No more "unknown unit" in multiplayer, please.

[Gambit]

Btw I planned to try showing all units in multiplayer when I was working on the new 1.7.0 help features, but currently busy with RL stuff. OTOH, now that we have ":discover" that seems less needed, and has the advantage to please both types of players (the encountered-units feature may be wanted by some people in MP, and being a console command should prevent true beginners to activate it).

Alternatively, I suppose that maybe we could add a new option in the multiplayer preferences for this.

A little detail to consider: if we hide not-yet-encountered units in campaigns and show all units in MP, then we must also decide what to do for MP campaigns. Depending of that, we may need to detect these special cases, or introduce a new WML thing for this.

Why was this change made to begin with? I never really noticed it... But I know it wasn't always like this...

It depends what you are referring to, hiding not-yet-encountered unit's help pages is an old feature (at least pre 1.2), but the UI has been improved, so it's maybe more visible now, and also more clear why it's like that (it was not-hyperlinked text before, which looked broken). If the "(?)" suffix is not visible enough, we could use a different color (like red or gray) but not sure how more clear it will look.

I see. So they weren't there but I didn't know what I wasn't seeing?

[Tonepoet]

It seems better to say this here then respond to your post in Off Topic but actually no Turuk, I wasn't aware of :discover. Not surprising since 1.7 is pretty much new. I know I'm not alone when I say from the bottom of my heart "Thank You" to whomever implemented this. In my opinion it is surely the greatest new feature ever since the start of my playing. I've noted several others who've desperately tried to level units in a match just in order to add them to the "Wesnothdex".

Prior to this, I used to set as many sides to A.I as I could in a low exp. high gold mutiplayer match and just wait until it was done. Not absolutely every unit always leveled to max but it certainly did add a whole ton to the roster. Once again, thanks.

[Turuk]

It seems better to say this here then respond to your post in Off Topic but actually no Turuk, I wasn't aware of :discover.

Well, that is why I asked you if you were and directed you to it, so you could use it. Hopefully others find it useful as well.

[Sapient]

What other games do you play that have a complete in-game listing of all unit stats before you have encountered any units? Just curious.

There is also units.wesnoth.org, you know.

For the record, I am against disabling or reducing the unit-discovery aspect.
And I do not think there should be a checkbox in the normal preferences.
However, I agree that :discover command is a nice thing to have.

Usually if there is a feature that some people like and some people don't like, the people who don't like it will be much more vocal than the people who do like it.

I suggest reading previous discussions of this to understand the reasoning behind the feature:
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=12987
http://www.wesnoth.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=10&t=10874

[ancestral]

Maybe I'm wrong here, but it seems like Wesnoth is all about:

• Keeping things simple
• Making things easy to learn

How does this "discovery"-based unit reference fit into this?

I am still confused by the original intention behind this. After reading the different discussions, I still don't feel like I have an answer. The only thing I've taken is there seems to be a fairly consistent want from the community to have a reference within the game, unlocked. Even by some very veteran players.

Why is it important that people don't have access to the entire unit section in the game? Additionally, it's confusing if you've never played before. You go to the Units section in Help and it's completely empty. At least tell the user why there's not many or even no units.

The only thing I can think of is during a campaign, there might be some relevance to only showing the units you've discovered so far on your journey, to only show what you've seen. But the problem is the help section isn't independent of other campaigns and multiplayer. If I play HttT and then go play a Drake multiplayer game, and then come back, oh, I've seen Drakes. What? Then this is broken.

What other games do you play that have a complete in-game listing of all unit stats before you have encountered any units? Just curious.

What other games do you play that have a partial in-game listing of unit stats? I've never heard of this before!

• Every game of Civilization (Civ II, III, and IV) has had a full Civilopedia showing all the units and the entire tech tree.
• Every game of Age of Empires (I, II, III) have come with posters with the game detailing all the units and buildings.
• Warcraft III and Starcraft have both come with posters detailing all the units and buildings.
• The Total War series, mixed turn-based and real-time set of strategy games has a very in-depth, in-game statistical analysis of friendly and enemy units immediately available within the game.

I'm sure there are many, many more.

Usually if there is a feature that some people like and some people don't like, the people who don't like it will be much more vocal than the people who do like it.

That's a fallacy. Appeal to Belief, or a reverse Appeal to Popularity. What if there really are a lot of people unhappy about something? How do you then judge this impartially?

Do keep in mind how something was originally intended to be used and how people [want to] use it can be acutely different. And also keep in mind this is a very player-centric feature that although isn't very important at all to the core game itself is still important to the development of the player.

[Turuk]

At least tell the user why there's not many or even no units.

It already does.

""This unit is unknown for the moment. You must discover it in the game to be allowed to see its description."

Unknown units currently have a question mark next to them. A curious player who clicks on the unit name will see that sentence. That would make it apparent how the system works.

What other games do you play that have a partial in-game listing of unit stats? I've never heard of this before!

Every game of Civilization (Civ II, III, and IV) has had a full Civilopedia showing all the units and the entire tech tree.
Every game of Age of Empires (I, II, III) have come with posters with the game detailing all the units and buildings.
Warcraft III and Starcraft have both come with posters detailing all the units and buildings.
The Total War series, mixed turn-based and real-time set of strategy games has a very in-depth, in-game statistical analysis of friendly and enemy units immediately available within the game.

I'm sure there are many, many more.

It was noted as being in keeping with RPG elements, and you have not named any RPG games.

[Blarumyrran]

It already does.

""This unit is unknown for the moment. You must discover it in the game to be allowed to see its description."

Unknown units currently have a question mark next to them. A curious player who clicks on the unit name will see that sentence. That would make it apparent how the system works.

