Decorations update
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@artch said in Decorations update:
@subodai Thank you for your feedback! It looks like your point is only about graffiti. Indeed, graffiti is the least valuable decoration type by design. We encourage you to try get other types, such as fully customizable landscapes visible on the world map, creep skins, user badges. And in the near future - structure skins and action animations.
You're welcome but you side-stepped a lot of my questions. from my experience of the rolls so far 90% just seems to be "filler". You skipped over legality, chance of drops, the list of what's droppable (this feels like a 100% requirement, otherwise we're literally buying blind, which is unnacceptable).
I'll just be skipping this feature in it's entirety I think.
These items being tradeable from a blind lootbox doesn't feel legal in the EU to me at all.
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@subodai All images are legally licensed to use for this puprose. Please don't worry about that.
As to revealing the full list of decorations, chances of drops - I understand that you would like (and even demand) to get this info, but we believe it's more fun if players discover new decorations on their own. It makes it to feel like discovery instead of shopping cart.
Overall, I'm sorry that you feel so disappointed about this feature. But it's very optional and you can continue playing Screeps without touching decorations if you dislike how they are implemented. We receive a lot of positive feedback about it, so probably it's just not your thing after all.
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@artch, I think you may have misunderstood the question about legality. Because you are allowing people to pay for a randomised reward it's effectively a form of gambling, which means it falls under gambling legislation in many jurisdictions. You may have to comply with certain rules such as clearly publishing the list of possible rewards and the chance for each of them.
If you haven't already I would strongly recommend looking into this - I would hate for you to run into legal issues over this.
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@systemparadox Definitely second this, the legislation has been changing rapidly in the past couple years so it is important that you guys look into it.
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I raised this on Slack, regarding some EU legislation, since "Loot Boxes" are for example completely illegal in Belgium (CS:GO had to make regional patch for that) and are quite grey area in other EU countries - not a lawyer but being able to
- buy virtual currency (pixels) with real money (via steam)
- get radomized loot (decorations)
- sell decorations via real money (via steam)
fills all the checkboxes for definition legal definition of "Loot Box" / gambling, @o4kapuk answer was that they are not breaking any law and it's game feature.
Regarding decorations itself - I'd recommend looking through some rooms with multiple decorations:
- sometimes they lower
readabilityof room and/or mask some features (walls/ramparts/etc) - they are broken if browser does not support WebGL (make room completely unreadable)
- tend to lean heavy on browser GPU cpu and memory
Besides this - i like feature itself, i see it as good credits sink and i guess it gives developers some nice profits
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RE: EU Lootbox legality.
I think the pat answer here is "Let the store handle it" as in be ready to remove pixels from the store in contested countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands.
The other issue is circuitous RMT paths, like Steam Dollars and Credits. Since those cannot be limited by region (Well, possibly with the Steam Dollars...) the fallback position is remove pixels as trade able through those currencies. Pixels on Steam are problematic anyway, and removing Pixels from the in game market also works fine.
By any measure, allowing direct account to account trades should always be a no go zone.
This leaves selling CPU Unlocks and the Season access tokens directly for Credits. I think you'll need to add that to stop inflation. However, use a modification of Blizzard's system... two token types for CPU unlocks, one sold in the cash shop that can be transferred or used as a CPU unlock, and one sold for Credits, that can ONLY be used as a CPU unlock.
Gadjung: Pixels for Credits is not a sink. Those credits stay in the player realm. To be a sink, the Credits must be destroyed when the transaction takes place.
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We appreciate your care about our legal position, but let's not worry about it. We're fine. We analyzed this concern when we designed this feature. It's not gambling, we're not selling items. You can generate pixels in-game using your CPU (which we also sell!), so even if we removed pixels from the store, you still have the same process: buy CPU -> use it to generate pixels -> get random decorations. Or buy CPU Unlocks -> sell for credits -> buy pixels -> get random decorations.
