Future of Screeps: What do the devs envision?

[artch]

@davaned Awesome, good idea, please post a list of questions and answers here on forum when you're ready, and we'll include them in the official survey emailed to all registered users.

[tedivm]

@artch if you really are spending that much on advertising perhaps you need to do better targeting. Right now I can't even force your ad to show up on any of the major programming subreddits despite attempting to. You've also been using the exact same text for your add on reddit as the post from a year ago, and instead of linking to an actual landing page with cool content and a CTA you're just linking to the rather bland front page. This isn't something you just "throw money" at- marketing takes a bit of effort.

What I suggest doing-

1. Blog about stuff, even if it's the community managers doing it. Next time you have a "quarterly report" type thing post it on reddit and then use that as your promoted listing.

2. Get videos of some of the good battles, and make ads out of those. Using Google Adsense make a few animated gif ads of creeps doing stuff.

3. After big features come out do a quick round of emails to game journalists offering interviews or asking if they'd like to review the game. @Esryok has some great stats showing that after articles are published you get a lot more subscribers.

As a final note advertising won't matter at all if you don't engage in the community in a positive way. Half the time it seems like when we bring up ideas you only want to argue against them, and at this point even the community manager role seems more about having the CMs convince us that you are right than to take feedback from the community and give it to the devs. You even pick stupid fights on reddit which negates half the publicity you get (and that's not even bringing up the attitude you have in this thread). The only reason this game exists is because of this community and to be completely blunt you seem to take it for granted.

[Davaned]

@artch Excellent! Glad we are on the same page. I think having data open to the devs and users on what the overall playerbase wants will go a long way to reducing the friction that has been developing lately. Transparency is always good! I'm excited to see the results.

[artch]

@tedivm Oh well. So you didn't take the advice, and are continuing to act as a mentor with an assumption that you are competent and we are not. I have no idea why you have came to such an assumption, but I don't really want to justify and prove something here. Just try to believe that we're actually putting efforts into all that rather than sitting our pants and wasting time. And that we've researched and tried, in fact, all of your suggestions and plenty of others. Oh well, do you really think we didn't try things like animated gifs or journalist contacts?

As a final note advertising won't matter at all if you don't engage in the community in a positive way. Half the time it seems like when we bring up ideas you only want to argue against them

And this generalizing again. Please speak for yourself. You might probably have noticed already that 95% of fights and friction on this forum have happened with your participation. Don't you think it may indicate that something is wrong with your way of expressing your ideas rather than our way of listening to them? Like, trying to constantly claim that your next idea is the only proper way for Screeps to survive and bloom? And if someone disagrees with you, he is simply mistaken and incompetent?

You even pick stupid fights

My weak point

[tedivm]

@artch said in Future of Screeps: What do the devs envision?:

Don't you think it may indicate that something is wrong with your way of expressing your ideas rather than our way of listening to them? Like, trying to constantly claim that your next idea is the only proper way for Screeps to survive and bloom? And if someone disagrees with you, he is simply mistaken and incompetent?

Someone could have written this exact statement to you and it would apply just as much. You treat the whole community as incompetent, whether here or on reddit (in conversations I wasn't even part of I'll point out). Your entire argument for not letting the community get more involved with the code base seems based around the idea that we're too stupid to do so. You even treat the mere idea that someone other than you might have a good idea as an insult, even if people are literally just trying to be helpful.

[artch]

You treat the whole community as incompetent, whether here or on reddit (in conversations I wasn't even part of I'll point out)

So now you're comparing competency of project developers who worked on it for 5 years, and a person who started playing it a month ago.

You're entire argument for not letting the community get more involved with the code base seems based around the idea that we're too stupid to do so.

Really, did I say that somewhere? All what I said is that managing open source project can be as time-consuming as developing it internally, and when the issue is in human resources, it doesn't work well for every project.

You even treat the mere idea that someone other than you might have a good idea as an insult, even if people are literally just trying to be helpful.

Oh come on, you can't be serious. Please search this forum for words "good idea" and such written by me - you can start from this very thread few posts above. A lot of excellent players' ideas got implemented in the game already. Like 50% of game mechanics are proposed by someone someday, and we're happy about that.

[tedivm]

@artch No, i'm not comparing your competency. I'm talking about your attitude. It is completely possible to engage with people who disagree with you without having an attitude. When people read the comments from your posts (which you promote) and see all of your comments flagged as "controversial" as well as you arguing with people and giving them attitude (as opposed to discussing with them while remaining reasonable) then they are going to be less likely to join this community.

