PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps
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@hernanduer Power Creeps are intended to be an RPG element in Screeps. They are not just units, they are heroes. And we'd like to make PCs feel like characters in RPG or heroes in a strategy game, where you don't recreate your character all the time, but develop it towards some build that you planned in advance. Experimenting and optimizing should be done in the planner, not on a real creep. We want players to invest in their PCs, make them valuable static asset rather than dynamically assignable resource. And as in any RPG, you can reset to fix some mistakes, but at a cost. The cost is not super high actually, it's only a day or two of power farming, and it can also be paid with credits, since power will be sold by NPC terminals starting from this release. It feels natural that higher level players should pay more, because their power processing rate is supposedly higher too.
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To back up @Hernanduer's point. It would be nice touch if all players had a 1 month free-delete grace period the first time they create a PowerCreep.
As for the RPG element, it's working. My initial play with PowerCreeps had them named after their role like regular creeps. But as I started actually trying to set up spawning I naturally gravitated towards hero-like names. Magellan replaced wanderer. Radar (old timey TV MASH character) replaced observinator.
Could we add a way to rename PowerCreeps. Currently I have to loose a power level if I decide I don't like a PowerCreep's name or I change my naming theme.
I have played other games where your latest level up is always undo-able. This would allow players to experiment with an upgrade without the fear of wasting a power level if they decide they don't like the ability or it doesn't mesh well with their plans for their PowerCreep. PTR might solve this problem, but in my experience most players don't use it as much as I do.
Both of these ideas can be added after PowerCreeps launch.
Thinking about PowerCreeps like heroes gave me another idea to avoid some friction I encountered. Disconnect leveling up a PowerCreep from selecting its powers. I've played many RPGs (most recently Divinity Original Sin) where I held on to ability points after a level up because nothing seemed particularly useful at that point in the game. This is a change from your stated goal to force players to have muti-use PowerCreeps, but only a slight change. A player that focuses on a single power would have unspent points instead of randomly selected powers. Later when they're ready to make use of those unspent points they can choose powers that they're interested in rather than whatever the clicked on at the time.
This mirrors my experience working with PowerCreeps. I added a single power(generate ops of course) then got some code up for that. Leveled up and picked a second power(operate observer) then got that code up. Decided I wanted to try out operating my power processing so I upgraded to level 10. And here is where I hit the snag. It's a no brainer to upgrade the powers my PowerCreep already knows how to use, but I could not get to level 10 without picking a 3rd and 4th power that I did not want to code for at the momement. So I did a best guess on what I might want and upgraded to lvl 10. (BTW it felt mildly unpleasant being forced to "buy" something I didn't want, like having your ISP force you to buy a router when I just want bandwidth). Now I've got a little more code done I wish I had picked different powers. Since resets are expensive I'm reluctant to delete it just so I can pick the 4th power I want to use.
A new player might not have my same experience since their power level will grow over time (in my case I started with 18 to work with). But honestly it's not that hard to buy and process power. Any player with some credits saved up and a decent energy supply could set up processing one weekend and come back the next with 10 power levels ready to go.
TL:DR: Allowing PowerCreeps defer selecting a power when leveling up would allow players (well at least me) to work on the code they're interested in at the moment while still encouraging multi-function PowerCreeps.
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@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
@davaned Imagine you have 10 rooms and 10 power creeps. Their cooldowns are designed in a way that one PC can maintain one room or a little bit more. Now you have to make a choice: would you use only 3 powers in every room, operating only 3 types of structures, or use all available powers, operating all structures, thus producing higher economy efficiency but with less ops efficiency.
I'm curious about something. Have major changes been made to the cost of power levels? Originally, it was an exponential growth curve (EVERY PL cost more than the one before it.) making something like "10 rooms and 10 PCs" essentially impossible unless you had ginormous piles of PL. Which... you wouldn't have with a mere 10 rooms. Let's see... 10 rooms each with a PC that has 15 ability points, so you can have 3 in several skills (as per your example.) That's 150 total PL. Total power processed: 22,349,193, the 150th one cost 320,497 power. And of course, if you foolishly delete one, you pay a 24 hour penalty before rebuilding it, and 320,497 power.
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@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
@hernanduer Power Creeps are intended to be an RPG element in Screeps. They are not just units, they are heroes. And we'd like to make PCs feel like characters in RPG or heroes in a strategy game, where you don't recreate your character all the time, but develop it towards some build that you planned in advance. Experimenting and optimizing should be done in the planner, not on a real creep. We want players to invest in their PCs, make them valuable static asset rather than dynamically assignable resource.
Why? I have 422 levels right now, I'm not going to be writing individual code for 40+ power creeps; they're going to fit into roles just like normal creeps. I'm not saying the levels should be immediately available again, you could even lock out all the levels someone used (level 25 creep - 25 levels locked) for a few days if they delete a power creep, that prevents someone from immediately switching. Permanent loss in a game like this is ridiculous.
