API tools faq
paste
Advertisement
VasVadum

Original Screeps Review

VasVadum
Aug 1st, 2018
148
0
Never
Add comment
Not a member of Pastebin yet? Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!
text 8.21 KB | None | 0 0
raw download clone embed print report
  1. Link to Review: https://steamcommunity.com/id/VasVadum/recommended/464350
  2. Screenshot Proof: https://i.imgur.com/9bCr816.png
  3. I'm rewriting the review to be shorter and more direct and respond to the developer response.
  4.  
  5. Below this line, is the original review.
  6. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
  7.  
  8. Overall, my experience with Screeps, has been a bad one, and very not fun. I could leave it at that, but if you want to read all the details go on and look below.
  9.  
  10. For my summery, I will say that the game its self has potential. Needs optimizations for sure. The slack community is self important and toxic to people they don't like and foams at the mouth if you try to mention a discord community.
  11.  
  12. Slack community is, helpful, if you're already an advanced coder, but if you're a beginner you get scoffed at or given generic URLs. If you have something negative to say you're insulting the game and become public enemy number one.
  13.  
  14. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  15.  
  16. The developers here, need to fix up their UI to be more intuitive.
  17.  
  18. When I got the steam client, and loaded it up, there was a SINGLE button on the screen. "Connect"
  19. For most everyone, they will see this as confusing, and not know that it will start their subscriptions immediately.
  20.  
  21. They need to change it from "Connect" to an actual menu, containing "Official Server" "Private Server" "Simulation Mode"
  22.  
  23. Official server will act as clicking connect does, private server will act as if you clicked change server. Simulation mode, which I can't access till I connect to the official server, will act as simulation mode does only without forcing me to connect to a server first.
  24.  
  25. This would clear up a lot of the confusion of bad reviews. I'll also post this on the forums but it seems like nothing gets a response there.
  26. Post: https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2297/change-the-main-screen-ui-stop-the-confusion
  27.  
  28. So my 30 day trial was wasted because it was forced to start when I thought "connect" was how I get to try the game before joining the official servers but making that account started my trial and I was screwed at that point.
  29.  
  30. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  31.  
  32. Worse off, the slack is full of fake accounts and trolls. When I asked for help, about 40% of the time I got some response back that was just a generic link to the API docs. Rather than actual help. When I said I didn't like something about the game, people called me a whiner and started disrespecting me. This disrespect never went away, and people kept trolling me and provoking me till the point where they got me to say stuff that made others annoyed and then they blew those things way out of proportion changing what I said to mean the most worse thing they could think of encouraging a slack wide man hunt.
  33.  
  34. Eventually, I was banned, but did that stop the harassment? Nope. Because the slack users placed a bounty on me in game and threatened my allies, telling anyone I was near that if they don't attack me they'd be nuked, preventing me from ever playing the game again.
  35.  
  36. What did support say about this? Nothing, they didn't care. They claimed "The players just don't want you near them, build somewhere else", where as that would mean I have to stop playing the official servers entirely because of the bounty thing they have going on to prevent me from ever playing again.
  37.  
  38. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  39.  
  40. The official servers are quite a mess, safe zones that are blue and green are battle arenas where you don't actually get to build up unless you're already an advanced player. By the end of the 20 day novice zone, one person conquers the entire zone.
  41.  
  42. This makes it hard for anyone to gain a grip in the official servers as everyone new will just be wiped over and over and over again.
  43.  
  44. Worse off, there are users who download other people's finished automated code and just become copies on the servers, and the devs haven't found a way to stop people from using duplicate code on the servers. So you have several bots taking over the game world that non-coders downloaded and stuck in just because.
  45.  
  46. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  47.  
  48. One thing I should also mention, is the tick rate for the official servers fluctuates between 3 to 4 seconds, sometimes a hardware malfunction of some kind happens increasing it to 10 to 12. Very rare. However, with the average being 3.7 seconds, that means it will take you hours to do one tiny thing.
  49.  
  50. I myself understand the reason behind the tick rate, and don't blame the developers for this. I felt it should be mentioned though for a review to be thorough and helpful. It is for this reason however, that I posted a suggestion to bind Novice Zones to tick rate rather than to real time. I tried to exhaustively make my argument over and over, but the people who I was arguing with in Slack were a bit toxic and considered no one but themselves not giving a shit about any argument I put through. However, if you wish to see for yourself the post, its here; https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2292/novice-spawn-counter-ticks-not-time
  51.  
  52. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  53.  
  54. If you were expecting this game to have a high amount of users, you're wrong. It looks that way because there's 600 on each of the 3 servers but some people make their account on all 3 servers so its somewhere between 900 and 1500 actual users. Slack distorts that number further by leaving 7000 fake accounts in it when only 20-40 people actually talk there.
  55.  
  56. One thing the devs could do to fix some issues is create small shards where only a limited number of people can join, rather than allowing people to keep joining endlessly till the tick rate becomes unbearable.
  57.  
  58. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  59.  
  60. Nearly done,
  61. The game has some sort of garbage collection issue where eventually it builds up and lags your client down or crashes your client. You have to click the gear icon to change your graphics settings then click apply to refresh the game's graphics and that tends to fix it, but its far worse in a browser which is here most people play to begin with.
  62.  
  63. I fell asleep leaving the steam client running one day in the global server, and woke up with my client totally, utterly frozen, and stuck in memory. I had to open task manager to end the task because it collected so much memory it just stopped working.
  64.  
  65. Its a little annoying that a game with hardly any graphics of any kind at all, even with lighting and swamp textures totally disabled, takes more CPU and more RAM than high end new age games. Hell, running a private server, it kept bogging down because they didn't include any sort of optimizations for a Windows client, 6 hours after starting a private server that only I can connect to it was bogged so far down the tick rate was worse than official servers and was consuming 150% of my CPU running my system hot. Restarting the server fixes it for another -few- hours.
  66.  
  67. This game is in serious need of optimizations, but when you talk about this in the community, the users just tell you to get linux and deal with it. You know, because they are selfish and only care about themselves.
  68.  
  69. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------
  70.  
  71. Lastly, as some people might seem to believe, this game DOES NOT teach you javascript. You are REQUIRED to learn javascript before you play the game. People have mislead me into buying the game originally claiming that it will teach me how to do javascript, but they were dead wrong and it does not teach you javascript, it requires you to learn it first.
  72.  
  73. ------------
  74. As a side note for the developers if they read this.
  75. I'd like to see graphics mods in the game. So I can upload a replacement texture for structures making it look different for anyone who applies this to their game. Graphics mods should be allowed to work on any server including official, but that'll certainly take some work to do with your current client. I just merely wanted to get the suggestion through.
  76. Link to post: https://screeps.com/forum/topic/2298/graphics-mods
Advertisement
Add Comment
Please, Sign In to add comment
Advertisement
Public Pastes
Advertisement
We use cookies for various purposes including analytics. By continuing to use Pastebin, you agree to our use of cookies as described in the Cookies Policy.  OK, I Understand
Not a member of Pastebin yet?
Sign Up, it unlocks many cool features!