Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Arcane Critique
> > What I think is broken in the current setup is: > - Ghosts, especially the high levels, are too powerful against undead > and drakes. Wraiths are unstoppable, especially because they regain > sizable amounts of health when their damage is boosted, because > they're quite mobile and hard to hit, and because they even have a > ranged attack that the drakes are quite weak to, which makes it > difficult to use the only weapon the drakes have against them, fire, > to significant effect. They also have the opposite alignment of > drakes, are mobile enough to make it matter, and also are very > resistant to all saurians' attacks. This is not as severe problem as it seems. First off, Ghosts do not get drain against the undead. This is a critical deficiency as taking retaliation damage does not get replaced by the increase power of the arcane attack. Moreover skeleton archers who are highly resistant to cold do very good damage against them, with little retaliation. Ghost on Ghost is very similar in outcome to the Horseman on Horseman. Actually if anything, horseman on horseman at day and dusk is far more volatile than Ghost on ghost at night, as they can kill each other with 2-2 at 40% defence, with greater mobility than a ghost. We might move to make it so that 3-3 does not mean a instant kill, but there is an obvious precedent for this. > - White Mages are playably balanced, but are too fragile; this is a > holdover from the days when they needed to be unusually fragile so > that the undead had any hope of stopping them. I suggest a sizable > increase in HP, with other nerfs (probably to damage) to keep things > even. Hasn't changed in years and a solid second line unit. Given its abilities to heal and its strong attack we think its weakness is warranted. Its not supposed to see front line combat, except maybe as a last resort. Also I always intended for the word Holy to remain in the attack of the white mage line instead of light beam. Since the path of piety allowed Clerics to tap into the arcane power, they would likely conceive of it as being a holy attack, so "holy beam" would make far more sense than "lightbeam." > - Dark Adepts, and even liches, are still largely powerless against > undead - this has never made sense, because they're supposed to be > the masters of them. You'd think someone with an intimate knowledge > of how to create said unlife would be equally apt at turning or > destroying it. (on that note - a "turn" ability for undead magi to > seize control of opponent's undead units would be very interesting). We've come up with an alternate scheme that will accommodate your concerns, as well as what we think to be a better balance than one we have now. We'll need to work on it, but essentially we're looking into creating a balance around the DA with an arcane and a cold attack. We do not want to change cold since it would seriously affect the balance vis-a-vis other factions, particularly the drakes. This would be akin to Dwarves having axes and hammers, with the latter only used against units weak against crush. > - The "drakes vs. undead" vulnerability circle is still there, and > this hinges largely on the presence of cold as the dark adept's > attack. Combat between these two is still too volatile, mostly from > the undead side. > This hasn't been a problem for the two years we've been balancing units. Its one of the most difficult match-ups in wesnoth, for sure, hinging critically on the day/night balance. Yes big damage swings do happen, but they are manageable and occur for both sides. Taking lots of damage is a necessary problem for a drake player: DAs at night are no more powerful than Spearman at day. Drake Fighters at day are excellent DA killers, with one almost killing a DA if need be, and having far greater mobility. But this has not been seen to be too volatile, and we do not see the need to change it now. ___ Wesnoth-dev mailing list Wesnoth-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Arcane Critique
Richard Kettering <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > What I think is broken in the current setup is: > - Ghosts, especially the high levels, are too powerful against undead > and drakes. Wraiths are unstoppable, especially because they regain > sizable amounts of health when their damage is boosted, because > they're quite mobile and hard to hit, and because they even have a > ranged attack that the drakes are quite weak to, which makes it > difficult to use the only weapon the drakes have against them, fire, > to significant effect. They also have the opposite alignment of > drakes, are mobile enough to make it matter, and also are very > resistant to all saurians' attacks. Agreed. Ghosts should not have arcane. > - White Mages are playably balanced, but are too fragile; this is a > holdover from the days when they needed to be unusually fragile so > that the undead had any hope of stopping them. I suggest a sizable > increase in HP, with other nerfs (probably to damage) to keep things > even. Neutral on this one. > - Dark Adepts, and even liches, are still largely powerless against > undead - this has never made sense, because they're supposed to be > the masters of them. You'd think someone with an intimate knowledge > of how to create said unlife would be equally apt at turning or > destroying it. (on that note - a "turn" ability for undead magi to > seize control of opponent's undead units would be very interesting). Strongly agreed. It's just silly that the Dark Sorcerer line doesn't have Arcane; it should. > - The "drakes vs. undead" vulnerability circle is still there, and > this hinges largely on the presence of cold as the dark adept's > attack. Combat between these two is still too volatile, mostly from > the undead side. Neutral on this one. -- http://www.catb.org/~esr/";>Eric S. Raymond ___ Wesnoth-dev mailing list Wesnoth-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Arcane Critique
