Steven Aus
Teach The World To Fish For Life
I am really looking forward to the many good changes happening in the k patch. As a way of appreciating and complimenting this game and other fantasy games such as HOMM 2 and 3, I wish to compare with my experiences in another turn-based fantasy game I found really appealing at first, but its shine has began to lose its lustre for me a little. Please bear with me, and if you don't wish to read the rest of this post, that is fine too. =)
I really liked Battle for Wesnoth at first, because it appeared to be everything an open-source fantasy game should be. Then I encountered a number of games when I had varying amounts of luck, sometimes less, sometimes more. Then I would get extremely bad luck *on one or two turns*, one of my loss condition heroes would get pinned down and killed, and "bang" I may as well not have been playing for the last 45 minutes/1 hour. My last advanced game really brought this into sharp relief. One of my loss condition heroes was pinned. I had two units that together had at least 6 attempts at 40% or greater to hit each attack. If even one of these had hit, I could have killed one of the blocking units and withdrawn my loss condition hero and successfully completed the scenario. But because those units seem to have no inkling that they should try just that little bit harder to get *one single hit* in, my loss condition hero fell, and *bang* I lost the scenario. Honestly, if you have 40% or 50% chance to hit on just the one turn, and you have at least 6 chances to hit, and *every single attack misses on that one single turn* I think you have the right to feel a bit (read: very) peeved.
Even though FFH2 and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3 have their share of luck that can tip a game, I don't think I've ever lost a game after early on purely because of bad luck from the random number generator. It is either through poor choice of battles, positioning of armies or other tactical errors. Games of Civ4 or its mods, and playing with a very sound strategy, can occassionally result in an early loss before you can really get past the early game, but once you get started, the random number generator seems to add to the game rather than take away from it. No "insta-deaths". Mostly skill, just a manageable amount of luck, and people with skill mostly able to utilize it. But it is very, *very* depressing when you have played well for 15 to 30 turns or so in a game of Wesnoth, then one of your loss condition heroes falls due to your units missing say 5 or more attacks because the RNG goes on holiday. Basically the consequences of one run of bad luck in Wesnoth overwhelm how you have been playing up til then - all the luck in the world counts for nothing when a loss condition hero is pinned down and killed within a turn or two, because you somehow managed to get a 0% actual hit rate when *supposedly* you have a 40% chance to hit EVERY SINGLE ATTACK. Bang! You failed. Back to the start of the scenario for you. And no, you're not allowed to criticize this aspect on the forum. No, you will get shot down in flames or have your thread locked without mercy, even if you try *really, really* hard to be non-judgemental and open-minded. I admit that not all those who bring up the issue are like this, but it seems even the ones that do are treated similarly.
There was recently a big thread on Wesnoth's forums about the co-operation on the forum, and the sometimes ridiculous runs of extremely low probability results that cause you to restart an otherwise very well played single player campaign level, or lose a multiplayer game against a player with very similar skill. No other particularly bad luck in the entire scenario, but hopeless and depressing bad luck on just a very small number of turns, causing an irretrievable loss. When initially reading the thread (which had run to 5 pages and then was locked) I initially felt aligned to the developers point of view. So I wrote a very carefully worded Private Message to one of the main developers, taking 110% care in how I was expressing myself and how it could be interpreted. I said I agreed with not wanting to keep win/loss statistics, because that could damage the community and encourage cheating. I said if it was possible, or already in place, that statistics on EV-deviation from single or multi player scenarios - I think EV-deviation is somewhat similar to, or a variant of, standard deviation from the mean. I have not got a reply yet, but am awaiting one. I feel that measuring average standard deviation from the mean in single and multi player scenarios was a non-threatening way of getting *as little biased as it is possible to get in a world that has both helpful¬ helpful, or good&bad characteristics, and a certain amount of luck* statistics about whether the way the RNG worked could use some tweaking. Especially since the result of a small amount of bad luck almost always overthrows a scenario otherwise full of good or at least average luck.
