Less random game

[turin]

No, I'm very much a pessimist, and I still like the luck factor in Wesnoth. I think it's because I find it fun it win a game in spite of bad luck. And I'm realistic; I realize I will also occasionally get good luck.

I think really it is people who want the world to be completely predictable who don't like the luck factor, and people who don't mind not being able to understand/predict/control certain aspects of life who do like it. Or something like that.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Well, I don't like luck in principle, but it is really essential to the gameplay of Wesnoth, which I DO like.

[Logan]

Two words: Difficulty Slider.
Create levels of ai, and put a difficulty slider on the options menu.

Of course, if you can't handle the ai, use it as a teaching post. You gotta get good sometime, right?
Whenever a character of mine dies, it's not bad luck but BAD PLANNING. You need to be ready for any event, so if you lose a character, it's your bad, not the system's. LIVE WITH IT.

There's also the tactic of saying "I know my men will die and lose and it wont be happy for us, so let's GIVE THE OTHER GUYS HELL!!!!!". Whenever i use that, everything works out fine.

Then there's confidence. Confidence is the devil. If you have it, you will probably lose. That's in my case, anyway.

[Artis]

Optimists like the luck factor, because, hey, you might get lucky. Pessimists dislike it because you might get unlucky. Currently Wesnoth is more geared towards the optimists [..]

This would make Wesnoth more geared towards pessimists: they are less likely to rely on luck and thus should win more.

[Elvish_Pillager]

No, people who rely on luck tend to win more. I should know.

[unsung]

actually, its geared more towards realists who somewhat pessimistic.

they don't take unnecesary risks, but they do know when to take them.

optimists will lose too many unis due to bad, or moderate luck, and get a few extras kills from good luck.
pessimists will lose les units, but have less in the way of kills and xp.

for example, if I have an 83% chance of killing a target, I take it, no matter what.


( selfish weirdo knows what I'm talking about)

[Chris Byler]

The reason people feel that lucky kills are slanted against them (IMO) is that the player is always outnumbered *and* trying to preserve units for later scenarios, and thus the computer's lucky kill has much greater proportional impact than the player's equally lucky kill. It is almost never to your advantage to make an attack with a good chance to kill an enemy unit if it also exposes your own unit to serious risk of being killed in return - you can't afford to trade fairly when the odds are stacked against you. (Furthermore you often lose all the experience you just gained and then some, which may hurt you a lot in later scenarios.)

Maybe people who play mostly multiplayer have a different view of the luck issue for just this reason - they're not usually outnumbered unless it is by cheap units or they're already losing, and they aren't saving their units for the next scenario.

[TheTauren13]

If youre playing a campaign and feel you got screwed by luck, there is already a feature in the game for you: saving and loading. If a really important unit died from alleged 'bad luck', load the damn autosave and rerun the turn again instead of continuing a forum argument that has been beaten to death long ago. You wont have to reload more than twice unless it isnt so much bad luck as bad tactics.

[Casual User]

For the 1000th time :

There are people who feel the randomness is unfair, but that is not the discussion.

The discussion is about a mod, post-1.0, where a few steps would be taken to reduce the incidence of extreme cases.

Some people (amongst whom myself) wonder if the deviance from the norm is not excessive in Wesnoth, so as to reduce the effects of good strategy in favor of dumb luck.

Save-load habits are the best proof of a problem. It really detracts from the game if strategy mistakes can be corrected merely by going back until eventually, it works. It also breaks tension to save-load to correct extreme bad luck.

The mod would reduce the incidence of extreme deviation from the norm, thus making the practice moot. It would be useless to correct bad tactics, and good tactics would almost certainly not lead to sheer unluck and the necessity of a save-load.

Luck would still be a big part of the game, BUT, whereas now, a run of bad luck can effectively wreck a good strategy and turn a probable victory into a defeat, the changed version would make it so luck can make the difference between a narrow victory and defeat or between a decisive victory and a narrow victory.

It would greatly reduce, however, the possibility that (especially in small battles), a well-played well-thought strategy be defeated by dumb luck.

