GCI/Playtesting/Descent into Darkness/Difficult

Preamble

GCI 2010.

Fist of all, I'm gonna talk about what I tought about the campaign generally, then I'm gonna answer to the quizz :)

So overall, this was a very fun campaign, it's nice to play with UD instead of playing against them. The artwork were good and they wern't many glitches, so this is another very positive point. I think ti could still get better, but it's already very good, congratulations to the campaign maker.

Just so you know, after the last scenario, I checked my stats and saw that i were lucky overall. I don't know if this is due to the "hacks" in the Wml (Force cth), or just because I had good luck overall, but I didn't reloaded that much. (Maybe 1 time for each scenario.) So, if this isn't due to the "hacks", maybe you can increase the difficulty that I reported by 1 (But I also didn't tought that much for some scenarios, and I'm a mp player, so it should balance.).

I did this quite fast because I had already started wednesday and had some spare time.

Questions

(1) What difficulty levels and what 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?

(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?

Scenario 1: Saving Parthyn.

(2) 1-2 - I gone for an ennemy leader kill and the goal was just to hold for 15 turns, I finished it with a bit of luck (But no reload) at turn 8.

(3) Very clear.

(4) - Pretty clear, nice plot for the start. The dialog for this scenario itself also looked good, but maybe Drogan's dialog is not agressive enough when you first recruit a corpse. (Maybe adding the word heresy somewhere :P). And I loved the 24,20 signpost message: good one.)

(5) No major challenge, maybe giving the xp to loyals instead of corpses was a bit challenging, but as you can't recall them later on, it was quite useless.

(6) 5 (Normal objective, but corpses are always fun.). Maybe a bit more if you take the challenge of not recruit any corpse, and also more if you see the 24,20 signpost. (Both of which doesn't happen so often.)

(7) Give northeners more gold or make leader stronger/less agressive.

(8) Nope, didn't needed my leader and was easy.

(9) I never learned WMl (I code in other languages tough), but it looked very clear and nicely commented.

Scenario 2: Peacefull Valley.

(2) 5 - The wolves can hurt at night.

(3) Clear. Maybe one mistake due to my not so good english, but I remember the first time I played this, i tought I had to have a unit on each village, not only to capture them all.

(4) Interessting, too bad most players won't see 4,1 dialog :/ (I played this scenario many, many times and only found it because I read WML... Maybe make it 4,4 ?)

(5) Shielding Darken. Trying to feed xp to bats and ghouls.

(6) 6 - Quite good, kill the ennemy leader, but with some interessting things. (Ghouls, gobos going out from vills...)

(7) Change even for 4,1 to 4,4.

(8) Nope, but if I was a bit unlucky Draken would have probably died.

(9) Looked quite clear, only one thing I didn't understood, but it does work :D

Scenario 3: A Haunting in Winter

(2) 4-9 depends of when and where the ghost goes evil... (Wraith alone are a pain.) Killing the leaders is easy.

(3) Clear.

(4) Good.

(5) Not letting a ghost alone, because I didn't wanted to rename my first ghost to understand which was the one that would transform.

(6) 8 - Really like it.

(7) Maybe randomize ghost that will transform.

(8) Nope.

(9) Maybe it's me but it looks weird to regain control over a unit that just died, maybe those 3-4 lines could be removed.

Scenario 4: Beginning of a Revenge.

(2) 3-4 No real challenge.

(3) Clear enough.

(4) Good overall.

(5) No challenge for this one.

(6) 6-7 The ice thing is pretty nice.

(7) Give more gold to ennemy/make them recruit more archers.

(8) Nope.

(9) There's a commented message from Darken, maybe we can remove it if we don't need it.

Scenario 5: Orc War.

(2) 5 - A bit hard to not lose your experienced units, I had to reload once because I wanted to finish it too fast.

(3) Very clear.

(4) Average.

(5) Dividing your troops to optimize fighting, once you did that, it's just a normal fight.

(6) 7-8 Because it's the first big battle, and there's also some important macro.

(7) Make green be more active. Also they arn't that much items in this campaign, but it may be fun to put an item behind green, so one has to sneak up past ennemy line to take it. Item could be something like skirmisher.

(8) Yes, I played badly and didn't protected well my experienced units, so i had to reload once.

(9) There's a FIXME for the map. Also code for the signpost is repeted here, I don't know WML but don't we use macros for those cases ?

Scenario 6: Return to Parthyn.

(2) 7 - Less if you don't try to level your guys

(3) Very clear.

(4) Good one.

(5) Recruiting the good units, feeding xp to the right units, tryng to not lose too much lv2.

(6) 5 - Didn't really liked it, quite classical and it's just a leveling or running scenario.

