3. Ideas for next seasons

Ideas for next seasons


  • I think I would buy into almost any coop, but some team-based thing could also work wonders, though that needs to be balanced to prevent noobs becoming energy farms for the big guys.

    Any other mode + limit controllers to level X (say, 3 or 4), but have a lot of CPU (or, haha, lower CPU action cost) and low GCL. With no boosts we'll now have massive zerg-like armies instead of T3 phat quad meta.


  • One more vote for CO-OP games Hunt:

    • Few special creeps wandering on the highways, who takes only fixed amount damage from each player. ( x players will need to kill them completly )
    • Leaderboard shows the damage done to them
    • Lesser creeps should help the boss ones, to make the engagement harder.
    👍

  • Generally there are quite a few interesting game modes in other games, we could even imagine a Battle Royale 10x10 shard (an obvious limit of 100 players), GCL limit 1, no corridor rooms. 100 players start, but in the end (in a voice of Christopher Lambert): there can be only one!

    This thing could keep restarting, too, people seem to think it's not repetitive, some matchmaking can be added so that you can have a chance to win and the excitement from being one of the last few is quite a thrill.


  • @gadjung Could do a wonder that's like "The tallest tower" where you pump energy into it like a controller, which builds up its hits 'infinitely', see who builds the one-tallest by end-of-time/season. May be hard to get to the wonder in-time to trash it if not enough people spawned in the area / already were cleared, but I suppose that's part of the challange.

    1 Reply

  • So first things first, i think you've done a lot things right in this season. I havent had the chance to participate, but it's been fun to watch and read along in slack. Initially i thought releasing the mod in advance would be better, but now i think it might be good this way.
    That said, i think that the rules should be released further in advance, both so people can decide whether the season is one they would like to participate in, and also to enable speculative coding and deliberations.

    I also think there should be a while between seasons. Now it's all new and shiny, so it might not matter too much, but i think further down the line even 2 weeks between seasons might be too little – maybe a month or two? For SWC/BA and other current community hosted competitions it works well because the objective is generally always the same, but with changing rulesets and mechanics i think it'd just lead to people burning out - and it's a lot of work for you devs as well, i reckon. Might work better to keep it somewhat "special" in the long run.

    One last thought is kind of a question: Will seasons stay somewhat close to vanilla Screeps in general? I.e. season mechanics wont stack up too much, straying away further and further.. The occasional really far off season might be fun, but if that were to become a standard i could see season becoming more of a top dog / elite playground. Just wanted to ask since i'm curious what your stance on that is.

    Now, for actual suggestions:

    • I also think that there should be coop modes (obviously not all the time). A few ideas:
      • For team management:
        • Have the quarter of the world you spawn in decide which team you're on. Each of the 4 teams would then work towards their goal. To make for competition within the teams as well and keep all the big guys from playing on the same team, it could be reflected in a split in the rewards: I.e. one part of the rewards for the rank your team places at and one (more interesting / better) part of the rewards for the rank within the team. Of course players could also sabotage other teams by using portals or just walking over if they're close enough to center roads, expand there, etc.
        • Smaller teams (e.g. 3-5 players). This would be more difficult to pull off, especially if it should be a fair split between more and less experienced players. It could maybe be figured out using metrics on MMO (restricted to those spawned in for X time if necessary), like power processed, GCL upgraded, creeps killed etc. Alternatively the game mode could be one with relative (in-team) performance measured instead of absolute (global) performance.
      • For goals:
        • Something like bogden's idea with the artifact could be nice, but it would need to be worked out better. Some problems i can see with it is that:
          a.) It could be cheesed with 1m creeps that get suicided once they've pulled and incurred the 5k fatigue. A possible solution could be a target lock, where it's locked to the same creep for say 100+ creeps after a pull. With a 50m creep you could then pull once every 50 ticks, with the break even point point being a 25m creep in this example. The target lock would have to be modified to reflect whatever you want to be the break even point.
          b.) It would pretty much lock out anyone who isnt on the line to the center. An easy solution for this is to have several artifacts, which would have the nice side effect of it not being a "done and over" kind of situation where a team can finish too quickly.
    • A hitman/handyman mode - the system gives each bot targets to either kill or assist:
      • In the case of an assist:
        • The target gets notified about helper(s)
        • Points get awarded for contributing to target's economy (construction sites, resources, ...) and clearing their owned and reserved rooms of hostile creeps
        • Points get awarded to both target and helper(s) for
      • In the case of a kill order:
        • Target gets notified about attacker(s)
        • Helper(s) gets notified about attacker(s)
        • Points get awarded for damaging target's economy (attacking owned/reserved controllers, destroying structures, killing creeps, ...)
      • Rate of attack and assist orders could be dependent on players' performance - higher up means more attacks and less assistance and vice versa
      • Target selection based on performance (weighted random):
        • High performance players attack high performance players
        • Low performance players attack low performance players
        • High performance players assist low performance players
        • Low performance players assist anyone