Let's stop attacking strawmen, shall we.

[Elvish_Pillager]

Who? I was only saying that it wouldn't be much like Wesnoth, which doesn't seem to be what you're complaining about.

[bruno]

For the 1000th time :
Some people (amongst whom myself) wonder if the deviance from the norm is not excessive in Wesnoth, so as to reduce the effects of good strategy in favor of dumb luck.

Save-load habits are the best proof of a problem. It really detracts from the game if strategy mistakes can be corrected merely by going back until eventually, it works. It also breaks tension to save-load to correct extreme bad luck.

That is just an indication that the developers weren't fascist and let people do what makes the game fun for them. That feature is actually useful for learning where you don't want to replay a whole scenario up to the point where you screwed up.

The mod would reduce the incidence of extreme deviation from the norm, thus making the practice moot. It would be useless to correct bad tactics, and good tactics would almost certainly not lead to sheer unluck and the necessity of a save-load.

If you regularly get hosed by bad luck, you aren't using "good tactics". You should be properly weighing the risks and benefits of the possible outcomes of attacks, not just figuring on doing average damage.

Luck would still be a big part of the game, BUT, whereas now, a run of bad luck can effectively wreck a good strategy and turn a probable victory into a defeat, the changed version would make it so luck can make the difference between a narrow victory and defeat or between a decisive victory and a narrow victory.

A really bad run of luck is going to sink you in a balanced scenario. A liitle bad luck is only going to be the difference if the battle was very close in the first place.

[BillG3]

My subjective feeling is that the computer seems to cheat though I know it probably does not.

Uhh...you do realize that this game is Open Source, right? Anyone competent in C++ (of which there are many people) can look at the source code and see for themselves that there is no cheating going on....

David

Yes, I do realize that. I respectively submit that I am not competent in C++.

My statement mentioned "subjective feeling" and also that "I know it probably does not". I was only stating my agreement with your previous post about people not trusting the computer for randomness. I have followed the threads regarding this topic with interest. I actually have the utmost confidence that, if there is any problems with the randomization, it is with the implementation of such on the o/s and not the coding in BfW.

[Dave]

Uhh...you do realize that this game is Open Source, right? Anyone competent in C++ (of which there are many people) can look at the source code and see for themselves that there is no cheating going on....

David

Yes, I do realize that. I respectively submit that I am not competent in C++.

However, other people are. Unless there is some massive conspiracy among us programmers to cheat people who don't know how to program, someone would have surely noticed such a problem.

if there is any problems with the randomization, it is with the implementation of such on the o/s and not the coding in BfW.

If there were problems in the library routines that implement randomization, then how would it 'cheat' in anyone's favor?

The only real possibility is that the random number algorithm doesn't generate numbers that have characteristics of real random numbers. However, despite numerous attempts no-one has shown that there is a difference large enough to be noticeable by humans.

David

[Slow]

I find this discussion pretty interesting. I just started playing and I definitely notice the randomness/luck and how it can affect strategies. I don't know that it would be better or worse with less luck, but I'd say that there's an easier way to modify the luck factor..

I was thinking it'd be pretty easy to just modify the attack engine so that instead of doing none or full damage, it is some portion of that. The randomness of the damage applied could be varied so that it is less or more random.

For example, instead of doing 0 or full damage, you could have it do 1/3rd or 2/3rd damage on a strike (based on roll). That would reduce the luck factor a great deal. A little more luck? Try 1/4 vs 3/4.. none? half damage always (always the average).

This would be easy to add I would think.. I could probably do it pretty easily. One could even add a configuration option for this.

[bruno]

For example, instead of doing 0 or full damage, you could have it do 1/3rd or 2/3rd damage on a strike (based on roll). That would reduce the luck factor a great deal. A little more luck? Try 1/4 vs 3/4.. none? half damage always (always the average).

This would be easy to add I would think.. I could probably do it pretty easily. One could even add a configuration option for this.

The game already effectily allows this with the current system of multiple blows. The variance is controlled by the people designing the units.
While there would be different nuances in a system like you propose I don't think the system in itself would change the game play much.