There are a number of things I like about the change to "Arcane", and few things I don't like. I do miss having a damage type named holy, but by and large I think we've otherwise had huge improvements through the new setup. I thought it was a great benefit to finally get a "generic magic" attack, because in many instances, elemental connotations being slapped onto different types of magic were unfounded. The biggest problem was an association of "cold" with "evil magic" in the game; cold might seem like the temperature of death to those from european backgrounds, but to someone from an equatorial background; to a man from the desert, I could easily see the parching, desiccating heat as the most prominent symbol of death. What we needed was something to represent "magic meant to hurt" in its pure form; like the "Evil Eye", it is something which has no physical corollary - that's what makes it "magic". It's not something dying from burns, or from frostbite - it's something dying from a curse _alone_. That's what makes it magic, and not a cheap substitute for technology - IMHO, the most truly "magical" fantasy works are those which do what could never (by our current conjecture) be possible for technology. To use LotR as an example; the one ring had one cheap property, invisibility, which we'll eventually be able to mimic. But its other, and much more subtle properties - the great command it could forcibly exact over fate itself, the real reason it was called the ring of Power, are what made the story so profound, what made it into something other than an odd form of gadget porn. I thought it was good to finally get a "pure magic" attack type of some kind. There were a lot of ways this could have fallen out - in one, it could have been a faerie-like magic that the more magical units (elves, drakes, trolls) were more resistant to, and the more mundane units (humans, etc) were weak to. There were others, but frankly, I was pretty happy to have seen any change, because the old balance was quite broken, quite volatile, and also quite boring. I do think the same attack damage being used for holy attacks works well to dispel magical things - as boucman pointed out, religion, in medieval times, was practically the only defense people thought they had against a demon-haunted world. I think there's a downside, in that any discerning heavenly force wouldn't be willing to smite good things at all, but we've always had that problem. What I think is broken in the current setup is: - Ghosts, especially the high levels, are too powerful against undead and drakes. Wraiths are unstoppable, especially because they regain sizable amounts of health when their damage is boosted, because they're quite mobile and hard to hit, and because they even have a ranged attack that the drakes are quite weak to, which makes it difficult to use the only weapon the drakes have against them, fire, to significant effect. They also have the opposite alignment of drakes, are mobile enough to make it matter, and also are very resistant to all saurians' attacks. - White Mages are playably balanced, but are too fragile; this is a holdover from the days when they needed to be unusually fragile so that the undead had any hope of stopping them. I suggest a sizable increase in HP, with other nerfs (probably to damage) to keep things even. - Dark Adepts, and even liches, are still largely powerless against undead - this has never made sense, because they're supposed to be the masters of them. You'd think someone with an intimate knowledge of how to create said unlife would be equally apt at turning or destroying it. (on that note - a "turn" ability for undead magi to seize control of opponent's undead units would be very interesting). - The "drakes vs. undead" vulnerability circle is still there, and this hinges largely on the presence of cold as the dark adept's attack. Combat between these two is still too volatile, mostly from the undead side. Volatile = high damage and/or fragile units, higher-than-normal importance of luck. Frustration, lack of fun, lower importance of skill due to a lower ratio of player-input versus game events. Volatility is bad, which is of course why we made the holy -> arcane switch in the first place, because the holy vs. undead matchup was so unpleasantly volatile. On Aug 24, 2007, at 12:59 AM, Hogne Håskjold wrote: > Soliton wrote: >> >> Arcane is confusing, full of contradictions, and unnecessary. Roll >> it back. >> > > I agree, this was a bad move. I looked back at the Holy damage > proposal > mails and I see that the justification for this change was to improve > coherence and needed for balance. I don't buy that. Wesnoth is > based on > a "traditional European fantasy" setting where /Holy/unholy and > undeads > are well known concepts. "Disenchanting type attack",
Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Arcane Critique