And as in any RPG, you can reset to fix some mistakes, but at a cost. The cost is not super high actually, it's only a day or two of power farming, and it can also be paid with credits, since power will be sold by NPC terminals starting from this release. It feels natural that higher level players should pay more, because their power processing rate is supposedly higher too.
The point is, that's game effort that is gone forever, and the more deletions made, the more expensive they get because power levels are exponential. It's not a fun or strategically valuable mechanic, it's unfair penalization for people who like to optimize.
This doesn't even account for guaranteed post-release balancing of powers. Grace periods won't work, what if someone has to be afk for some period of time? You also won't be able to immediately reset everyone's power creeps using the changed powers, that could break who knows what. Free resets or something?
This stupid permanent loss system just adds so much needless complication while giving absolutely NOTHING in terms of value to play, and in fact takes away from things players feel they have earned.
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I have 422 levels right now, I'm not going to be writing individual code for 40+ power creeps
Honestly, I actually think you will be. Not at the start, but your pursuit of perfect optimization will inevitably lead you to the point when your every single PC has slightly modified skills tree and thus slightly modified aspects of behavior, thus effectively becoming unique "characters", unlike regular creeps which all have identical bodies. Otherwise you won't be able to achieve the desired level of optimization, identical builds of PCs won't work as good as highly optimized for given circumstances (rooms, defense/offense balance, neighbors, world location, new secret trade mechanic that will be announced soon).
This process is a bit skewed for you because you already have so many levels without actually going through the natural process of growing new power creeps. But an average player who builds new PCs as he levels up will most likely have unique PCs, not a bunch of identical role-based templates.
Permanent loss in a game like this is ridiculous.
Well, you permanently lose almost everything when you respawn.
I have a question for you: have you ever played a persistent world online game with skills/tech trees where you are allowed to reset without cost (i.e. without some permanent loss of resources like gold, credits, skills points, etc)?
Grace periods won't work, what if someone has to be afk for some period of time?
This is a valid concern. We should probably consider some "free reset coupons" instead of "free reset periods".
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If you want there to be a strong penalty for adjusting power creeps, what about a really long cooldown instead of a permanent loss of power level. Let's say you want to delete a level 15 power creep, how about locking you out of 15 levels for a month. That way, you can change your power creep without permanent loss, but you will have a month of operating inefficiently with fewer power creeps. So there will be a strong reason not to change, but if you do really need to change you can.
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@wtfrank But what if I want to reroll all my power creeps? Or if I have just one power creep?
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@artch You want to reroll all of them? then be locked out of all your power levels for a month.
Lets say I am GPL 100, and I have 3 level 20 power creeps. This means I have 40 "spare power levels". Lets say I delete one of them, then I still have 40 spare power levels but only 2 power creeps. Lets say I then create a level 5 power creep. I now have 35 spare power levels. After one month I get the 20 back, putting me onto 55 spare power levels.
For simplicity the rule could be "power levels are returned when one month has gone by since the most recent power creep was deleted". So if multiple power creeps were deleted at different times, you wouldn't have to have differing level return times and all the complication around tracking that.
So this changes the permanent penalty of a loss of power level, into a temporary penalty that is more severe for the period of the penalty, but in the long run less severe as you don't permanently lose those power levels.
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@wtfrank Forcing a player to wait for a month without access to some game feature is unacceptable. Some players may just quit during this wait. Especially if this is the first player's power creep.
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Lock out of only half the power levels you deleted then?
Or have one level "recharge" every 48 hours?
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I reckon the level drop penalty is a very elegant solution. It's functionally similar to proposals for hard timer lockouts but leaves player interaction as part of the system while scaling the penalty with the player's ability to mitigate it.
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@faff said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
I reckon the level drop penalty is a very elegant solution. It's functionally similar to proposals for hard timer lockouts but leaves player interaction as part of the system while scaling the penalty with the player's ability to mitigate it.
It's not a level drop, it's a malus to your real level. That means the scale of loss gets greater the more creeps you delete and there is nothing you can ever do to fix it. It's bad design and antithesis to fun or strategy.
@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
Honestly, I actually think you will be. Not at the start, but your pursuit of perfect optimization will inevitably lead you to the point when your every single PC has slightly modified skills tree and thus slightly modified aspects of behavior, thus effectively becoming unique "characters", unlike regular creeps which all have identical bodies. Otherwise you won't be able to achieve the desired level of optimization, identical builds of PCs won't work as good as highly optimized for given circumstances (rooms, defense/offense balance, neighbors, world location, new secret trade mechanic that will be announced soon).
