Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

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egallager
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Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by egallager »

Someone posted this in the Japanese channel of the Discord server:
https://pc.watch.impress.co.jp/docs/column/easygame/1327997.html
I don't actually speak Japanese, but the page comes with a built-in Google Translate button, and the translation comes across as relatively legible for a machine translation, so it's worth reading even if you don't speak Japanese. Some points of note:
  • Li'sar's portrait comes across as "rugged" apparently
  • They note a disconnect between some of the messages and portraits... I wonder if, instead of having artists do entirely new sets of mood portraits for all the units that don't currently have them yet, if it'd be possible to do something simpler like just having eyebrows or blush marks or cross-popping veins or sweat marks that can be overlaid on existing portraits with WML? That could solve the problem of portrait-emotion mismatches without taxing our artists as much as asking them to draw additional mood portraits for everyone would.
  • Baran apparently feels too old to be Arvith's younger brother in AToTB
  • Player was caught off-guard by poison in the first scenario of AToTB. Would it be possible to have poison introduced in the tutorial at all? They also didn't seem to realize that villages would cure poison, besides just healing units and giving income.
  • They seemed disappointed there were no magic-using units available in AToTB S1; although I think I kinda get why that decision was made in the first place; if the player could recruit mages, it'd make Baran less special. It's probably ok to leave Baran as the only player-controlled mage in the campaign (unless mainline wants to do like my add-on version of the campaign does, and complete the "make Muff Toras able to join you" code hinted at in the comments of S3)
  • Player seemed confused that both encampments and castles have the same functionality when it comes to allowing both recruiting and recalling. Thus, they were confused by where all their units went in S2 of AToTB, didn't realize they could recall them, and thus tried completing that entire scenario with just the 2 main units the scenario gives them for free, with keeping them alive by saveloading
  • Same thing with S4 of AToTB, although they eventually figured out that encampments could be used for recalling units, too (besides just castles), about part-way through this scenario
  • Basically there were a number of elements to the gameplay that they were surprised weren't covered by the tutorial. This is something I've noticed as well; I've also thought the game could do a better job of continuing to be tutorial-ish throughout the first few easier campaigns, which is why I added all the extra dialogue in my add-on version of AToTB.
Anyway, give the article a look if you're able!
Last edited by egallager on June 19th, 2022, 2:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by Iris »

egallager wrote: May 30th, 2021, 3:40 amI wonder if, instead of having artists do entirely new sets of mood portraits for all the units that don't currently have them yet, if it'd be possible to do something simpler like just having eyebrows or blush marks or cross-popping veins or sweat marks that can be overlaid on existing portraits with WML?
We invested energy and actual money into moving away from the cartoon style in portraits. Applying cartoon elements to photo-realistic illustrations... the result would look grossly out of place.
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Re: Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by otzenpunk »

egallager wrote: May 30th, 2021, 3:40 am
  • Player was caught off-guard by poison in the first scenario of AToTB. Would it be possible to have poison introduced in the tutorial at all? They also didn't seem to realize that villages would cure poison, besides just healing units and giving income.
  • Player seemed confused that both encampments and castles have the same functionality when it comes to allowing both recruiting and recalling. Thus, they were confused by where all their units went in S2 of AToTB, didn't realize they could recall them, and thus tried completing that entire scenario with just the 2 main units the scenario gives them for free, with keeping them alive by saveloading
  • Same thing with S4 of AToTB, although they eventually figured out that encampments could be used for recalling units, too (besides just castles), about part-way through this scenario
  • Basically there were a number of elements to the gameplay that they were surprised weren't covered by the tutorial. This is something I've noticed as well; I've also thought the game could do a better job of continuing to be tutorial-ish throughout the first few easier campaigns,
Hm, I don't see the necessity here. The Tutorial is just there to provide the basics, so that you're able to start right into the game. There are lots of game mechanics, which are not explained there, and which you either have to find out by playing, or by reading the manual pages in the Help window. Many of them don't even come into play in AToTB, e.g. skirmish, leadership, etc.

Regarding poison, though, I see that it's a little bit difficult, because at least the English help text to poison doesn't mention villages. The German translation actually does, by the way. That would be the place, imho, where this problem could be addressed.

And regarding "encampments", actually in the Tutorial, Part II, the enemy uses an encampment instead of a "proper castle" to recruit, so if they'd paid attention, they could've known.^^
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Re: Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by Lord-Knightmare »

Player was caught off-guard by poison in the first scenario of AToTB. Would it be possible to have poison introduced in the tutorial at all? They also didn't seem to realize that villages would cure poison, besides just healing units and giving income.
Player seemed confused that both encampments and castles have the same functionality when it comes to allowing both recruiting and recalling. Thus, they were confused by where all their units went in S2 of AToTB, didn't realize they could recall them, and thus tried completing that entire scenario with just the 2 main units the scenario gives them for free, with keeping them alive by saveloading
Same thing with S4 of AToTB, although they eventually figured out that encampments could be used for recalling units, too (besides just castles), about part-way through this scenario
Basically there were a number of elements to the gameplay that they were surprised weren't covered by the tutorial. This is something I've noticed as well; I've also thought the game could do a better job of continuing to be tutorial-ish throughout the first few easier campaigns,
Well, there was a campaign that did teach these things. However, it was demainlined. Ironic.
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egallager
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Re: Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by egallager »

Lord-Knightmare wrote: June 5th, 2021, 11:13 am
Player was caught off-guard by poison in the first scenario of AToTB. Would it be possible to have poison introduced in the tutorial at all? They also didn't seem to realize that villages would cure poison, besides just healing units and giving income.
Player seemed confused that both encampments and castles have the same functionality when it comes to allowing both recruiting and recalling. Thus, they were confused by where all their units went in S2 of AToTB, didn't realize they could recall them, and thus tried completing that entire scenario with just the 2 main units the scenario gives them for free, with keeping them alive by saveloading
Same thing with S4 of AToTB, although they eventually figured out that encampments could be used for recalling units, too (besides just castles), about part-way through this scenario
Basically there were a number of elements to the gameplay that they were surprised weren't covered by the tutorial. This is something I've noticed as well; I've also thought the game could do a better job of continuing to be tutorial-ish throughout the first few easier campaigns,
Well, there was a campaign that did teach these things. However, it was demainlined. Ironic.
Heh, yeah, I was thinking of AOI, too...
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Re: Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by shevegen »

Perhaps japanese like cartoonesque. All the anime is very stylized cartoonesque IMO.

By the way weren't there at the least two japanese campaign authors? So perhaps they understand the article 1:1.

Ever since I used babelfish years ago I am very skeptical of auto-translations. :P

Village healing units - perhaps there could be some visual cue for new players. Like if you
are injured, with poison. and have this unit active, to indicate all villages in a slight,
non-annoying glow or something like that. (I am just thinking of something that could
be applied to both newbies and oldbies, because otherwise you end up with having to
maintain complexity which is not good either. Evidently newcomers are important
because without newcomers a project will struggle.)

By the way, about tutorials: I don't deny that they can be super-helpful, but I think I just
kept on trying things without a tutorial and learned that way. I tend to not like tutorials
and just "dive in" in general. But it is hard to remember since it's been so many years ...
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Re: Japanese article describing a first-time player's experience with Wesnoth

Post by egallager »

shevegen wrote: June 6th, 2021, 10:09 am By the way weren't there at the least two japanese campaign authors? So perhaps they understand the article 1:1.
I can think of 3: tamanegi, RatArmy, and IIIO_Metal; RatArmy was the one who posted it in the Japanese channel on Discord in the first place...
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