General Criticism of the Mainline Campaigns

[Noy]

Two points:
#1 I disagree that its all about a dream team. I think its more about a good balance between lvl1s and lvl2/3s that balances the quality quantity debate.

#2 People like the recall system as is in general. It works for many scenarios; I've played though World Conquest at least a dozen times now in the past six months. Given that it is quite popular we're not going to go in and do all this work based on the fact "you don't like it."

A far better approach is to make suggestions for incremental improvements on certain maps, or a new campaign that contains all these great ideas. If you sincerely think this would be a great addition to the game then it should be a success. However I doubt any developer wants to hear anyone pontificate about how you think the campaigns aren't good in general.

[tsr]

While I think making a huge overhaul of all the single player campaigns o mimic singel-scenario-mp is a huge undertaking and mistake atm I do see a point in what the OP expresses here.

One aspect of the wesnothian economy, that bothers me - but I always felt is part of the core that wont be changed - is that units are paid only if there is money, otherwise they are happy to keep fighting for nothing.

In multi-scenario-games (mostly single-player, but there are a few mp-campaigns too) you just have to make it till the next check-point (scenario) to get your purse refilled with new shiny gold coins. In single-scenario-games (I'm mostly looking at mp here) this has the effect that you can't recruit more units until you get those figures in white again, because there are no check-points.

I see two things that can be made to change this (and they are not mutually exclusive, quite the contrary):
- make units only fight if they are paid
- allow red figures to follow you to the next scenario in a campaign.

Note: I don't play SP (except to try out a mp survival from time to time). I am also aware that this is a huge thing but I'm merely trying to expand the discussion with another aspect.

/tsr

[Cataphract]

I see two things that can be made to change this (and they are not mutually exclusive, quite the contrary):
- make units only fight if they are paid
- allow red figures to follow you to the next scenario in a campaign.

The problem with this is that those mechanics can lead to a death spiral. If you go really negative in one level of a campaign, you'll likely have to start all the way back at the previous level. You may even find yourself in a situation where you'd have to go extremely far back to reach a point at which you'll have enough gold to carry you through. That's not to say your idea doesn't have merit, but it could lead to some very "not fun" outcomes.

[Daxion]

The problem with this is that those mechanics can lead to a death spiral. If you go really negative in one level of a campaign, you'll likely have to start all the way back at the previous level.

To some point this is true. However you have a similar problem in existing campaigns (basically because they get a bit harder with each scenario).

The same rule that was stated in Campaign design howto:

But the most reliable way to manage gold is to alternate hard and easy scenarios. The easy ones generate gold, the hard ones eat it.

will still apply. True going too muchOf course, going way to much into dept, does the same thing often now. into dept will kill your next scenario, or maybe even that one after that. But that's about as far as it goes.

[jb]

Well, Noy pretty much hit the nail on the head. You should create a new campaign that proves how great this concept really is.

The current campaigns have been balanced and tweaked time and again. That balance continues to develop. There aren't going to be major changes to a campaign based on some arbitrary thoughts. If you can't get specific, and prove your points, we're not going to make drastic changes.

Developing a new campaign in this style is a good idea though. Time to try your hand at WML and make your vision come true.

[Caphriel]

@Cataphract: The "Death spiral" as you called it already exists, and there was recently a thread about it. Even without negative gold following you, you can still have a death spiral of insufficient funds and/or not enough level 2 and 3 units, leading to insufficient army growth until you hit a wall that you need more money/high level units, and have to go back several scenarios to try again. I think tsr's implied suggestion would make the game more intuitive (if slightly harder in current campaigns), because you wouldn't be able to escape terrible economic performance by being granted the minimum starting gold of the next scenario. I completed An Orcish Incursion, for instance, by recalling the same five units or so from Valley of the Trolls onward, because Wasteland drained my gold and I wasn't willing to start over, and I never had enough resources to complete a scenario fast enough to get a sufficient bonus to exceed the next scenario's minimum gold.

