PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps
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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The PTR API Reference is out of date too, in particular with some constants usage and stating power creeps have indefinite lifespans.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.
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I keep wanting to weigh in here and say that I really don't like the penalty, but then I see the reasoning behind it. However, we need to make sure the cost is reasonable and scales appropriately.
There has been some confusion about the cost, since higher power levels cost more. The main thing is that if I reach level 10, then reset, it should cost the same to get back to level 10 as it did the first time. Resetting just effectively moves you back in time.
Some of us were worried that it was instead calculated like
powerLevel = getPowerLevel(powerProcessed) - numberOfResets, which would be really, really bad. That would mean every reset effectively increases the cost of all future levels - I think we can all agree that this would be madness. @artch seems to have confirmed that this will not be the case, although this perhaps needs stating a bit more clearly.HOWEVER
So far I've been assuming that resetting deletes all power creeps. I'm very surprised to see it only affects one. That seems very wrong to me, especially since you can choose to have lots of low level power creeps or one big one. If I'm at level 10 and I choose to have 10 power creeps at level 1, it should not cost me all 10 levels to reset them all!
Similarly, If I'm at level 50 and I create a level 1 power creep and then decide to reset it, I should not be reduced all the way back to level 49.
As @deft-code suggested, surely the cost should be based on the level of the power creep being reset?
This is why the higher-level players feel that this is unfair - because it is! @artch is right that higher-level players are in an unnatural situation, which is true. But they're forced into this situation. Let them make the unnatural situation natural by allowing them to "hold back" on their levels and develop their power creeps gradually, as if they were starting from a low-level.
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Some of us were worried that it was instead calculated like
powerLevel = getPowerLevel(powerProcessed) - numberOfResets, which would be really, really bad.I have no idea where this comes from. Some rumors in Slack probably. The wording is quite clear:
When you permanently delete a power creep (either from the UI or the API) you will lose 1 Power Level in your account, i.e. your processed power decreases.
You lose it for real. You were GPL 45, you delete a creep, now you're GPL 44. Fully identically to the situation when you were GPL 44 some time ago. No hidden variables.
As @deft-code suggested, surely the cost should be based on the level of the power creep being reset?
We might consider something like 4% of a Global Power Level for every level of the creep being deleted. But honestly, encouraging to have a few bigger PCs rather than a bunch of smaller ones is a good thing too.
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Update
New feature deployed: experimentation periods. An experimentation period can be activated for 24 hours, during which power creeps are deleted without cost and without delay. Each player has 30 experimentation periods initially, and we will replenish them from time to time when major balance changes occur.
@artch +1 on the experimental period, great way of handling it as long as spawning the power creep doesn't take longer than the day. If you had to delete all the PC's with one day, then test them out the next day and find out they didn't work so had to use another day it wouldn't be ideal.
Random thought: If you want to start working on goal oriented progress and more onboarding to the game, you could reward all players who reach(ed) 5 GCL with 5 free power levels. That would give players a way of messing around with power creeps and not feeling super locked out. Plays into the "hero" idea where they can get one hero creep, and understand that if they work for it they'll be able to level them up. It's harder to see the value if they don't have a taste of it, and concrete goals are great for player retention.
It's a shift from just a "raw world" type progression, but it's a thought.
@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
Update
New feature deployed: experimentation periods. An experimentation period can be activated for 24 hours, during which power creeps are deleted without cost and without delay. Each player has 30 experimentation periods initially, and we will replenish them from time to time when major balance changes occur.
In the current state you have there, this is actually a nice solution for my problem. I understand the need for penalizing re-creation of power creeps too often, and I still disagree with losing power levels, but this seems like a generous solution that still works against anyone trying to abuse the system.
@davaned said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
Random thought: If you want to start working on goal oriented progress and more onboarding to the game, you could reward all players who reach(ed) 5 GCL with 5 free power levels. That would give players a way of messing around with power creeps and not feeling super locked out. Plays into the "hero" idea where they can get one hero creep, and understand that if they work for it they'll be able to level them up. It's harder to see the value if they don't have a taste of it, and concrete goals are great for player retention.
