[Proposal] Increase the size of novice areas
-
Good morning screepers,
I suffer from the belief that the future of this game is strongly linked to how well it can find and integrate new players. This area has unfortunately suffered of late.
The advent of evil organizations such as the Screeps United Nations (SUN) has drastically decreased the survival chances of new sectors opening up. It is increasingly the case that novice sectors will be completely cleared as soon as they open.
I have a simple proposal I would like to put forth, which I think addresses this problem. The opening up of the internal walls in a novice sector has already proven to be an excellent mechanic. Let's expand that behavior. Make the novice areas comprise 4 sectors instead of 1. Make the walls between those sectors drop midway between the novice area's time period. Double the period of the novice area all together. Increase the GCL limit once the walls between sectors drop.
Essentially, make the novice areas a breeding ground for stronger players or groups of players. The increased size and time they get should make them more likely to resist external pressure.
The lifecycle of a novice area would be something along these lines:
- Day 0 - spawn 4 sectors with 4 quads each all walled off
- Day 15 - drop walls between quads of all sectors
- Day 30 - drop walls between sectors of novice area
- Day 60 - drop walls to the outside worldKind regards,
Atavus
-
In this case we'll need to implement a mechanism to increase the allowed claims count gradually, which is quite difficult technically.
-
Smoothing the claim limit wouldn't be a requirement, but it would be nice. It could just be 3 for the first half, then unlimited for the second half. These super-sectors would have 240 claimable rooms, so it wouldn't be the end of the world to be "stuck" in the novice zone with someone with unrestricted high GCL. a handful of dozen GCL-10 respawned players could coexist in such a space.
That said, I am all in favor of smoothing out the claim limit, even if the novice sector doesn't get any bigger. Even if nothing else changes, I'd like to see the claim limit dropped to 2 for the first half of the current novice zone period, then 4 when the interior walls drop. 3 claims motivates a strong respawned player to completely eliminate their neighbors to harvest all 15 rooms in their quadrant, but 2 would leave space for a couple of smaller neighbors to peacefully coexist. Further, 3 claims doesn't provide much motivation at all for conflict/expansion when the interior walls come down; a good player will already have 2-3 RCL-8 rooms when that happens, and then just be bored or needlessly violent for the next two weeks.
-
A fair point Artem. I would then double down on Sparr's suggestion. Just drop the GCL limit after the internal walls come down. Either the inter-quad walls or the inter-sector walls. Whichever makes more sense.
-
Addendum: novice zone geometry and opening order doesn't actually have to change to accomplish this goal.
Geometry could stay the same, but order change a little, if instead of opening a 20x20 room block for one of these mega-novice-zones you opened a 10x40.
Better yet, and with much more interesting side effects... you could keep geometry the same and the opening order the same and promote diaspora if you opened four 10x10 zones exactly where they would get opened now, but made them persist twice as long, and for the second half of their lifetime, throw in portals between them. This would also inspire new players to write portal-using code much sooner (week four instead of maybe-never)
-
Hadn't thought of it that way Sparr, but it's an interesting twist.Just spawn these areas at the map edges. Always 4-5 sectors bound together into a single novice area. If it would be possible to have portals spawn within this area during the second half, that would make it an awesome experience.
The main idea is to enhance the novice areas and give them a better experience before throwing them out into the real world. The current time frame of 30 days is wholly insufficient for them to prepare.
-
One side effect to consider - on days 30-60 it will be very hard for completely new players to join this novice area, so we have to reserve more sectors in total which affects world growth dynamics.
-
I think that increasing time won't result in better protection for novice players. Many players live with paper walls and even without them for months. At any rate, a new player by no means can prepare within reasonable time against 10+ players unless maybe he's a revived veteran.
Walling the world for 2 months won't save from an alliance as well: a player behind the wall can join the alliance and get reinforcement through a terminal and then cleanse the territory. Besides, a group of players has the same limits that a single player has: GCL and CPU, so "evil" alliances don't get any benefits by cleansing very large territories.