Hinting at :discover there somehow would be relevant to many; im sure for most players with the problem it wont occur to look through the commands.

It was noted as being in keeping with RPG elements, and you have not named any RPG games.

Wesnoth's mp part (where the hidden unit attributes are particularly relevant) is certainly decidedly more tbs than rpg.

[Turuk]

Wesnoth's mp part (where the hidden unit attributes are particularly relevant) is certainly decidedly more tbs than rpg.

Very true, and that is why the discover command was added. It was previously stated that campaigns take precedence, and so that is why it was kept to be revealed in an RPG style.

Hinting at :discover there somehow would be relevant to many; im sure for most players with the problem it wont occur to look through :commands.

A good point, perhaps a bit of text informing players to check out the commands if they would rather all the units be revealed.

[ancestral]

It may not have been clear, but Turuk, I'm talking about in the Help window, in the Unit section. It's barren.

And the RPG elements in Wesnoth are not any more profound than the RPG elements in Warcraft III or the promotions and upgrades with Civ IV; the former bundled with a detailed poster, the latter with an extensive reference.

But I have yet to see anywhere else a partial reference. Either they have one in-game or they don't. I've seen journals and notes, and maybe that's what the intention was? To be like a journal, like what Lewis & Clark compiled on their epic journey. I don't know, someone tell me. If that is the case, then portray it or indicate it as a journal.

I want to make this less confusing, because I'm scratching my head since I don't know what I'm looking at.

[Sapient]

It's pretty common for some games to have entire sites and wikis devoted to the in-game statistics.
Players tend to reference these sites without going into long tirades about how it should all be accessible in-game.
Maybe you and I just don't play the same games?

Neverless the intention of "unit discovery" is just that... discovering units. The goal is to preserve (for the new player) the thrill of discovering something new and the anticipation that leads up to it. Some people can pick up a book, skip right to the end to figure out how it ends, then go right back to reading it from the beginning. With most people however, skipping spoils the story for them. Yet if you already know how the book ends, because you've already read the whole thing and are just planning to read it again, then it doesn't spoil anything for you. So you (veterans) are exactly the ones who the feature is *not* intended for. Small wonder then, that veterans complain the most about it. As a veteran you have other means of accessing the information, including the :discover command. Great. Now I really feel don't feel like repeating myself so feel free to read my MANY posts about this topic. You might also want to read Sirp's posts.

Finally, I will mention Final Fantasy Tactics as an example. One of my all time favorite games, and it certainly has some similarities to Wesnoth, if simply the fact that it is a turn-based strategy with a fantasy theme. They took a very deliberate approach of hiding some class information until it became accessible to you. I think you can learn a lot from the deliberate design decisions of a truly great game.

[ancestral]

Well, personally I don't feel the discovery aspect is an integral RPG element, and I don't think it fits very well in the help section as-is, often incomplete and hiding amongst a comprehensive, informational document, which is totally unique among games, as far as I can tell. However, that's just my opinion, and thank you for explaining that it's the discovery element you feel is RPG-esque and is therefore important for retainment in BFW. That answers my question.

[tsr]

TBH I think the problem lies in an ancient design of the help-system that has not been changed since BfW was an offline single-player campaign game.

The discussion about discovering units comes up from time to time and it always end in: yeah we like it like that for single(/multi)-player campaigns but honestly it is not that good for standard multiplayer scenarios.

IIRC there has been talk about an overhaul of the help-system at least since I joined the community and I think we are better of if we come up with an RFC for how the new system should be than discuss something that many of the core developers do not want to change.

Things that I would like to see in such a new system:
- the possibility of dynamicly generating the contents based on the current situation
- era-"books" with subsections for each faction and then pages for each unit
- custom help-pages for specific scenarios/campaigns

/tsr

[Blarumyrran]

An eyecandy thing that yet every decent upgrades-based game should have (in help if not elsewhere) is a genuine unit tree.

[5dPZ]

I think unit info/trees should be available to all players, for the default era.

It is good to have discovery for user-made era to keep the thrill to upgrade your unit into something unknown but powerful.

Since default is the most used era for beginners, and for multiplayer-competitive purposes, people should know about which kind of upgrades they are going to get for all their own and their enemies' units (old players know this anyway, but we should make the game more fair and user-friendly to new players).

[Mordocai]

This has already basically been said above, but i might have a slightly different point of view... so here we go:

I think it would be possible, (and in my view preferable), to set up the help system to detect what era or campaign you are in, and show the corresponding help entries. For instance, it annoys me to have to scroll past Era of Myths units if i'm playing a campaign or default era game and am looking for a unit that is not currently on the battlefield, but that I have previously discovered.

While I, personally, am kind've torn on whether i like the discovery feature during multiplayer or not, i think there should be an option(maybe under Preferences->multiplayer->advanced, so that beginners might not see it right away?) that shows all units in the current era. This would be only multiplayer. With campaigns, I would absolutely love it if each had it's own unit tree, and you had to discover each unit to be able to see it. If you encapsulated them so that each campaign has it's own help files, then i think it would make campaigns more fun. That way, you can't play "An Orcish Incursion" and already have a bunch of the units in your help system that show up in "Heir to the Throne", for instance.

Now, I hate suggesting things... because this is an open source game and i'd rather just implement it. However, I don't have the expertise to make this happen... So hopefully this will be accepted and implemented by someone else...

Edit: I realize that the most voiced argument against this will probably be the "Keep it Simple, Stupid" principle of wesnoth... however, while i'm a VERY novice programmer, I think this should be fairly easy to implement. I just don't know enough about the code base to know how to do it.