Room signs failing to prevent novice zones from appearing
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Dear Rob and Devs of Screeps,
I think we can all agree that the mechanism for how novice areas are created in the interior of the map needs reform. There is a clear cycle of concern coming out of the current way of managing this subject. I've personally started a few threads on this voicing my own surprise and concern over the past months.
That being said, I feel it was relatively clear from the discussions surrounding room signing that this method was advisory. Simply a way to express the player's intent to the developers. There was no reasonable way that this would represent a full proof method. It was never part of any official documentation and the PTR discussions wouldn't count as such. This game is being continuously developed and it is easy to collect contradictory statements from the long series of discussions on hot subjects.
I also think the Screeps devs need to work on their communication skills. In a game where the community is such a central piece, it would be valuable to invest a little extra energy in managing this relationship.
Regarding the management of novice areas, I will reformulate the idea collected from the previous discussions which I find the most appealing.
Any area which the devs would like to turn into a novice area should be flagged as such (visible on the world map/controller signs) for an arbitrary amount of time before this happens (ie 1-3 days). If players reserve/claim rooms in that area in the meantime the novice area will adjust accordingly. At the very least this would give interested players another chance to voice their intentions through new controller signs.
Kind regards,
AtavusPS: Rob, we haven't always seen eye to eye (most of the time), but the community will suffer from your departure should you decide to go through with it.
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If I may add my 2 cents:
The official documentation states that you can prevent novice areas from spawning by reserving or signing:
> If you don’t want some rooms to get transformed into Novice Areas, you should take care to reserve or at least sign them.
SourceSo, in my honest opinion that novice areas should not have spawned. And the novices there also have a small problem when the novice status expires. (Hint: They will die if tedvm is still around)
So, basically, the question is now how to handle that:
- Remove the Novice Area, exposing all new spawned players to tedvm now
- Keep the Novice Area intact, let tedvm destroy everything there when the borders open.
There is also the question how to deal with the community:
- Say "there was no mistake" and loose some valuable pillars of the community
- Say "We did a mistake, and removed the novice protection" - And what do you tell the players in that novice area?
- Say "we did a mistake, but we have no idea how to fix it" - I don't know what will happen.
There is currently no solution to make everyone happy, but I hope that you will find a good one.
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> Then what additional restriction rules you suggest to add, except:
Signatures do two things-
* They let players know where territory is claimed by players. This is more of a social construct that makes it so alliances with agreements about territory can follow them easily.
* They prevent n00bzones from opening up.
I would leave the signature bit alone so it can be used as a territory marker, but add an ability to mark them as no n00b *for a price*. If I have to send a tagger with a bunch of ghodium to prevent the n00bzone from popping up that's fine.
The important thing though is that we can't have "fake rules". It's unacceptable to tell us that something will work a certain way and then to just decide that it isn't without notice. It's impossible to play a game where the admins change the rules without telling us.
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So the devs so far have stated that there are no rules for this ... but that the rules were strictly followed. Hm.
There is indeed a pretty clear statement towards the bottom of the Novice Area page: http://support.screeps.com/hc/en-us/articles/210342985-Novice-Areas
That is not some random forum. That sure looks like part of the game's core docs to me.
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@Logxen I get a strong feeling the devs are not native English speakers. This is, unfortunately, a source of continuous frustration, but it also means nitpicking on their choice of words is just inflaming everyone's spirits.
From the context it feels more like what Artem was saying is:
- controller signing is advisory and not a hard rule
- Sergey was strictly following the rules for novice area generation
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I've been one of the first people to tell people not to nitpick over language, and to give the benefit of the doubt when language seems to be a barrier, but there's no excuse for their statements and the official docs to contradict their "shadow rules". In cases where mistakes occur they should be willing to work with us to solve them, which does not appear to be happening here.
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I think, one rule we may formalize is that your signing message should contain clear and reasonable date when you plan to claim this particular room. If you don’t have enough GCL, you should explicitly comment that you will drop some of your existing claims.
So the devs so far have stated that there are no rules for this … but that the rules were strictly followed. Hm.
No rules regarding signing, I mean.
That is not some random forum. That sure looks like part of the game’s core docs to me.
Documentation is documentation, discussion is discussion. Discussion may eventually result in some documentation, or may not.
Folks, it is Sunday evening. Let’s please take a timeout until tomorrow. I think we’ll come up with some compromise solution then.
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Artem-
This is a game. Most of us have jobs. We spend the week doing our jobs. We spend the weekend playing the game. By delaying until tomorrow you're essentially forcing me to wait a week. This isn't fair, especially since I opened a ticket with you on Friday- no one forced you guys to ignore this until now, but you're forcing me to live with your decisions.
