Decorations update
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@o4kapuk said in Decorations update:
We are glad to announce that we analyzed recent pixelization statistics and changed some parameters. As a result, Rarity 5 decorations will now drop much more frequently. Enjoy!
After everyone's dumped their initial pixels income.. great.
I'm sorry but this feature is a dead horse.. the 'decorations' have no context, meaning or value... they're just random (not very good) vector drawings with absolutely zero relation or value to the game in any meaningful way...
I was hoping we could add at least our own flare, i.e. a number of pixels we earn = LITERALLY a number of pixels we can make a drawing from or something.. not these quite frankly (parden the language) shit vectors...
it's like someone scanned a book of clipart or something, I don't wanna bag on whoever designed these, but they just feel so completely out of touch with the entire theme of the game?
Where's the master list of possible image rolls? (so I can at least limit my shit rolls to a theme to limit the shit rolls)
Where's the chance-to-drop-chart?
Are these even legal in most places?
They're basically lootboxes and BAD ones at that... I've yet to find roll a single half-decent image that has ANYTHING to do with screeps...
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@subodai Thank you for your feedback! It looks like your point is only about graffiti. Indeed, graffiti is the least valuable decoration type by design. We encourage you to try get other types, such as fully customizable landscapes visible on the world map, creep skins, user badges. And in the near future - structure skins and action animations.
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Why is it so expensive to restrict to a particular theme? It's 500 pixels for a random decoration, but it's 2000 pixels to limit it to a particular colour scheme. 4 times the price seems rather excessive - it's not like we're any more likely to get rare drops by restricting to particular theme.
There isn't really a reason for it to be more expensive at all, but if there's going to be an extra cost, it should be like 10% or 20% extra at most, not 300% extra.
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It's expensive on purpose, it's a design choice to ensure that there are always pixel sinks. If it wasn't extremely hard to get the pixels you want then within a few months the world would be saturated and demand would be tiny. As it is people will always be trying to reroll to get that one thing they want, in the color they want.
Gives players a market to sell pixels, gives devs a way to earn cash, and helps servers by providing CPU sinks so players have reasons to optimize their code and ways to spend their bucket without additional server strain. Downside is that it sucks as an experience to use, but over time it'll suck less as the world becomes more saturated and demand falls. I hate lootboxes but in this case given there isn't another way to take pixels off the market it makes sense to gouge on creation.
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Any chance we can get an option to disable display of decorations? It's such a cacophony of colors or otherwise poorly contrasted it hurts function. To each their own really but please don't force me to look at this, my eyes hurt!
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@tun9an0 This is indeed an interesting question. We considered such an option, but decided not to implement it. If you don't want to get your eyes hurt in your rooms - just don't use decorations in your rooms, or use those pleasing for your eyes. But if you "visit" someone else's room, than you are supposed to see what the owner want you to see, even it you dislike it. Its their right to have their room look like that.
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@artch said in Decorations update:
@subodai Thank you for your feedback! It looks like your point is only about graffiti. Indeed, graffiti is the least valuable decoration type by design. We encourage you to try get other types, such as fully customizable landscapes visible on the world map, creep skins, user badges. And in the near future - structure skins and action animations.
You're welcome but you side-stepped a lot of my questions. from my experience of the rolls so far 90% just seems to be "filler". You skipped over legality, chance of drops, the list of what's droppable (this feels like a 100% requirement, otherwise we're literally buying blind, which is unnacceptable).
I'll just be skipping this feature in it's entirety I think.
These items being tradeable from a blind lootbox doesn't feel legal in the EU to me at all.
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@subodai All images are legally licensed to use for this puprose. Please don't worry about that.
As to revealing the full list of decorations, chances of drops - I understand that you would like (and even demand) to get this info, but we believe it's more fun if players discover new decorations on their own. It makes it to feel like discovery instead of shopping cart.
