Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

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Flameslash
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Joined: December 21st, 2008, 12:29 pm

Re: Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

Post by Flameslash »

Minor dialogue thing - in S3, Zhul says to Garak something along the lines of “lay down your bow and use your sword”, however he has neither a bow nor a sword anymore. Also, the berserk special he gets in that scenario doesn’t seem to work.

Now for my initial thoughts on the new units.

I love the Quenoth Fighter line. The Formation ability is really interesting as it encourages holding tight formations, which allows you to get the most out of leadership, healing, and illuminates too. The Warrior advancements add a blade attack, which makes them a little more versatile. The Flanker line transforms the unit completely, from a formation based unit to a skirmisher. I ove the synergy between Skirmish and Poison, it really allows you to wreak havoc. It’s always a tricky choice when I level up a Fighter because of this.

The Quenoth Mystic is pretty weak at first level, I find - a Shaman without Cures or Slows, essentially - although Daze is a pretty handy little special. The Shaman line is your standard healer, nothing too noteworthy about it, but definitely a handy unit to have. The Sun Singer line, though... I’m in love. With great arcane firepower and some limited healing, it’s both deadly and capable in a support role. When it then gains Illuminates, it becomes so so powerful, and definitely worth the struggle of getting a Mystic levelled up. Honestly, this line could stand to lose a few hitpoints, just to tone down its power. I’m also not sure if the level two is meant to fly - it’s sprite doesn’t look like a flyer, at least.

The Quenoth Scout line, I haven’t found too much use for. The ranged impact damage is handy, but otherwise the unit isn’t all that powerful, and 8MP isn’t fantastic for a scouting unit. Disengage is a nice trait, but very situational. Personally, I’ve always opted for the Pathfinder line - the Archer’s pierce damage isn’t as useful as the Pathfinder’s Slows. With that said, the Marksman looks pretty damn deadly, with its Marksman special, which makes me think it might be worth trying to struggle through with an Archer.

The Tauroch Rider is a pretty fun unit, and it’s Impact damage is very valuable against the undead. It’s ability to tank and deal decent damage seems balanced out by its lack of mobility - although in caves, it’s very difficult to actually use these things. The Vanguard line’s leadership is very useful, as is the Shock special - but this has meant that I haven’t got much use out of the Stalwart. Sure, it’s pretty tammy, but the Vanguard is decent enough at tanking anyway. Moving the Shock special to the Vanguard could balance this out - and thematically, it fits with him doing the Vanguard take less damage.

Overall, I really appreciate the creativity shown in these units, with a range of new abilities, and a unique theme.

Here’s my proposed changes:

Quenoth Mystic - Increase ranged damage from 3-2 to 4-2.
Quenoth Sun Singer - Reduce HP from 50 to 45.
Quenoth Sun Sylph - Reduce HP from 59 to 54.

Quenoth Archer - Increase MP from 8 to 9. Give it increased mobility to allow it to pick out targets it’s pierce damage is useful against more effectively.
Quenoth Marksman - As above.

Tauroch Stalwart - Give its melee attack the Shock special.
Tauroch Protector - As above.
Tauroch Vanguard - Remove the Shock special. Maybe rename it to Tauroch Insignia or something, as Vanguard sounds more like a tank line than a leader.
Tauroch Flagbearer - Remove the Shock special.
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Sudipta
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Re: Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

Post by Sudipta »

My feedback on the new desert elves. One word - Magnificent :mrgreen:

Quenoth fighter line – A pretty good melee unit though its damage types are not very useful against most of the enemies in this campaign. The champion line is superior to the ranger line in a pretty big way. I rarely found any use for flankers and rangers except poison enemy leaders a couple times. It might help to increase quenoth flankers move from 5 to 6, since they are dropping the heavy shield and glaive.

Quenoth Mystic line – The lv 1 unit pretty much sucks but its advancements are great. I especially loved the sun singer line, with high arcane damage they easily demolish undead. Too powerful. The lv 2 sun singer has 50 hp, it might be better to reduce its hp to 40 or 45 since no other lv 2 mage unit has so much hp. It’s a shame I didn’t get to use any moon singers, I was looking forward to using them(I like their sprites and stats.) I would still like to know why they aren't included. :o The healer shyde line is well balanced.

Quenoth Scout line – An all rounder scout line, its good both for exploring and for fighting. The disengage ability is really useful, since I can slow an enemy and then move away and make space for another unit to attack the slowed enemy. The pathfinder is greatly superior to the archer with the slowing ranged attack but the L 3 Marksman and outrider seem more evenly matched. Since I make dextrous scouts into archers,so my marksmen had 10-5 ranged attack which is a whooping amount of dmg for a scout line unit. I love this line. Superbly made.

Tauroch Rider line- Arguably the most useful unit line for the cmapign, these units are just bad ass. The stalwart can tank all day while the vanguard has leadership and is pretty tanky itself and it’s shock special is really useful. This line is perfect in my eyes.

