Power Creeps - Others can enable power in my reserved rooms
-
I'm only GPL7/GCL14. I started playing this game in Jun 2018 and haven't had years to farm power like some people around me. Enabling power is just simply equal to hanging a "come and killme/take my stuff" note because I have absolutely no other way to deal with multiple 25+lvl power creeps roaming my neighbourhoods. So no. I am not going to be enabling power anywhere in my rooms any time soon.
And I have been arguing ever since introduction of power creeps that some of their powers are too OP and have no active counter to them outside of "oh, but you can just kill the creep". Yeah, you can kill Tigga too, but how well has that worked for ya'll so far?
I would rather focus my time on something more productive in the game right now, as I haven't had years to develop my codebase either, so it's always a game of catching up for me.
-
The matter of perma power enabled and not being able to disable it is something that bothered me for a long time now.
I really hadn't any viable suggestion so far, of how this could be addressed in a fair and transparent matter.But reading this conversation gave me a idea:
Power can be active by two ways:
- PowerSpawns enable power in rooms passively
- A room without a PowerSpawn is activated by a power skill for a set amount of ticks
This means anyone processing power is forced to deal with the consequences but also allows to chose to activate power or someone rather failed to protect his controller.
This somewhat protects players against high GPLs without making it impossible to use power as a fair offensive mechanic.I think this is a fair compromise imo the current mechanic is lacking.
-
@orlet I mean that same argument applies to older players with massive stocks of t3 boosts....
-
@wtfrank said in Power Creeps - Others can enable power in my reserved rooms:
@orlet I mean that same argument applies to older players with massive stocks of t3 boosts....
If anything this only serves to prove my point. It only further exacerbates the great canyon of a gap that is between old and new players.
-
@wtfrank said in Power Creeps - Others can enable power in my reserved rooms:
@orlet I mean that same argument applies to older players with massive stocks of t3 boosts....
T3 boosts will be used, stolen, or destroyed. Power, once converted to GPL, is never lost. A new player now will always be behind a more established player no matter how good either of their code is. This will only get exacerbated more when the other PC are released.
The main problem comes down to how power was released. This has given some players a huge advantage over others just due to their time played. Had power and PCs been released at the same time then I don't think there would be nearly as much of an issue about having power turned on. It may not even need to be an option to toggle had that happened.
-
@kyralee Welcome to MMO. Established players always have a advantage in a MMO world..
-
@gimmecookies Established players should always have a advantage but good MMOs make sure that does not hinder new players progress.
Currently those mechanics in screeps are not able to provide this, shard3 is a good first attempt to level the playing field and it is working so far.
But creating a lot of shards with the only difference in CPU cap or other arbitrary restrictions is unreasonable.The core mechanics must provide buffer between those players or winning new players will get increasingly difficult.
-
@mrfaul ah come on. Show me the replays where established players are wrecking new players with PCs... afaik there was not a single fight till today with a PC involved. The bounty is still not claimed. You can stop complaining and try to catch up, it's not that hard.. I was negative about PCs, and still would prefer the game without. But i can see how it can make the game interesting.. I'm GPL11 now with code written in a hour, far from optimal. But it works..
-
@mrfaul The experience is probably wastly different for different players. From my standpoint it isn't the experienced players that new players should be concerned about, but the players starting at roughtly the same time in the same area. Those are generally more agressive in order to secure expansion options.
-
@GimmeCookies I don't like it that you are not able to turn off power in a room without even the person who turned it on.
No matter on how you look at it, it isn't fair. I don't have beef with the PCs in general just with some specific parts of their mechanics.
A other method would be to turn off power with safe mode should also be a compromise.@SandGrainOne you are completely right about that with the current mechanics it favors greatly the person with high RCL in that scenario.
IMO there is some balancing mandatory.
-
Nothing's fair. Someone who has played the game longer than you will tend to have slightly higher levels than you, and have a slight advantage. This is how RPG mechanics work, and RPG mechanics are arguably a powerful motivator of player engagement retention. (possibly because of a sunk cost fallacy but that's a different story).
Here's a way of looking at it that is completely fair: if you're behind someone else, then improve the code and carry on racking up GCL, and if your code is better than theirs you will eventually exceed them in GCL. What could possibly be unfair about that?
If you want there to be no advantage between old and new players, then you must get rid of the RPG level mechanic. The game would be entirely different (and perhaps have no in-built long-term per-player hero story arc).
I'm not saying that the game is perfect, but you're suggesting something that is at the level of converting it into an FPS. This is the type of change that could be done at a pre-alpha experimental phase of development. Not in a mature product!
-
Question for @artch Is the power enabling mechanic a transition period or a longterm plan?
If a new shard is released, will it have power enabled in all rooms? Or are you expecting to keep the enabling mechanic for the foreseeable future.
-
@davaned This mechanic is not supposed to be temporary. It's an opt-in mechanism which allows newcomers not to worry about the added complexity of this gameplay. We don't have plans to remove it anytime soon, including on new shards.
