3. Draft: Seasonal server

Draft: Seasonal server


  • I think you're misrepresenting their reasoning.

    Screeps Inc thinks they can serve the communities desire for a flavored seasonal server better than ScreepsPlus can. They've been reluctant to try before now because of the effort involved. An official clone of the ScreepsPlus seasonal server wouldn't really be worth it (and possibly risky optics). If they're going to compete with ScreepsPlus's seasonal server they need to make it better. They've defined better as resurrecting the World Review and adding seasonal flavors. They're checking with the community if they're OK with this. Would you pay for a better version of ScreepsPlus's season server?

    They've been very consistent in their view on the CPU subs. You buy screeps to get access to the client which gives you access to private servers. If the community 3d clients every stabilize you wouldn't even need to do that. The CPU sub is the player paying for time on the Screeps servers whether that MMO or whatever. However Screeps Arena pricing plays out we will not need another CPU sub.

    I think this confusion is partially why they're considering a Screeps Seasonal product. To help everyone grok that we buy the games and server time separately.

    My feelings:

    ScreepsPlus doesn't do flavors. We totally could. Custom leader boards aren't that hard. We could launch a World Review on ScreepsPlus. But we haven't. Would you bump up ScreepsPlus's patreon a bit if AGS agreed to do these things?

    My hopes:

    I'd like Screeps to offer services that don't make sense for the entire community but would work at a premium tier. Nickel and Dimeing? Kinda, but kinda ala cart. I'd love an official Logging and Monitoring feature, but few others do.

    I'd also hope that Screeps Seasonal would add deeper changes or custom API tweaks eventually. ScreepsPlus could alter constants, or crank up the invader rate, etc. But I'd love something like all Swamps are lava and damage creeps and structures. Or a new FLY bodypart. These would be really hard to do well with mods on ScreepsPlus.

  • Dev Team

    @kyralee

    I want to see if I have this right. We have to have bought the base Screeps game, plus also purchase access to the Seasonal server? If you want more than 20 CPU in either the MMO server or the Seasonal server you also need to buy a CPU subscription?

    That's correct.

    I am assuming people will need more than 20 CPU to be competitive on the seasonal server, correct?

    Not sure about this. Probably we can make two shards and two season rating leaderboards - for subscribed and non-subscribed players. But it's not decided yet.

  • Dev Team

    @shibdib Please read the first post in full, it's all explained there including our reasoning for such pricing, see Marketing section. Without this fee, the seasonal server idea will not work.


  • While I generally like the idea of seasonal servers, I don't truly agree with the pricing model right there. Namely, having to pay for both access and cpu sub to be competitive not only sounds like pay-to-win, but also like double dipping to me. It just feels... wrong.

    Here's my ideas on how you could go about this to make it a bit more fair to everyone:

    1. Drop the cpu sub effect on seasonal shards. Leave it to be MMO specific, and allow everyone on the seasonal shards pay for entry, and have a specific cpu limit (say 100 for everyone). This puts everyone on equal footing (isn't that the goal for the seasonal servers?). Adjust the access cost/seasons pass accordingly, if needed.
    2. Keep the sub cpu effect, but create completely separate shards for cpu-unlimited (normal 300 cpu cap) and 20-cpu shard, each with their own, separate leaderboards. This way we'll have equal footing for the subscribers and non-subscribers, leaving them to compete against their equals. Maybe even have separate goals for each of the shards?
    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @orlet The option 2 is something that we're considering and that I mentioned in the previous post.


  • I am totally in favour of a seasonal server - I've been waiting for this for a long time.

    However, like others I feel the pricing is a bit strange - you really run the risk of making this feel like double-charging. @Orlet has excellent suggestions there.

    I understand why you would want to tie-in with the persistent game and help promote it, but I think you should seriously consider option 1 to just completely avoid the double-charging issue completely. If you do go for option 2 you are going to have to think very carefully about your marketing.

    There is another issue I would like to raise here. I personally have an issue with subscription services and prefer to only buy lifetime subscriptions or not at all. Are you considering any kind of lifetime membership for the seasonal servers? Also, what about players who are only interested in the seasonal servers? It seems strange that you can't buy access to the high CPU seasonal server without also getting access to the persistent servers.

    Personally I would choose to give up access to the persistent servers and only run on the seasonal servers, given the choice. Perhaps you've deliberately designed the pricing to prevent that. But it might be nice to have the choice. The lifetime subscription was quite an expense and I'm not really happy about possibly having to pay similar again for the seasonal access.

    Another suggestion would be to have a fixed CPU limit on the seasonal server (say 100 CPU) and give players a choice of how to access it:

    1. Sacrifice 100 CPU on the persistent servers and allocate it to the seasonal server (with no other costs to access the seasonal server)
    2. Pay for one season of full CPU. No persistent subscription required. If the player also has a subscription on the persistent servers then it is unaffected.
    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @systemparadox Please take into consideration that the CPU expenses is not everything. We're going to provide unique content for every season and also spend a lot of time making the chronicle, videos and reviews during the season. This work should be paid somehow as well. If you switched your CPU from the persistent server to the seasonal server, well okay, it covers the server cost, but it doesn't contribute to our expenses in this other area.


  • I would hope that the time spent on the chronicle, videos, etc would turn out to be really good marketing for you and end up paying for itself. Obviously that may or may not be the reality but I'm sure we all wish for screeps continued success 🙂

    The unique content is an interesting one. I'd be really happy with just a seasonal version of the current game. But ranked goals and interesting challenges is a pretty exciting prospect too!