    Heh, that actually took more time than expected. Might have been thinking about the actual implementations too much already ^^'


  • The most important thing for me would be a delay before the next season, I feel it should be a month minimum, I have really enjoyed this one but I think a good break is needed to prevent burn out. Also I like the idea of a gentler/co-op based season to help engage new players that others have mentioned. Really like 'the great road' and 'king of the hill' ideas

    👍

  • @tedivm I like your idea. To add to this idea

    I think the shards could have a pyramid structure as they go up - the upper shards are smaller, where the outer hallway corners of each level line up with the center rooms of the shard below.

    Basically the center rooms can have teleporters that go UP a level, and the hallway crossroads can have teleporters that go down a level.

    You could keep score and scorecollectors as the main mechanic for scoring. Put higher score amounts in upper levels but less energy or minerals to mine as a tradeoff.

    Even if it was just 2 levels it might be fun.


  • How about a "race" variant where a tall fixed-height map keeps expanding to the east, while losing rooms along with anything in them at the western edge (e.g. by a column per day)? Minerals could be very much biased in to vertical bands, and never all available at once, so you have to carry forward a stockpile from room to room if you want boosts.


  • Age of Power

    • All users start out with some amount of GPL, and may spawn in power-creeps in any configuration desired up to the GPL Limit
    • Powerbanks spawn more frequently, or smaller in every room (to allow for more harvesting and/or power creep renewal.
    • win condition(s)/'achievements'
      • Longest living power-creep
      • Most power-creeps
      • Highest GPL level
      • Most enemy power-creeps slain
      • Furthest distance traveled from spawn

  • Invaders have a 'sickness' and when they get within 6 range of a creep the sickness can spread to that creep. Tough parts can reduce the chance of getting the 'Invader flu'. The creeps TTL will drop quicker and can spread the sickness to others. When a creep with the sickness dies you get negative points.

    Each region of the map needs to collect/deposit heal boost into a central 'lab'. After enough boost is collected the lab will create a 'cure' You then need to boost a heal creeps with the 'cure' boost. Healing creeps while boosted with the cure creeps will give you points.

    The sector with the highest points wins.

    As if we haven't had enough of this 😥

    😷

  • Paint the World

    • Each player is assigned a color value.
    • Either signing a controller or 'moving onto' a room position 'paints' that room/roomPosition the player's color
    • mapVis shows painted rooms/positions
    • Player with the most 'pixels' (roomPositions) or rooms painted wins, can score from 'most covered area'.
    • Could also 'paint' with energy and have some low eng to build walkable structure as a 'claim' on that room position as well.
    👍
    1 Reply

  • @donatzor that's what nukes are about.

    Also if map is of similar size to current i think it should not be a problem i think every quadrant has a warfare capable player now

    Also even if not, then limit on walls and ramparts should make it more viable for multiple not-combat-versed players to have a swing at attacking

    Just pumping energy would be usual - person with most GCL wins

    To build-up on ScoreWonder structure idea:

    • instead of having Huge cost it could have 'smaller' upfront cost (i.e 1m energy)
    • structure works like ScoreCollector from S1
    • Score is produced in Labs (T1 Score
    • Score can be refined in Factory (T2 Score)
    • player deposits T1 / T2 score to ScoreWonder (1point/score for T1 Xpoints/score for T2)
    • ScoreWonder can be destroyed (deposited points are then lost forever)
    • ScoreWonder can be captured (room ownership changes - deposited points are then gained)
    • deposited points CANNOT be withdrawn and is not dropped on ScoreWonder destruction
    • Ratings based on collected Points

  • @donatzor said in Ideas for Season #2:

    Paint the World

    • Each player is assigned a color value.
    • Either signing a controller or 'moving onto' a room position 'paints' that room/roomPosition the player's color
    • mapVis shows painted rooms/positions
    • Player with the most 'pixels' (roomPositions) or rooms painted wins, can score from 'most covered area'.
    • Could also 'paint' with energy and have some low eng to build walkable structure as a 'claim' on that room position as well.

    I honestly love this idea. It'd be so visually pleasing to have whole rooms just painted in your color alone, but it'd also be a nice take on the gameplay in general, i think. I didnt know until now, but i really want this to be a season theme.

    1 Reply

  • @rayderblitz said in Ideas for Season #2:

    @donatzor said in Ideas for Season #2:

    Paint the World

    • Each player is assigned a color value.
    • Either signing a controller or 'moving onto' a room position 'paints' that room/roomPosition the player's color
    • mapVis shows painted rooms/positions
    • Player with the most 'pixels' (roomPositions) or rooms painted wins, can score from 'most covered area'.
    • Could also 'paint' with energy and have some low eng to build walkable structure as a 'claim' on that room position as well.

