The Battle for Wesnoth Forums

Hey, just wanted to say that I'm fairly new to Wesnoth, and after playing it a lot, I really like the game and everything it has to offer.

The only major flaw I can find with it is that once you start adding more than 2 players, it takes forever for your turn to come. Specifically, the fact that each person has to take their turn individually is probably the biggest factor that leads to ridiculously long games.

In the first 4 Civilization games this was also the case, where the time for a multiplayer game was exponentially increased because of each player having to go at once. In Civilization 5 (as well as in a lot of the newer games in this genre), they came up with a brilliant idea that speeds everything up, at the cost of requiring better teamwork. Each team simply takes their turn at once, so regardless of how many people are in the game, it goes at about the same speed as having two players (maybe a little longer, but certainly a lot less than 4+ people taking their turns individually etc.)

I can already see a lot of resistance to this change. "Well how will I coordinate with my teammates where I want to go?" "What if they walk into the spot I wanted or kill a guy I wanted to last hit?" Well first of all, the "team turns" setting could be completely optional, allowing the host and the players joining to decide whether they like it or not. Secondly, good teamwork is the hallmark of any successful multiplayer game. If anything, team turns would make the game more exciting because you would have to have better teamwork, which leads to more communication between players.

Honestly, I know some people may be extremely patient, but I think I speak for most gamers these days when I say that nobody has 10 minutes to sit around between turns watching everyone move their units in slow motion. "Team turns" is the new future for the TBS genre, and I think Wesnoth would be a lot more enjoyable, as well as a lot more popular, if this feature was added.

Thank you for your consideration.

This is an idea that has come up repeatedly and been turned down (and not for the reasons you mentioned).

You might find some purchase in the experimental corner where a number of ideas that would solve your problem have been proposed.

Otherwise if you really are having problems with waiting for your turn just read a book when it isn't and make sure the turn bell is on.

EDIT: Incidentally, using sales pitch phrases like 'Group turns are the future of the TBS genre' is not going to earn you a lot of purchase here. Decisions are not made based on what someone (or even many someones) believe will make the game more popular but mostly on developer preference.

Thank you for the timely response.

Since you've apparently seen threads with the "Team Turn" idea as a suggestion, would you mind sharing the links with those with me? Or at least explaining why the idea was turned down. Personally, I can't think of a single reason that you wouldn't want to implement group turns, at least as an option. If people want to speed up the game and improve their teamwork, why should they be denied that?

Decisions are not made based on what someone (or even many someones) believe will make the game more popular but mostly on developer preference.

Finally, the success of "group turns" in modern TBS has nothing to do with belief, it's a fact that it works well and makes the game happen more quickly.

I would like to hear some logical counterarguments for why group turns, as a game option, would be negative for the game in any way. For the record, "Because the developers don't like it", is not a logical response, but an excuse based purely on opinion.

Wingflier wrote: Since you've apparently seen threads with the "Team Turn" idea as a suggestion, would you mind sharing the links with those with me?

http://forums.wesnoth.org/viewtopic.php ... neous+turn

Wingflier wrote: I would like to hear some logical counterarguments for why group turns, as a game option, would be negative for the game in any way. For the record, "Because the developers don't like it", is not a logical response, but an excuse based purely on opinion.

While I wouldn't be opposed myself to this feature, I have to remind you that developpers don't necessarily need a good reason not to implement somthing. Even if the reason was "I don't feel like it" or "it'll be hell to develop", they're the ones doing it. Maybe they wouldn't be as opposed if you were gonna do it, but alas it's not the case (AFAIK).

That being said, maybe there's a better argument, I don't remember the threads enough.

Wingflier wrote:but an excuse based purely on opinion.

The opinion of those who would be doing all of the work. Why should they waste their time on ideas they don't like? They're not being paid. They develop the game because it's fun for them to do.

Also this belongs in the ideas forum. Moved.

Now, your next post here should contain solutions to all the technological problems posed in the thread Dixie gave you a link to (and those linked to in it).

Wingflier wrote:In the first 4 Civilization games this was also the case, where the time for a multiplayer game was exponentially increased because of each player having to go at once.

FALSE, it increases linearly.

Wingflier wrote:In Civilization 5 (as well as in a lot of the newer games in this genre), they came up with a brilliant idea that speeds everything up, at the cost of requiring better teamwork.

FALSE, that was introduced in Civ-4 already.

FALSE, it increases linearly.

Lol, are we going to quibble about details? While it is true that according to the correct definition of the term, it increased linearly, I don't think Wingflier was attempting to use it in its literal mathematical sense.

For my part, I play mostly singleplayer, dual-player (2p), and do WML. So for me, this addition would add nothing to my game. In addition, even with my primitive knowledge of computer coding, this seems like a whopping big task. So all things considered, if I was on the dev team, I'd probably give it a miss too.

Not because I think it's a bad idea, but simply because I don't see it as being worth the effort.

Wingflier wrote:Thank you for the timely response.

Since you've apparently seen threads with the "Team Turn" idea as a suggestion, would you mind sharing the links with those with me? Or at least explaining why the idea was turned down. Personally, I can't think of a single reason that you wouldn't want to implement group turns, at least as an option. If people want to speed up the game and improve their teamwork, why should they be denied that?

If you can't think of a single reason you wouldn't want to implement this, why haven't you done so already? Wesnoth is open source. You could have made a patch yourself. If you don't know how to program, you could have learned. After all, if people want to speed up the game and improve their teamwork, why should they be denied that just because you don't want to do the work?

the wait time is a problem. i guess at the beginning this game wasn't designed for multi-player. i think no one will object to add this feature *as an optional feature* for people to test, just no one has time to do so.

salade wrote:i think no one will object to add this feature *as an optional feature* for people to test, just no one has time to do so.

Eh, wrong. There are many technical problems with this idea. As presented, it is actually impossible.

Gambit wrote:

salade wrote:i think no one will object to add this feature *as an optional feature* for people to test, just no one has time to do so.

Eh, wrong. There are many technical problems with this idea. As presented, it is actually impossible.

so you are saying such feature is too difficult to be implemented in the current codebase. so i hope someone fork Wesnoth to develop a new game with Wesnoth's great game rules and mechanism but focus on multi-player game playing.

Since when did Wesnoth not have a focus on multiplayer gaming?

Caphriel wrote:Since when did Wesnoth not have a focus on multiplayer gaming?

The whole multiplayer thing is glued on sideways around a singleplayer core.
That was between 0.4 and 0.6 if I remember correctly.

You can still see this fact when looking into the source code. It makes things complicate sometimes.

salade wrote:

Gambit wrote: Eh, wrong. There are many technical problems with this idea. As presented, it is actually impossible.

so you are saying such feature is too difficult to be implemented in the current codebase. so i hope someone fork Wesnoth to develop a new game with Wesnoth's great game rules and mechanism but focus on multi-player game playing.

Did you read the link Dixie gave? Nobody has ever presented a way to implement this idea that solved all of these problems:

• Players can be on multiple teams.
• This completely breaks the careful balance of the game because turn order is very much a part of that.
• Wesnoth scenarios are based on events. How would this work when you have two players triggering those at once?

Forget forking. With the work required, you'd be better off starting from scratch and making an RTS.

Caphriel wrote:Since when did Wesnoth not have a focus on multiplayer gaming?

Since ever.

As for the idea: Upload a working (and structured, and stable!) patch at gna please and we can talk again. Like 99% of everything posted in the ideas forum this is completely illusory.