Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

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Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

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(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
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Maiklas3000
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by Maiklas3000 »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Difficult (nightmare); 1.9.0

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
9

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Pretty clear. Not clear whether the Mage will be in some random village or in a noticable location, until you see the noticable location.

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Getting pinned in by Blood Bats at night, unable to shift my troops, was a major problem. But by far the biggest problem was getting to the Mage in time (without Keshan.)

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
8. Those Bats flying back to the cave at daylight are so cool. That's how all Bats in Wesnoth should be.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Add at least one more turn. It's no fun to lose due to time, especially when you went about as fast as possible.

Reduce the number of Bats. It's no fun to get surrounded by Bats, unable to move even one of your units

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Yes, lost due to time, so restarted from turn 1.

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
Well commented.

"generate_descripiton=yes" appears several times in the code. What's a descripiton?

* * *

The following replay comes up as corrupt due to a bad movement, but if you then select "ignore all", you can continue the replay to the end.
Attachments
DW-The_Mage_replay.gz
(31.71 KiB) Downloaded 910 times
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beetlenaut
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by beetlenaut »

Maiklas3000 wrote:"generate_descripiton=yes" appears several times in the code. What's a descripiton?
The outdated version of generate_name. I removed it because it doesn't work on monsters anyway.
Maiklas3000 wrote:Add at least one more turn. It's no fun to lose due to time, especially when you went about as fast as possible.
I hate losing on time. I added one turn per difficulty level, so nightmare went from 15 to 19. I didn't change the number of bats, but it should still be easier now.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
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alda
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by alda »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
difficult, 1.9.0

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
8
(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
average

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
It's the kind of scenario you have to try first to know what's going on. After a few tries, seeing that my army couldn't really advance between the bats and the scorpions, I understood I had to send one unit to go fetch the mage and stay with the rest of my army to defend, and, as suggested in the scenario file, Keshar was the best unit for the job. So once you know what's going on, its not a very difficult scenario.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Actually, I find it a bit strange that all the units in the map advance toward you as if there was no fog. I know that the AI doesn't really recognizes fog, it's just that it's not really what I expected in this kind of scenario. I expected something like actually moving your army to go fetch the mage while killing some units rather than just sitting near your castle and winning the scenario when some unit of yours just found the mage, even if the rest of your army is still surrounded.
But of course, changing this would make this scenario very different.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
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Pewskeepski
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by Pewskeepski »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Normal 1.9.3 (186 gold)

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7, But only because of the reason stated in #5 and #7

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
When the bats would come out I would have a rough time keeping injured units alive

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
I think bats spawning and moving on the same turn is a bad idea, I moved a unit next to the hole thinking he would be safe, But the bats came out and killed him

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
Lost Cylanna and restarted

(9) If you know a bit of the Wesnoth Markup Language - do you think that the WML of this scenario is clear and well commented? If not which part would you like to be documented better?
Comments are good
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dsa
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by dsa »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Difficult, 1.9.3

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6, a restart is almost compulsory to find out, what awaits you. After the restart it isn't very hard.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Good

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Shroud

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
6, I don't like scenarios with shroud.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Less scorpions and more spiders or another type of monster.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
I restarted, although I finished, because I lost the loyal Brawler during my first try.
podbelski
Posts: 151
Joined: June 7th, 2011, 8:35 pm

Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by podbelski »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
1.9.8, top difficulty, reloaded a couple of times

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
7. I had a bunch of pierce/fire/arcane damage dealers so everything went quite smoothly. The bats made some spots ugly though. Finished about 4 turns before time limit, I like it.

No replay - it's corrupted again...

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
good

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
bats coming out at night to pick off my injured units.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
agreed those bats are cool, and I like the scenario overall.

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
don't know... usually I hate ending in negative gold, this makes me feel like I need to replay it b/c of problems in the next map.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
didn't want to lose crippled Keshan to bats, and there was another spot I could not exactly remember... so reloaded twice
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taptap
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by taptap »

Triton (Difficult), 1.9.13. Another tough and fun scenario. Very small, but between poisoning and slowing Giant Spiders, tons of scorpions and high movement annoying bats (very cool effect with them sleeping during the day) it can be surprisingly hard to shield wounded and crucial units.
I am a Saurian Skirmisher: I'm a real pest, especially at night.
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Wesbane
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by Wesbane »

