 0" or "Lvl. X" or something, so that all the leveling is done through the new system.

Kind of related, it's a bit confusing when the Spectral Servant completely changes names and appearance. Would be better to just stay as "Spectral Servant" throughout.

I also noticed a lot of issues in the help/description screens. Most of the special units have duplicate entries with different stats (like, there are two entries for "Dark Mage" and they both use Malin's name in the description), and many of the special abilities and perks are not listed at all. After Malin becomes an Ancient Lich his description still goes to normal Lich; various minor things along those lines.

Just to step back a bit, let me reiterate that the more complex leveling system is *awesome* and makes the game a *lot* more fun and engaging. So I don't think it should be removed or anything; but various aspects do need some polish when time allows.

(4)
Just as another minor note, the campaign start screen says 10 scenarios, but there are actually 12+.

---------------
About the Overall Campaign:

I was a bit conflicted about how to rate this campaign, because it has some elements that are just completely epically awesome, but other elements that are still glitchy and frustrating. The best parts are the overall story with its nuance and moral complexity, the final scenario concept, and the unique leveling system. A lot of the maps seem to have improved since the last time I played, with more interesting terrain and tactics and new "special objectives"; those changes seem generally great. On the downside though, the implementation of the leveling system has some confusing and frustrating aspects, some of the writing is not up to the story's overall standards, and there are numerous minor glitches, poorly placed objectives, confusing descriptions and events, confusing map clutter, etc. To avoid repetition I'll put the details of leveling issues etc. into the last scenario thread. Overall I'm going to give the campaign 5 out of 5 stars, because I think its awesomeness outweighs the lingering problems. But, it could definitely still benefit from patching up in places.
Last edited by JL42 on February 18th, 2024, 5:18 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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octalot
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Re: Scenario Review: DiD 12 - Endless Night

Post by octalot »

JL42 wrote: February 18th, 2024, 12:49 pm Apparently they try to burn the book, and Malin says "Aaargh," and then the foolish hero says "Still, it seems to be hurting the lich." That "still" doesn't make sense. It feels like something is missing, like it should be, "The book is undamaged, but it seems to be hurting the lich."
Thanks for catching that bug. The line "It’s not catching fire!" is already in the scenario, #8422 will make the unit that found the book say it.
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