Such a shame

[Caphriel]

At the end of the day the campaigns are supposed to introduce new players into the Wesnoth world before they decide to play against others.

I don't know where you got that idea, but it's wrong. You even pointed out that the two are not similar at all, so what made you think the campaigns are some sort of introduction to multiplayer? There are many Wesnoth players who do not play MP at all, and there are many who do not play SP at all.

[pauxlo]

I'm not sure what Battle for Wesnoth is trying to be but if it's some sort of strategy/rpg hybrid rather than a RPG with strategy elements then I think the campaigns need a little tweaking.

It is a strategy game with RPG elements, not the other way around.

You (should) build up an army, not a little group of heroes.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

At the end of the day the campaigns are supposed to introduce new players into the Wesnoth world before they decide to play against others.

I don't know where you got that idea, but it's wrong. You even pointed out that the two are not similar at all, so what made you think the campaigns are some sort of introduction to multiplayer? There are many Wesnoth players who do not play MP at all, and there are many who do not play SP at all.

In fact, the game was originally built entirely around SP. MP came later almost "as an afterthought". (in the words of a forum member whose name I can't recall now...)

[Noy]

Secondly, Advance Wars is just as strategic as this game. It has damage types, terrain, and instead of times of day it has weather(snow, rain, etc) just like Battle for Wesnoth. The only thing it doesn't have is leveling, carrying money from one mission to the next, and "king" units. Otherwise, it is VERY similar to Advance Wars. The idea of king units and leveling carrying from one mission to the next is something straight from Fire Emblem. Sounds like a perfectly valid comparison to me. Tell me what concept in Battle for Wesnoth is not in either Advance Wars and Fire Emblem?

#1 The damage swings (how much base damage changes) in Advanced Wars are not even close to as large or as regular as they are in Wesnoth. Rain may affect you for a turn; Time of day affects you for four turns out of six. Even with modifiers (weather or leader specials) I felt that you never needed to make hard strategy choices to win, just grind it out.
#2 Terrain plays a much more significant role in determining outcomes in Wesnoth. Entire factions, like the Dwarves will live or die on your terrain choices. Thats almost never the case in Advanced Wars.
#3 Its a square based vs hex based game map. Thats a huge difference in tactics. Unit placement is far more complex an issue in Wesnoth, where the correct placement of fodder or tank units can make or break your game.
#4 The sheer number of damage types, the units that possess them and how they interact, makes unit selection a more critical process than in advanced wars.
#5 Wesnoth Maps are far more open, larger and less restrictive than their Advanced Wars counterparts, often with comparatively less units. That forces harder decisions to be made about what are the most viable areas to attack, where best to defend, and how best to scout.

And in skirmish matches and the competitive nature of Wesnoth I never said the game had problems. It's just easy to tell every Wesnoth newbie to LTP but when a mistake leads to like 6-7 hours lost of game-play and forces the player to completely restart then I'm sorry but that is excessively punishing. It's a "screw this I'm never playing game again" kind of punishing. I'm sure you might enjoy that because you're l33t but I doubt the developers of this game want most new players to have such a sour experience.

No, we want people to learn how the game is played, not to keep making horrible choices based on strategies that don't work for this game. This isn't a kiddie game like Advanced Wars; it requires perception and intuition. Because of that fact its tough to make it so blindingly simple that it loses all of its character. You've yet to figure out how to actually play this game and keep relying on inaccurate comparisons to other games that play very differently than Wesnoth. This is evidenced by your following statement:

Unfortunately, the campaign experience is so different from regular skirmish matches it forces you to play a completely different style of game chalk full of reloading and leveling up. Something that I find to be completely devoid of strategy altogether.

[Schierke]

Well I'm talking about campaigns here. And in campaigns since how you start depends upon how much you leveled many missions ago then strategy becomes less of an issue and how much you leveled your "heroes" starts to matter.

This is an exaggeration.

While is true that many missions require you to have some lvls 2 and 3, most of them are doable without the need of an army of advanced units, but they do require good tactics and strategy.

Is for each player to decide how to play; you can try to maximize your army by preventing losses and feeding exp to low level units, making the current stage harder to complete but making you more prepared to face future challenges, or you can take the easy way out, playing more carelessly and taking the risk of making future stages harder to complete.

Secondly, Advance Wars is just as strategic as this game. It has damage types, terrain, and instead of times of day it has weather(snow, rain, etc) just like Battle for Wesnoth. The only thing it doesn't have is leveling, carrying money from one mission to the next, and "king" units. Otherwise, it is VERY similar to Advance Wars. The idea of king units and leveling carrying from one mission to the next is something straight from Fire Emblem. Sounds like a perfectly valid comparison to me. Tell me what concept in Battle for Wesnoth is not in either Advance Wars and Fire Emblem?

The first thing that came to my mind when i first played this was that it seemed like a hybrid of Advance Wars and Fire Emblem, sharing many elements of both but a the same time creating something new.

The problem is that you can't play Wesnoth like it's Advance Wars, because it's not, and you can't play Wesnoth like it's Fire Emblem, because it isn't either.

And in skirmish matches and the competitive nature of Wesnoth I never said the game had problems. It's just easy to tell every Wesnoth newbie to LTP but when a mistake leads to like 6-7 hours lost of game-play and forces the player to completely restart then I'm sorry but that is excessively punishing. It's a "screw this I'm never playing game again" kind of punishing. I'm sure you might enjoy that because you're l33t but I doubt the developers of this game want most new players to have such a sour experience.