  • 1) Level, Version? Normal (178/110 gold pieces); 1.9.7
    2) Difficulty? 6. Drops greatly if you have bat and know map. Personally I avoid solutions that employ player knowledge.
    3) Scenario Objectives? Clear.
    4) Dialogue and story? Nicely done.
    5) Challenges? Exploration.
    6) Is it fun? 8. Its really nice adventure scenario and ending conversation is really rewarding.
    7) Make it more fun? It would be good to change randomly position of a mage to one of a predefined locations. Still this place might be different from others. This solve problem of player memories.
    Pewskeepski wrote:I think bats spawning and moving on the same turn is a bad idea, I moved a unit next to the hole thinking he would be safe, But the bats came out and killed him
    Although scenario was shifted accordingly to this request I disagree with this statement. Whenever player receive a unit by event its immediately his to command that he could take advantage of this. So, if someone decide to apply the same rules for ai everything is fine as long as there is given direct warning about what is going on or units are spawned at beginning of a turn. Optionally at least during player turn.
    8) Reload or restart? Several restart, bad initial tactic.
    9) WML? Well commented.
    Bugs:
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Ninjuri
Posts: 167
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by Ninjuri »

Normal 1.10.2
Difficulty: 6
Objectives 100% clear
Storyline/Dialogue: Good
Challenges: Getting bogged down and sandwitched between the spiders and bats. Almost all of my units were heros so i couldn't let them die. This meant my tactics revolved around whoever is the lowest hitpoints sitting on the village while the other surround them, and then switching it up. I managed to spearhead a hole through the spiders and sent keshan through it since his flying would give him decent movment across the forests, the rest of my part just stayed back and rotated on the village, staying alive.
Fun: 7
Changes: I would maybe make a trail of villages leading up to the mages house so your party could move steadily there.
Reloads/Restarts: none
Fate is against me.
hrushi
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Joined: August 18th, 2012, 4:23 am

Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by hrushi »

1.Nightmare difficulty
2.5
3.clear enough.i played similar scenarios in other campaigns
4.Bats going back to the cave is nice.
5.Not much of challenge. I have 2 vampire bats which made life easier.i made sure that my cuttlefish advances to kraken
6. no fun. Even in nightmare difficulty i felt i am too much overpowered. i have 9 loyal units(1 inferno drake,1 mermaid diviner,1 mermaid entangler,2 vampire bats,1 soulless bat,1 merman brawler,cuttle fish, krellis having storm trident) and all of them are at maximum level.
7.Limit on number of loyal units following you.
8.No
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beetlenaut
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by beetlenaut »

Well, I didn't want it to be a really hard scenario. The reason that there are only two castle hexes is that you should have quite a few loyal units with you. Also, I didn't expect anyone to kill all the enemies on the second scenario, so you have more that I thought you would. Something seems wrong though: Where did you get the loyal mermaid entangler?
Campaigns: Dead Water,
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hrushi
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by hrushi »

Sorry it is merman entangler. Gwabbo who will be with you from first scenario onwards. Also is there any plan to develop mainline campaigns with different units/races. I thoroughly enjoyed Son of the Black Eye,Descent into Darkness partly because of story, partly because you get different units. It would be nice to have different mainline campaigns with Drakes, Goblins,Trolls,Saurians,Woses,Nagas etc as heroes.
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beetlenaut
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by beetlenaut »

Oh. That should have been obvious, but somehow I made "entangler" into "enchanter" in my mind.

Anyway, there are plans to add a Drake campaign to mainline, but not any of the others as far as I know. There are add-on campaigns available using most of them.
Campaigns: Dead Water,
The Founding of Borstep,
Secrets of the Ancients,
and WML Guide
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D-Wade
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Re: Scenario Review: DW 9 - The Mage

Post by D-Wade »

(1) What difficulty level and version of Wesnoth have you played the scenario on?
Normal, 1.10.5

(2) How difficult did you find the scenario? (1-10)
6, You had to watch out for the spiders. Scorpions and bats weren't a real challenge.

(3) How clear did you find the scenario objectives?
Clear

(4) How clear and interesting did you find the dialog and storyline of the scenario?
Okay.

(5) What were your major challenges in meeting the objectives of the scenario?
Getting my loyal dragon to the temple without getting him killed.

(6) How fun do you think the scenario is? (1-10)
7, the bats hiding and coming back were a great idea

(7) What, if any, are changes you would have made to the scenario to make it more fun?
Nothing.

(8) Was there any event that caused you to lose the game and forced you to reload or restart the scenario?
My loyal dragon once died, an event that would have resulted in me not managing to get to the mages house in time.
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