Ideas for next seasons
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So the first season is going on pretty well. We are very happy about the added value it gives to the game. If fits well into our MMO persistent paradigm, giving a fresh new take to the game experience. Both for those who are interested in participation, or those who just observe from a distance.
And we're already excited for the second season! It will start in February, and we've got own ideas for it, but we also would like to ask the community: what would you like to see in the next season mechanics? Share your ideas! Of course we don't give any guarantees, but some parts of this discussion may inspire us enough to change what we have in mind currently.
Now, Season #2: what are the rules?
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Co-op mechanics please!
Example:
Epic map with 4 powerful artifacts at the corners of the world. Each guarded by powerful enemies that require timed teamwork to take down. Once slain, you must pull the artifacts towards the center of the map one tile at a time, gaining 5000 fatigue per pull. The artifact attracts invaders periodically. Season ends when the community wins by assembling the artifacts.
Everyone shares in the prizes, which go up the faster the community wins.
There's a leaderboard of who's contributed most to the overall goal, but it's just for bragging rights.
Example Mechanic:
Various tasks can contribute to the overall goal with varying degrees of difficulty. Easy tasks would be something like collecting a resource and dropping it somewhere. Harder tasks could be collecting raw materials, then assembling them in a factory or a lab before bringing them somewhere. Even harder than that could be tasks to take out NPC strongholds. Higher tier tasks would give the player more overall contribution points for the leaderboard.
Overall, one of my main goals with something like this is to come up with a system that will be friendly to new players, so that they want to start playing and continue playing, as opposed to getting wiped out 6 times in Season and quitting entirely. Worst case scenario I see is if people start looking at Season like it's something that's only worth doing if you're a "top player".
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To keep a healthy player base I think it would be very important to allow the players with not very mature code bases to play during the season as well. Currently if you've spawned anywhere around Geir and haven't been competing in BA/SWC events you would be pretty much done for.
What I would like to see in next iterations of the season: Try to get the players competing for top 10 positions near each other and try to accommodate for areas for newer/less aggressive players as well.
As an example for the season 1 score gather/deposit goals you could have the score collectors in the center of the map reward 10x as much score for each turn in than the score collectors at the map edges (and then just a linear distribution related to distance from center). This would force players which want to be in top 10 to spawn near the center and leave the edges for the less competitive players.
As for the season 2 ideas: I would love to see some heavy fighting over "score"/trophy points. Every sector has a portal towards a fighting arena in which you would have a "domination" game mode. For each tick you have the controller reserved in this fighting arena you would be getting points (we would need to have multiple arenas, like 10 or so and not have every sector connected to every arena at all time).
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Firstly, I'd like to say I'm a huge fan of this season so far. And the concept in general. Screeps from GCL 1 is much more fun than MMO based screeps. It's also a bit my full-on though.
With that said maybe it'd be nice to have a break rather than back-to-back seasons. At least a two week gap between them, or maybe a month? I think you risk burn-out running them too frequently as I feel players put a bit more effort into seasonal than regular Screeps and that's hard to sustain non-stop.
I have some feedback on the current season which I'll share and I guess might help inform the next season.
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Collectors and containers seem to be fairly well balanced. To compete for top spots you need multiple collectors. Collector capacity is low enough to prevent "bursting" meaning fighting for collectors is effectibe. Regen is about right for the score generated in the region. If you expanded and took land and more collectors it is easier to score high. This is how it should be.
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Game start wasn't handled perfectly: the rules dropped very late and so the collector:container balance was unknown to players until after they'd spawned. This meant it was impossible to make good decisions, and I think that's bad. For example: should I spawn near the centre crossroads with four collectors, or should I go for the best room I can find across the map.
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Some people struggled to respawn after dying - things got fairly cutthroat. One suggestion on slack was to explicitly stratify the world. Make score spawn more (and collectors regen faster) closer to the centre of the map. Maybe bias the map generator so rooms closer to the centre of the map are more likely to be two source rooms, or less likely to be swamps. This creates stratification: good players want to be closer to the middle. Weaker players can then spawn at the much safer outskirts. There's a risk:reward tradeoff: the winner won't likely be on the outskirts, but at least you can play.
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No market worked fine. We're not even done with the first month and there have been multiple T3 boosted fights. I think no terminals would be fun, but more game changing. Not really sure.
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@bodgen suggested it might be nice to be able to attack a collector. Maybe using claim parts you could attack it and gain a (very) small fraction of score placed into that collector, deducting from other players. Not a very "Screeps" thing as stuff always goes down. Does allow for more combat options around collectors.
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Total tick count and 100 CPU gives a fairly nice balance between sub RCL 8 play and RCL 8 CPU conrained play. I do think min(100, 20 + 10 * GCL) would work fine as well.
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@tigga said in Ideas for Season #2:
With that said maybe it'd be nice to have a break rather than back-to-back seasons. At least a two week gap between them, or maybe a month?
Yeah, for sure, I didn't say it's going to start on February 1. Just in February. A two weeks gap is something we have in mind as well.