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @systemparadox said in Draft: Seasonal server:

    I would hope that the time spent on the chronicle, videos, etc would turn out to be really good marketing for you and end up paying for itself. Obviously that may or may not be the reality but I'm sure we all wish for screeps continued success

    Unfortunately, we don't have resources to invest into marketing this way, and we have to consider this seasonal project paid work rather than investment. We're a lean startup with a small team and no outside funding.

    1 Reply

  • @artch said in Draft: Seasonal server:

    @systemparadox said in Draft: Seasonal server:

    I would hope that the time spent on the chronicle, videos, etc would turn out to be really good marketing for you and end up paying for itself. Obviously that may or may not be the reality but I'm sure we all wish for screeps continued success

    Unfortunately, we don't have resources to invest into marketing this way, and we have to consider this seasonal project paid work rather than investment. We're a lean startup with a small team and no outside funding.

    Semi off topic, has outside funding been looked for? I'd imagine outside of the usual game investors you'd be able to sell the product well to educational groups, etc..

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @shibdib Yes, we have looked into that.

  • Dev Team

    One more additional reason for selling season entrance fee: we may set up a reward for best players in the season. Say, 1 Subscription Token for everyone in season TOP-X.

    1 Reply

  • @artch said in Draft: Seasonal server:

    One more additional reason for selling season entrance fee: we may set up a reward for best players in the season. Say, 1 Subscription Token for everyone in season TOP-X.

    Nice idea!


  • I'd like some stuff my creeps on MMO could show off instead 🙂 Like a banner or something!


  • @artch said in Draft: Seasonal server:

    This can be a content event like "go there, do that, fight with this thing, gather that thing and gain season score points". It will last during the entire season and will be unique for every season. This will be the primary metric for generating the leaderboard; common GCL and GPL metrics will be either removed or made secondary.

    I think racing others over GCL, GPL or a combination could be pretty fun, I would definitely not appreciate it being removed. It also flies well with seeing how existing bots, in it's current state, perform relative to others. To be honest I still have many things to implement on the game as is, getting yet more stuff to program for seasonal content doesn't sound all that attractive to me, especially if it would just be temporary code for just that one season. I will probably not bother at all in that case and focus on stuff that has continued value and use.

    As a side note I think for the regular servers it could be nice to have more forms of ranking/achievements also. Perhaps work on the seasonal game could bring some things over to the regular servers.


  • Can we get any update on this devs? What's the conclusion based on the poll results and how are you going to proceed forward?

    1 Reply
  • Dev Team

    @qzarstb the conclusion is that seasonal content is planned for development. More details will be announced separately when we're ready to disclose them.

    👍

  • I love Screeps and look forward to a seasonal server and any other improvement that allow new players to get into the game.

    Just today, a couple of hours after having a novice area protection lifted (Shard3), a dominating and aggressive player, wiped me out with 2 power creeps. From what I've been able to determine, he is a power player that can't realistically expand any further because of shard3's CPU limit, but he can send out powerful creeps to wipe out new players that claim rooms in the area. I watched as those two creeps went from room to room taking out the spawn in each room so that each player could not rebuild their room. The creeps had enough healing power that even rooms with 6 towers could not damage them.

    Just seems bad for business $$$$ that a player like that can stockpile resources waiting for the novice area protection to be lifted, then proceed to destroy rooms being built by new players. The new players were dead men walking the moment they spawned into the game, just didn't find out until the novice protection was lifted. In this specific case, new players are intentionally being used as target practice. No new player is going to purchase a mmo subscription $$$ to be used as target practice.

    I like the idea of seasonal server because it would significantly reduce he problem I have just experienced. At least everyone would be starting about the same time, so there would not be power players simply camping out, stockpiling resources, then playing target practice with new players.


  • Finally a idea that could bring a steadier and new income stream.
    (And even managed to make me post something)
    However here are my two cents that are needed for it to be a success:

    • Undiscovered world map / fog of war
    • equal CPU limit for all participants
    • you get one chance in a run, so be prepared to defend your self
    • A "season run" starts monthly,
      the time frame should be a 1/3 year aka 4 month.
    • Players need to be registered in advance for a "season run"
      and get grouped based on their overall screeps metrics. (if available)
    • Season servers are instances with a fixed amount of equal starting rooms
      that get randomly populated with players of a group so they are on equal footing.
      (This is to ensure server performance and fairness)
    • Ideally there are three entry models:
    1. season pass: Includes entry fee and a subscription for one entire "season run"
    2. entry fee: a discounted one off payment for players with active subscriptions
    3. subscription token: you already made money of this and it is a good method to reward very active players
    • There need to be rewards that have worth like subscription tokens and
      unique season items like cosmetics or tiered (depending on season performance) landmarks
      (interesting structures that do nothing besides wasting their building material/space just because you can)

    A perk of this approach is, once you have your "season" developed there is actually no need to "abandon" old seasons since people need to register for them anyway.
    This allows all players to get the collectibles over time even if they have to wait for a big enough crowd to start up a server instance. Older season simply can get cheaper over time.

    This is something where I gladly would fork some cash over.
    I have a lifetime sub because I'm not that interested in screeps and try to keep my footprint as small as possible on the server as long I'm not playing actively besides grinding some GCL.
    But the season idea is something that I would invest time in since it is something definitive with a goal.

    👏