Reinstate newbie walls for new players
-
Protection walls had very serious drawback of blocking routes between rooms which made large-scale pathfinding a much more difficult task than it should be. We are glad that we've found a solution to get rid of them.
In order to focus on the basics, there is the Tutorial and Simulation. If you spawn in the World, you are supposed to be able to deal with the multiplayer aspect of the game, and that's a good social thing that other players can affect your gameplay from the very start.
Being in safe mode, all you actually have to do is to build 1 HP walls around your place. And the Tutorial gives you all the required ready-to-use code you need to accomplish that, as well as explains such concepts like structures, walls, construction sites, hostile creeps, etc.
-
Yes Artem, that is all true, we can ask all players to spend days in sim preparing before playing in the game and then sitting for hours in their first day fixing bugs anyway, just to keep alive. And then spend hour more to deal with someone doing that, because that is something not covered in sim. Of course this won't work for someone who has out of screeps obligations and can't sit for hours on end adjusting to all the unpredicted stuff, that person will simply come back next day to colony making no progress and being on verge of protection mode without tower up.
There needs to be a point where this game need some newbie accessibility over "oh it's simple once you know how to do it and that you know it is going to be a problem", and I would say that walls were good at providing that.
-
Building walls is perfectly covered by the tutorial. And it's not days, it's more like an hour or two. When you spawn into the world, the game even explicitly asks you whether you have completed the Tutorial. Better not to lie to it!
-
I think you underestimate the impact of moving from the sim, not to mention tutorial, to the real world. Because sim is only as good as what cases you will create in them, and how many cases can a player with no actual play experience create in there to prepare? Even if you are diligent through the tutorial, did it twice (like I did) and kept referring to it as you go through the first code, you will spend hours before everything is running. And it will be running too poorly to get you that tower before old walls would expire in most rooms.
But alas it's not my call to make whether you want to make it easier for new players to join the game or not. What worries me that the player base is already shrinking each month, and very soon we will have more members in #general on slack than total players in CP leaderboard at end of the month.
-
And it will be running too poorly to get you that tower
Not to a tower. To 1 HP walls. You can build them right away when you start in the world using the code from the tutorial. It’s really as simple as 20 room clicks in the Construction mode and spawning one
role.buildercreep. We’re not talking about active defense here, we’re talking about replacement for old hardcoded walls with manual user-designed ones.
-
So every new player very the first action should be to put a wall at each room exit? Then I struggle what would be the harm in placing them for that new player in the first place, what is the benefit of burdening players with it, when instead they should focus on getting basic economy running as the click to 20k race ticks?
-
So every new player very the first action should be to put a wall at each room exit? Then I struggle what would be the harm in placing them for that new player in the first place, what is the benefit of burdening players with it, when instead they should focus on getting basic economy running as the click to 20k race ticks?
Not every, but those who are in need. It’s a good starting exercise. Or, you can focus on other things and strategies if you wish.
What worries me that the player base is already shrinking each month
That is absolutely expected after the first launch effect has ended. In fact, the biggest launch effect is yet to come.
-
The only person not in need of walls would be a newbie in an empty area. And that will only last this long, as sooner or later someone will spawn in and, if he wants, block the heck out of that person. So yea, every new player should, as very first action, mine and put 1hp walls at all the exits, as this is a very smart, cheap and easy thing to do. But then we are exactly where we were before, but with new players having one more thing to learn and worry about.
-
Are you serious? within two minutes of being in my room this was happening
Then this
https://snag.gy/SBWVaO.jpg As he attempted to block off my spawns
And this is the new player right next to me. Or what is left of him
If this is honestly how I am expected to learn this game after doing the tutorial several times, and attempting to spawn, you can refund me now.
-
So yea, every new player should, as very first action, mine and put 1hp walls at all the exits, as this is a very smart, cheap and easy thing to do.
Eventually - yes. But the important difference is that these walls are yourwalls, you can repair them further and grow them up into your permanent defence system. It is your achievement, your small step up. You can be proud of them and their design. Newbie walls are just a substitute that suddenly (and unexpectedly for many) disappear.
But then we are exactly where we were before, but with new players having one more thing to learn and worry about.
Again, the Tutorial Step 5 is where you should have learned that. I mean really should have - you are not supposed to start in the World without going through the Tutorial.
