What has happened?

[Negern]

I havent played for more than a year now. But logged in a few times to have a look. Got a surprise now. 149 active players. It used to be a lot more. But it seems now most players are gold members etc. Not as before. So i guess it evens out.
Anyhow. Do u guys have any plans to make the game more noob friendly. Its not so easy for noobs to learn. Even worse now i guess, when it seems that there are only a few members, almost all of whom are very experienced. Few other noobs to practice with.
But lo and behold. I have a solution.
Add a function: "request tutored game" or something like that. Can be checked in the same way as fow, how many players allowed in the game etc. And then, a group of players signed up as volunteers receive a message saying "join this game if u want bla bla".
The game would only be open for the noob and any tutor that doesnt mind to help out.
It is up to the noob if he wants to choose map or let the tutor decide. Perhaps it would make things easier if a certain simple map is used. Or not. Up to them.
Anyhow thats all.
I would consider to help noobs out if this function was implemented and some new players registered

[gil]

Negern that's nice

personally i don't think that will help

i've been playing this game for over a year now and i'm still unaware of most its features

in my point of view creators made this game for people with stamina or old players of WL no shortcuts here

i know its not only me since i've been asked by someone playing this game 4 years do castle units get castle bonus at ruins and to this day i do not know.

iv also been asked what are heroes terrain movement bonus and i can honestly say IDK my best reply is try it it seems to work for ranger in the trees but not for HL on the stone

do ya think you have a better answer for noobs then "try it out you'll figure it out"?

[SnotlinG]

We are constantly (as far as time allows) working on improving the GUI / wiki and welcome screens etc to help new players get into the game. But we are aware of that the threshhold is very high, so any and all ideas is appreciated

i know its not only me since i've been asked by someone playing this game 4 years do castle units get castle bonus at ruins and to this day i do not know.

Ruins is its own terraintype, so all units gets their UndeadLore as a terrainbonus there. I.e. a scout gets +1 extra in battle, a ghost gets +3 etc... Heroes gets a good terrainbonus since they usually have a high UL.
Most ruins give +5 wall bonus also (not shipwrecks).

iv also been asked what are heroes terrain movement bonus and i can honestly say IDK my best reply is try it it seems to work for ranger in the trees but not for HL on the stone

The Ranger starts with a specialized forest move skill (same as Elf etc) which can be seen in the wiki.
Both the Ranger and the HorseLord starts with pathfinding 2, i.e. no terrain cost more than 4 for them to move through. So both the Horselord and the ranger can move through hills at a cost of 4/tile.

[Chazar]

iv also been asked what are heroes terrain movement bonus and i can honestly say IDK my best reply is try it it seems to work for ranger in the trees but not for HL on the stone

The Ranger starts with a specialized forest move skill (same as Elf etc) which can be seen in the wiki. Both the Ranger and the HorseLord starts with pathfinding 2, i.e. no terrain cost more than 4 for them to move through. So both the Horselord and the ranger can move through hills at a cost of 4/tile.

1. This always irritated me as well: Is this special case for the ranger really necessary? It's thematic, but each special case makes the game less transparent and thus harder to learn.
(Wouldn't it be better to have Pathfinding Level 2 generally allow 2 move cost on Forest and Desert? (Or maybe even better: have pathfinding work like this: max(2,(normalcost-pathfindinglevel)), i.e. level 1 gives up to one reduction everywhere, level 2 up to 2 reduction everywhere. - However, one could then argue that scout should work in the same way.)

2. Speaking about the ranger: the ranger's innate personal warding of 30 is not shown in the hero dialogue, which is not transparent and thus confusing. Why?!

3. In order to make the game easy to learn, all rules should be as transparent as possible. Expose the full rule set through the game.
(The new skulls with daggers and dice are really important for new players who cannot read the detailed battle info log! Thanks for adding this!)

Hence, I again argue that newbies simply need a battle calculator!

It simply takes too much time to understand a unit's strengths and weaknesses otherwise: A newbie just gets frustrated by playing against veterans who have enough experience to judge battle outcomes. Especially the rare end-game battles with all kinds of negative and positive group bonuses and ambush/warding are incredibly difficult to predict for a new player, since a newbie sees such battles only in every other game. So how does a new player decide during mid-game whether to invest into dragons, devils, unicorns or archons? Requiring all new players to lose dozens of games before they even understand the game they are playing sound like a bad strategy to me.

So let players experiment by clicking together two battle stacks and let them see how such a battle plays out. So they can easily learn what difference an added ghost or an archon may makes to the entire battle. This is not "strategic-experience", this is just an innate understanding of the basic game rules.

