Such a shame

[A-Red]

Not liking the game and posting clear reasons for feeling that way is not trolling. For the record, as someone who managed to get over the initial difficulty hump and has beaten almost all of the mainline campaigns, I more or less agree with the OP.

[artisticdude]

----, that's a cute troll...

I'm going to make a sprite for him. Heeheehee.

Not liking the game and posting clear reasons for feeling that way is not trolling. For the record, as someone who managed to get over the initial difficulty hump and has beaten almost all of the mainline campaigns, I *completely* agree with the OP.

I agree with that, it's not trolling (at least not as I understand it). And yes, I'm 100% ready to admit there is a learning curve in Wesnoth, as there is in most things. But trying to say Wesnoth should be more like this game or more like that game really gets to me. I can't say for sure, but I'm betting Dave had no intention of creating a free version of any commercial strategy games when he first released BfW. That's my point, apologies if I came across as being unpleasant.

[Sapient]

It's not trolling. The criticism is just flawed because the poster does not understand the fundamental differences between Wesnoth and games like Advance Wars or Fire Emblem (which are more like tactical puzzles). This post is just like many others that criticize the influence of luck or RNG in that respect.

Having said that, there is always room for improving the campagins. You should be more specific about the scenarios, campaigns, and versions though because in different campaigns and in different versions of Wesnoth they can vary greatly.

[King_Elendil]

...But we don't need to waste our collective breath on three pages of advice before we find out.

[sur.nhm]

I propose that this sign be added to the forums:


90% of them in the "This game is really good but it has this minor flaw** that I would like fixed" category don't even reply back to our well thought out and helpful troll food. Or they respond negatively to you trying to help/explain things to them.
**And the flaw turns out to not be an actual flaw, but rather the posters lack of knowledge about how to play the game.

This is no particular offense to you Brunopolis. It is just a pattern that can be discerned by reading through the forums for threads like these.

I second Gambit wholeheartedly; I have noticed quite a few posts like that in the not-so-long time I hang around here (Here: the forums).

[TheGreatRings]

I'm very impressed by the quality of this free game and how fun it can be to play. It reminds me of Advance Wars with a few elements of Fire Emblem. The Skirmish mode is great and is definitely the strong suit of this game.

Unfortunately, the campaign mode is a rather poor experience. For all intents and purposes it might as well be Fire Emblem regarding character death and the importance of leveling up units. It can easily get to the point where the game become absolutely impossible and this is a huge detraction to the game. At the end of the day the game becomes a save-load unit dancing experience where you keep trying to make sure unit X gets the killing blow. Personally, it absolutely ruins the experience and removes any kind of strategy from the game. Being in an impossible scenario where you didn't level up your units 3 levels back is rather ridiculous. At the end of the day the game stops being fun when you realize you have to replay half the campaign again due to mistakes done early.

I think you're exaggerating. Let me just say this: I have beat late game battles in Heir to the Throne as well as Northern Rebirth (ie, possibly the hardest freaking campaign in the game) using almost entirely level one recruits. I am in no way an extradordinarily good player. It is in no way nessissary to level every unit, nor to have every unit survive.

I just wanted to end this by saying I won't really be touching any of the campaigns for precisely this reason. The game is designed around strategy but the campaign is completely devoid of this due to the level-fest currently present.

You know, you just gave me an idea. Someone should design a campaign specifically around making leveling less critical. Not a change I'd want implemented game-wide, because I don't think its needed, but it might be a nice experiment.

Save-Load trial and error game-play is rather lame so to reduce this I'd like to see 3 changes made to this otherwise great game.
1. Units gain experience only per attack rather than per kill. This way you don't save-load just to make sure unit X gets the finishing blow.

I don't do that anyway. I'm not that worried about leveling, because its not that critical. Its important, sure. You definitely want to have some leveled units later on, especially in harder campaigns, and it'll make things a lot easier if you have them. But you don't have to level every unit at optimal speed.

2. Dead units instead are "injured" and can be recalled the following mission. This also prevents the save-load frenzy as having one of your good units perish will only hurt you in that particular mission as opposed to every mission there-after.

