GCI/Playtesting/An Orcish Incursion/Normal

Preamble

Google Code-In 2010. This page shows the results of testing The Battle for Wesnoth 1.9.2 - campaign "An Orcish Incursion" on Normal (Medium) difficulty. I followed the guidelines on this page for the analysis.

The following has been quoted from the page for reference purposes:

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: Defend the Forest

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 2. Normal for first scenario in the campaign.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. The dialog makes very good introduction to the rising battle between orcs and elves.
5. No challenges to meeting objectives.
6. Fun: 4. It wasn’t so interesting, but for first scenario it’s expected.
7. Nothing to change. The first scenario is good to begin slow and easy. No needed using special abilities and tactics, just introduction to the campaign.
8. No events caused me to lose the game or reload the scenario.
9. I don’t know nothing about WML so I can’t give a comment. In the scenarios below I will miss this point.

Scenario 2: Assassins

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 5.
3. Very clear scenario objectives.
4. Clear and good dialog.
5. The assassins caused me bad headache until I find the way to beat them. But the rest was easy.
6. Fun: 6. The enemy forces have quite different abilities, and it’s very fun until you find the correct strategy to fight them.
7. No changes needed.
8. I restarted the scenario 2-3 times until I find the right strategy for these nasty assassins.

Scenario 3: Wasteland

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 4.
3. Clear objectives.
4. The dialog is good. The description of the landscape is very impressive.
5. The major challenges in meeting the objectives of this scenario were high level enemy units, but with good strategy it’s easy to defeat them.
6. Fun: 5.
7. The terrain is very monotonous, but may be this is the purpose of the scenario. I would change it adding more colours and 1-2 mountains.
8. No events caused me to lose the game or restart the scenario.

Scenario 4: Valley of Trolls

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 7. The hardest scenario in the campaign.
3. Clear scenario objectives.
4. Not so good dialog. It could be more interesting.
5. My major problem was the attacks from two sides and the power of enemy units (especially at night).
6. Fun: 6.
7. The scenario is quite hard. Two bosses recruit lots of units which are attacking all the time and I can’t deal with them. To be more fun the difficulty of the scenario may be lowered by more starting gold or decreasing the number of recruiting enemy units.
8. I restarted the scenario several times because of dying the hero. It’s very hard to hold the inpouring enemies from two sides.

Scenario 5: Linaera the Quick

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 6.
3. Very clear scenario objectives.
4. Good dialog, the longest in the campaign.
5. First time when I played the scenario was very hard to eliminate enemies, but when I learned how to use mages properly it wasn’t so difficult.
6. Fun: 7.
7. No changes. The scenario is very good.
8. I restarted the scenario once because Linaera died (I forgot to keep her alive) but there were no other problems with the implementation of the objectives.

Scenario 6: A Detour through the Swamp

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 5.
3. Clear. The hint was very useful
4. Short, but well-written.
5. Easy scenario. I had 3 level 3s and it wasn’t difficult to defend all lower level units . I had 3 mages from the previous level and they were very helpful against the undeads.
6. Fun: 7. Very enjoyable.
7. No changes. Again good scenario.
8. There were no problems with completing the objectives.

Scenario 7: Showdown

1. Campaign difficulty: Medium. Version: 1.9.2.
2. Scenario difficulty: 3. For last scenario in the campaign it’s very easy. For increasing the scenario difficulty I think it would be good to begin only with 2 additional Rangers instead of 4.
3. The objectives were clear, and the hint was very helpful.
4. Compared with the previous scenarios the dialog at the beginning was very short. It would be good to insert additional dialog.
5. There were no challenges. With the reinforcements it was very easy to complete the objectives.
6. Fun: 9. The funniest scenario in the campaign.
7. This scenario was too easy. Increasing the difficultly by giving the enemy stronger units (some level 3s), and decreasing the Rangers in the beginning will make the scenario more fun (10). The dialogs and the cutscenes need to be extended.
8. No problems.

Bugs

In this campaign there were no bugs at all but I found several small mistakes.

1. When I played the game for first time the default language was Bulgarian. The title bar of the window was “???????????” but when I changed the language at English everything went right – “The Battle for Wesnoth - 1.9.2”.
2. Before scenarios 6 and 7 when the map appeared there was no text or description on what’s happening next. May be this isn’t bug but I was confused because previous scenarios had text below the map.
3. I had Elvish Marshall in one of the scenarios. When I right-clicked on it and then “Unit Description” Strikes were: sword(10-4) and bow(8-3). Meanwhile in the right menu characteristics were sword(8-4) and bow(6-3). After 2-3 turns everything was fine.
4. When cutscene appears I can’t click on Menu.
5. In fullscreen mode the graphic was a little bit blurry in my resolution(1280x1024)

Summary

“An Orcish Incursion” is one very good campaign. I had a lot of fun when I played it. It’s well made, has good storyline(some dialogs are short but that could be fixed) and has no major bugs or glitches(only small problems mentioned above). The campaign is helpful for novice players and it makes great introduction in “The Battle for Wesnoth”.