I feel and did my utmost to not unnecessarily judge. I was very careful with my words, and did as much as is humanly possible to get my points across in a non-threatening and accurate way. I did not make the post in public, which could have facilitated a great deal of angst and anxiety in many members of the community, no matter how carefully worded a public post might be. And I believe I was being constructive. I am very much looking forward to a reply to my PM, but it is *possible* that I have hit another no-go zone, even though it not nearly as visible as online-flame-fests. And that makes me really sad, because I really love the concept of a free, open source fantasy turn-based strategy game made by gamers for gamers for the love of the game.
But I don't think that open-source games have a monopoly on having a friendly and easy-going community. I have had good experiences with games like HOMM 2 and 3, Guild Wars and Civ4/FFH2. The Astral Wizard web-site that was around for a number of years really facilitated a friendly and open community the majority of the time for HOMM fans - and even though the AW web-site no longer exists online the community and its great comraderie still exist at the Quill Yahoo Group. Even though individual members don't always post a lot, we care a lot about each other considering we are very diverse, live very different lives and don't always have heaps of free time.
With Guild Wars I found a lot of comraderie in certain guilds too. Sure, there were people playing Guild Wars who didn't really follow the intended spirit and sometimes made life a lot less enjoyable for fellow players, but for example, before I stopped playing Guild Wars (because I decided I much preferred turn based fantasy games rather than games relying on lots of real-time decision making which I'm not so good at) I had been scammed by another player, and one of my guild actually refunded the in-game money which I had lost, and other guild members strongly sympathized too! Something completely unexpected and very "life-affirming", if you can say that about a multi-player computer game.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the *very long-term* success of a mod or gaming community has little to do with whether it is turn-based or real-time, whether it is from a commercial game or has a full or partial open source basis. The community behind great games such as the HOMM series and the Civ4 game and (especially) FFH2 and its modmods is one of its greatest assets any game or mod can have. I am really looking forward to patch k of FFH2, and because of the comraderie of the Civ4/FFH2 community and also the HOMM community (including the Quill Yahoo Group, the fheroes2 and VCMI projects) I will continue to play and support the games I enjoy and the enjoyable community behind these games. Thanks for everything Kael and all the people who have done any small, medium or large contribution of any kind to FFH2's mod over the years!
Long live gaming and mod-making communities!
Best regards,
Steven from Australia.
I really liked Battle for Wesnoth at first, because it appeared to be everything an open-source fantasy game should be. Then I encountered a number of games when I had varying amounts of luck, sometimes less, sometimes more. Then I would get extremely bad luck *on one or two turns*, one of my loss condition heroes would get pinned down and killed, and "bang" I may as well not have been playing for the last 45 minutes/1 hour. My last advanced game really brought this into sharp relief. One of my loss condition heroes was pinned. I had two units that together had at least 6 attempts at 40% or greater to hit each attack. If even one of these had hit, I could have killed one of the blocking units and withdrawn my loss condition hero and successfully completed the scenario. But because those units seem to have no inkling that they should try just that little bit harder to get *one single hit* in, my loss condition hero fell, and *bang* I lost the scenario. Honestly, if you have 40% or 50% chance to hit on just the one turn, and you have at least 6 chances to hit, and *every single attack misses on that one single turn* I think you have the right to feel a bit (read: very) peeved.
Even though FFH2 and Heroes of Might and Magic 2 and 3 have their share of luck that can tip a game, I don't think I've ever lost a game after early on purely because of bad luck from the random number generator. It is either through poor choice of battles, positioning of armies or other tactical errors. Games of Civ4 or its mods, and playing with a very sound strategy, can occassionally result in an early loss before you can really get past the early game, but once you get started, the random number generator seems to add to the game rather than take away from it. No "insta-deaths". Mostly skill, just a manageable amount of luck, and people with skill mostly able to utilize it. But it is very, *very* depressing when you have played well for 15 to 30 turns or so in a game of Wesnoth, then one of your loss condition heroes falls due to your units missing say 5 or more attacks because the RNG goes on holiday. Basically the consequences of one run of bad luck in Wesnoth overwhelm how you have been playing up til then - all the luck in the world counts for nothing when a loss condition hero is pinned down and killed within a turn or two, because you somehow managed to get a 0% actual hit rate when *supposedly* you have a 40% chance to hit EVERY SINGLE ATTACK. Bang! You failed. Back to the start of the scenario for you. And no, you're not allowed to criticize this aspect on the forum. No, you will get shot down in flames or have your thread locked without mercy, even if you try *really, really* hard to be non-judgemental and open-minded. I admit that not all those who bring up the issue are like this, but it seems even the ones that do are treated similarly.
