Room signs failing to prevent novice zones from appearing
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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
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Yeah, but the fact that the majority of players agree with my interpretation shows that you very much were not clear about this. I also don't see the point in signatures at all at this point anymore since they're clearly just ignored by you.
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Here it is again: http://support.screeps.com/hc/en-us/articles/210342985-Novice-Areas
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You can't expect a tiny company to have the manpower to support you on weekends. I also think devs shouldn't give in to this kind of blackmailing, shouting and cursing. This childish tantrum we're seeing is just absurd. Please do not make it seem like one can get what they want if they act like this or there will be no end to these kind of situations.
I really like the idea of a warning period before novice area is activated.
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To be fair I opened the ticket on Friday. It was their decision to ignore it until the weekend. I also don't think it's unreasonable to offer support when the majority of the customers are actually playing.
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Also, if you look at the beginning of this thread we went out of our way to report it ASAP and before there was anyone spawned there. By ignoring the issue they made it worse.
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To be fair I opened the ticket on Friday. It was their decision to ignore it until the weekend. I also don’t think it’s unreasonable to offer support when the majority of the customers are actually playing.
Please, tedivm, you know this is not true, it was yesterday (Saturday) evening or morning depending on the timezone:
Alright, here is a temporary compromise solution:
- This novice area in question will be reset to 5 days, the next Friday.
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The following rule is added to the documentation:
If you sign a controller, please make sure that your sign message contains clear and reasonable date when exactly you plan to claim this particular room. If you don’t have enough GCL, you should explicitly comment how you plan to implement your intentions (e.g. you will drop some of your existing claims).
The eventual solution will be a mechanism to mark areas under consideration, but it’ll require some technical implementation effors.
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I wouldn't expect the devs to work 24h during Friday, or that your issue should have the highest priority. I also believe you're in different timezones. No one else has gotten any special treatment when it comes to novice zones previously either, I don't see why you should. We're all equal paying customers.
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Thank you! While not perfect (I still don't believe this n00bzone should have popped up) this is a compromise I can live with given the circumstances.
I am looking forward to an improved mechanic that will prevent issues like this from happening again. I understand your signature idea is a temporary one until you can figure out a better mechanic, but I think you should prioritize that new mechanic and get it out to us ASAP to prevent issues like this from happening again. Expecting us to come up with strings to tell you that a) we're claiming this area, b) we're dropping claims to do it, and c) the timeline to do so is a bit more complicated than is reasonable for this, but that being able to spend resources (I like the ghodium idea) to explicitly mark something as "claiming soon" will solve this issue while preventing people from claiming the whole map.
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Ashburnie, I'm not asking for special treatment. If this had happened to you instead of me I'd be arguing on your behalf, despite the antagonistic stance you have towards me. I think that expecting the admins to follow the documentation is a reasonable expectation, and where the documentation is unclear they should work with us to resolve it.
Maybe I'm just bias because I've worked at multiple small companies that have become successful, but I don't think it's unreasonable to expect a company that wants to grow to have decent customer service.
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When you really want to create newbie zones in the old world there should be a strict rule, with defined (and documented) requirements. Which will/can be also executed automatically. Different newbie zone creations I cannot understand. Especially such snakey versions like currently in E45N65
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We discussed this subject a bit more, and I think we've found an interesting solution to the entire inner novice area issue. It will be introduced on the PTR in a few days.
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I found Dissi's suggestion of "intermediate rooms" very interesting.
What about yellow/orange sectors for intermediate players. While there wouldn't be walls blocking entry, it would have some limitations to help players get established. For example - no boosted creeps (any creeps entering the zone lose their boosts), and no nukes.
I could also support Tedivm's idea of signing controllers with boosts to prevent noob zones from opening.
Dewey
