Revenue Generation Via ILV Zero Limited Edition Blueprints

[slow flame]

Given the focus on extending the runway as much as possible, I believe avenues to increase revenue should be explored as a preference to capital raises wherever possible.

PROPOSAL: When ILV Zero launches, a set of the blueprints already designed be designated as ‘Limited Edition’ blueprints. The microtransactions allowing players to speed up build times would be enabled during these alpha phases of the game launch. Multiple seasons of these limited time blueprints can be run with the microtransactions providing a second wave of revdis following the land sale. All functions and content proposed are already completed or in development for the final Version of ILV Zero so costs would be fairly minimal and primarily in terms of marketing, communication and admin.

EXAMPLE: For the first 50 days after ILV Zero Alpha launches, a total of 30-50 blueprints are shown as available as ‘Alpha Season 1 Limited Edition’ blueprints. Anyone obtaining these blueprints will retain rights to them. Once the 50 days ends, all ILV Zero land plots are cleared. Some amount of time to allow a technical reset (~14 days) is allocated where ILV Zero is unusable. During this window, another 30-50 ‘Alpha Season 2 Limited Edition’ blueprints are shared for the next 50 day window. [Note: Not all blueprints have to be shared up-front. A small number could be included each season as Secret Blueprints.] The number of seasons and duration can be adjusted based on technical requirements but this allows some revenue to begin flowing sooner while providing meaningful (and rare) rewards to early players.

REVENUE FORECAST: With 20K land plots at average Web2 spending rates per microtransactions, we would expect each 50 day Season to generate between $500K-$1.5M. Running these seasons could provide several million dollars in revenue to extend the teams runway by several million dollars before the final version of the game launches.

[frozen plume]

I think we need to get @modest crow to first chime in on this if this is even possible to do. The build may have technical or feature limitations such as the feature to enable microtransactions for alpha.

Additionally, even assuming its possible, what effect will it have in the release date? Is it going to add more scope and therefore delays? Or is it possible for them to build this module after release and roll out after an update?

[hidden crater]

I agree with @frozen plume - first stop is technical evaluation and impact to timing. I do strongly believe we need to evaluate mechanisms of revenue from IZ, particularly from Tier 0 plots. While we have 20k paid plots at the moment, there is an immense scale of gaining appeal and exposure of "free" plots that need to be explored. The amount of effort and resulting beauty and engagement promised for IZ at this stage should enable this broader appeal, and the DAO needs to maximize this value.

[shell acorn]

Before I go into this idea i want some more clarification.
Can you go into more detail on your ideas around:
"30-50 blueprints"
Does this mean that from a subset of the blueprints there is a limited availability of a type of blueprint?
So say Atlas helm:
Season 1(the first 50 days): 30-50 Atlas helm blueprints.
Season 2: 30-50 blueprints for the same helm or a different blueprint type?

Or Season one = 30 Types of helms (atlas, doka, kukka, pho, blink w/e).

And then land plots being "cleared". Does this mean all buildings demolished and the entire plot being returned to 0 after a season is over?

[terse hemlock]

I don’t understand why you would need to clear the land, rather than just updating the data for skin drops. So clarification on this is desirable as it heavily affects fuel generation too.

[slow flame]

Yes, good clarification points Garf. I’m meaning that if we have 1000 total skins created right now that over a 3-5 ‘Season’ window we would use 100-200 of those as Limited run time skins to make them extra rare. The exact breakdown or which blueprints should probably just be a mix and should be determined by the dev and art teams.

At the end of each season the plots would go back to zero. So it’s essentially a short term, ‘race to blueprints’ cycle for people to use land a few months while we are waiting on all three titles to be ready.

[slow flame]

The land being cleared is what actually creates potential revenue. The current proposal for ILV Zero as I understand it is a single ‘Season’ like this. However, that cycle would be so long that there is little to no incentive to try to rush to build to get to blueprints. If I am expecting to have 6 months to build up to get to blueprints, I’m very unlikely to grind hard to do so and less likely to engage with any microtransactions. If I know that I’ll have to be playing my land regularly to be able to get to a good point to do research I will regularly use microtransactions to speed up completion if I have some I want to get during that season.

Regarding fuel, there is no use for fuel and it isn’t to be transferable until after the alpha is done and the Overworld is out. This proposal is strictly during the alpha phase so fuel is no consideration here, only blueprints.

[slow flame]

We fully agree on that Scruba. I’ve written this so that it should not require much additional development as Kieran in AMAs has already indicated all features included in this proposal are under development already. Johnny and the team should feedback if something needs to be adjusted technically. As long as it’s feasible, small tweaks like this to generate revenue from our alpha game versions in lieu of capital raises seems worth some minor development time.

[shell acorn]

In that case I'm opposed to the proposal unless a number of things change.
I do think it would make sense for Johnny to chime in with his two ideas concerning additional raise during the Alpha season of IZ as well. I kind of doubt that his fund-raising ideas would be similar to this because this conflicts with game-mechanics and things (light-promises) that were said/made previously.