The randomness of decorations crafting does not make it gambling, it's simply a game mechanic involving some in-game resources. The way how you get these resources is up to you and does not relate strictly to crafting.
You can also sell your purchased pixels directly for credits if you wish, so you're not "buying blind". If you choose to spend your pixels in a game mechanic with a random aspect, then that's your choice, we're not forcing you. We provide you with the specific and visible amount of pixels, that's all.
If gambling was treated this way, then any game with some random aspects in its mechanics and transferable purchasable resources would be gambling.
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@gadjung said in Decorations update:
they are broken if browser does not support WebGL (make room completely unreadable)
Decorations should be disabled if WebGL is not supported. Isn't it the case for you?
tend to lean heavy on browser GPU cpu and memory
Do you have more specific details?
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Well I am going to have to agree with some of the above posters about room visuals. They really affect the readability of the room to the human player. There have been several rooms that I have to really study just to determine where the swamps and natural terrain are. Obviously the code doesn't have an issue with it but the human player might. That is going to really hamper people if they need to do some emergency coding.
Looking at the world map with the room visual alpha mode on I can see an unsightly patchwork of various room visuals. Honestly it just looks ugly to me. I would greatly like the ability to turn all of this stuff off.
Regarding the Steam market, is there anything you can do about selling pixels on there? Currently the lowest price we can sell pixels for is $0.01 where as you(the devs) are selling them for $0.0012. There is absolutely no way we can compete with that. If that is the way you wanted it to be designed then so be it. If that is the case, there may as well not be a market entry for individual pixels.
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Yeah, the decorations aren't too bad, but the background layers can be made to really obscure what's going in a room. I'm not a huge fan of those.
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@artch said in Decorations update:
We appreciate your care about our legal position, but let's not worry about it. We're fine. We analyzed this concern when we designed this feature. It's not gambling, we're not selling items. You can generate pixels in-game using your CPU (which we also sell!), so even if we removed pixels from the store, you still have the same process: buy CPU -> use it to generate pixels -> get random decorations. Or buy CPU Unlocks -> sell for credits -> buy pixels -> get random decorations.
If there is an OPTION to roll a random thing using something with real world value, that strictly IS gambling. just because you don't force it, doesn't make that go away.
The randomness of decorations crafting does not make it gambling, it's simply a game mechanic involving some in-game resources. The way how you get these resources is up to you and does not relate strictly to crafting.
Yes it does, it precisely makes it gambling.
You can also sell your purchased pixels directly for credits if you wish, so you're not "buying blind". If you choose to spend your pixels in a game mechanic with a random aspect, then that's your choice, we're not forcing you. We provide you with the specific and visible amount of pixels, that's all.
Having the choice to gamble with them on a completely unknown set of end points is 100% gambling.
If gambling was treated this way, then any game with some random aspects in its mechanics and transferable purchasable resources would be gambling.
Yes, that's EXACTLY what it is in ANY and all games with that mechanic where the currency to buy said random boxes is attainable for real world money. This is precisely why there has been a massive crackdown on it artch.. It doesn't matter that there are other options, the fact that there is ANY option to purchase or a purchase flow to get a random lootbox for currency through any path, makes it gambling.
This is like saying you can gamble to win a thing for x number of monies ( $ cost of pixels) on a random roll, OR you can pay more actual $ to buy the thing from the store... This is 100% gambling.
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@artch i see that no-webgl supported browser no longer render decorations - my bad here
regarding cpu/memory opening rooms with decorations (walls/floors) seem to add ~50-100MB to Memory of Screeps tab in browser, and bump GPU process around 100-200MB also (that fells down a bit later)
Seems also that there are leaking Dedicated Workers (hard to pinpoint from where/what action)
Also opening rooms with decorations feels 3-5x slower than opening other rooms
@artch regarding Selling Items: The 'possible' legal issue is not that You sell items that are random, but that the game creates possibility for a player to participate in gambling using real world money
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Well I am going to have to agree with some of the above posters about room visuals. They really affect the readability of the room to the human player. There have been several rooms that I have to really study just to determine where the swamps and natural terrain are. Obviously the code doesn't have an issue with it but the human player might. That is going to really hamper people if they need to do some emergency coding. Looking at the world map with the room visual alpha mode on I can see an unsightly patchwork of various room visuals. Honestly it just looks ugly to me. I would greatly like the ability to turn all of this stuff off.