[Moonknight]

I really think the "Campaign" mode of play would do wonders for beginners. It takes tutorials to the next step and would be more enjoyable to play through for most.

I know at one time there were plans to build out such campaigns, is that still in the works?

Also, if possible when building the campaigns, if there was the ability to Save your game, play a battle, and then load the game back to before the battle, players could learn what risks to take and which to not. I mainly played against the AI in Warlords, so I would save my game all the time before attacking when I was a kid. If I didn't like the results, poof, back to as before. While it's not realistic of real-play, it would be good for new players experimenting.

I'm available to help out in anyway I can including story-telling for the Campaigns! I'd suggest getting some guys like SCIkick and Tim involved who make great maps and Scenarios today.

[gil]

i think the way to do this is allowing noobs into real games

here is how it should work

you have a game where real players played

after game finished other players can step into the game and play instead of a player

thay can have a help botton that shows the move/hero upgrade that the real player made

this will require for all moves not to be random but instead recreate the original result as long as the same battle was recreated

i'm aware that once he do not follow the original players steps recreation will have to stop and normal ai/randomization will start.

i think if you can create a code that allows no randoms and duplicated dice throws as long as army size is exactly the same will help a lot for new players.

[gil]

my other option is to make game easier to understand in the same way backgammon and chess is.

where the complexity of the game is derived from user actions and not from unit/terrain attributes

[KGB]

i know its not only me since i've been asked by someone playing this game 4 years do castle units get castle bonus at ruins and to this day i do not know.

It's right there in the wiki.
http://www.warbarons.com/wiki/terrain

Hence, I again argue that newbies simply need a battle calculator!

It simply takes too much time to understand a unit's strengths and weaknesses otherwise: A newbie just gets frustrated by playing against veterans who have enough experience to judge battle outcomes. Especially the rare end-game battles with all kinds of negative and positive group bonuses and ambush/warding are incredibly difficult to predict for a new player, since a newbie sees such battles only in every other game. So how does a new player decide during mid-game whether to invest into dragons, devils, unicorns or archons? Requiring all new players to lose dozens of games before they even understand the game they are playing sound like a bad strategy to me.

So let players experiment by clicking together two battle stacks and let them see how such a battle plays out. So they can easily learn what difference an added ghost or an archon may makes to the entire battle. This is not "strategic-experience", this is just an innate understanding of the basic game rules.

The problem with this is that any player will then be able to scout his opponents stack/city and go to the calculator and play out battle calculations to know what stack they need to achieve a victory. So a free play calculator where you can manually set up both sides and fight it out is a bad idea.

On the other hand in solo games vs the AI, it would make sense to let players 'play battles' against the AI (click on enemy units and get a test run of the battle that shows the numbers and odds of winning) so they can see how it all works and then they can decide whether they want to attack. That should be enough to get players familiar with battles esp if the calculated numbers are explained more in these test battles.

At some point players have to play and learn from experience. It's the same as learning openings and end games in chess. You can pick up the basics quite easily but to become good at chess you have to study and learn. The same with Warbarons. Allowing learning vs the AI is going to be very helpful for new players since they can play as much as they want on their own time.

my other option is to make game easier to understand in the same way backgammon and chess is.

I think everyone is for this idea. If you can figure out a way to simply things. One thing that I still believe is overly complex is the bonus system with positive, negative and negate powers for each bonus. The hybrid system from War2/DLR makes it hard to figure things out especially as it relates to Negate. I still think the game would be better if it dropped the negate concept all together and just went with positive/negative values.

KGB

[Chazar]

Hence, I again argue that newbies simply need a battle calculator!
[...]

The problem with this is that any player will then be able to scout his opponents stack/city and go to the calculator and play out battle calculations to know what stack they need to achieve a victory. So a free play calculator where you can manually set up both sides and fight it out is a bad idea.

I cannot see why this would be a bad thing! Having the right units available at the right place at the right time is the essence of the game, nothing else! A calculator does not help with having the units available, it only helps to plan ahead and filter out the bad plans - the ones that a veteran player would never do anyway.

[gil]

i agree with Chazar a calculator will help a lot to even out difference between noobs and experts.

why do the knowledge of whats needed in stack stay a mystery.

as a noob i am amazed that:
- in the water a water stack with kraken and serpent will lose to a non water stack with a unicorn.
- that a HL having open terrain bonus killed my kraken and serpent stack on a bridge
- that adding a +15 tower to a HL+ele stack did not upgrade its powers

after over a year i still consider myself a noob since i keep losing games for features i didn't know and a calculator will help me a lot.