Soliton wrote: > > Arcane is confusing, full of contradictions, and unnecessary. Roll it back. > I agree, this was a bad move. I looked back at the Holy damage proposal mails and I see that the justification for this change was to improve coherence and needed for balance. I don't buy that. Wesnoth is based on a "traditional European fantasy" setting where /Holy/unholy and undeads are well known concepts. "Disenchanting type attack", what the heck is that? it is in no way firmly rooted in our chosen setting at all. -- mvh (o_ Hogne Håskjold //\ V_/_ ___ Wesnoth-dev mailing list Wesnoth-dev@gna.org https://mail.gna.org/listinfo/wesnoth-dev
[Wesnoth-dev] Arcane Critique
Hello! Since Truper has problems posting to the mailing list because of the spam filter I'm relaying this message for him: I have been having a lot of trouble recently with the whole concept of Arcane damage as it has been implemented in 1.3. Both the rationale for the damage type and its effects on gameplay seem questionable. As I understand the matter, the primary reason for the change was that Holy as a damge type was entirely directed against the Undead. I believe that it was felt that this was flawed from a design perspective, as it did not give the damage type sufficent reason to exist, and also from a multiplayer balance standpoint, as Holy attacks inflicted so much damage upon the Undead as to be unfair. A secondary reason appears to have been that there was objection to the word Holy itself, as bringing religion into Wesnoth. What may have been a tertiary reason for the change was the nature of Undead vs. Undead combat. I'm not sure this last was part of the justification for the move to Arcane, but since it was being actively discussed at the same time as Holy vs. Arcane, and the most obvious change in gameplay is that the Ghost's melee attack now does Arcane damage, I am going to treat it as a factor in the rationale. If it was felt that a damage type directed solely against one faction had insufficient reason to exist, I have to say that this seems to ignore the unique nature of Undead. The Undead are, well, dead, but yet somehow also animate, and malevolent. Their natures cannot be compared to those of other creatures. That which is especially effective against them should not be expected to be especially effective against anyone else. In gameplay terms, Undead have loads of resistances, and a unique immunity, the immunity to poison, so the fact that they had a unique vulnerability troubled me not at all. It must also be remembered that only 3 units in the game did Holy damage, and of these, one was level two, and the others were level three. Obviously the level threes were almost never seen in multiplayer, and the level two only rarely. This level two unit, the White Mage, is a level-up from the Mage, and there is also an alternative level-up, the Red Mage. For myself, I always found the choice between these to be interesting, even when fighting Undead, as the Red Mage is so much more robust than the White, and while not capable of inflicting the damage that a Holy White Mage did, was nonetheless an anti-Undead powerhouse. As far as mutiplayer balance went, I see no issue that could not have been dealt with more simply and cleanly by reducing most Undead's vulnerability to Holy from 100% to a more reasonable 50 or 60%. It seems to me obvious that Wesnoth is loosely based on medieval European society (among other things). Who can deny that religion, specifically Christianity, played an ovewhelmingly important role in the world of kings, castles, and knights? How then is it possible to object to the mere presense of the word holy? Whatever one's own stance on the place of God or religion in the modern world, the fact is that religion inseperable from the culture in which Wesnoth has its roots. To take this a bit further, it is also undeniable that in mythologies involving the undead, they are considered unholy abominations, from which religion can offer some defence. When the vampires come calling, the peasants run to the parish priest for protection. Vampires shy away from a cross. Undead can be dissolved by Holy Water. They cannot come onto consecrated ground. To deny that religion has been mythologically regarded as an antidote to the undead is a bit like denying dragons breathe fire, sleep on hoards of treasure, or eat maidens. Undead vs.Undead combat in Wesnoth has always been rather odd, since Undead are resistant to their own weapons. Typically in 1.2, such a matchup involves Skeletons, Skeleton Archers, and Walking Corpses attacking each other fairly ineffectually until someone gets lucky, or the players give up in frustration. Dark Adepts, Ghouls, Ghosts and Vampire Bats are generally not recruited at all. It seems to me that the situaion in 1.3 is actually worse, since there is very little incentive to use anything but Ghosts. Ghosts now do more damage to other Undead than any of their other units, while retaining their mobility advantage and their ability to heal realtively faster than anything else. Ghosts are also now among the very rare units in the game able to kill another of their own kind in a single combat. I find this odd, even bizarre. The only other (level one) units that can do this are the Horseman, the Ulfzerker, the Mage, and the Augur. The Horseman and Ulf are obviously exceptional due to the Charge and Berserk abilities, but I have a hard time understanding why Augurs and Mages can. An Augur at night can kill another Augur, but only because of the cold vulnerability. Why should a creature tha