[cool evil]

Here's what i think about the gold problem in SP after playing "Invasion from the Unknown" episode I. One of the scenario "Over the Sands" has minimal amount of enemies that could a serious threat, yet i was fooled into thinking that there were significant amounts of orc/human resistance and spent 400 gold recruiting simply due to the vastness of the map. Turns out that half of my forces never saw combat, and the only ones who really did anything were the scouts plus Mal Keshar, Galas and Anlinde.

Now i know there's a village counter on the top of the screen that shows the villages visible, but it really means nothing in a map with shroud plus fog of war on. Had i known that there was no more villages to be captured other than pillaging an oasis controlled by outlaws, then my forces would be something like 8 or 10 units strong to avoid going into the -300 debt that i ended up.

[Yojimbo252]

The point of this thread isn't to pick an individual scenario or campaign to pieces. If I was going to do that I would have posted in the Mainline Campaign Feedback sub forum. The intenion here is to discuss the BfW economic system that underpins the campaign scenarios but imo isn't being used to it's full potential in certain scenarios. But before singling out any specific examples I wanted to gauge people's opinions to see if others shared a common view.

Well to be perfectly frank, this approach makes your post entirely useless. We're not going to redo every scenario or even a portion of them based on vague conceptual notions of how to develop scenarios.

I don't see why this makes the post entirely useless. There's some good discussion and suggestions going on here and clearly there are others that have similar impressions as mine.

Also I find your statement 'vague conceptual notions of how to develop scenarios' quite condescending. No where in this thread have I suggested 'every' scenario should be redone and in fact I'm not making any demands that any scenarios be redone. I'm simply discussing one aspect of scenario design that I feel could be given more attention for future campaigns.

If scenario/campaign developers want to take note of the suggestions made then great but if they choose to ignore the feedback that's entirely up to them.

Personally I like having most of my recruits available on the map in the first few turns, though I can see at times how changing the gold available at certain times would make it interesting. But just saying "there should be some variation in how gold is used" is something nobody is going to disagree with, and doesn't help whatsoever.

If you read through what's already been posted again you'll see that the issue has been quite clearly stated and suggestions made on how it could be improved for certain types of scenarios. We've gone on to present more detailed information than simply "there should be some variation in how gold is used".

If you have suggestions about how to make certain scenarios better or more interesting through different use of gold, then make that suggestion in the campaign sub forum. You'll actually have far better luck there.

Like I said before the intention of this post isn't to change any specific campaign or scenario. It's to discuss a scenario design concept that could be applied to future scenarios or retrospectively fitted back into an existing campaign scenario if that campaign maintainer was so inclined.

In addition if you have these great ideas, why don't you try your hand at creating a campaign? That might cater better to your own tastes and be "proof in concept" that can be applied later.

Yes that's true (although my developing skills are somewhat limited compared with what others have produced) but I felt it far quicker and easier to create this thread to discuss the idea first before investing what I'm sure is a painstaking amount of time creating a campaign around it. After all if I was a lone voice in this regard and no one had any interest in scenarios of this nature then that could result in a lot of wasted effort.

There's no harm in bouncing ideas with the rest of the community first is there?

However I doubt any developer wants to hear anyone pontificate about how you think the campaigns aren't good in general.

Noy I think you're taking this too much to heart. I certainly don't want to come across as unappreciative, as previously stated in the opening post I really do enjoy the game and campaigns I've played and having created a single (fairly straightforward) scenario myself I can imagine how much effort and imagination has gone into creating the existing campaigns for the benefit of the rest of the community.

No one here is claiming the campaigns aren't good in general we're just talking about one particular aspect of the economic system.

The current campaigns have been balanced and tweaked time and again. That balance continues to develop. There aren't going to be major changes to a campaign based on some arbitrary thoughts. If you can't get specific, and prove your points, we're not going to make drastic changes.

Like I said the purpose of this thread is to discuss a concept not to pick holes in a particular campaign.

Also these aren't arbitrary thoughts. After playing my first campaign I started noticing this pattern and each successive campaign I played helped cement this impression.

Now I'm not suggesting this is the 'correct' or only way to base a scenario and I've certainly enjoyed the scenarios where you do start out with your strongest force, I was just wondering why there weren't more scenarios beyond the first few of each campaign where it was more 'build up' and map control orientated.