-
MaXxUser, I can see that you already spawned some builders and placed the construction sites for walls. I'd recommend you remove your road construction sites and build walls first. That is all what you need to do right now.
It's a pity that another user didn't want to do that, but unfortunately, we had hundreds of such inactive players even when there were protection walls for novices.
-
> If this is honestly how I am expected to learn this game after doing the tutorial several times, and attempting to spawn, you can refund me now.
There is definitely a learning curve and it might take a few respawns to get a foothold, but the game is worth it. Each time, watch your history and see if you have any ideas to improve on the next iteration. The spawn-crowding thing isn't really something you can expect from most players. But I agree that the novice walls would rule it out and add some psychological peace of mind as well.
-
The thing is that we cannot really mix safe mode and protection walls mechanics. It would be just too confusing for everyone, especially for new players. You spawn with walls and safe mode, but then they disappear, but you can activate safe mode again, but you cannot place walls again... It's a mess. Currently the system is not perfect, but it works better than the previous one. For new players as well, it gives them some understanding of what safe mode is and how can they make use of it at the next few controller levels (Tutorial step 5 has been updated to reflect that).
-
For the record, pathing around newbie protected rooms was super easy to do. I just had the costmatrix return false for rooms that had newbie protection which I didn't have visibility in (so I could respawn if needed). Caching the "isRoomProtected" function results made this trivial from a performance perspective.
I also agree that it's super easy to exploit this with 1m creeps. However, as an alternative solution you could just make it so all hostile creeps in a safe mode room only have 1hp- then a very basic attack creep would easily be able to wipe them all out.
-
Completely agree with Artem on this one.
I have to say, for someone who argues vehemently about requiring people to try to help themselves before he offers them help Puciek, you're quick to tout the advantages of newbie walls, which as Artem has pointed out, simply prolong the inevitable for those who haven't put in the effort to do the tutorial and play around with the sim.
Building walls isn't difficult, building a single attack creep isn't overly hard to work out from the documentation and the examples it provides. It does, however, make it a lot easier for those of us trying to path around the map without people spawning walls on us for 20k ticks.
Safe mode also allows new players to venture outside of their room in relative safety before the 20k ticks are over if they so desire, without being an all or nothing 'drop the walls and risk death' that we had on the old system.
Maybe a brief combat tutorial would be helpful for those starting the game and feeling under pressure from the get-go, but there is little threat to them and respawning is always a click away
However, as an alternative solution you could just make it so all hostile creeps in a safe mode room only have 1hp-
then a very basic attack creep would easily be able to wipe them all out.This would also be a neat idea. Or at least lower it down so new players can remove higher level creeps
-
However, as an alternative solution you could just make it so all hostile creeps in a safe mode room only have 1hp- then a very basic attack creep would easily be able to wipe them all out.
This seems reasonable. We just need to think out all unwanted side effects here.
-
It might be reasonable for newbies. But imagine attacking a high level room with boosted creeps... making them have 1hp means you could just as easily kill them instantly instead, because there will be no chance to heal them, and no chance for them to move to another room. Safe mode is annoying enough already, in that it can be reactivated without cooldown in novice areas, basically making rooms unattackable for multiple days straight.
Also, if one reason for safe mode was easier pathfinding, I think it just wouldn't make sense to set all creeps to 1hp, because it would be way to risky to path through a safe mode room then. Sure, with the new system it would be high risk but possible compared to not possible at all with the old system.. but I think nobody would want to risk costly creeps being killed.
-
This may be a bit more difficult, but making it so that the creeps die when they are stepped on by the owner of the room would also solve the problem.
-
Or walking over them without them dying, so the owner can't chase your creeps down as they walk through to a different objective
-
because there will be no chance to heal them
Healing is disabled in safe mode rooms anyway.
This may be a bit more difficult, but making it so that the creeps die when they are stepped on by the owner of the room would also solve the problem.
There might be cases when friendly players do some friendly activity in your safe mode room, you don’t want their creeps to be immediately killed.
Or walking over them without them dying, so the owner can’t chase your creeps down as they walk through to a different objective
That is an interesting idea actually. Hostile creeps can become visually transparent and passable. You don’t need to kill them, you can simply ignore them at all. That would solve this issue completely, although it’s a bit hard to implement.
