PTR Changelog 2017-03-06
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This post describes changes on the Public Test Realm. The estimated launch date is March 9.
Introduced new “Respawn Area” mechanic:
- Respawn Areas are highlighted with blue color on the world map.
- It is isolated from the rest of the world with a wall. The wall has a timer similar to Novice Areas, but probably with a longer period. Any player can place the first spawn in this area, but nobody can come here from the outside world while the timer is up.
- The only restriction in Respawn Area is nukes usage - a nuke cannot be launched from or to a room in a Respawn Area.
- Players with GCL 4 or higher are no longer able to start playing in Novice Areas. They have to either respawn in a regular room or in a room within a Respawn Area that will keep them safe for a while and allow to claim as many rooms as their GCL allows.
As an example, an area in sector E45N35 has been converted to a Respawn Area. Feel free to click “Respawn” on the PTR and try this new feature.
We plan to create Respawn Areas in inner old sectors only, while keeping Novice Areas at world borders. But sometimes regular Novice Areas will still appear in inner sectors too if needed.
Tell us what do you think about these upcoming changes in the comments below!
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An awesome change! It will likely help with a lot of the grief novice players suffer when wiped by veterans. Good thinking.
However, this adjustment does not fundamentally change the process of selecting which areas become "Respawn Areas". This has been a source of continued frustration and strife. Any intention to adjust that?
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Nice improvements, I still got a few questions:
- How will these areas be chosen?
- Where will they spawn?
Suggestions:
I would suggest that the walls to respawn areas are destroyable. Make sure to give them a high hitpoint value.Don’t make them time-out. Let the spawn-areas be spawn-areas until one of the walls is destroyed. This way the spawned persons in the area will need to have attack code which can handle remote attacking, likewise the external persons can start whacking at the walls too if they have a desire to claim the rooms.
Make sure there are API methods available to check the room status of any room. This way a lot of scripts can adjust based on these conditions:
Game.map.getRoomState(<roomName>); returns: ROOM_NORMAL ROOM_NOVICE ROOM_SPAWNMake sure that if they’re spawned in that they won’t split highway rooms. Because we can’t “reserve” highway rooms there’s currently no way to mark a highway as actively used by a player (Power harvesting)
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The choosing process will be the same as it is now. We check your sign messages and reservation. The difference is that since now there is no "bad novice experience" factor, and blue zones population will consist only of players who have already been wiped at least once, there is no real issue in wiping them one more time. Small blue areas won't be receiving a long timeout, so that if their appearing has broken some of your plans, you are welcome to deal with your new neighbors with all the power you have at your disposal with no mercy
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Interesting assessment. I can still see some grief potential for the players affected by the zone, but you are right. This choice would take out the "poor novice guys" factor out of the equation. It might even make for some interesting challenges.
To be honest, I've personally become a lot less upset by the appearance of these novice areas as I used to be. I've started finding them as a good utility for getting some fresh blood.
At times I've intentionally cleared stale areas to see if a good player settles there. I've managed to establish some pretty good relations with the survivors of these areas.
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The difference is that since now there is no “bad novice experience” factor
Noobs can still spawn in the areas, I’d say it can still result in “bad novice experience”
blue zones population will consist only of players who have already been wiped at least once
Does this mean that players have to be killed once before, before spawning there? Are “complete noobs” unable to spawn there?
Could you comment on the API methods and the splitting of highway rooms, or even the wall idea?
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I’ve managed to establish some pretty good relations with the survivors of these areas.
This was exactly my point when we discussed this topic last time. Glad to see it confirmed to some extent.
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Does this mean that players have to be killed once before, before spawning there? Are “complete noobs” unable to spawn there?
The majority of new players spawn in the areas which the game automatically recommends to them (the “Another area” button in the bottom). We won’t recommend blue zones to players below GCL 4, so their appearance is very unlikely.
Could you comment on the API methods the splitting of highway rooms, or even the wall idea?
API methods are under consideration. Splitted highway is necessary evil, there is no way to avoid this since any area should be passable without deadlock rooms. Respawn area walls will have a timer with no hit points in the same way as novice walls.
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Respawn area walls will have a timer with no hit points in the same
way as novice walls.Can we get this time in ticks? It currently says “X days remaining”. I’d love to see the
ticksToLivefilled.
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This has been discussed many times on the forum. The timer is in days for a reason.
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Can we have access that in game?
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Not yet, but we're thinking about this. It would be a Date object anyway, not ticks count.
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> The wall has a timer similar to Novice Areas, but probably with a longer period.
What's the logic of having these respawn areas last longer than the novice zone ones? I was actually thinking the opposite would be useful- instead of existing for ~20 days have them exist for ~10. That way the biggest disruption these zones cause (the lack of an ability to path through them) won't result in several weeks of grief for existing players.
Are there any plans to revisit the signing mechanic? I still think there are two separate use cases which need to be handled separately-
* Marking territory so other players are aware of what you claim for you and your alliance,
* Marking to the admins which rooms you plan on claiming in the next week or two.