This game is challenging, some people enjoy challenges and some don't. Most comercial games aren't challenging at all because they want to draw as many people as posible to sell copies, Wesnoth doesn't need to sell copies, so it can try to be a good and challenging game and not just a popular one.

At the end of the day the campaigns are supposed to introduce new players into the Wesnoth world before they decide to play against others. Unfortunately, the campaign experience is so different from regular skirmish matches it forces you to play a completely different style of game chalk full of reloading and leveling up. Something that I find to be completely devoid of strategy altogether.

I have never, ever, played any sort of strategy game with a multiplayer and campaings in which the campaings served as a good introduction to the multiplayer aspect. Single player campaings are often about telling a story and having a more lasting experience, while multiplayer tends to be about competition, player interaction and actually being good at playing the game.

[Gambit]

Didn't someone complete HttT with all shamans? I assume that means no shaman level ups too. Which kind of invalidates the arguments of anyone who claims you *must* level up units and that the ability to do so ruins the game.

Even if they used shamans + shaman level ups, imagine if that same player with that same level of awesomness had used all the units available to him (or her) but no level ups. I'm sure it would have been easier.

[HomerJ]

Didn't someone complete HttT with all shamans? I assume that means no shaman level ups too.

Afaik, this is not true, at least in my personal shamans-challenge, all level ups were ok to be recalled. Then again, there was a different challenge (which will be in here, with replays of course) which includes no recalls whatsoever.

Greetz
HomerJ

[pauxlo]

Even if they used shamans + shaman level ups, imagine if that same player with that same level of awesomness had used all the units available to him (or her) but no level ups. I'm sure it would have been easier.

I did this once with shamans + level ups + given units (= recruiting only shamans, recalling everything). It is surprisingly easy doable, if you use slowing and terrain right (and later the better attacks of the sorceresses), and don't mind losing quite some units.

I don't know whether shamans-only-no-recalls would be doable without excessive save-loading, especially the later levels.

[Captain_Wrathbow]

@Pauxlo: What difficulty was this on? Just wondering.

[pauxlo]

@Pauxlo: What difficulty was this on? Just wondering.

I'm not sure (was some years ago) - I think once on easy and once on normal. But others posted here having done this on hard, too. (Search for it, there may even be replays.)
Shamans are great units: Mass slowing + healing + impact damage (helps against nearly everyone but horses) + low cost (compared to mage or archer) + great forest defense.
The level-ups (which you should get quite a lot, given that you only need 4 kills for non-intelligent ones, and most enemies should be slowed, so can't kill you) have even curing + magic pierce (Druid) or magic arcane (Sorceress) attacks. And the final levels can fly (limited), which helps for even more mobility and defense on some terrains.

They are a bit terrain-dependent, though ... I think the scenario Test of the Clans was the hardest (there one need some high level units, which don't get killed at one hit, and can quickly kill the horsemen).

(You have to go the land route after Bay of Pearls, since on the island you can't recruit shamans, and this is not doable without recruiting.)

(I think such a recruit usually won't work on multiplayer, though.)

[Yogibear]

And in skirmish matches and the competitive nature of Wesnoth I never said the game had problems. It's just easy to tell every Wesnoth newbie to LTP but when a mistake leads to like 6-7 hours lost of game-play and forces the player to completely restart then I'm sorry but that is excessively punishing. It's a "screw this I'm never playing game again" kind of punishing. I'm sure you might enjoy that because you're l33t but I doubt the developers of this game want most new players to have such a sour experience.

This game is challenging, some people enjoy challenges and some don't. Most comercial games aren't challenging at all because they want to draw as many people as posible to sell copies, Wesnoth doesn't need to sell copies, so it can try to be a good and challenging game and not just a popular one.

Then why do we have easy difficulty for campaigns?

[zookeeper]

I split the last couple of pages to another thread on Zarel's request.

[Schierke]

This game is challenging, some people enjoy challenges and some don't. Most comercial games aren't challenging at all because they want to draw as many people as posible to sell copies, Wesnoth doesn't need to sell copies, so it can try to be a good and challenging game and not just a popular one.

Then why do we have easy difficulty for campaigns?

Because otherwise new players would just commit suicide = P.

I can't say this is true for all the mainline campaings, as i haven't played them all, but i think HttT is a good example of this.

The easy difficulty will surely challenge new players who know nothing or little about turn based strategy games.

The medium difficulty will challenge more experienced players in the genre that aren't really "hardcore", such as myself, a great fan of Advance Wars, Tactics Ogre, Fire Emblem, Final Fantasy Tactics, etc, who found the medium difficulty challenging enough.

And the hard difficulty is for those truly commited to the game.

Now, each campaing is made by different people who might have different perceptions of how each difficulty should be, but my point was that even the easiest mainline campaings, in the easy difficulty, are more challenging than their equivalents in similar commercial games.

[Yogibear]

Now, each campaing is made by different people who might have different perceptions of how each difficulty should be, but my point was that even the easiest mainline campaings, in the easy difficulty, are more challenging than their equivalents in similar commercial games.

Fair enough.

My point was, that we care for different user bases and different prerequisites by providing difficulty levels. We do that so they can have fun. And i don't see a reason why we shouldn't think about alternatives for even more users to have fun if it doesn't affect the others at all (or only to a minor degree).