Winds of Fate

[Celtic_Minstrel]

So because you changed your mind you think it's okay to confuse readers who come to this thread later? You could've just struck it out instead of deleting it.

[Gothyoba]

Well, I admit it was a very bad way to handle that. Sorry about it. I can’t really undo it now. What I was saying is Aspirant level’s difficulty is far too low compared to the rest and is essentially trivial, which might be less necessary given the new TSG Re-Revision leading to less need for such easy campaigns.
I said a bit more than that but that’s my main point. I currently disagree with this, though I think this a bit confusing to new players, who wouldn’t expect a hard campaign to have such an easy difficulty. I think this a more general problem. It’s hard to tell by a new player if a hard campaign on a lower difficulty is easier or harder than a novice campaign at a high difficulty. But I don’t think the difficulty itself should be changed. I did notice some earlier proposals to reduce the number of yetis on Aspirant difficulty and I personally think it shouldn’t get easier either. It is already quite easy, and the yetis aren’t very hard on Aspirant difficulty. But maybe others disagree. I am quite biased myself. In general, allowing a large variety of difficulties for campaigns seems like a good thing.

[Lord-Knightmare]

I believe it is beneficial for campaigns to have a "Story Mode" difficulty to allow the "story-enjoyers" player segmentation to experience a campaign fully and not be forced to "debug" their way through when scenarios become too much.

[SanDonk]

I did not like much this campaign (except for the amazing last scenario), in fact one of the least among mainline. I second the criticism of others regarding the costs of recalls, especially lvl3 units. I have seen, it was thoroughly discussed over previous posts, but I will share my personal experience:
1/ Except for 2 Inferno Drakes in Overlook scenario (high starting gold and strong enemy) and 1 Flameheart in the very final mission, I did not recall any other lvl3 unit for the entire campaign due to their costs.
2/ This took away the natural incentives for keeping my top veterans alive as everything that progresses to lvl3 is already useless and should be sacrificed the same scenario it evolved as a sturdy cannon fodder as it will not be recalled again.
3/ This created an unique (but rather boring and unnatural) playstyle, where I relied mostly on lvl1 and lvl2 high xp recalls, which can tank a lot of damage to nearly kill them and then evolve to instantly replenish their 60-80 hp instantly only to be sacrificed as a sturdy bait immediately after.
4/ In addition to that, the campaign also offers enough heroes/starting units (including lvl4 leader with 6 hits) to do most of the main job and cleanse most of the map relatively effortlessly as sturdy lvl3 cannon fodder tanks the damage with zero regard to its survival (for interest: Gorlak did 2 AMLAs and Resha 1)
5/ In conclusion I found the campaign very easy even on hard difficulty (did not do "nightmare" as I was afraid of getting stuck on officially a hard campaign).

I will post a scenario-by-scenario feedback to the relevant forum, but wanted to share my feedback in general first.

As a solution I would suggest (in addition to the amendment of recall costs, which is already being discussed) increasing the starting gold, while simultaneously making the enemies more powerful and also having more gold and potential allies (Karron in Reclamation or Landfall) weaker. It should help to make the battles a little bit more large-scale. The current feeling of the campaign was mostly “let's one-shot a bunch of fragile enemies with a meat-shielded lvl4 superhero”.

I wish you good luck with the campaign and do not intend to offend anyone. I am happy, there are finally drakes for the first time in mainline and see a great potential.

[name]

1/ Except for 2 Inferno Drakes in Overlook scenario (high starting gold and strong enemy) and 1 Flameheart in the very final mission, I did not recall any other lvl3 unit for the entire campaign due to their costs.
2/ This took away the natural incentives for keeping my top veterans alive as everything that progresses to lvl3 is already useless and should be sacrificed the same scenario it evolved as a sturdy cannon fodder as it will not be recalled again.

Yeah, I made a huge mistake with the level 3 recall costs. The level 3s were meant to be of equal gold value to the level 1 and 2 units, so that as you acquired these elite units you would use them as shock troops or special forces, alongside the more ordinary units which provide cheaper zone of control and hit points recovery.

The level 3 recall costs are perhaps as much as 50% more expensive than they should be. So they will be much lower in 1.20.

I relied mostly on lvl1 and lvl2 high xp recalls, which can tank a lot of damage to nearly kill them and then evolve to instantly replenish their 60-80 hp instantly only to be sacrificed as a sturdy bait immediately after.

Yeah, the experience points / proximity to the next level needs to be reflected in the recall costs also.

It should help to make the battles a little bit more large-scale. The current feeling of the campaign was mostly “let's one-shot a bunch of fragile enemies with a meat-shielded lvl4 superhero”.

I totally agree. At the time this campaign was being re-developed for mainline there was a fad going to try and remake every wesnoth campaign into some kind of RPG, along with a lot of social media negativity against large battles (often derided as "MUBs") in mainline campaigns. So there was pressure to focus on small battles and a few powerful player hero units (though thankfully we got to keep the final battle large scale). Now that the RPG fad seems to be running out of steam, I think we can have some larger battles (more gold on both sides) in this campaign.

[SanDonk]

Hi, thank you for replying back. I know, you already discussed these recall costs on previous pages, but I do not know your conclusion and wanted to share my play style feedback, how I navigated around it. Hope it helps. I also already shared my scenario-by-scenario feedback to the relevant forum, so you can check it there.