[Dan-the-Terrible]

I am a relatively new BfW player, I have only played campaigns, not multiplayer.

I wanted to say that I found it counterintuitive that the game allows you to acquire large negative gold with no consequences. I sweated through several scenarios struggling to keep my gold positive before it finally occurred to me this isn't necessary. I was sure if I let my gold get negative something "bad" would happen, most likely recruited units leaving the game or becoming uncontrolled. I found the lack of consequence so odd I wasted time blowing through a test battle deliberately generating large negative gold just to see what would happen.

I am not experienced enough with the system to say wether the mechanic is good or bad from a balance point of view. But I would like to see something in the manual acknowlege the fact that you don't actually have to pay upkeep, as negative gold has no negative effect.

I also found the fixed recall cost a bit annoying. Not because it makes it cheap to recall high level units, but rather because it makes recalling low level units impractical. I started with the South Guard campaign, and found I had a lot of loyal peasants in my roster, but at 20 gold each they simply are not worth recalling. From a role-playing perspective it bothered me that I had to turn my back on these loyal friends.

[Hulavuta]

I always kind of found that a problem too. Maybe a good idea is that you pay their recruit price plus some gold per xp? Unless they were at their final stage. But sometimes recall is good, because for example, you get a horseman for 3 less gold.

But, if you think about it, the few gold pieces that you have to pay kind of does compensate for it though. Plus, like you said, it's a good idea to recall a guy who has 7/45 experience if it will only cost 5-7 more, and because like you said, the large negative amount of gold is not a big deal.

[Velensk]

My campaigns (and a few others campaigns I'm sure) would be severely crippled by negitive gold causing problems.

Personally I still think that level 0s costing 10 gold to recall is a good idea however I am definately against increasing the gold cost of higher level recalls.

[Icarusvogel]

I'm sure that higher-level units know what they are worth, and would want more gold than the recruits.
Yikes. Realism-based argument.
I think the higher costs enhances gamplay though; you see, it would make it easier to have a solely lvl-3 army, which would not be a real advantage, I think.

[Velensk]

Try saying that again. I had a hard time following that though.

All I can respond to is that, speaking as a campaign designer, I know that higher recall costs will be detrimental to my campaigns.

Also: Level 3s are more expensive, they cost more upkeep. On any large battle that adds up pretty quickly.

[Dave]

This is an interesting discussion thread...

When I was designing the core of the Wesnoth campaign system, I recognized most or all of these problems. The potential or death spirals, for players to end up in intractable positions, for the need to thoroughly defeat certain scenarios in order to make future scenarios tractable, and so forth.

Allowing for these possibilities was an intentional design decision and understood tradeoff, since certain aspects of the Wesnoth campaign system -- namely the ability to recall units and develop an army -- are considered so fun that it's worth it.

I think any system has certain trade offs, and I don't think there is a way to strictly improve the campaign system without diminishing some of the fun aspects. However, I recognize there are benefits of other systems too.

I completely welcome and encourage developing new campaigns with very different approaches to what we have so far. I think it could present a fun and refreshing change.

David

[catwhowalksbyhimself]

I personally like the way the system works now. yes, you basically end up building a force at the beginning, then using it, but I don't consider this a bad thing at all. It's certainly different, but contributes to actually making wesnoth a more tactical experience.

Consider this--if you had a slower stead stream of new units through the scenario, you would either have to have new units wait for another other new units to be produced make a decent force--otherwise they'd just get chewed apart by enemy defenses, and you'd never have worry too much if you weren't careful about how to use those units. Wait a couple of turns, and you've got a decent force built back up anyway. It would also mean your leader unit might as well not even be there. You'd never have a reason to move him anyway.

Instead, you have to consider how many troops you need careful, recall or recruit the minimum you think you need, then attack carefully and tactically. I like this. It's both different and fun.

The only suggested change that I can see is a penalty for negative gold, but even that would require the game to be reballanced quite a bit. It simply may not be worth it at this point.