(Future) Trait confusion

[thissneppah]

In the 1.3.2 version of Wesnoth there has being, to my knowledge, a few traits changes (fearless and healthy added / quick removed from Drake Clashers and strong from Dark Adapt) which is of course great. However with the current way the traits are distributed around units it is a bit confusing in my opinion. For anyone who doesn’t actually know what is supposed to happen (through the forums or MP server) what hint is there at how things actually work? In other words I can imagine that the Trolls can’t get intelligent trait but how am I supposed to know that if I wasn’t explicitly told so?

Plus its going to be hard for new players to learn what’s going on in the game with the current traits distribution. Imagine trying to explain traits to a newbie: “All units can get two of four traits: Strong, Intelligent, Quick and Resilient. And Elves get Dexterous trait and Dwarves get Healthy trait. Also Dark Adapts can’t get Strong, Drake Clashers can’t get Quick and Troll Whelps can’t get Intelligent. Ohh and Undead only get Undead trait... except for Walking Corpses who also get Fearless. Plus all non-neutral units can get Fearless, except some (all?) Drakes. Simple really.”

Basically I think it would be helpful to have some kind of tool-tip pop-up to be added to the game that would tell the player explicitly what traits a unit can get or to have fewer exceptions in the way the traits are distributed and hence simpler rules for traits. Well that’s what I think anyway.

[Noyga]

Well there is a few small issues with current fearless setup, so i believe there will be some changes in this area (one possibility is fearless becoming race-specific, but there might be some others).

[zookeeper]

Why would you need to know? Would it ever make any difference to how you play if you knew which units can get which traits?

I can imagine a case where you recruit a drake clasher in a particular spot hoping that you'll get a quick one in order to reach x,y in one turn, but besides that, I can't really think of anything else.

I'd say it's exactly the new players who least need to know the details. "All units get two traits that give them little bonuses so that their stats will vary a little bit. Not all units can get all traits, and there are a few units like undead which don't get any. You can't control what traits your units get, so don't worry about it too much, just check what traits you did get and try to figure out how to best make use of them."

[UngeheuerLich]

In the unit discription could be added:
-available traits: quick, fearless, intelligent, resilent

[Eleazar]

Zookeeper is essentially right.
But a automatically generated description like the following would be nice to have:

In the unit discription could be added:
-available traits: quick, fearless, intelligent, resilent

[jb]

I guess this is a small problem that could be potentially confusing, but you have to remember 1.3.2 is still a development version...so lots of changes may be coming and going with each release. People who do not understand the nuances of gameplay are encouraged to play the stable version of the game.

And while ZooKeeper is probably right, he doesn't have the healthiest attitude towards new players who actually do care

UngeheuerLich

In the unit discription could be added:
-available traits: quick, fearless, intelligent, resilent

Tihs sounds like a very reasonable solution, but again, things are still in-development and subject to change....so I wouldn't expect anything like this until the next stable release.

[thissneppah]

Why would you need to know? Would it ever make any difference to how you play if you knew which units can get which traits?

Other then the fact that I like to know all the rules to the game (I am sure I’m not the only one) some examples where I think knowing what units get what traits would be useful:

I’m sure a lot of people will not approve of this but – save / loading for a specific (impossible) trait / trait combination in a campaign. Something I do obsessively.

Not hoping for an impossible trait in any game. I for one was quite exited to see a fearless drake...

Also not knowing that a certain trait could come up could mean that you won’t notice a certain units that needs to be used a bit differently to be effective (like quick and fearless).

But I guess the main reason I wanted this was because, to me, it seems like traits are becoming overly complicated in what was / is fundamentally a game with a simple rule set. Still I can see why it wouldn’t make much difference.