Quenoth Youth Line – The advancement trees of Kaleh and Nym are great. I went for the hunter and leader upgrades first. I managed to max out Nym, but Kaleh faied to get the warrior special upgrade.
It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.
Playing Wesnoth since 2010, still there is so much left to play
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ghype
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Re: Under the Burning Suns, Quenoth Youth

Post by ghype »

EDIT: i deleted my comment since i realized it was better for: Mainline Campaign Sprites Animations Needed
mikeanthony
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Joined: July 31st, 2013, 8:48 pm

Re: Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

Post by mikeanthony »

Just re-played UtBS with the new units, for the first time in many years; still a great fun campaign.

Lots of feedback already on the units from others; overall, a definite improvement.

The changes to the graphics require some dialog changes;
- in the first level, the elves are talking about 'horses' - there are now no horses; a more generic term like 'steed' or 'mount' would be safer, in case of future changes. maybe even just 'animal'. this will apply to all translations.

- another post already mentioned, but in the mission where the elves first encounter the dwarf/troll skirmish ("A subterranean struggle"), they are described by the dwarves (Lvl 1 Dwarvish fighter called 'dwarf defender') with the phrase "Wait a minute... Blond hair, pointy ears - they must be elves" - almost none of the quenoth artwork now features blond hair, so that line needs changing (maybe 'long' hair, since I think that's true of most of the units? or just stick with the ears)

on the artwork, great overall, but the Tauroch units need a re-colouring; they look very "washed out" compared to the other quenoth units (stand a tauroch stalwart next to a sun singer and you'll see the stark difference) - the effect in play is you constantly do a double-take because you assume the unit is 'slowed' - redressing the colour palette presumably isn't too difficult

In terms of overall balance - I hardly ever used taurochs or fighters because they were agonisingly slow to move around in unfavourable terrain; so I just recruited half a dozen sun sylphs and shydes (with a few outriders for slowing) and utterly blitzed the campaign (most of them AMLU'd a few times). I don't think I lost a single unit. Which makes me feel that maybe the magic tree is a bit over-powered; you shouldn't really be able to win a campaign with just a magic blitz. Those sun singers in particular were unstoppable; they raced over the map with their flying ability, wiping out everything and leaving you with a massive early finish bonus... which meant you had enough gold to recall a whole squad of them again on the next map, rinse-and-repeat... even their melee attack does massive damage to undead opponents. And they are lawful so benefit from their own illuminate ability. In short, if you're offering units with those stats, yes, I'll recruit a whole army of them, and never even look at any of the other well-designed and lovingly animated units, because, heck, I've got an unstoppable magic uber-unit, thanks anyway.... seems a shame.

A massive improvement on the original desert elves, but definitely a bit of tweaking still needed to balance here, IMHO
Zrevnur
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Re: Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

Post by Zrevnur »

This is for 1.14.11 (hardest difficulty without reloading, dwarves as allies). Balance between unit types is very bad.
All can be seen here: Quenoth units

The Quenoth Fighter line is sort of useless. Warrior/Champion are (completely not just "sort of") useless after scenario 3. With "useless" I mean its always better to recruit/recall/level another type of unit. The Flanker/Ranger is slightly better but poison isnt very useful for human player vs AI and skirmisher is unnecessary vs AI. Skirmisher and poison also do not synergize - only reason I would consider getting one is to be able to kill a blocking enemy unit and poison doesnt help doing this in the same turn its applied.

The Quenoth Scout line is useful but weak. Removing it wouldnt make much of a difference in campaign difficulty with the possible exception of scenario 3. I also dont see any point in picking the Archer branch. The Pathfinder branch is simply better. (Scout line is probably more useful if not knowing the campaign yet.)

The Quenoth Mystic line is the most important due to healing/curing. For the Sun Singer side its IMO too easy to level up to Sun Sylphs.

For the Tauroch Rider line I would distinct between the two branches. The Stalwart branch is too strong and IMO needs to be nerfed - maybe defense or ranged attack. The Vanguard branch is significantly weaker. The 'leadership' is near useless and the 'shock' cannot compensate for the inferior tankability and damage output.
R831
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Joined: March 26th, 2020, 10:53 pm

Re: Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

Post by R831 »

About new "elves" desigh. Back to good old days, elves were elves, slightly changed because of living in desert. But now they are totally look like Kyrgyz people.
They were beautiful.
Now they are not.
And characters on map were designed just great. Now it was replaced by cheap design , where characters simply lost their individuality.

As a player, I don't get a point of replacing good design content with "dubious improvements", instead of placing it like a new content.
It's like replacing original game with a trash unprofessional addon.
Could you imagine any normal gamemaker, who release a good game in a world, and then, oddly, loved some crappy addon, so much, that now new version of distributed game was replaced with that addon?

I like new game mechanic, but redesign is really awful. Sorry.

P.S.: Ugliest elves design implementation i've ever seen in my life!
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ghype
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Re: Under the Burning Suns, new desert elves feedback thread

Post by ghype »

I think your comments are a bit too harsh. But it's just your opinion.
I do think many enjoy as they are and they do look like more as they suppose to look like.
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