As another example, even though I was clearly wrong about your advertising budget doesn't mean that none of the ideas I brought up are worthwhile. You are right that your competence at building this game is really high, but that doesn't mean you know everything about every subject. There's a reason people make landing pages for their ads, and the simple suggestion from me that you vary your reddit ads a bit more was not an insult despite your insistence to take it as one. I get that you are attached to this game (who wouldn't be after spending five years on something), but you have to stop taking general thoughts and advice from people as insults.

[artch]

Alright, I'll consider your opinion in the future. I'm not fully convinced that it's not just your personal opinion, but anyways useful to know.

Also, don't forget about the language barrier, a lot of misunderstandings may originate from it.

Regarding advertising, I meant that you're suggesting such basic ideas with such confidence we have never researched them, that it becomes, well, mentorish and... no, not insulting, but hilarious. I probably need to put more emojis to be more clear about that

I mean, yes, I personally can't know everything about every subject, but this is the reason why it's not just me who does all the advertising. Or do you think Screeps is still one-man show? There is a reason why I always say "we" instead of "I", and it's not just about core team of developers, there are contractors, consultants and partner companies.

Thanks for taking time to think about ways to improve our marketing though. Such involvement is appreciated!

[Knightshade]

Alright, I'm going to jump in here, despite my better judgement.

@tedivm No offense buddy, but you kinda have that linux-guy vibe that makes it really difficult to agree with you sometimes.

@artch I'm not really sure where that 30% to marketing is going. I've never seen an ad for Screeps. From what I can tell, the ad you have running on reddit seems to be a general site ad, not something specifically targetting, say, /r/javascript (unfortunately, from the ad page it's impossible to tell where the ad is being posted). In any case, something like 55% of people run adblockers- I'd go so far as to say the overwhelming majority of programmers do, so a straight ad (something most people have trained themselves to look past anyway) may not be that efficient, dollar per dollar. You've got the solid numbers (presumably), so you'll know better than I how cost effective the reddit ads are generally.

Personally, I think one of the better forms of advertising we could have is by the idea (mentioned a while back) of having a sort of ".edu" version of screeps- a version specifically designed to be run by a professor to a classroom, allowing the professor to pay for a single lisence (provided they have a valid .edu address, plus whatever qualifications are necessary, etc). That said, that's more of a long-haul word-of-mouth strategy, so I won't argue that it will or will not be cost efficient.

I think some of these ideas- blogs and the like give a way to advertise without advertising.

As for tick rates, 2.4 second ticks would be nice. Really nice. I could work with 3 second ticks, because I tend to do screeps a couple hours at a time anyway and that gives a buffer for debugging, checking, etc. This is something we'll need to get hard data for, though, as has been said. Anything less is just a room full of people standing on soap boxes and shouting at each other.

I like some of the other ideas here. Sub tokens for engine code and bug fixes is a good move. Being able to look up player info with an extension of the user prototype that already exists would be great.

Despite the difficulty of implementation, has the idea to create an in-game poll system been considered? I.e., you log in, see a little blue bubble that says "A new poll is available!", and then the player can answer a question regarding, say, how they'd like power creeps to launch, or what their desired tick rate, is, etc. Logging their answers, as well as metadata about the player who picked the choice, could give us a lot more information about the playerbase. (Ex. New players are more sensitive to longer ticks, steam-sub 10cpu players are more interested in full iso-vm, etc.) I think it'd give us the ability to make a lot more educated decisions rather than resorting to flamewars on an internet forum where a fraction of players actually go with any regularity or see. We run a very real risk of catering to the vocal minority. (As an aside, I'd recommend publishing the data once it's made anonymous, so the community has a better ability to understand why you're making the decisions you are, but that's a matter for another time).

Honestly, speaking to both @artch and @tedivm, I expect better than this out of the Screeps community. I have a rule- before sending any email, text, or post when I'm agitated,I get up, walk around for a bit, grab a bite to eat, go sit in a park for an hour, etc. If I come back and sending it still seems like a good idea? Go take a shower, maybe a nap, etc. If after all that I still think I'm making a sensible, levelheaded response, then (and only then) I send it. Now, you both seem like friendly chaps from when I've spoken to you (whereas I'm an asshole, I'll admit), so you probably don't need anything so extreme, but it is something to consider, I think.