Overall, I'm sorry that you feel so disappointed about this feature. But it's very optional and you can continue playing Screeps without touching decorations if you dislike how they are implemented. We receive a lot of positive feedback about it, so probably it's just not your thing after all.
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@artch, I think you may have misunderstood the question about legality. Because you are allowing people to pay for a randomised reward it's effectively a form of gambling, which means it falls under gambling legislation in many jurisdictions. You may have to comply with certain rules such as clearly publishing the list of possible rewards and the chance for each of them.
If you haven't already I would strongly recommend looking into this - I would hate for you to run into legal issues over this.
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@systemparadox Definitely second this, the legislation has been changing rapidly in the past couple years so it is important that you guys look into it.
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I raised this on Slack, regarding some EU legislation, since "Loot Boxes" are for example completely illegal in Belgium (CS:GO had to make regional patch for that) and are quite grey area in other EU countries - not a lawyer but being able to
- buy virtual currency (pixels) with real money (via steam)
- get radomized loot (decorations)
- sell decorations via real money (via steam)
fills all the checkboxes for definition legal definition of "Loot Box" / gambling, @o4kapuk answer was that they are not breaking any law and it's game feature.
Regarding decorations itself - I'd recommend looking through some rooms with multiple decorations:
- sometimes they lower
readabilityof room and/or mask some features (walls/ramparts/etc) - they are broken if browser does not support WebGL (make room completely unreadable)
- tend to lean heavy on browser GPU cpu and memory
Besides this - i like feature itself, i see it as good credits sink and i guess it gives developers some nice profits
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RE: EU Lootbox legality.
I think the pat answer here is "Let the store handle it" as in be ready to remove pixels from the store in contested countries, like Belgium and the Netherlands.
The other issue is circuitous RMT paths, like Steam Dollars and Credits. Since those cannot be limited by region (Well, possibly with the Steam Dollars...) the fallback position is remove pixels as trade able through those currencies. Pixels on Steam are problematic anyway, and removing Pixels from the in game market also works fine.
By any measure, allowing direct account to account trades should always be a no go zone.
This leaves selling CPU Unlocks and the Season access tokens directly for Credits. I think you'll need to add that to stop inflation. However, use a modification of Blizzard's system... two token types for CPU unlocks, one sold in the cash shop that can be transferred or used as a CPU unlock, and one sold for Credits, that can ONLY be used as a CPU unlock.
Gadjung: Pixels for Credits is not a sink. Those credits stay in the player realm. To be a sink, the Credits must be destroyed when the transaction takes place.
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We appreciate your care about our legal position, but let's not worry about it. We're fine. We analyzed this concern when we designed this feature. It's not gambling, we're not selling items. You can generate pixels in-game using your CPU (which we also sell!), so even if we removed pixels from the store, you still have the same process: buy CPU -> use it to generate pixels -> get random decorations. Or buy CPU Unlocks -> sell for credits -> buy pixels -> get random decorations.
The randomness of decorations crafting does not make it gambling, it's simply a game mechanic involving some in-game resources. The way how you get these resources is up to you and does not relate strictly to crafting.
You can also sell your purchased pixels directly for credits if you wish, so you're not "buying blind". If you choose to spend your pixels in a game mechanic with a random aspect, then that's your choice, we're not forcing you. We provide you with the specific and visible amount of pixels, that's all.
If gambling was treated this way, then any game with some random aspects in its mechanics and transferable purchasable resources would be gambling.
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@gadjung said in Decorations update:
they are broken if browser does not support WebGL (make room completely unreadable)
Decorations should be disabled if WebGL is not supported. Isn't it the case for you?
tend to lean heavy on browser GPU cpu and memory
Do you have more specific details?
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Well I am going to have to agree with some of the above posters about room visuals. They really affect the readability of the room to the human player. There have been several rooms that I have to really study just to determine where the swamps and natural terrain are. Obviously the code doesn't have an issue with it but the human player might. That is going to really hamper people if they need to do some emergency coding.
