3. avg tick duration climbing up

avg tick duration climbing up


  • The change that kinda bothers me is the fact that ever since steam release avg tick duration was climbing up and changed from ~1.5 (UPD: players in comments say it was 2.5 during steam release, but no mater time frame it is obviously growing with the amount of players in game) to >3 (3.13 last week, 3.51 last 24 hours, 3.78 last 10 minutes atm of post creation) which may seem like not much but if you consider the 24/7 fact then you kinda realize that it means you progress >2 times slower already, you wait 2 times more for things to happen, you harvest 2 times less energy per real world day, you upgrade you controller to next RCL 2 times longer, and basically you buy less progress for the same subscription price. The game was slow paced, and now it's 2 times slower then slow paced. The CPU system imho already seams kinda not 100% fair since the amount of goods you receive for the price differs based on your GCL (which mostly, differs with real world expirience, buying VPS for instance), but at least it encourages new players to write better code. But, again, imho max room count is big enough reward for GLC and trading (equally limited for all players) CPU time in the begging for efficiency (billion little checks for range to everything? billion little creeeps that chain from source to controller in pre-Link room? and other crazy CPU eating creative stuff) and profiling\optimizing as you progress seam like fun too. If ~constant tick duration is not possible (which it seam like), wouldn't it be fair for players be billed based on amount of ticks code gets executed? If not, would you, player, change your mind if in a week it will grow to 5s per tick? 20s per tick in a month?

     

    UPD:

    If tick duration growth is inevitable and player base is willing to pay for current model, the other suggestion that i have is balancing out energy (and probably minerals too) according to tick duration, enlarge the amount of energy sources have, amount of energy per WORK part harvested e.t.c. so amount of proggres per real world time stays same with tick duration growth.


  • Regarding your billing idea: I don't think that's fair, unless the developers also have to pay less rent and spend less money on groceries when the tick time goes up. I don't really think I'm paying for server utilization. I'm paying for them to keep up their work. That's about it.

    But yeah, 5s per tick and I'd need to get back to real life...


  • It would be nice to see the tick times go down. However, I am not paying for CPU time or any creative stuff might be officially said. I pay because this is a unique game that excites me. I would be willing to pay several times more then the current cost with that in mind.

    I payed 60 euros for the latest Galactic Civilizations and played it for 6 hours. So far I have payed 10 euros and spent 200+ hours.

    I have the subscription now which means I payed another 20 euros, but that's for the next 6 months. Compared to the average price / time I see in most of my steam games this one is a god like investment.

    If there is a suggestion I could offer it would be this, there should be some additional way for me to give money to the developers. Let me buy development credits which give me voting rights on what gets developed first. Or give me very expensive credits that let me buy additional CPU time at a diminishing return rate. I currently have to invest a significant amount of my game time optimizing my CPU usage. I would be willing to trade money for time.

    tl:dr

    I am in no way dissatisfied with the current services offered.


  • it had been at 2.5 seconds per tick looong before steam release, actually. Also, Screeps used to have that "pay for what you use" system before it was scraped for the current payment model, and it made the game way more approachable and interesting at the same time.

    The GCL restrictions aren't the problem though, the problem is just that there's more and more players and the whole server structure doesn't seem to scale that well. that'd be the same no matter how you bill the players.


    • If there is a suggestion I could offer it would be this, there should be some additional way for me to give money to the developers.

    TOS prohibit you from registering new account to play game, it says nothing about registering new account and never spawning. If you can (have money to) support developers and the thing you want is supporting developers and not lobbying your interests or pay2win, then everybody will be glad if you create as many new account as you want, pay subscription and never spawn on them.

    • it had been at 2.5 seconds per tick looong before steam release, actually.

    I was not subscribed at the time, and at the time there were no status page for screeps, but when i found out about the game (few days before steam release) on multiple occasions i found messages from players saying that tick duration is 1-2 seconds. If that (2.5s) is the case, i'm sorry for misinformation.

    • Also, Screeps used to have that "pay for what you use" system before it was scraped for the current payment model, and it made the game way more approachable and interesting at the same time.

    I know that, i'm not suggesting that, i'm suggesting pay for fixed (and equal for everyone) amount of ticks model. You pay for N ticks and if tick duration is 3 real world seconds your script is running with whatever CPU restrictions (equal or based on GLC) you have for 3*N real world seconds (not CPU seconds), if tick duration is 10 real world seconds your script is running with whatever CPU restrictions (equal or based on GLC) you have for 10*N real world seconds (not CPU seconds).

     

    If tick duration growth is inevitable and player base is willing to pay for current model, the other suggestion that i have is balancing out energy (and probably minerals too) according to tick duration, enlarge the amount of energy sources have, amount of energy per WORK part harvested e.t.c. so amount of proggres per real world time stays same with tick duration growth.

  • Dev Team

    Tick duration is a known issue, we understand that it may be frustrating, and we're working on optimizations now. Our current goal is 2.5-3s per tick.

     

     


  • Would rather the site just have a visible "current average tick length" visible on the front page. That way, if you have any long running things. I dont have to fully open the game to check on them, i can just see how long ticks are.
    And maybe if you click on it, you can see a graph of the last few minutes to hours to a couple days.


  • @Nikarus that already exists. Check out status.screeps.com.