Can't get to that point if deleting them costs me a usable level. I will absolutely never delete a single one and thus won't ever develop such optimizations.
Permanent loss in a game like this is ridiculous.
Well, you permanently lose almost everything when you respawn.
I have a question for you: have you ever played a persistent world online game with skills/tech trees where you are allowed to reset without cost (i.e. without some permanent loss of resources like gold, credits, skills points, etc)?
I remember the fact you keep your GCL and code being a big deal. You never lose everything when you restart, and levels are supposed to be one of those things.
Sure, some RPGs have costs for reskilling. NEVER are they the levels you're trying to reskill, and they're typically pretty cheap, in the realm of some credits or a special item you can find.
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PowerCreeps aren't showing up under Room.find FIND_CREEPS or the more specific versions.
The PTR API Reference is out of date too, in particular with some constants usage and stating power creeps have indefinite lifespans.
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I assumed PowerCreeps would have new
FIND_andLOOK_constants. I couldn't find any documentation on what those constants do, it just implied by their name.
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@artch, i fully agree with @Hernanduer when he said "Permanent loss in a game like this is ridiculous," when specifically referring to losing a power level. And to answer you, the games that I've seen that let you respecialize a character do have a cost, but the cost is never a skill point itself... Looks at Mind Wipe Tonic in Ark for an example in a "persistent online game" and Token of Absolution in Diablo II in general... Both of those were wildly successful games and they did have a cost to respec, but neither cost skill points themselves. To draw a parallel, you should make deleting a power creep cost a boatload of Ghodium or any T3 boost. We're not saying a respec shouldnt have a cost, we're saying the cost shouldn't be a power level...
Edit: another comparison: losing a GPL for deleting a power creep would be the equivalent of downgrading someone's GCL for respawning... Both are a horrible idea, and would upset players.
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I don't think the level loss is really that severe a departure from existing systems in the game, but maybe people would be happier with some sort of power Debt system where your level up rate is instead slowed (halved seems to be popular in many games) while you pay off the debt?
Then, rather than losing a level you already gained, your progress to the next one is just temporarily more expensive. The debt could dwindle automatically over a longer period of time, and it would still accomplish the same sort of scaling penalty.
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@hernanduer said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
It's not a level drop, it's a malus to your real level. That means the scale of loss gets greater the more creeps you delete and there is nothing you can ever do to fix it. It's bad design and antithesis to fun or strategy.
Are you sure you understand this mechanic correctly? It's an actual level drop. When you delete a creep, your real level decreases, the actual number decrements by 1 (as well as the internal counter of total processed power in the account, but it's invisible now). Thus the delete cost decreases too. I can't seem to get your point here.
To draw a parallel, you should make deleting a power creep cost a boatload of Ghodium or any T3 boost.
Physical resources can't be used for that purpose. A player may not be even spawned in the world, but wants to tinker a bit with Power Creeps in his account. We can only use account resources - currently it's GCL, GPL, credits, and tokens. We might use credits, but it doesn't feel natural, credits is another game aspect. And credits can be converted to power very easily, since, I repeat, power will be sold by NPC terminals starting from this release.
And most physical resources are liquid enough too, so I suppose, your point here is that the cost is just too high. What % of a level would you think would be more appropriate? Or some absolute value, without scaling with levels?
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An internal counter separate from the total power processed counter clarifies a lot. We've been assuming GPL was derived directly from total power collected. That's not nearly as bad as it sounded like before.
It's still kinda crazy to think about how much Power Hernanduer would loose if he resets a creep. A single reset for Hernanduer might cost as much as all of the power I've collected so far.
It might be more fair to have the cost of reset scale based on the level of the power creep instead of the GPL of the player.
On another note:
I just noticed the widget to edit PowerCreep names. It may have been there before and I missed it, either way thanks, it worked great.
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We've been assuming GPL was derived directly from total power collected.
That's correct. The internal counter is the total power processed. It's internal because only GPL is exposed to the UI/API, not the raw power processed.
It's still kinda crazy to think about how much Power Hernanduer would loose if he resets a creep. A single reset for Hernanduer might cost as much as all of the power I've collected so far.
But imagine how much power he can process every tick, considering that he will have 40+ Power Creeps working in his economy.
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Edit: another comparison: losing a GPL for deleting a power creep would be the equivalent of downgrading someone's GCL for respawning... Both are a horrible idea, and would upset players.
I don't think this is a valid comparison. When you respawn, you lose everything in the world. You lose time spent to build your previous empire, and now need to rebuild it from scratch. Frequent respawning is discouraged so greatly already, that there is no need to add some additional penalty to it.
On the other hand, if there was no delete cost (or it's too low), rebuilding Power Creeps would be painless. One could do that all the time. Think of it as if someone respawns constantly keeping all his world assets. Not fun.