[Davaned]

@knightshade Agreed, and thank you. In the end, we the players want to play a game that is fun and rewarding, and the developers want to create a fun and rewarding game. That requires mutual collaboration and understanding.

[artch]

@knightshade Excellent input, thanks!

Personally, I think one of the better forms of advertising we could have is by the idea (mentioned a while back) of having a sort of ".edu" version of screep

This is a very good idea, and we're still trying to wrap our mind how to effectively implement it in the current model with the least effort. It seems to be a huge project.

Being able to look up player info with an extension of the user prototype that already exists would be great.

Exactly, this is the reason why that weird owner: { username: "..." } object exists instead of a simple username property. It will be populated with more data eventually. No ETA though, it's just in the backlog.

Despite the difficulty of implementation, has the idea to create an in-game poll system been considered?

We'd need to think about that. Currently I'm more inclined to create a full-scale survey using a third-party service and simply promote a link in the game and via email newsletter.

[Ashburnie]

I think that many people agree that @tedivm is easily the most disruptive player in the screeps community. He manages to make everything personal and is unable to have arguments without them heating up. He will escalate things until he gets his way. He never has any intentions of trying to calm down the tempers in the discussions, act politely towards other people, use the approach of assuming good intentions in others, or see things from another point of view.

The best approach I have observed to work is to completely ignore him. And he certainly is not the "voice of the community" he likes to portray himself as.

[tedivm]

@artch

This is a very good idea, and we're still trying to wrap our mind how to effectively implement it in the current model with the least effort. It seems to be a huge project.

I think there's two ways to do this, one of which is hosted and would require more work from the Screeps team, the other self hosted and would require less (it could even be a community based project).

With the self hosted option there are two things that need to be done. One would be to create a deployment system to make it easier for CS teachers to host and deploy (a simple docker setup or some brebaked machine images). If interested this might be something the community could put together (I've been thinking about puppetizing the setup anyways, so tossing teraform in the mix shouldn't be hard).

The biggest problem here though is the lack of a client that doesn't require steam. Since you mentioned to @ags131 that you're going to open source the new client (or at least the room viewer aspect of it) this problem may seems like it'll get a lot smaller over time.

So if it's something you're interesting in getting community involvement on it seems like you may be able to get an education version with low effort from the primary devs.

The hosted option will be a lot easier for schools but also requires more work from the devs. It'll also involve more support (schools paying for hosting will probably want fast response times), but it can directly make money by charing from hosting. It definitely seems to me like this would be further out.

[tedivm]

With regards to me thinking I'm "the voice of the community"- come on. Look at the very first post that started this conversation-

The comment from me in there, in case anyone can't open the image, is that I think the devs should send out surveys to get the full community opinion. At no point have I said "you must listen to me", or even "I speak for the community". In fact I've been pretty clear when I've said that things were my opinion ("I think" being a phrase I use regularly). The one time in this thread where I said that I heard people in slack being vocal about things I said, in the same sentence, that a survey should be used to get the real opinion. This is the same stance I made in slack and is the reason why @Davaned started the survey project.

While I have not been saying "I speak for the community", what I have been saying is "you should listen to the community more" and I stand by that.

The last time I complained that they weren't talking with the community enough they hired a community manager (and I'll point out that the thread I started pointed to a bunch of other people's topics, not my own, and that that thread was in fact very civil).

With that in mind I would appreciate it if people would stop putting words in my mouth, but I get that some factions in this game view insulting other players or causing drama as a sort of "politics". But I want to be clear here- people who keep pushing this propaganda or agenda where they try to paint me as trying to be some "speaker of the community" are doing it for their own reasons, and it really does not have a place in this conversation or even in fact.

[artch]

@tedivm

I think there's two ways to do this, one of which is hosted and would require more work from the Screeps team, the other self hosted and would require less (it could even be a community based project).

True. And there is one more way - to improve Simulation mode so that it can persist game state, and allow this state to be shared to other users. A teacher would create a "task" or a "quest" for his students and see how they solve it. Such direct and easy approach might be even more suitable for in-class activities than managing a full-scale world, and it is completely free since it can be done via the web site registration only, Steam purchase is not required.

[Davaned]

Ted, this frustrated me recently and has before. I was extremely disappointed that you backed out of leading what might be an excellent chance for reconciliation between the devs and us. If the goal is to improve the state of things, you can't just raise issues and attack without being willing to take steps to solve them.