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super-structure / wonder
1st player to build a ScoreWonder structure wins.
optional: creating 1st ScoreWonder triggers timer after which game ends if ScoreWonder is still standing and undamaged any other ScoreWonder completed during this timer counts towards x place (so 2nd person to get and hold ScoreWonder undamaged get's 2nd place and so on)
ScoreWonder requires:
- 20-50m energy (?)
- 1m of each resource (?)
End game Trigger Timer:
- 1 week ?
- paused if ther's no 'undamaged' ScoreWonder
Ramparts are disabled/very low limit, Walls have lower limit, terminals disabled same as in S1
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Pyramid Challenge / King of the Hill.
Stack a few shards on top of each other, with each higher shard having less resources and space. Each shard has prizes associated, which each higher shard having more rewards, but the rewards end up getting split amongst all players with claimed rooms on that shard.
This can then incentivize later stage players to abandon lower shards for the higher rewards, which could help keep a balance in place (new players spawning on shard0 won't get wiped immediately as the more skilled players are already on shard 3). The shrinking shards helps incentivize battles at the higher levels, and since they're smaller they should hopefully require less resources. Top shard can be a single 10 by 10 block.
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A structure that can be built in owned room, generates score but compromises room defenses, so disabling towers, disabling walls/ramparts in some way.
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Some Stuff I vaguely remember being talked about in Slack before.
Battle-royal
- Everyone starts with a creep with 1M part, have to 'pick-up' parts around the map.
- Rooms deactivate/start to cause damage after a short time (blue-zone/storm) to force players towards center.
- Last creep alive wins.
Not sure that fits a seasonal thing though.
Territory/King
- Players are split into teams, teams have one 'king' at the 'center' of a sector. The king having a room there enables 'vassals' team-mates to spawn within the sector. *Players compete to destroy nearby king's rooms, disabling vassals/forcing respawn (if last), king who won can then take that sector as their own
- Team with most 'territory' and/or points from having territory wins.
- Players with 'top' code bases and/or winners of previous season could be 'kings' adjusting so that its not one very large/advanced team.
King of the Hill
- crossroads have 'score zones' instead of collectors.
- A creep inside the 'score zone' increases global 'score' for the player, multiplier and/or additional points for more parts (larger creeps)
- Score zones could change in size/shape/worth dynamically, requiring creep movement and/or different numbers of creeps allowed in the zone at different times.
Edit: Could be 'ramparts' that are pathable, standing on them deals damage to the hits of the rampart, starts with random # of hits, as hits goes down, adds to user's global score. the 'area' tends to have different values/hits and pathing to/defending one your standing on adds variety then 'stand in the area'
Creep harvest
- Creeps drop a new resource on-unnatural death (players only)
- Larger creeps -> More of the new resource.
- New structure in a player's base processes these for score (like a powerSpawn)
- Player with the most of this new resource processed by the end of the season wins.
Econ-wars
- Players compete to see who can have the most credits, normal market in-game as the MMO
- Scoreboard is total 'credits' of players.
- deposits spawn more frequently / different ways to get factory resources
- Natural/unnatural waves in the NPC market to benifit players who hold back resources for higher prices vs selling bulk at lower prices.
The great road
- Players compete to build the longest-unbroken road, longest road at end-of-season wins.
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@donatzor Find the catan ref!
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Ahh darnit, should have just said 'the longest road' quite right heh.
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@bogden I love this idea, especially if the rewards scaled up with more players getting involved. I've got a couple of coworkers who are more likely to hop in if it were a 'friendly' coop where we all worked together. There could also be rate-limiting tied to account, so it really would be in the interest of the community to get more players involved in the season.
A peace-nik hippy flowers love-in commune definitely wouldn't be appealing to everyone, so just cycling in the coop season periodically would be the way to go, then the short knives could come back out in to appease the blood lust of the top tier players.
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I think I would buy into almost any coop, but some team-based thing could also work wonders, though that needs to be balanced to prevent noobs becoming energy farms for the big guys.
Any other mode + limit controllers to level X (say, 3 or 4), but have a lot of CPU (or, haha, lower CPU action cost) and low GCL. With no boosts we'll now have massive zerg-like armies instead of T3 phat quad meta.
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One more vote for CO-OP games Hunt:
- Few special creeps wandering on the highways, who takes only fixed amount damage from each player. ( x players will need to kill them completly )
- Leaderboard shows the damage done to them
- Lesser creeps should help the boss ones, to make the engagement harder.
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Generally there are quite a few interesting game modes in other games, we could even imagine a Battle Royale 10x10 shard (an obvious limit of 100 players), GCL limit 1, no corridor rooms. 100 players start, but in the end (in a voice of Christopher Lambert): there can be only one!
This thing could keep restarting, too, people seem to think it's not repetitive, some matchmaking can be added so that you can have a chance to win and the excitement from being one of the last few is quite a thrill.