True, some decoration combinations may be very bad choice. But room owners have their right to make bad choices. It's their property, we don't want to restrict them in any way.
Regarding the Steam market, is there anything you can do about selling pixels on there? Currently the lowest price we can sell pixels for is $0.01 where as you(the devs) are selling them for $0.0012. There is absolutely no way we can compete with that. If that is the way you wanted it to be designed then so be it. If that is the case, there may as well not be a market entry for individual pixels.
That is something that we plan to fix later, but it's not an easy fix, so it may take a while.
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@gadjung What is your OS, browser, video, how much RAM and CPU do you have?
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@artch Win10, I5-6600k, 16GB, NVidia GTX 1060 6GB, Chrome Version 83.0.4103.116 (Official Build) (64-bit)
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@artch While from a legal standpoint you are fine in Russia, I think they are worried about what it means in EU and if they invest any money into pixels that it might be taken away at a later time, or that it might be legal issues. They are asking these points for you, not for them selves.
Nothing about how to get pixels, or the randomness of getting items makes it gambling. It's the fact that it's tradable for other currency(steam$$) makes it gambling. Take away the trading and you take away the gambling factor.
This is how it's gambling: Money->Pixels->Art->Steam Inv -> Money -> Pixels.
Take away the Steam inv and replace it with in-game trading and it might take away the money part of this equation:
Money->Pixels->Art->Credits->pixels->Art
The current graffiti is just random graphics, it would be cool if it was more screeps related, and maybe even have contests for players to draw vector art that can be voted on and put in the game. Why is there no graffiti with actual game art? You have all these cool designs and stuff in the GUI, is this not available?
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@likeafox Of course we're talking about EU. Russia jurisdiction has nothing to do with it.
Sorry, I don't really want to continue these arguments. We're grateful for all your opinions, we considered it as well as our own research, and we're fine, really. There will be no legal issues. Let's stop this discussion please. Let's talk about the game, not about legal matters that none of us are competent enough in.
Why is there no graffiti with actual game art?
What makes you think there is no such graffiti?
Currently active image base is just the beginning. We're working on more, a lot more. We will add new images all the time, including unique art and very special sets of images.
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An issue I'm having is that I really dislike the "Lighting effects" in the room, so I have them disabled and the "animated swamps" (Which look like toxic waste) turned off. I have no idea if I'm the lone weirdo for doing that, but it is what it is.
Anyway, the issue is this makes the wall and floor textures WAY too light! I keep looking for the rare feature to be able to set that, but all I seem to get is "Stroke brightness" which does very little.
If you could push the brightness control for W and F decorations to a lower rarity, that would make a LOT more of the textures usable.
Added images: Here is what a typical texture looks like in one of my room:
But THIS is what it looks like in the preview:
It looks much darker because the preview defaults to the "normal" lighting. This gives a false sense of the actual appearance of the image on an actual room if you're not using the "normal" setting.
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Oh. And as long as I'm here. I like the range of images. Sure, I toss the goofy "stock line art" into the recycle bin, but what else is it for? The way I see it, Screeps is a "generic image game" with round and square shapes instead of styled, rendered images. It's very "indie" in that respect and i like that style. As such, there are no real "Screepsy" images TO put in there.
But a range of images like you are putting in will produce ones that appeal to people. For example, I really like the circular "Babylon ocean clock face" looking graffiti I have in that room. No way it's "Screepsy" at all, but it lends an artistic flair to the room. At least, in my opinion. And I'm the one that has to look at it.
So that part is fine.
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