Looking at the world map with the room visual alpha mode on I can see an unsightly patchwork of various room visuals. Honestly it just looks ugly to me. I would greatly like the ability to turn all of this stuff off.
Regarding the Steam market, is there anything you can do about selling pixels on there? Currently the lowest price we can sell pixels for is $0.01 where as you(the devs) are selling them for $0.0012. There is absolutely no way we can compete with that. If that is the way you wanted it to be designed then so be it. If that is the case, there may as well not be a market entry for individual pixels.
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Yeah, the decorations aren't too bad, but the background layers can be made to really obscure what's going in a room. I'm not a huge fan of those.
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@artch said in Decorations update:
We appreciate your care about our legal position, but let's not worry about it. We're fine. We analyzed this concern when we designed this feature. It's not gambling, we're not selling items. You can generate pixels in-game using your CPU (which we also sell!), so even if we removed pixels from the store, you still have the same process: buy CPU -> use it to generate pixels -> get random decorations. Or buy CPU Unlocks -> sell for credits -> buy pixels -> get random decorations.
If there is an OPTION to roll a random thing using something with real world value, that strictly IS gambling. just because you don't force it, doesn't make that go away.
The randomness of decorations crafting does not make it gambling, it's simply a game mechanic involving some in-game resources. The way how you get these resources is up to you and does not relate strictly to crafting.
Yes it does, it precisely makes it gambling.
You can also sell your purchased pixels directly for credits if you wish, so you're not "buying blind". If you choose to spend your pixels in a game mechanic with a random aspect, then that's your choice, we're not forcing you. We provide you with the specific and visible amount of pixels, that's all.
Having the choice to gamble with them on a completely unknown set of end points is 100% gambling.
If gambling was treated this way, then any game with some random aspects in its mechanics and transferable purchasable resources would be gambling.
Yes, that's EXACTLY what it is in ANY and all games with that mechanic where the currency to buy said random boxes is attainable for real world money. This is precisely why there has been a massive crackdown on it artch.. It doesn't matter that there are other options, the fact that there is ANY option to purchase or a purchase flow to get a random lootbox for currency through any path, makes it gambling.
This is like saying you can gamble to win a thing for x number of monies ( $ cost of pixels) on a random roll, OR you can pay more actual $ to buy the thing from the store... This is 100% gambling.
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@artch i see that no-webgl supported browser no longer render decorations - my bad here
regarding cpu/memory opening rooms with decorations (walls/floors) seem to add ~50-100MB to Memory of Screeps tab in browser, and bump GPU process around 100-200MB also (that fells down a bit later)
Seems also that there are leaking Dedicated Workers (hard to pinpoint from where/what action)
Also opening rooms with decorations feels 3-5x slower than opening other rooms
@artch regarding Selling Items: The 'possible' legal issue is not that You sell items that are random, but that the game creates possibility for a player to participate in gambling using real world money
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Well I am going to have to agree with some of the above posters about room visuals. They really affect the readability of the room to the human player. There have been several rooms that I have to really study just to determine where the swamps and natural terrain are. Obviously the code doesn't have an issue with it but the human player might. That is going to really hamper people if they need to do some emergency coding. Looking at the world map with the room visual alpha mode on I can see an unsightly patchwork of various room visuals. Honestly it just looks ugly to me. I would greatly like the ability to turn all of this stuff off.
True, some decoration combinations may be very bad choice. But room owners have their right to make bad choices. It's their property, we don't want to restrict them in any way.
Regarding the Steam market, is there anything you can do about selling pixels on there? Currently the lowest price we can sell pixels for is $0.01 where as you(the devs) are selling them for $0.0012. There is absolutely no way we can compete with that. If that is the way you wanted it to be designed then so be it. If that is the case, there may as well not be a market entry for individual pixels.
That is something that we plan to fix later, but it's not an easy fix, so it may take a while.
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@gadjung What is your OS, browser, video, how much RAM and CPU do you have?
