Quality of life improvements, that should be done with the re-branding.
-
Some suggestions for usability, coherence and better clarity This will break stuff, but it's for the greater good and a improved experience.
Since @artch mentioned sometimes that there is a major re-branding in progress,
I want to use that opportunity to introduce new naming schemes and to remove potential misunderstandings and ease the learning curve.
Also some additional mechanic changes that might be very beneficial for the game.So lets get to business:
Renaming:
The fact that I have to write natural before it is my gripe with it.
Also it makes no sense to build tunnels through walls... those are called doors
- Natural Wall
Rock (or something else 
sounding) - Natural decaying Wall We have the lava constant, so lets use it. This requires new artwork but I think it is worth it.
(This way it is a actual "cooldown"
) - Rampart Shield (because... just look at it...)
Mechanics:
-
Moving the boost capability from the lab to the spawn. Opens new ways of "pushing players" for whatever reason you might have.
This will also greatly improve the expansion rate for inter-shard colonization and allows to use PVE bounty early on. -
Lowering the Terminal to RCL 5 and Extractor to RCL 4, this is also to speed up game play.
It is crucial for new players to get a feeling of progression. (So mining allows them to sell the stuff if they don't have use for it, yet.) -
Moving to a "Coin based" subscription system, an example is found here:
Make trading subscription tokens more profitable for everyone -
Use the new introduced "fortress/stronghold" mechanics as mid to high lvl PVE,
and convoys/intruders as low level PVE with respektiv rewards so that it is engaging, challenging but also rewarding for your lvl. -
Add a flagging system so you can flag other users with "
neutral ,allied ,hostile " and show that also in the map.
I honestly think this is long overdue. I want to see more interaction between players. -
A new "offer/handshake" method to make exchanges between creeps in a safe and controlled way.
As always, please insert input below
- Natural Wall
-
For the last point, if it's about exchanging resources between two players, I can think of some user-made procedures that, if one of the party breaks the agreement, would limit the other's losses to at most one creep's content worth.
However, being able to make such offers between terminals without going through the market is something I would really look forward to !Until now I didn't really have an opinion on creep pre-boosting for I never had touched a mineral, but now that I'm getting my head in some chemistry codes I see how useful that is :
All my creeps want to do is be born and get to work, having each and every of my role having to check whether they have respawned and go out of their way to fetch a boost feels like something that shouldn't belong here.If moving the boosting ability directly to the spawn, ends up being to complicated or too much of a change, another softer alternative I can think of letting the creeps themselves boost other creeps; (HEAL seems like a good candidate to me). This you can bring the boosts directly to the creeps on their workplace, boosting becomes it's own job, and everything fits nicely.
-
@estecka said in Quality of life improvements, that should be done with the re-branding.:
However, being able to make such offers between terminals without going through the market is something I would really look forward to !
You can
Terminal.send()things to any terminal owned by anyone
-
I know that, the point here if I understood, is that you'll be able to offer, but have the resources be sent only if you are assured that the other party will send you back the payment.
A "private" order in other words.
-
The idea behind the offer/handshake method is to allow the building of trade routes.
One implementation idea could be to use the room events log, basically a mini market order but local to that room.Then you could call a handshake method to seal the trade.
But for the same reason I like to introduce the standing flag so that all (besides Invaders) creeps are standard as neutral so your turrets don't attack every foreign creep because they are listed in the "hostile" creep list.That said this could all be implemented by players them self's but it is a quite complex system and requires a lot of communication between parties. Having standardized inbuilt methods for this greatly improves the willingness of implementation of such systems.
The idea to move the boosting to the spawn is also a part of that, because it doesn't make sense to invest time into that if you only have a marginal benefit from it.Boosting in low-level rooms is a huuuuge boon and makes the low-level rooms much more fun if you have to deal with resources from the beginning.
I feel like that the game is a total grind up to at least RCL 6 and that really hurts the recruitment of new players if it isn't engaging enough.
Screeps tries to be very balanced and they did a really good job, but that is only something that is be recognized by people with a educated/experienced IT knowledge. The problem is that new people without that don't feel that way, all they see is the "initial grind".
Having those early options of boosting and trading makes it much more engaging from the get go.To summarize I want to improve the games feeling of progress.
-
@mrfaul said in Quality of life improvements, that should be done with the re-branding.:
The idea behind the offer/handshake method is to allow the building of trade routes.
Trade routes would be interesting if the world wasn't uniform. The world is uniform. You're imagining a new game. Terminals work and you get them early enough.
I feel like that the game is a total grind up to at least RCL 6 and that really hurts the recruitment of new players if it isn't engaging enough.
I'm not sure this is true. The progression for new players is quite fast and it's not like you have nothing to do. You can start work on remote mining pretty much instantly (along with anti-invader code). Reserving starts properly at RCL 4, RCL 5 has GCL 2 which is a big step, RCL 6 has terminal and basic labs, 7 has real labs, and 8 has nukers/observers.
There's a lot to do and no "grind" much at all. It's all active work early game. It's late game that lacks content unless you go fighting.
-
@mrfaul said in Quality of life improvements, that should be done with the re-branding.:
I feel like that the game is a total grind up to at least RCL 6 and that really hurts the recruitment of new players if it isn't engaging enough.
I've played the game on and off since June 2017. I control about 24 rooms. The game has never not been a grind. The entire core mechanic of the game is about increasing the number called GCL (and now/soon, power). This is a text-book example of a grind!
Except there's a lot of engaging code optimisation to do as you grind.
-
i think he meant "grind" as in the tedious, monotonous, doing the same thing over and over. in the sense of just pushing energy into GCL, it absolutely is a grind. in the overall game itself, it doesnt feel like a grind b/c there are so many things to do and so many ways to do it that prevents it from being tedious and monotonous...
-
@semperrabbit @Tigga @wtfrank
Yes, your view point is totally legit. As SemperRabbit noted it is the the monotonous part that bugs me.
While I like optimization problems a bit of variety to spice it up couldn't hurt, like hunting for caravans that offer resources that actually do something.One feeling I get that there isn't a really good power balance between the RCL levels.
Also not really much benefit of friendly inter player interaction, that makes me a bit sad.