But first sentimental reasoning and the Investor one:
**Sentiments: **The 15 limited blueprint Types that alpha players would have a chance to get were said to be easily available to the land-owners as a "thank you" for buying land. To me it is weird to suddenly have to pay to have a better chance to get these blueprints. Especially after 5 months of waiting with these lands in our pocket. Would you be interested to spend tens of dollars for every of your lands every number of days and have to speed up the buildings on all your lands? (I'm not stacked enough to do so. I can't imagine @unreal pasture to be eager to have to do this all by himself until lending is a thing though?)
**Limited typings: **Yes, only 15 types of blueprints were said to be available during the alpha season. How will you split these up in seasons? If it takes 6 months until the open Beta, then we may need 3 seasons of 50 days... so then won't the scarcity be a problem in either case? Too little blueprints and only 1/100 would get one, and too many and their value would be so low that it wouldn't make sense to spend for them.
**All-in Investors?: **Investors may choose to rush towards a high level city, knowing they will only have a slight chance of gaining a blueprint. Additionally, the money they spend is 100% wasted after a small period of time whether they got the blueprint or not. But if they do gain a blueprint, they will have a speculative asset, of which tens will be created over that season and even more over the following seasons. For me that is not a great outlook to invest hundreds of dollars and hours of playtime in. The main-game isn't even out and now we are investing on speculative aesthetical items without (yet) other in-game functions. This sounds like a really bad deal to me.

Game mechanic conflict:
**Production conflict: **Tier one lands produce 16x less Elements and 36x less fuel than a T4 land. For the owners of Tier 1 lands, this means that they will have to really dig deep into their pockets for this one. After all, any resources will likely cost to buy as well. So you are basically asking the shrimps, or ill-informed whales with tens of T1s to also spend 16x as much on resources than the whales who "luckily" bought big plots. (easy fix would be to normalise productivity on all lands, but you still have more sites on a T4 land and you shouldn't reduce productivity because people will think it's a rug. "my T4 produces as much as a T1 wtf")
With this occasional clearing, you are basically pushing all blueprints towards high tier land holders, or wealthy T1-T2 holders.

Alpha test conflict:
Test All Gameplay: A problem that some games face is that they allow beta/alpha testers to play the game but don't allow them to move into the late-game. This results in a great start of the game and absolute dogshit final bosses. In the same way: Erasing all your progress on T1 lands (That were said to be able to scan only after roughly a month of playing) would make no sense. They barely got to the mid-game so how would they test end-game stuff before the big release?

[slow flame]

Thank you for the discussion ser!

Limited Typings: The numbers of blueprints and time for each season are obviously customizable. This is a first draft and we’d have to get more details from the team on honing in on those.

All-in Investors: We’re a bit limited in what we can do (and rightfully so) since we have a fair launch model. We can’t generate stored fuel. Cosmetics (like Illuvitars and Merchandise) are the types of revenue options we’ve got available to us at the moment. I understand your point here about speculation but the entire blueprints portion of ILV Zero is based on catering to the players that want this. Arguing that they shouldn’t want to play this kind of game is self-defeating to the project as half of the structure of ILV Zero is based on this type of mechanic.

Production Conflict: I attempted to set the parameters so that an active T1 would have a chance for 2-3 weeks to scan for blueprints (based on the point that ~30 days gets you there). For sure this needs to be balancedzz. The fact that a T4 is faster than a T1 is true but I think fair as the T4 purchaser paid many times more for the plot. Every person who bought land knew the approximate power ratio between the tiers. This does nothing to change that. It’s an identical difference to what it will be after the game launches and the fair market values were arrived at through the Dutch Auction and after market sales. I think this argument assumes we should only have one tier of land but I think that ship sailed long ago.

[slow flame]

Test All Gameplay: I agree this is the biggest risk here. However, once Kieran positioned it that the Alpha would only maintain Blueprints and not Fuel (see Fair Launch point earlier) this risk was already realized. People will not be trying to balance for optimizing fuel production in the Alpha version anyway today, whether or not speed-ups are monetized if they can aim for permanent blueprints.

The speed-ups are optional but I know I and many base-building players are open to this as it’s a common mechanic. I couldn’t say what each individual or guild’s plans are that owns hundreds of land plots. Presumably they have some individuals or groups to cover the usage after alpha launch. If not then they’ll be providing neither testing feedback for the alpha nor revenue so I don’t think this proposal applies to them at all.

General Thoughts: I like your point about the discussion that the first wave of blueprints is intended to reward land-holders. Maybe Season 1 should have no speed up options and a slightly longer run time? And then Season 2 and after have shorter cycles. The problem is that some people want to pay to speed up, even during an alpha. Imagine that I’ve got a building finishing in 8 minutes but I’m starting work. My choice is to pay $0.20 and start the next building or to wait 10 hours with my base idle. Not having a speed up mechanic can be worse. I favor full transparency to the gamer and personal responsibility in this situation.