If there is certain data that should have been in the signatures it's your job to document that. I followed the rules and am now being punished for doing so, and frankly I expected more out of the admins here.
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I stand with you on this subject Rob. The devs have mismanaged their relation to the community more than once. An area which could certainly use improvement. Personally, I like to imagine the Screeps devs like some basement hackers with serious social disabilities. Most devs I know have some "deficiencies" in this department.
Whatever the case, my main desire is to temper the spirits a little bit. I feel your reaction could be qualified as out of bounds. Atlan was certainly a lot more justified to be outraged with that funny novice area which appeared multiple times. Check out the older thread, it's a real doozy.
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I agree with the players voice in this case.
It's clear in the documentation that signing a room will make it noobzone-proof if it's been signed in the last 5 days. There is no way to misinterpret those rules.
The noobzone in question will have noobs in it who will probably be bombarded with nukes/boosted creeps the second the walls go down, this is not good from a gameplay and noob experience perspective.
I would highly suggest to NOT create noobzones in established worlds anymore. If you spawn outside a noobzone you should have code which can deal with attacks, and use safe-mode effectively.
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I’d like to quote my post from that old PTR forum thread:
Every day will be safe. I think even 2-3 days is a good estimate. We’ll add this to the documentation when this feature goes live.
I clearly stated that in case if/when this rule becomes a thing, it is to be added to the documentation. It has not been added. The signing feature has been launched, but the “novice area signing rule” has not been introduced neither in the changelog nor documentation. You seem to have misinterpreted some ongoing non-finished discussion as an already established rule, and I apologize that I might be not very clear (English is not my native language indeed), but I think it should be obvious that forum contents cannot be considered as some strict game mechanic rules. Sometimes in hot discussions on the PTR forum I make diametrically opposite statements, while we are in the process of considering some complicated topics. But they only take effect when they make it to the docs, not while they are being discussed.
It’s clear in the documentation that signing a room will make it noobzone-proof if it’s been signed in the last 5 days
Could you please provide a link to the docs page containing such a rule?
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I would highly suggest to NOT create noobzones in established worlds anymore.
It will make our world half-empty very soon, since many novice players simply stop playing, and their void zones cannot be fulfilled by nearby active players with the speed fast enough to make them populated.
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We've given you the link to the documentation repeatedly, and you've ignored it.
http://support.screeps.com/hc/en-us/articles/210342985-Novice-Areas
http://support.screeps.com/hc/en-us/articles/210342985-Novice-Areas
http://support.screeps.com/hc/en-us/articles/210342985-Novice-Areas
> If you don’t want some rooms to get transformed into Novice Areas, you should take care to reserve or at least sign them.
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I meant this rule:
It’s clear in the documentation that signing a room will make it noobzone-proof if it’s been signed in the last 5 days
Where in the documentation it says something about “5 days” and “noobzone-proof”?
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> It will make our world half-empty very soon, since many novice players simply stop playing, and their void zones cannot be fulfilled by nearby active players with the speed fast enough to make them populated.
Are we playing the same game? When players time out other players move in pretty quickly. Alliances resettle their younger players. People create jump rooms to move in. There's no situation where valuable rooms stay vacate for long.
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It will make our world half-empty very soon, since many novice players
simply stop playing, and their void zones cannot be fulfilled by
nearby active players with the speed fast enough to make them
populatedIt won’t! If you adjust the spawn mechanism to make it an “intermediate room” to spawn it it will make clear that it’s dangerous to spawn there, but the rewards can be high.
If there are lots of zombies nearby they will not be attacked and it’s basically a noobzone. Just make the color orange/yellow instead of walling it off and making it a noobzone. This way established players can still get into the zone, but it’s made clear to new guys that they may be attacked at anytime.
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> Where in the documentation it says something about “5 days” and “noobzone-proof”?
Seriously, you're going to ignore the documentation we showed you repeatedly, but are going to nitpick over that bit? How about you respond to the fact that your noob zone documentation clearly states that signing should have done something?
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Also, this insistence that we ignore what you say in the forums is kind of ridiculous. Should we never trust anything you say then?
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Seriously, you’re going to ignore the documentation we showed you repeatedly, but are going to nitpick over that bit? How about you respond to the fact that your noob zone documentation clearly states that signing should have done something?
It does do “something”. We read all sign messages every time we plan new novice areas, and do our best to take them into consideration. But we never officially stated that any “5 days” or “noobzone-proof” rules do exist in the game. The fact that some players like Atavus interpret it in the same way as we do, shows that we weren’t completely unclear on this matter:
That being said, I feel it was relatively clear from the discussions surrounding room signing that this method was advisory. Simply a way to express the player’s intent to the developers. There was no reasonable way that this would represent a full proof method