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@gadjung Could do a wonder that's like "The tallest tower" where you pump energy into it like a controller, which builds up its hits 'infinitely', see who builds the one-tallest by end-of-time/season. May be hard to get to the wonder in-time to trash it if not enough people spawned in the area / already were cleared, but I suppose that's part of the challange.
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So first things first, i think you've done a lot things right in this season. I havent had the chance to participate, but it's been fun to watch and read along in slack. Initially i thought releasing the mod in advance would be better, but now i think it might be good this way.
That said, i think that the rules should be released further in advance, both so people can decide whether the season is one they would like to participate in, and also to enable speculative coding and deliberations.I also think there should be a while between seasons. Now it's all new and shiny, so it might not matter too much, but i think further down the line even 2 weeks between seasons might be too little – maybe a month or two? For SWC/BA and other current community hosted competitions it works well because the objective is generally always the same, but with changing rulesets and mechanics i think it'd just lead to people burning out - and it's a lot of work for you devs as well, i reckon. Might work better to keep it somewhat "special" in the long run.
One last thought is kind of a question: Will seasons stay somewhat close to vanilla Screeps in general? I.e. season mechanics wont stack up too much, straying away further and further.. The occasional really far off season might be fun, but if that were to become a standard i could see season becoming more of a top dog / elite playground. Just wanted to ask since i'm curious what your stance on that is.
Now, for actual suggestions:
- I also think that there should be coop modes (obviously not all the time). A few ideas:
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- For team management:
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- Have the quarter of the world you spawn in decide which team you're on. Each of the 4 teams would then work towards their goal. To make for competition within the teams as well and keep all the big guys from playing on the same team, it could be reflected in a split in the rewards: I.e. one part of the rewards for the rank your team places at and one (more interesting / better) part of the rewards for the rank within the team. Of course players could also sabotage other teams by using portals or just walking over if they're close enough to center roads, expand there, etc.
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- Smaller teams (e.g. 3-5 players). This would be more difficult to pull off, especially if it should be a fair split between more and less experienced players. It could maybe be figured out using metrics on MMO (restricted to those spawned in for X time if necessary), like power processed, GCL upgraded, creeps killed etc. Alternatively the game mode could be one with relative (in-team) performance measured instead of absolute (global) performance.
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- For goals:
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- Something like bogden's idea with the artifact could be nice, but it would need to be worked out better. Some problems i can see with it is that:
a.) It could be cheesed with 1m creeps that get suicided once they've pulled and incurred the 5k fatigue. A possible solution could be a target lock, where it's locked to the same creep for say 100+ creeps after a pull. With a 50m creep you could then pull once every 50 ticks, with the break even point point being a 25m creep in this example. The target lock would have to be modified to reflect whatever you want to be the break even point.
b.) It would pretty much lock out anyone who isnt on the line to the center. An easy solution for this is to have several artifacts, which would have the nice side effect of it not being a "done and over" kind of situation where a team can finish too quickly.
- Something like bogden's idea with the artifact could be nice, but it would need to be worked out better. Some problems i can see with it is that:
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- A hitman/handyman mode - the system gives each bot targets to either kill or assist:
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- In the case of an assist:
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- The target gets notified about helper(s)
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- Points get awarded for contributing to target's economy (construction sites, resources, ...) and clearing their owned and reserved rooms of hostile creeps
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- Points get awarded to both target and helper(s) for
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- In the case of a kill order:
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- Target gets notified about attacker(s)
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- Helper(s) gets notified about attacker(s)
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- Points get awarded for damaging target's economy (attacking owned/reserved controllers, destroying structures, killing creeps, ...)
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- Rate of attack and assist orders could be dependent on players' performance - higher up means more attacks and less assistance and vice versa
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- Target selection based on performance (weighted random):
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- High performance players attack high performance players
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- Low performance players attack low performance players
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- High performance players assist low performance players
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- Low performance players assist anyone
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Heh, that actually took more time than expected. Might have been thinking about the actual implementations too much already ^^'
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The most important thing for me would be a delay before the next season, I feel it should be a month minimum, I have really enjoyed this one but I think a good break is needed to prevent burn out. Also I like the idea of a gentler/co-op based season to help engage new players that others have mentioned. Really like 'the great road' and 'king of the hill' ideas
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@tedivm I like your idea. To add to this idea
I think the shards could have a pyramid structure as they go up - the upper shards are smaller, where the outer hallway corners of each level line up with the center rooms of the shard below.
Basically the center rooms can have teleporters that go UP a level, and the hallway crossroads can have teleporters that go down a level.
You could keep score and scorecollectors as the main mechanic for scoring. Put higher score amounts in upper levels but less energy or minerals to mine as a tradeoff.
Even if it was just 2 levels it might be fun.
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How about a "race" variant where a tall fixed-height map keeps expanding to the east, while losing rooms along with anything in them at the western edge (e.g. by a column per day)? Minerals could be very much biased in to vertical bands, and never all available at once, so you have to carry forward a stockpile from room to room if you want boosts.
