Wesnoth changes for 1.20 - Survey!

[Hejnewar]

Help us create better game by answering our questions!

Link: Survey

Questions were created by me and Dalas with help of knyghtmare.

[egallager]

A bit too long, IMO; I ended up just saying I hadn't played any of the mainline campaigns recently at the end because I was losing interest and was too lazy to go and check when I had actually last played them...

[Atreides]

I looked it over and since I have pretty much no opinion on most of it I'll pass. Also it seems you need a google acct to fill it in maybe and I lost mine a year ago. It was an antique from the 90's (yes really) from when google bought out another small site where I had an account. I only ever used it for youtube anyways since I pretty much boycott the rest of google. Yeah I'm one of those fanatic pro privacy and anti mega corp nerds... 8- b

[Straff]

... I pretty much boycott the rest of google. Yeah I'm one of those fanatic pro privacy and anti mega corp nerds... 8- b

Me too.

[Anekron]

I wanted to participate, but I don't have a Google account and I do not wish to make one. Ended up filling it with the help of my friend Mirion through his secondary acc. Just wanted to mention it since it's possible that more privacy conscious people play Wesnoth and may be discouraged by this requirement.

Edit: I now see that there are indeed more people like me, overlooked the Atreides comment and there has been another one while I was writing mine.

[stencil]

I thought the survey was fine. I wasn't clear if the proposed unit changes were ones that would help multiplayer balance, or whether they were proposed "to shake up the meta," as it asks. I'm in favor of keeping multiplayer balance and letting single player developers work around changes. The faction balance is one of the best things about Wesnoth (to me). And I know the survey asks this, but just to repeat my opinion, I'm in favor of adding a bunch of campaigns to mainline. There's so much great UMC I feel like people miss because they either don't know how to access it or just aren't familiar with it (i.e. no marketing). I think the content advertising channel on Discord is great for that, but again only a small slice of players view that. Thanks for working to keep making Wesnoth better!

[max_torch]

I don't quite like the fact that giving an answer about the balance changes is a required question...
Especially because I wouldn't know without testing and also because i don't know if the context is only for MP or only for SP. If only for SP, it doesn't matter as long as any of the scenarios are properly balanced or rebalanced. On the other hand if it's MP, I don't really play MP that much, and not competitively if ever. So the best option that I could select in this case was "None of them".

Really appreciate having surveys like this.

[Hejnewar]

Well unfortunatley for me google was the best free option and yes free matters here. Other good option was microsoft like thats any better. Others required to pay for similar quality. I did expect people to complain since people aready complain about github but well.

Also balance changes are for both.

And yeah not like we have any expirience in making surveys. Tried our best. Also imo it isnt that long and even if its more of a one time this long since most campaigns wont change soon.

[Anekron]

Well unfortunatley for me google was the best free option and yes free matters here.

If I'm not mistaken, you can create a Google form that doesn't require a login. There are also other free options such as OpnForm, to name just one.

I definitely appreciate any form of a survey though and am quite interested in the results.

[Hejnewar]

If I'm not mistaken, you can create a Google form that doesn't require a login.

Yes but I on purpose wanted to have more spam protection than less. After all creditibility of results is equally important to the results themselves.

[Vendrick]

Just a few thoughts that don't really fit in the survey:

I think multiple player sides and recall lists are completely fine in concept but both Legend of Wesmere and Delfador's Memoirs campaigns are actually terrible examples of them.
In Delfador's Memoirs, the choice of recall lists feels random (LoW also uses multiple recall lists but somehow does it even worse than DM.) There are several addons where it works well though.
In LoW, multiple player sides make bad scenarios even worse by making them longer - it is painfully obvious that they were originally AI controlled. Son of the Black Eye has a good scenario where the player gets control of a temporary allied side. (It's also clear on whether the allies will appear again later or not.)

Variable recall costs:
I'm mixed on variable recall costs. I don't like the percenatge based modifications in WoF or UtBS.
It introduces several problems, but I don't think it addresses any issue except to compensate for UtBS' overpowered L3 units (200+ effective HP?).
The recall costs modifications in Eastern Invasion and World Conquest are both decent though.

Unusual units:
I bounced off 1.18 UtBS: the Quenoth elf units really vary on a unit-by-unit basis. Disengage is a little absurd in combination with Slow, but is still fun and requires some planning to use. Tailwind is sometimes tedious to optimize around but otherwise decent. The Tauroch lines' separate rider/mount attacks are usually less interesting than having to choose between attacks normally. The area of effect / ray attacks feel outright broken.

Campaigns:
Just in terms of developer time, the two worst mainline campaigns are marked as high difficulty. I think any new player is likely to start with the Easy and Normal difficulty campaigns, which means work on them is likely to get more mileage.

In terms of modifications to campaigns, all of the good campaigns have one or more dud scenarios. Secrets of the Ancients is a strong campaign, but I wouldn't miss the "harvesting spiders for XP" scenario. Significant modifications to or outright trimming weak scenarios doesn't qualify as either a major or a minor change in the survey.

[ForestDragon]

I appreciate the idea of gathering feedback from the community, but I personally believe that forum threads remain a much more transparent way to do so, and in the long term I would rather not see google forms become the new norm to be used as a justification to change unit stats.

With google forms:
-there exists the possibility of people using alt accounts to skew polls in either direction, and due to how things are structured it is significantly harder to tell apart real users and alt accounts
-you only vote, but cannot share you reasoning for the vote with the rest of the voter base
-people do not see how the survey is going real-time, only see announcements at the end

With forums posts:
-people's amount of posts and account age is visible, making large waves of alt accounts far easier to detect
-besides voting you can also share your opinion/argument for supporting or opposing a specific change
-people see the overall forum thread's attitude towards changes in real time

Even if the current survey is not meddled with, there exists a real possibility of the system becoming abused later down the line

[Zrevnur]

... I pretty much boycott the rest of google. Yeah I'm one of those fanatic pro privacy and anti mega corp nerds... 8- b

Me too.

Me too. At least for the "pretty much boycott <...> google" part.

[shevegen]

I did not do the survey - it wanted me to log in, so it scared me away.

I have also been not playing wesnoth for quite a while, simply due to reallife being rather
taking away so much time for me now.

So I can not comment on any changes so far.

For wesnoth I'd like it to slowly explore what it could add to the mainline campaigns.
I understand these are mostly for newcomers, but I always end up just playing addons
since there is where most of the creativity appears to be happening.

I also think there should be a little bit more of an effort by the main team to see which
addons can be added into the mainline. Not saying there has to be a gazillion, but
something managable, say, 1 new good campaign into the mainline or so per year.
Anything that seems reasonable, without causing any burn out on people. Modest
additions.

As for recall cost: Perhaps this could be a bit more flexible. Or, like a new ability
where there is no maintenance. Not saying this should apply to the whole army,
but perhaps this or that unit gets some extra-award or so for great performance.
I believe the old Battle Isle had something like that, at the least getting better
with higher XP, which wesnoth also has - but I am here thinking of units that
perhaps get the "loyal" attribute upon player choosing too. (Could also cost some
gold coin to perhaps buy it within a campaign, or in a village or so, past level
3 of the unit. Something like that to add more tactical finesse.)

PS: As for Google, Google changed and I don't want anything to do with it anymore,
so I also think using the webforum here is much, much better than external surveys,
in particular when they require log in.