[terse hemlock]

Ok i understand a little better what we are focusing on now with this pre full launch mode. Thanks for clarification

[shell acorn]

I typed out my entire thought process and while i was doing that, I think everything boils down to the entire plot being razed at the end of a season. You can't do that as it will discourage players instead of giving them reason to rebuild. And the value of blueprints is really hard to set when you have to base it on building your base and the time it takes to redo it all.
I'll send what i wrote out anyways. but that's what it came down to.

Limited Typings:
For sure, I just feel like having Blueprints generate revenue for the project should be done carefully. It's not easy to make a dozen more blueprints and have all of them work by the release of the open beta. You can't give these patiently waiting landowners assets that don't show up when the open beta is released xD. So it may be possible to make a small 2, maybe 5-X limited blueprint types on top of the 15 limited available ones but i don't think we should expect 20 more (i'll continue with 5). And because of this, their rarity should be just as high or their scarcity will plummet so that they don't have any value anymore.

To make it worthwhile for the investors, you will have to limit the amount of blueprints, and balance the time it takes to set up the land to the suggested level, or decrease the costs of investment. Destroying someone's entire base after 50 days of hard work really sounds like a pain and I would quit after 1 round rather than feel the need to build back up.
My recommendation:
If we want to generate revenue from blueprints... I'm thinking that you should not reset someone's progress during the alpha, and instead add a costly scan for Eth to have a very slight chance to get one of those 5 blueprints bound to bonding curve. (Yes still reset at open beta) You completely remove redundant effort and wasted time from the equation, making it fair and a lot less painful for all land holders especially if you have two seasons with 2-3 blueprint types each. If you make it so that being prepared for the start of Season 2 requires a fully active T2 plot owner or less active but with some speeding up, then they will be more inclined to speed up to get to the scanning quickly, and instantly pour their money into the singularity scanner for the highest odds at a limited blueprint (Or 1/100 silly team-facts with a funky X/100 medal or whatever 😏).

All-in Investors:
When the game comes out, obviously the skins will have a certain value, and from then it would make sense to invest. After all, their use-case will be clear. I doubt that landowners are full-on gamblers that will pay however much when they don't yet know that they have a chance to get it. It is a lot easier to push that "scan for blueprint" button than the: re-build the entire city, plan it all out with slight changes and then push that button.

Production conflict:
Obviously, the higher tier lands will (and likely should) have an edge over other lands especially in the open beta. But in the main game, even if you are the slowest, you will still have a small chance to get that same blueprint with an immense amount of luck. With close to 1000 T4 lands, and now a reason to give the blueprints a high value because lands have to re-build entirely, a T1 landowner should not even dream of getting a blueprint without spending. I (very personally) don't think a blueprint with more than 50 copies is all that valuable. So 1/20 T4 rushers would be able to get a blueprint, and then they would have 49 competitors and who all would try to push for the most amount of money out of the one that tries to collect them. So a pool of like 10 limited blueprints would make more sense if people intend to pay significant amounts of money for them.

Test All Gameplay: While the risk was there, at least you would allow people to get to the later parts of the game instead of blasting their cities 🙂

Re-General thoughts: I don't mind the speedups. For sure they can be used to allow players to get somewhere quicker and give them an edge over others. I just don't like that, in this proposal, there is such a clear discrimination against lower tier lands that would basically have no reason to play since they wouldn't leave the early game and be reset when things get interesting.

[shell acorn]

Also as another thing that came to mind, the team always intended for a fair start to everyone. Yes these 15 blueprint types are an early start for the land owners. But they have barely any value since all land owners will have a fair shot at gettig them.

Now introducing limited, actually valuable blueprints may be against the ethos of the project.

[modest crow]

This seems like a no-starter for many reasons, here's a handful of notes related to the discussion above:

1. we already have many interesting ways to generate revenue from IZ which don't require significant work

2. blueprints are already tied to 'seasons', the Illuvials you can scan for match the active set
   (and there will be some mechanism that prevents research in to previous set Illuvial BioData)

3. microtransactions are already a Beta feature to speed up non-Fuel/Research related activities

4. I don't think the mechanics of this work at all, its unlikely that the value of the limited edition blueprints would be high enough to be worth destroying your city which has a large time and cost ... remember advanced buildings cost Fuel, and each has many levels, each level more productive but also more costly to build, doing this doesn't just require rebuild it also means you lose revenue for the time you are rebuilding

5. balance aside, for technical reasons we can't keep alpha progress

---

It sucks to shut things down when a lot of effort has gone in to thinking about ideas, but this seems so far from suitable that I don't think its an avenue worth pursuing any further.

[slow flame]

No worries @modest crow. Thanks for taking the time to weigh in on it! We can go ahead and close this one down then.