Re: [Wesnoth-dev] Three level units

[Guillaume Melquiond]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 12:56:19 +0100, Hogne Håskjold wrote:
> Is it more fun to halfway into a campaign reach the level limit of my
> units, or is it more fun to be able to have my units progress through
> the entire campaign?

Neither one nor the other; you are forgetting an important point.
Wesnoth is not a tactical RPG, you don't lose when one of your
soldiers die. This thread is not about campaign heroes, it is about
the plain soldiers you recruit. They will die, it's just the way it
is, and you will recruit other units to replace them. If your units
never die, you should really start playing in a harder difficulty
level. Units die, and hence your argument of having "units progress
through the entire campaign" isn't on the mark.

> For me it is obviously the latter. So I welcome all the third level
> units sangel proposed. I would even like 4th and 5th lvl *grin*
> (although this would have some serious game balance issues).

Let's see, Elvish Genocider, a lv5 unit in the Elvish Avenger branch
path. Considering the previous units on the path, it would have
roughly these stats:
- Hp 120, move 6, ambush
- sword 16-4
- bow 20-5
- upkeep 5

Do you really believe such a unit would be fun to play with? And even
from a tactical point of view, this unit isn't interesting at all.
Nobody would ever attack it, and hence it would never be able to kill
more than one enemy unit each turn. Paying 4 gold each turn for such a
unit is a complete loss. For the exact same upkeep (village related),
you can have 4 Elvish Rangers. That's a lot more effective.

And here we are only talking about campaigns. What about multiplayer?
Wesnoth is not simply a campaign game, it also provides a fun
multiplayer game; it has to be taken into account. It is already hard
to get a lv3 units during a mp game, how will you get the 400xp
necessary to get a lv5 unit? By putting the experience settings at 10%
instead of the usual 80-100%? Once again, where is the fun? All the
lv1 and lv2 will level up after only one kill.

To make lv5 units interesting, you will have to deeply rewrite Wesnoth
rules, and it is probably an understatement. Wesnoth is not a tactical
RPG. When I want to play one, I play FF Tactics, not Wesnoth.

> I don't quite understand the varied gameplay argument. The game is
> varied because of a lot of things, I don't feel lvl cap on some units
> is significant in this regard.

You seem to forget that units that are capped at lv2 are almost always
stronger than their uncapped counter-parts. Lv2 capped units are
interesting: they provide fast reached low cost heavy hitters. Too bad
you don't think such a diversity between units improve gameplay. I do.

Regards,

Guillaume