No. Emphatically no. This would make the game too easy, remove a lot of the challenge, and generally cheapen the game. I feel this way about games in general: death should be permanent, and its irritating when it isn't (barring rare exceptions, like the two white mages in Northern Rebirth).

3. Reduce or remove the gold carried over from one mission to the next. This is rather self-explanatory as doing poorly in the previous mission can lead to the next mission being impossible. This can force you to replay large amounts of the campaign all over again.

I think a better way would be to simply make sure that it is possible to beat every scenario with the starting gold. In fact, don't campaign designers already try to do this?

What I'm trying to say here is please make this game more like Advance Wars rather than Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem is a great game but I'd hardly call it a strategy game given the excessive focus on levels.

With all due respect, your complaints sound rather like "I'm new and not very good and want the game to be easy." Problem is, if it was that easy, it would probably spoil it for the people who are good or even, like me, simply mediocre.

[joshudson]

FYI, even #1 (giving XP via attack rather than kill) can be done in WML if you're willing to put enough effort into it (intercept event and alter XP as desired).

[Rya]

The point that it should be possible to beat every scenario, even if you don't have any leveled units or carryover gold and without repeating turns is pretty valid, though. It doesn't even depend on what type of game Wesnoth is or how it's supposed to play.

You know when playing Easter Invasion I got really far until the scenario where you can to go over a bridge while tons of level 3 trolls and level 2 orcs attack you. I got like 570 gold, one level 3 unit and some level 2 units. I tried this scenario often but couldn't win no matter what tactic I chose.
I consulted the wiki and it says something along the lines of "Expect to lose many level 2 and level 3 units in this scenario - First recruit many level 3s, then get many level 1 expendable units". So the wiki also ASSUMES you have 'many' level 3 units. It apparently doesn't consider that it's actually hard to get level 3 units. I only have one, so what should I do? Replay the campaign from beginning?

I tried this scenario often by only recruiting level 1 units, but it doesn't seem to be possible, even though sometimes I can get pretty close to the bridge.

And what if I didn't have 570 carryover gold? At some point it will be pretty much impossible even for the best Wesnoth player.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

You know when playing Easter Invasion

[Caphriel]

Rya, this has been discussed before:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28440
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=6&t=28200

General consensus seems to be that it is acceptable for the player to discover they have no possibility of beating a scenario with their current resources and having to replay several scenarios, or the entire campaign. If you're not playing up to par (and there's not necessarily any way to know what par is, which is a recurring complaint), you will eventually run into a wall that will require you to replay some scenarios, up to all of them.

[Rya]

I'm not sure if this could really be called enjoyable, though. Or if that's generally good game design.

[Max]

i've never had a real problem with getting stuck in a campaign. it's - at least for me - fun to go back several scenarios (or restart the whole campaign) and see if i can do better.

i know to guys that play bfw on the iphone and quit because this happened to them ("it's so incredible hard"). I think i managed to tell them that it's how it's supposed to be. at least one of them gave it a second try and is now quite happy. my guess would be that it would benefit wesnoth if there were some reminders in the easy/beginners campaign. (e.g. "this doesn't look good - we're so low on ressources - we should have taken more care in the beginning of our campaign". or maybe directly adressing the player "you're low on gold, your recall list sucks - i doubt you'll make it throught this scenario - consider starting all over").

there are casual players that aren't aware of the concept that you can win a certain level and are nevertheless fighting a loosing battle on the next one. i guess this can get really tiresome.

[jaimeastorga2000]

Although I personally have never had to, I would be uncomfortable with having to go back further than the beginning of an scenario to be able to complete a campaign - it would clash with the storytelling and sense of flow to have to do several scenarios over again, the text for which I had already read.

[zookeeper]

The closest thing we have to an official policy is that every campaign scenario should be beatable on the easiest difficulty with minimum starting gold and very few if any recallable units.

[King_Elendil]

90% of them in the "This game is really good but it has this minor flaw** that I would like fixed" category don't even reply back to our well thought out and helpful troll food....This is no particular offense to you Brunopolis. It is just a pattern that can be discerned by reading through the forums for threads like these.

If you look at bronopolis' profile, he has not visited since he posted the original post on this topic. As Gambit already pointed out, we're probably all wasting our time.