It's a shift from just a "raw world" type progression, but it's a thought.
Power will be buyable from NPCs on the market and the first few levels are meaningless in amount, so that doesn't really seem like a very useful thing to give for free and break all other "rules" the game has in place.
@hernanduer Just because it's always been that way doesn't mean that's the best way. We have heard complaints about a lack of external motivations more than a few times.
I'm not saying it's necessarily the way to go forward, but worth considering. Part of the reason I suggested it is so that accounts could have a baseline of 5 power, so no new player messes up and deletes their first power creep entirely. They'd be able to play around risk free and never drop below 5 levels of power.
I could see a new player ragequitting if they put a ton of effort trying to get a hero and then suddenly they lose it while learning. I've certainly messed up some stuff early on. I despawned entirely when I first started, I didn't realize that pressing unclaim on my controller would immediately delete me, I thought it would let me replace my spawn like when I first claimed the room. This was after a decent amount of RCL growth. And then when I tried respawning in the same room to get my stuff back everything was deleted. Very very frustrating experience.
Again, it's a departure from the current style of complete open world. I do think that a few onboarding "quests" could be valuable though. Getting a thousand market credits for free upon getting your first level 8 room, getting some power when you get to x GCL. Gives new players clearly defined goals/quests to aim for.
I'd really like to see some quests/achievements to help direct new players to try everything out. Even without any rewards I think this would be helpful.
When I read about loosing a power level, I thought it to be quite ridicilous too.
Having experimental periods or long cooldown for recreating a creep is a much better idea. As for the details - maybe 30 periods is too much, but they definetely should be replenished periodically.
@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
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.
No. It's apples and oranges. It SHOULD be painless to rebuild a Power Creep. Just as it's painless (For a high level player) to rebuild a room. People delete rooms ALL THE TIME to build new ones... it doesn't decrement their GCL. Your example of a FULL RESPAWN is ... facetious at best.
So, what PROBLEM does Power Creeps ACTUALLY SOLVE, if any? It's not a parallel development path... in fact it increases the cost of development several fold. The only logical use in that regard is to get your GCL to a sufficient level and THEN segue to PC development.
Ok, fine. I can be down with that. But what problem does it ACTUALLY SOLVE, other than "Oh gosh. 6 months in and I've utterly demolished this game." Which does not happen in screeps. Ever.
The problem it solves is the time it takes to level a room to level 6 to get the TERMINAL. That one building that solves all your problems.
With Power Creeps, I can use OPERATE_SPAWN to blast out mules to send energy (In the form of recyclable creeps) to the room I want to get to level 6. So it can get a TERMINAL.
Just set the level for a Storage at level 3, and the level for a Terminal at level 4. Done. Problem solved. Noobs will be all "Woo! Storage!" And ignore the Terminal. After all, it's useless to them until level 6. Mid level players will be working hard to develop their terminal code early, and advanced players will just do WHAT THEY'RE ALREADY DOING. Which is use complex systems to mule up their forward bases to level 6.
@smokeman said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
Just as it's painless (For a high level player) to rebuild a room.
Rebuilding a room takes a lot of resources. It's not painless at all.
So, what PROBLEM does Power Creeps ACTUALLY SOLVE, if any? It's not a parallel development path...
Yes, it's a parallel development path, "wide" and "tall" empires, it was discussed on this forum many times.
Also, it's a new programming challenge and gameplay style. When you program regular creeps, you code small uniform units with primitive behavior covering only one or a few tasks. Effective Power Creeps will need smart AI with complex behavior to leverage all their various skills.
@artch said in PTR Changelog 2019-02-01: Power Creeps:
Power Creeps are now available in ptr beta branch on npm and Steam:
I cant seem to spawn a power creep on my local steam server on Windows 10. The .spawn method returns "0" but no power creep is spawned. The only reason i can think of that it should return "0" and not spawn is if the Power Spawn is blocked by another Power Creep, but there are no blocking creeps. The power creep is created, just not spawned.
