Room going from RCL2 to RCL8



  • The room at E2S7 on the MMO server went from RCL2 to RCL8 at record breaking speed this morning:

    https://screeps.com/a/#!/history/E2S7?t=19550754

    Can we get some clarification about what happened here?



  • Just had a look. The downgrade timer also has a strange behavior. It almost downgrades the RCL and then suddenly gets an extra 10k.



  • Asking Hernandeur directly, it seems it was an accidental manual unclaim.

    This doesn't sit well with me, should probably give a little context as to why. Hernandeur and I have been engaged in some combat over the last few days. He attacked me and took out a lower level room and forced another into safemode. This was likely a response to my alliance attacking someone in his alliance. After that, an attack by myself and taiga forced his room (the one in question) into a safemode.

    Sometime after this, Hernandeur accidentally unclaimed the controller, significantly compromising his room. After submitting a support ticket, the room was restored to its original state.

    I would really like the devs to clarify, is it their policy to revert player mistakes? How do you decide which requests to fulfill?

    In a multiplayer game, an action like this has consequences not only the player in question but those he/she is engaged with. Making mistakes is part of any game, it changes the game significantly when players are insulated from their mistakes. 


  • Culture

    Hernanduer



  • Had I committed resources and mental energy to an attack in this war I would feel that the game was being manipulated against me.


  • Culture

    It was just a slip of my finger while I had the controller selected. There's no real purpose for that button to exist on owned rooms anyway, it's such a dangerous thing to have available at a click.

     

    The room was already in safe mode, there was no effect on the conflict.


  • CoPS

    I don't think it is unreasonable that a player can have a major manual mistake rolled back, if it was clearly a mistake and it doesn't affect other players too much. Of course, it shouldn't happen often - maybe once per account, ever.

     

    When it affects other players, more care needs to be taken of course.

     



  • @Hernanduer well that makes sense. Without an opportunity to take advantage of this mistake the reversal is far less offensive to your opponent.



  • > The room was already in safe mode, there was no effect on the conflict.

    That's not true. The safemode ended when the controller was unclaimed and there is also 50k ticks before it can be reactivated. It is also very outlandish to think that you could have restored the room in 20k ticks even if a safemode was allowed.

    edit: To clarify, I'm not asking for any reverting of the reverting. What's done is done and any further admin actions will just make the situation even more artificial.


  • Culture

    I can't think of many other examples of something like this happening, although I suppose there are some. I'm pretty sure if the button was simply removed from the game this would be a rare event going forward (especially since the respawn button does require confirmation).

    I really don't get why there isn't a confirmation button for the unclaim, or why people can't just use the console to unclaim a room manually. Something that potentially harmful should require having to type in the actual code to do it (and it's not hard to do the one line needed).



  • I have to say, this is a bit surprising.

    The unclaim button has a confirmation request.

    I have not seen any complaints in public forums, slack or private circumstances about the unclaim button.

    Hernanduer has 38 claimed rooms, so accidentally dropping a room is hardly significant enough for him to require direct intervention by the devs. Devs whose attention should really be focused on improving the tick times and CPU stability of the game.



  • http://i.imgur.com/roo9kyK.gif 

    There is definitely a confirmation. Whether or not it is enough is a good question, but atavus makes a good point that it has been this way for a while and I'm unaware of any complaints or accidents.

    I'm ready to put it behind me. I think in the future, if a rollback needs to happen in a PvP-heavy situation such as this, extra caution needs to be taken. If the administrators feel a rollback is warranted, it might be worth thinking about a compromise. For example, allow the room to go back into safemode but don't manually add RCLs to the controller.

    Also, it is important to be transparent about the action you are taking. I think it would have gone a long way to diffuse concern if the devs had just said "we realize this room is involved in a conflict but we acknowledge there is an issue with the controller unclaiming mechanism and would like to restore this player's RCLs". To just silently accommodate one player shows a total lack of regard for the others involved in the situation.

    Finally, there is a bit of an elephant in the room. Dissi, our community liaison, happens to be in the same alliance with the player in question. I'm unaware if it was Dissi or someone else on the team who made the reversal. What kind of assurances do we have that administrative decisions that impact dissi or his alliance will be objectively made? Personally, I'd be willing to accept even just verbal reassurance and transparency. When actions need to be taken that impact Dissi or those in his alliance, it seems best that someone else make the call.


  • Dev Team

    > I would really like the devs to clarify, is it their policy to revert player mistakes? How do you decide which requests to fulfill?

    The break of RCL2 lasted only 6k tiks (19544756-19550756).
    During this time there was no attack so restoring is not affected to anything.
    But if it had not restored then the following negative consequences are possible:

    * Hernanduer is unhappy because he's all thumbs;
    * The belligerents are unhappy because they are lost a fair fight;
    * Support is unhappy because couldn't help;
    * Developers are unhappy because created a button that makes everyone unhappy.

    Be happy! 🙂