Honestly, you have some good ideas and do a lot technical things for the community, but I think the tone you take has a tendency to turn discussions into arguments. I do think we've got a great opportunity on our hands though.

Hopefully artch will aim to deliver what the community wants, so if others share how we feel then they'll want to do whats best for their players. I have faith, I think this game is really cool and we all want it to succeed here. Part of how we get there is keeping things civil.

artch I do want to make sure that everything remains open to the public so we can see the raw survey data.

[tedivm]

@davaned if you quote the rest of the conversation I also state that my involvement in the project itself might cause it to be ignored, and I think that the messages in here from various people support that. Having someone else in the community take lead on this project seems like the best way to get more people involved and to keep the accusations people make against me to the minimum (I won't be trying to "speak for the community" with this survey if someone else is taking the lead on the survey, for instance).

[Atavus]

Esteemed colleagues and friends,

I see spirits and tensions run as high as they always tend to. I won't feed the conversation surrounding Tedivm and do think it should be discussed somewhere else. This thread is here to hold an important discussion that is likely to yield a useful outcome for the game.

Here are my thoughts around the tick time.

I personally don't believe that the tick rate is a major cause of player loss. I think the tick rate is a simple excuse. A visible thing to point to. Whether the tick rate is 2s, 3.6s or 5s, it's still in the same order of magnitude. This game is (and should be) a slow game with engagement over hours or days. In fact, this is one of the things that has been very attractive to me about the game.

I have been playing mmo games for a long long time now and I've had a special attraction towards mmo strategy games. One of the core problems with most mmo games is that they require time. Lots and lots of time. Which is fine if you're a teenager. Not so much when you've got a job, wife and kids. It's natural for interest to rise and wane over time. The beauty of Screeps is that it allows players to maintain a connection with the game during their low periods.

I'm strongly in favor of a 3.6s tick rate. It makes understanding and translating game events into the real world much easier. An hour is 1k ticks, a day is 24k ticks. You send off an attack and log back in one hour to see it in action. It segments interaction with the game in a clean way.

2.4s is another reasonable choice due to the creep life cycle but does not translate Screeps time to real-time as clearly.

Still, the only reasonable choices IMHO are 3.6s and 2.4s. The choice of which to pick should be made on ideological grounds of how the player is meant to interact with the game and not on which one is the cheaper or fastest choice. A faster game is not necessarily a better one and, again, I seriously doubt that the game's speed is the real reason people would leave.

Personally, I feel faster tick rates benefit established players more than they do new ones. The faster the game, the more automation plays in and new players can't be automated at the required level. My memory of 2s tick times was quite a stressful time when the game was sucking much more time then I could afford to give it. I was close to quitting a number of times due to the game being too intense.

Fundamentally, I think people are not having a problem with the tick time, but with reaching a point of equilibrium with their environment and losing the pressure to survive. Once a player is in that state, it doesn't matter what the tick rate is.

[Dissi]

I've waited quite a bit with replying to this conversation due to the controversial nature, but I've decided it's quite a good idea to share my vision on it as well.

@atavus said in Future of Screeps: What do the devs envision?:

This game is (and should be) a slow game with engagement over hours or days. In fact, this is one of the things that has been very attractive to me about the game

I got the same feeling as atavus here. I've got quite a demanding day job and have very little time interfering/fixing my scripts. If someone were to exploit a bug in my script it could take days before I could have time to fix it. If ticks were really fast I would not have time to fix it and some rooms could have been lost.
I do not mind losing rooms, but I could do exactly 0 things about it at that time, which is an issue for me. I would not have had the time to improve my scripts. This game for me is about perfecting my AI to deal with a lot of diverse problems. With faster tickrates that could become problematic for me. Especially with timezones of different players, they could schedule full fledged attacks in times that I'd be alseep.

@atavus said in Future of Screeps: What do the devs envision?:

I'm strongly in favor of a 3.6s tick rate

I agree with this tick time, it's fast enough for ~1 wave of creeps to do something in 1 hour. But for others, it might be too slow.

[o4kapuk]

Guys,

It's hard to deny that slow tick could be a negative experience for some players. On the other hand, fast tick could also be a negative experience for another players, primarily for those who can't afford checking out with the game too often. Some people got a job after all.

Given the single shard, it's obviously not possible to satisfy everyone. Fortunately, the game now have shards system now so there is fast shard1 for players who want intense and/or interactive gameplay as well as slower shard0 for those of us who prefer to have more time to react on world's events.