There was recently a big thread on Wesnoth's forums about the co-operation on the forum, and the sometimes ridiculous runs of extremely low probability results that cause you to restart an otherwise very well played single player campaign level, or lose a multiplayer game against a player with very similar skill. No other particularly bad luck in the entire scenario, but hopeless and depressing bad luck on just a very small number of turns, causing an irretrievable loss. When initially reading the thread (which had run to 5 pages and then was locked) I initially felt aligned to the developers point of view. So I wrote a very carefully worded Private Message to one of the main developers, taking 110% care in how I was expressing myself and how it could be interpreted. I said I agreed with not wanting to keep win/loss statistics, because that could damage the community and encourage cheating. I said if it was possible, or already in place, that statistics on EV-deviation from single or multi player scenarios - I think EV-deviation is somewhat similar to, or a variant of, standard deviation from the mean. I have not got a reply yet, but am awaiting one. I feel that measuring average standard deviation from the mean in single and multi player scenarios was a non-threatening way of getting *as little biased as it is possible to get in a world that has both helpful¬ helpful, or good&bad characteristics, and a certain amount of luck* statistics about whether the way the RNG worked could use some tweaking. Especially since the result of a small amount of bad luck almost always overthrows a scenario otherwise full of good or at least average luck.
I feel and did my utmost to not unnecessarily judge. I was very careful with my words, and did as much as is humanly possible to get my points across in a non-threatening and accurate way. I did not make the post in public, which could have facilitated a great deal of angst and anxiety in many members of the community, no matter how carefully worded a public post might be. And I believe I was being constructive. I am very much looking forward to a reply to my PM, but it is *possible* that I have hit another no-go zone, even though it not nearly as visible as online-flame-fests. And that makes me really sad, because I really love the concept of a free, open source fantasy turn-based strategy game made by gamers for gamers for the love of the game.
But I don't think that open-source games have a monopoly on having a friendly and easy-going community. I have had good experiences with games like HOMM 2 and 3, Guild Wars and Civ4/FFH2. The Astral Wizard web-site that was around for a number of years really facilitated a friendly and open community the majority of the time for HOMM fans - and even though the AW web-site no longer exists online the community and its great comraderie still exist at the Quill Yahoo Group. Even though individual members don't always post a lot, we care a lot about each other considering we are very diverse, live very different lives and don't always have heaps of free time.
With Guild Wars I found a lot of comraderie in certain guilds too. Sure, there were people playing Guild Wars who didn't really follow the intended spirit and sometimes made life a lot less enjoyable for fellow players, but for example, before I stopped playing Guild Wars (because I decided I much preferred turn based fantasy games rather than games relying on lots of real-time decision making which I'm not so good at) I had been scammed by another player, and one of my guild actually refunded the in-game money which I had lost, and other guild members strongly sympathized too! Something completely unexpected and very "life-affirming", if you can say that about a multi-player computer game.
So I guess what I'm saying is that the *very long-term* success of a mod or gaming community has little to do with whether it is turn-based or real-time, whether it is from a commercial game or has a full or partial open source basis. The community behind great games such as the HOMM series and the Civ4 game and (especially) FFH2 and its modmods is one of its greatest assets any game or mod can have. I am really looking forward to patch k of FFH2, and because of the comraderie of the Civ4/FFH2 community and also the HOMM community (including the Quill Yahoo Group, the fheroes2 and VCMI projects) I will continue to play and support the games I enjoy and the enjoyable community behind these games. Thanks for everything Kael and all the people who have done any small, medium or large contribution of any kind to FFH2's mod over the years!
Long live gaming and mod-making communities!
Best regards,
Steven from Australia.
