Multiplayer Competitive Era

[Fosprey]

Madnesbane, this matter has not been thought light.
I've desire to build a strategy games for years , i wander in the game design forum if sirlin.net for years and even talked and gave ideas on several projects that today run.
I understand what you say, but i don't want the player to play against a system, but against a human. I don't want to make wesnoth strategy any deeper, i want to make the game more competitive and increase the importance of playing against an opponent and decrease how much you must play against a system.

Certainly increasing the randomness of the game has good points in it, but it doesn't came with very bad ones, the bad ones are too negative for a very competitive game that's what i want to build here.

Admiral-N : i don't understand your point number 4
Your suggestions go toward the idea not of changing the damage system, but give the rng more space to even out, in that scenario, make maps bigger, and increase gold are ways to do it too, i already thought of this and is of course the first an easiest plan. It doesn't mean it isn't the best and i have it in mind.

But since all this changes don't need c++ programing or even WML programming, i think other persons could try it , instead of me.

[ADmiral-N]

Just to clarify my 4th point:

It's based on the fact that in case you implement my other changes, every "poison" attack would do at least 20% (or some other percentage) base damage with every strike. The idea is that a light hit without the 80% random part would not poison the target even though it still takes the damage. Same goes for slow. Therefore, the odds of getting an enemy poisoned or slowed don't change. I'm not as sure about charge and backstab; Should the damage double even if it's just a base-damage only strike?

I see that you've got your own ideas about your mod, and I'm watching the development with interest I just wanted to drop in my suggestions since you asked for them.

[Fosprey]

admiral, i know what i want to achieve, but how to do it, i don't have that clear, i would try, but in order to do what i want i need vision changed.

I'm asking suggestions because i did it completly deterministic as i said. But there are some problems with it. One of them is that maths skills gain a lot of weight, and i don't like that.
Also thinking WAY ahead in tactical combat now is possible, and i don't like that either, so i want a little variation in the possible resultas of each particular combat (i was suggested that the result of each mini combat was solver by a minigame, and while in theory sounds great, in practice, it will become tedious in my opinion).
The problem is that adding variation bring us back to the original problem of chances that the best player lose.

As you see the problem is a little more complex and i have a solution, but not a very good one, otherwise i wouldn't be asking.

I'm happy there is someone that shows interest in the development, the problem is that for now it's only me as designer and wml coder, and two c++ programmers, and neither of us have plenty of time to invest here, so i think this will be moving, but i'm sorry to say you can't expect speed.

Btw i'm planning (and already looking for a web designer) to mount a web page dedicated MAINLY (But not entirely) to this mod, and i want to make it attractive, for a start i should put the site a name and i don't know wich, any ideas? (i hope this site would help me to put my ideas more organized and help me recruit some people to help me)

Once i get the vision thing 100% complete i'm safe to release a version to the public, but the mechanics of my mod, don't work with the actual vision, and i think this will take a few months.

[Yogibear]

I'm happy there is someone that shows interest in the development, the problem is that for now it's only me as designer and wml coder, and two c++ programmers, and neither of us have plenty of time to invest here, so i think this will be moving, but i'm sorry to say you can't expect speed.

This sounds so very much familiar, it's a pity that people only discover it if they start to program themselves (sorry, not offending, just couldn't resist ).

I can give you some experience, since i apparently was one of the few persons who tried saurons mod (how many times? Errm - well - not so many - err - ok, once ). We played with 50% deterministic damage and i think this is the range where it starts to really feel like it makes a difference. I believe 20% you will hardly notice.

In my opinion turning 10-2 into 5-4 is not a good idea since it takes away some uniqueness from units. Of course, if there is 100% deterministic damage there won't be any difference at all.
Edit: Just realized that this is wrong, it does make a difference if a unit is about to be killed. It may decide if it is able to retaliate.

[Yogibear]

If evade becomes armor then you are going to know the outcome from each battle, making the choices simpler, more straightforward, and involving less strategy

Really, i have never understood why this is so. I mean take chess. I may be the only one, but for me this is one of the games with the deepest level of strategy i know of. And it is 100% deterministic.

I also think that wesnoth is a lot more complex than chess, since there are more variables and you can move all your pieces at once (there is more, actually, but you get the point). That should make up for a lot more strategy.

I think what randomness does is that it adds intuition to the game. You start to get a feeling if you are stronger than your enemy instead of just taking out the big calculator and counting the numbers.