    I honestly love this idea. It'd be so visually pleasing to have whole rooms just painted in your color alone, but it'd also be a nice take on the gameplay in general, i think. I didnt know until now, but i really want this to be a season theme.

    You'd have to be careful not to make the season goal irrelavent until the last few days. Tying it to the controller might acheive that (claim, sign, wall off controller, defend). Or accumulation of score over time based on signed rooms.

    1 Reply

  • Age of Legends: Power processing costs are reduced by 10x, power bank spawning is increased. All rooms have power enabled. Highest GPL at end of season wins.

    Huge power creep fights, massively efficient empires, and a ton of neutral room combat.

    Edit: Read through posts, very similar to Age of Power by Donatzor above. Some general idea of showcasing cutting edge power.


  • This post is deleted!

  • I do not have a good name for this one - Get 1 point for each unique room you have had reach RCL6 at any time throughout the season. Challenges include:

    • trying to get to RCL 6 without being attacked and wiped out
    • bigger incentives to camp and/or downgrade enemies rooms, and to try retake your downed rooms to try get them to RCL 6
    • how many GCL levels you allocate to build new rooms vs keeping strong bases for launching attacks or building defenders
    • need to move empires across long distances to get new rooms to conquer
    • potential intentional respawns to reach rooms in a new area
    • challenges of building up 1 source rooms and other rooms that have weird layouts / limitations
    • trying to walk through strong rooms that are blocking access to a number of other rooms in a dead end scenario
    👍

  • @tigga

    (semi-edited / deleted the post I forgot to link to this one)

    Holding a controller's 'sign' adding to score over time would prob do, more you have signed, more points your accumulating and could also add multipliers for rooms that are owned/reserved. Would prompt wider sprawl though probably alot of fighting over territory for more score. Everybody could probably easily be on the board, but more advanced could mass-reserve areas to increase score at the cost of energy/spawning.

    If it was roomPosition/easy-to-build objects on each roomPosition with your assigned color could add score per-tick per each one, or every x number of pixels (positions) adds a point (like 25 = 1 point per tick). Would also be fairly easy for anyone with creeps around to score just by doing basic movement, more advanced players w/ scouting to score, or way more advanced to path though unowned pixels (positions) in patrolled rooms or finding best route to take to keep an area painted.

    Would agree that if it was total count at the end, would be a end-round blitz to paint as fast as possible.


  • Limited Amount of creeps:

    Idea:

    • every player gets limit of X creeps (lets say 50k? creeps) to use throughout season (could reset on respawn)

    • every creep that has WORK, CARRY, CLAIM, HEAL subtracts 1 from total creep count

    • limited ramparts to 10m(?) , walls to 50m(?) at rcl8 (so attacking/nuking is worthwhile)

    • creeps with only ATTACK / RANGED_ATTACK / TOUGH / MOVE parts do not count towards creep limit :

    to make combat, sieges and enemy-creep killing still viable and do not disencourage fighting since it's net-creep loss for attackers most of the time

    • why not HEAL then ?

    since repair/work creeps are limited to offset siege balance and encourage more planning on offense rather than just pop boosted quads all around

    Why it would be interesting:

    • renew() mechanic would come into focus
    • stronger need on calculating for remote mining (mining/transporting/defending)
    • stronger need on proper calculation for attacking and sieging (do i realy need to take-out this guy and use some creep quota by adding 'heal' parts ? should i have in-wait healers that are renewed ? etc)

    Rating: determined by amount of owned rooms, their level and amount of creeps left


  • Battle Royale.

    World gets smaller by random rooms, where the center point is randomly determined and you can't respawn in that shard. Have a lot of shards that each time you die you get pushed down to the next shard that has a lesser reward when you win. If your last to survive a shard then you get the prize for that shard, first shard being the biggest prize. That way over time you will start facing players equal to your score.

    Mass Invasion

    Where NPCs are in constant invasion and surviving will be tough and over time you will get overwhelmed. You get a ranking based on how you survive. Give enough space to everyone where it's not PvP focus but like a long tower defense game. Make invasions occur in rooms regardless of energy harvested forcing players to always be on there toes. Make strongholds spawn larger invasions. Just a lot of Pve invasions.

    Maybe even add some co-op where you want to work/trade with others to have boosts to stay alive longer. An idea is that everyone start out in the outer ring of a map, and invasions come from the outside non-stop. Everyone will want to move inside as the invasion get more and more intense and starts killing the outer layers until there's just a small space in the middle.

    I think making a PvE focused season would be nice - where players want to work together to stay alive or newbies aren't under pressure from bigger players to live.