(7) Make a giant serpent appear X). Seriously, I don't really know, maybe allow computer to recruit some horses too. (So we must do something else than ghosts, fighters and adepts...)

(8) Yes, I restarted 3 times, 2 from start of scenario, because I lost units badly. (9) Looked right.

Scenario 7: A Small Favor Part 1.

(2) 9-10 Hard, need to do the good recruits and play carefully, unless I missed an easy way to do it (Maybe not enough gold from previous scenario, but then the minimum gold amount for this scenario is very short.)...

(3) Very clear, but not all my units have nightstalk :P

(4) Good. I liked the title A Small Favor that spreads over 3 scenarios, quite ironic.

(5) Keeping my units alive, killing the silver mage without too much losses.

(6) 9 Even if it's very hard, it's quite fun to set traps, and to kill a giant army with only some guys

(7) Add ~20 gold more to the minimum starting amount, to make it a bit easier.

(8) Nope, but it was close.

(9) Only a quick glance, looked right.

Scenario 8: A Small Favor Part 2

(2) 9-10 Very hard because you have no healing.

(3) Very clear, maybe say something about how to open the doors ?

(4) Average.

(5) Keeping some units healthy. (Only because of luck.)

(6) 8 - Very fun, because you never know what you will fight.

(7) Maybe add some item that heals ?

(8) I had to reload 2-3 times because of lv3 mages.

(9) There's a TODO, but other than that it looks right.

Scenario 9: A Small Favor Part 3

(2) 2 - Very easy after the previous one, it's basically the same things with less units...

(3) Very clear.

(4) Average.

(5) Not at all.

(6) 2, not fun, looks exactly like the previous scenario, only new thing is that you actually get the book...

(7) I don't know, but I don't really feel the need for this scenario, it could be merged to the previous one.

(8) Nope.

(9) Looks good.

Scenario 10: Alone at last.

(2) 7-8 Quite hard but if you don't mind recalling your lv3 and having huge negative gold at the end, it's not impossible.

(3) Very clear.

(4) Good, I really liked the spectre dialogs.

(5) Know when to retreat, manage ZoC for paladins and mages.

(6) 9 - Very fun with many changes in tactics.

(7) It's already good enough :)

(8) I had to restart because I hadn't recruited units powerfull enough.

(9) There's a TODO about a message explaining defeat, should be fixed I think.

Scenario 11: Eponym (Descent Into Darkness)

(2) 7-8 Quite hard and you have to know how to live with losses.

(3) Very clear, drain hp from lv0 little rats and then kill a l3 troll.

(4) Good, I liked the transformation and the spectre speech. I also like the fact that with the book and the transformation, you can now level to Liches.

(5) Don't loose too much units. I was very lucky and didn't lost a l2 adept but then I was unlucky and lost a nearly levelled lv1 :)

(6) 8-9 Like the regeneration by killing little rats and also like the wose :)

(7) Very good already. I don't think it needs to get harder: The troll shamans are already very annoying.

(8) No, but I nearly lost an important unit.

(9) The disallow/allow recruit part could maybe handled at start on recruitable units ? The cth too ensure that you don't lose because you're unlucky looks too high for me, some people might think the lich attack is magical (I'm an experienced player and I tought those were special Liches.), maybe you could just give +5 hp to the lich ?

Scenario 12: Endless Night.

I played this scenario in two ways, the classical way, with a classical recruit and reached hero 6 (That was in 1.8, just say if you want me to test it again on this version), and with assasinate recruit where I could resist forever (1.9). The second scenario is bad, because it means that if you do a "hackish" recruit and just go for assasinate, you may never win.

(2) 3 - You have to lose to win, so it's easy (But you have to win the first time, so it's not 1)... If you want to kill some foolish heroes with conventional recruit I would say it's 3 for first hero and then it increases by one for each hero.

(3) Not clear, but making it clear would remove the fun.

(4) Good, but could be better, maybe there should be some text for the different factions and heroes that would be said randomly...

(5) None in assasination - Keeping enough healthy units in normal recruit.

(6) 8 Quite fun, but may be very annoyng for other players (Maybe one would think there's an infinite loop...)

(7) 7 Do something with the west part of the map, maybe a special monsters commando (That would make assasination a bit harder and use all the map.), add some text for the foolish heroes or some "heroic units" (Like a lv 4 mage for loy, a runesmith for dwarves...). As said in the forums, a counter may also help to keep the fun for guys that want to go as far as possible. Finally, to remove a so easy assasination trick, you could remove the only one hex to attack places so lich cannot hide so easily.

(8) Nope, because you win when you lose...

(9) Looked very long but I guess that all the hero specifics couldn't be much shorter.