[Fosprey]

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=22168
based on this thread we did a change of direction.
I dropped the WML workaround the battle system, and now it will be changed on the binary.
So now i'm working on chaning it binary based both the vision and the damage system.
there will be a new parameter on units that will be called [DefenseNL] that will assign the defense in Non luck mode of the units.

That's on the programming part.

On the gameplay part.
I want to implemetn a tech system. So you can't right off the bat recruit every unit, you will be able to only build one unit, and then by investing gold you will be able to have access to other units.

[Yogibear]

I want to implemetn a tech system. So you can't right off the bat recruit every unit, you will be able to only build one unit, and then by investing gold you will be able to have access to other units.

I am pretty sure this is already doable with WML. You should check out "A new Land" (i think by Bob the Mighty) for that.

[Fosprey]

yeah, thanks, i know it's doable via wml, i just wanted to inform of the idea of implement it to hear thoughts about how it would be a good idea to implement (not in the technical aspect but gameplay wise)or if it's agood or bad idea in the first place. But thanks for caring to help me

[Wintermute]

yeah, thanks, i know it's doable via wml, i just wanted to inform of the idea of implement it to hear thoughts about how it would be a good idea to implement (not in the technical aspect but gameplay wise)or if it's agood or bad idea in the first place. But thanks for caring to help me

It's hard for me to imagine what will be going on in your game, but it seems that you may have some problems with not allowing all the units at the start - depending on how much is changing. Many units "counter" other faction's units, so if you need to make sure all starting units can deal with each other.

Just as another idea I think that something like zookeeper's "choose your own recruits" era might be fun to play with, and is perhaps along the same lines as what you are suggesting with a tech tree.

EDIT: Updated the link to point to the more current thread. -zookeeper

[Fosprey]

Ok the idea of the tech tree is too increase the mindgames in the game.
In wesnoth for example (not that is a bad thing how it's implemented right now, just that don't fit my porpouses) you pretty much know what will come on the other side.
In strategy games where you can build different units, once you can build every unit fully upgraded, your best approach is to do a mix of units with slight variations to adjust to different situations based on unhidden information.

But before that happens in strategy games where a tech three exist (and several ramifications of that tech three exist) what you tech or build should be based on what you think your opponent will tech or build, you can't assume he will just do a mix of units, nor can you. And then a mindgame comes in. Wich i think is pretty interesting and want to have.

[Fosprey]

http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=22733
Just wanted to ask for help, for those that don't visit the Code corner that much, here is one of my friends that's working with me in the mod asking for help , any help is greattly appreciated

[KingdomAmericaCMG]

Idea defense to automatic miss based on strikes
You could have evasion be automatic.

say 40% is default evasion so right away take away 40% from all units and normalize it


with 40% gone that leaves

non defenders 40% and below= maybe less resistance to balance the normal dodge
really light defenders 50%=10% which equals nothing
light defenders 60%=20% 1 strike misses
heavy defenders 70%=30% 2 strike misses

this means that a rogue on grassland will dodge the first strike always, and on villages and forest it dodges the first 2 strikes.

now this may not be exactly how it could be numericaly but you get the general idea, you could change the values to your liking

say make your own units
100% dodge means you dodge the first 4 hits
75% dodge means you dodge the first, third and forth hits hits
50% dodge means you dodge the first and third hits hits
25% dodge means you dodge the first hit (or change to second hit)


now its hard to say how this would work as when you remove the change of missing you really impower the dwarvish thunderer and how it wont miss, and if you mess with the resistances too much it will thow everything out of wak

[Fosprey]

I don't see how this would work better than the damage reduction system

[raptoRus]

omg
what a great idee,
love your ideas man!!!
sry im no coder, cant help sry
are your add-on out? can i play it? what is the name?

and here a more some of my suggestions:
a complex game is always! better then a simple one.
you are coder you go to college, and the most player are in college i think.
the stuff in college is complex, a game is never complex

and make the defend(evasion) of the units not "race-addicted"
today every troll has
fire 40%
ice 50%
spear 10%
sword 10%

today every elf has
arkan 10%
fire 0%
ice 0%
and so on.
make it like this.

elf warrior
sword 40%
spear 0%
arkan -30%
fire -20%
ice 10%

elf archer
sword -40%
spear -10%
arkan -10%
fire 0%
ice 0%

more dynamic in the defend(evasion) mean a more dynamic gameplay
and so on(with balance of cource)
if you want i could make a list for every unit

best regards