How to save Wesnoth

[name]

I see, thank you!

[taptap]

I feel tempted to try such a thing; specifically the rehash of an existing mainline campaign.

The main reason for the turn limits (apart from obviously being required due to gold carryover) is to provide challenge. The standard AI isn't very good assaulting, yet usually it is assaulting, and without a clock there would be even less reason to ever play anything else but defence until the main forces are defeated. Only a few campaigns manage to make different gameplay worthwhile -> limited healing, more gold per village, higher xp requirements or just good scenario design are often involved.

[tekelili]

The main reason for the turn limits (apart from obviously being required due to gold carryover) is to provide challenge.

I agree turn limit is necessary. However I very dislike it becoming a mayor scenario key or beign used as difficulty scale (and I include here high carryover percenatages, wich for my taste is any over 15%). Imo this is against whole BfW design: Combat is bassed in randomess. A good BfW plan is one wich calculates actions when RNG gives bad outcomes. A short turn limit just destroy this mechanic and I see short turn limit technice as one of the worst ever in scenario balance technics. Players sould be almost no punished for 4 turns difference, or they would be punished for pure RNG variances (or ever worse, pushed to rely on RNG to succed).

[name]

The standard AI isn't very good assaulting, yet usually it is assaulting, and without a clock there would be even less reason to ever play anything else but defence until the main forces are defeated.

Have you tried the newer AIs, like Experimental or Strong? They too are most always assaulting, but are significantly better at it at least.

Only a few campaigns manage to make different gameplay worthwhile -> limited healing, more gold per village, higher xp requirements or just good scenario design are often involved.

Yeah, I think varied, thoughtful scenario design is the key here. Here are some ideas (with each scenario potentially combining any number of these):

Village Challenges:

Vast majority of villages reside within enemy castle.

Almost all villages already owned by enemy but concentrated in center of map. Player at great disadvantage if villages not taken swiftly.

All villages in terrain easily defended by enemy faction but very difficult for player's.

Terrain Challenges:

Player starts in sunken castle far from shore, must recruit from there, storm beach and inland enemy castle before being overrun by sea monsters.

Player can only recruit from untenable areas near enemy strongholds.

Map is made up of three or more strips of consistent terrain types, like water, mountains and plains, connecting the player and enemy leader(s). One side can recruit specialists for each terrain type and other side can recruit only terrain generalists. Generalists can amass all forces in one terrain region but specialists fight and perhaps move better within their natural habitat. Player faction can be either the generalists or specialists depending on campaign design. Losing total control of any one region is dangerous as player leader is on untenable terrain.

Ally Challenges:

In the midst of a battle, if player can beat an enemy leader with his own leader in singular combat (deal the final blow), his forces will switch from enemy to ally (but remain ai-controlled). Player probably hopelessly outnumbered otherwise.

Players commands negligible force with few villages in front of a choke point or 'landing zone' where AI controlled allies arrive from periodically but in increasingly large numbers. Player can only hope to defend until ally forces can defeat enemy.

Small player force of first level units defend fragile catapults or magical artefacts that every turn kill or badly damage one of the enemy's numerous third level units. Keeping these "glass cannons" in operation for many turns is the only serious hope of reducing enemy forces enough that player controlled forces can go on the offensive

Event Challenges:

Player controlled territory is slowly becoming sunken / caved in on and enemy stronghold is only sanctuary.

Impassible terrain temporarily bottles up growing enemy force otherwise adjacent to player keep, for many turns. Player must thoroughly enough beat other enemy forces on map and preserve and maintain his own forces before this happens or will be heavily outnumbered and fighting on two fronts.

Player can lead larger enemy starting force into a giant and deadly trap region that can be sprung only one time and on the player's command. Player must hold the line on other side of trap area (where there is no keep and bad terrain) to prevent enemies from pushing past it, while waiting for enough enemies to collect in the kill zone. If trap is sprung prematurely with significant enemy forces still outside it, player will likely be overwhelmed by enemy survivors.

Assassination Challenges:

Player must use its forces to draw enemy away from their leader while player leader reaches a distant keep... that is distantly attached to enemy leader's castle. Friendly units spawned directly around enemy leader are the best chance of killing him. Scenario doesn't end until all surviving enemy forces are destroyed, which will still greatly outnumber player forces for many turns.

Player has easy control of only few villages on map but enemy has enormous gold reserves. Only reasonable chance is to send small groups of assassins to maneuver through advancing enemy forces and kill largely unprotected enemy leaders before player castle is overrun.

Significant enemy reinforcements arrive periodically from random edges of the map until their supreme leader figure is killed. If supreme leader is not killed, player will likely be inundated with enemies eventually.

[Aldarisvet]

For me as UMC developer the main problem is feedback problem. Not in terms of bug reports, but in terms of sharing emotions. What people think about my campaign? I have no idea. Wow, I have about 3000 downloads of my campaign, and in fact I got some feedback only from few people whom I practically forced to do this! This fact discouraging developers, but despite this there is SO huge UMC content for now, that I do not think that this is actually a great problem. Lack of feedback cannot stop me and was not able to stop lot of other UMC developers in fact. No one should expect that he would be patted on the head for his work.

I see other problem. For me the world of wesnoth and mainline campaigns are generally quite weak/primitive from writers point of view. Compare it with starcraft/dune/star wars/toklien/harry potter worlds and so on. You cannot get great number of fans with that to hold their attention for a long time. It is understandable because teenagers/students cannot compare with George Lucas or others great scenarists or professional writers.
But if you really want to even imitate holding of attention, you must periodically produce seqels, every 1-2 years. Look, Terminator-1, then Terminator-2, then Terminator-3 and so on. Or look how starcraft storyline develops. Instead of it you play a campaign for humans, then for elves, then for orcs. All of it is almost totally separated in all aspects, including timeline (Cold Steel already wrote about it in Problem 2: Campaign characters, places and events not well interwoven). Well, you breaking base principles of holding attention.

And I do not think at all that Wesnoth is dying or something like that. It is definetely not dying, the problem is only in holding attention of old players. They need 'emotional refreshing'. They need to be eager to know, what will happen further with main heroes (and yes, some new special abilities, some new elements of gamplay should be presented in new seqels for sure, as it was written already). And this refreshing must be made in mainline, not in some UMC. The development should be made in secrecy with some controlled leaks. Well, actually you all know the rules of industry, it is same for comuter games as for the commercial movies.

That also means that the principle everyone making his own UMC content while mainline content remains static is completely wrong. It is always a pleasure to make your own content of course. But what is really needed is that some group of developers unite in one team and create a new high-quality mainline campaign. Not the way it was working before - developers chosing some campaign from UMC to mainline it. That was wrong way. People should work together for some common project, not to compete in UMC.

And it was already discussed that wesnoth have no PR at social media. Come on, in Russian social service vk.com we have 1230 members in wesnoth group. Wow all from this thread wasted more time in reading posts and writing an answers, than time that needed to spent for wesnoth in Facebook for month. Someone, for example, doofus, published a new portrait. Well that is a news for Facebook. New custom sprite? Someone released new campaign? Great news. Not much time neefed to support this. Omg, why people spending days for developing UMC and cannot just create community in Facebook? Why Russians was able to do this and you guys not?
Well, if no one cares about PR, as I got from Search in forum, then I created community myself. https://www.facebook.com/wesnothian/ - Hey, join everyone
Just a /wesnoth is already taken by Poland wesnoth comminity.