The first one is already covered by the existing feature, but the second one does not. A simple second argument to the "signController" function (expressClaimIntent) should be able to cover this use case, and to prevent abuse you could even add a cost to it (ghodium?).
This would resolve the use case that occurred this weekend. I signed a bunch of controllers so other players would know where The Culture plans on putting people, but clearly I wasn't going to immediately claim all of those rooms- they were being signed for the first use case above. However, there were a handful of rooms that I would have "expressedClaimIntent" on- the actual rooms I wanted to claim, and a path to those rooms that my claimer would need to walk through. If this proposed feature had existed I could have added this "intent" sign to the rooms I specifically needed access to and the game developers would be able to see that information.
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As I understand it, the intention with the longer period of the zone is to give a more realistic chance at survival for the individuals spawning in these areas. The main intent seems to be to program a mechanism which would allow respawning veteran players to set up shop in the main zones of the map with a good enough time to prepare.
Realistically, this won't allow someone to spawn in the interior of an alliance due to the quantity of available nukes, but it might allow someone to establish on the fringes of existing alliances or in deteriorating areas of the map.
Defense is still pretty solid in this game and as the recent R33t4rd show exemplified, you can make it quite costly for someone to take your position if you had a good time to prepare.
It's an interesting choice, but it doesn't seem intended to solve the frustration of established players (us). It seems more intended to help mitigate the impact we might have on the unlucky new players spawning in the current internal novice areas.
Additional development/enhancements in this subject would be justified imho.
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Would still be nice to know what the minimum requirements are for such an area.. I always tried to avoid free 2x5 or 3x4 areas (but without taking sk-rooms into account). Don't know if this is sufficient to escape the "choosing process"..
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Greatly appreciated feature!
May we go a little further by adding a reclaim period before walls appear? I mean a warning period informing neighbors that this area will become a Respawn area. During this period, each player can reserve some rooms to avoid some usual troubles (next GCL target, usefull path ,...).
I also think, you better have to fully automate, as much as possible, this task so you can provide us with clear guidelines on this process.
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GCL4 is a pretty low value, with some luck its easy to reach in the first playthrough in a Novice zone.
Could the GCL requirement be increased or can it be dropped altogether as requirement ? Not having a room limit is already a significant incentive to choose blue instead of green.
I fear that the blue zones will become awfully crowded after a while with still fairly new players. After all, Novice zones can only contain <4 GCL players, so the aggression levels there will drop.
Additionally, it feels weird that having a higher GCL becomes a drawback.
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You should have it so you spawn some around the edges every now and then as well.
Just a few.
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What’s the logic of having these respawn areas last longer than the novice zone ones? I was actually thinking the opposite would be useful- instead of existing for ~20 days have them exist for ~10. That way the biggest disruption these zones cause (the lack of an ability to path through them) won’t result in several weeks of grief for existing players.
The period should be long enough to allow a GCL 4+ player to claim and develop all available rooms and prepare to defense them when the walls fall. However, in inner areas it will probably be shorter than at the borders.
May we go a little further by adding a reclaim period before walls appear? I mean a warning period informing neighbors that this area will become a Respawn area. During this period, each player can reserve some rooms to avoid some usual troubles (next GCL target, usefull path ,…).
Alright, what if we introduce a new small feature - when an inner Novice/Respawn Area is being planned, controllers are signed with the system message (sign user =
Screeps) showing the warning message. 24 hours in advance. If you manage to reserve some of the rooms during this period, the area is cancelled. The sign message cannot be erased by your creeps until the controller is reserved. What do you think?Would still be nice to know what the minimum requirements are for such an area.. I always tried to avoid free 2x5 or 3x4 areas (but without taking sk-rooms into account). Don’t know if this is sufficient to escape the “choosing process”..
I can’t seem to understand the question. If you claimed some rooms in an area, it will never be transformed.
Not having a room limit is already a significant incentive to choose blue instead of green.
But the need to compete with established strong players will push a lot of new players back from theze zones.
You should have it so you spawn some around the edges every now and then as well. Just a few.
We’ll be experimenting with different blue zones placement when this feature is out.
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> The period should be long enough to allow a GCL 4+ player to claim and develop all available rooms and prepare to defense them when the walls fall. However, in inner areas it will probably be shorter than at the borders.
Is there a need for that? What's the balance or end goal? For border rooms the longer time makes sense, as they aren't going to disrupt things, but I would really appreciate a shorter time period near already active players.
> Alright, what if we introduce a new small feature - when an inner Novice/Respawn Area is being planned, controllers are signed with the system message (sign user =
Screeps) showing the warning message. 24 hours in advance. If you manage to reserve some of this rooms during this period, the area is cancelled. The sign message cannot be erased by your creeps until the controller is reserved. What do you think?The problem with this is that moving in to some locations requires using jump rooms due to the limit on claim distance. The area I wanted to move into I couldn't reach, so I built up a room in range to it specifically to launch claimers with. The same issue is going to come up when requiring reservations.
What about being able to pay resources to unsign it? Send over a creep with 1000 energy or 100 ghodium and spend that to clear out the signatures, and if enough rooms get flipped *or* any of the rooms are claimed then the system can cancel converting it over.
