shell mason
Morning Gamers
Some thoughts about how we create a long term, sustainable & healthy Economy for Illuvium
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D1fY9hCHImKCyZbDQYN947daAf81qiT2zVa41ULLb5g/edit
^ Any thoughts or feedback would be greatly appreciated
smoky garden
1 fundamental thing about burning illuvials. They are by design created in such number that if you fuse all of them there will be remaining 1 illuvial. This forces burning illuvials in multiples of 3 otherwise they can become extinct.
wide pumice
being able to upgrade illuvials to 100 lvl. might not be a bad idea
solemn fable
Morning Gamers
Some thoughts about how we create a long term, sustainable & hea...
There's some interesting thoughts in here. On a fundamental level, I don't believe that F2P games fail because whales get bored - I agree that not providing very deep sinks for whales would be a mistake, but most F2P games fail because the F2P playerbase disappears, and without someone to "whale over", whales aren't interested in whaling anymore. Wealth and power are comparative, if no one sucks then is anyone good?
I agree with churn (new, exciting things that are worth buying and selling) and burn being important, I'm just wary about leaning too heavily towards the burn elements you've suggested. I also think that no one would be able to afford to play the game at the pricing you've mentioned, and increasing burn mechanics from what currently exists would only exacerbate that issue.
I think targeting price around how much a competitive deck would cost is a better way to determine Overworld run pricing. I think a player should be able to make a reasonable "entry" deck for about $20-$40 (i.e. no T4/T5's, limited T3's). A very good competitive deck should be somewhere in the realm of $100-$200, and potentially more with full exalted augments and a flexible deck for counterplay. Beyond that, I think additional spending should be for cosmetics only (holos, skins etc.).
Limiting the entry price for a competitive deck will ensure more players can participate in playing Illuvium. That makes it worthwhile for whales to chase exclusive assets, because there will be players to whale those assets over.
I don't mind the idea of deterministic holos. It's better for content and would be a net positive for the marketplace. I agree that gating valuable T0 content behind skill checks (tournaments, survival etc.) will help ensure that T0 assets can retain some value.
I wouldn't be in favour of removing holos from base gameplay. They should absolutely be rare, but so should holo crystals. Randomly encountering holos is an exciting gameplay experience that could create an anchor point for players, while finding a holo shard and selling it for $5 is not necessarily as enjoyable or memorable. I'll reference PoE as an example of a game that uses shard/crystal systems for rare content. The majority of players will behave in the most economically advantageous way, which means they will sell their shards instead of engaging with content unlocked by shards. I think crystals would be a good addition, but removing holos from base gameplay would be a mistake. Having both would allow for big dopamine moments for average players, with the benefit of dense content for creators and some additional incremental progress for players not interested in holos.
Burn mechanics for weapons/armor is fine, there will need to be a sink for materials beyond people getting their drone upgrades.
I'd reduce all the pricing you listed by about 3x if we want people to engage with the paid experience. A $1.99 entry point for T1 runs is likely about right, it would allow for 5 capture runs and 5 gathering runs for $20, which is likely enough to build a starting deck to engage with PvP, when coupled with some T0 runs. At the prices you listed, I'd expect a competitive deck to run around $600, and likely more for full augments (at least at current drop rates). That's frankly an untenable amount of investment to make a deck to compete with, and I'm concerned it would result in Illuvium getting ignored by the masses.
Providing sinks for whales is important, but we need to be careful that we don't have those prices spill over to average players. Expensive holos? Sure. Expensive skins? Yup. Expensive base gameplay (PvP)? We can't.
sILV2 is the worst in-game currency we could use. If we're giving players anything, it needs to be Fuel (coming out of the DAO's portion of supply ofc). Eliminating sILV2 is a high priority for overall DAO financial health, and I'm categorically against any system that creates more of it. We should honour what exists, and never introduce more. Rewards for leaderboards are a good idea (and afaik, something that is planned). There's 1M ILV set aside for things like tournament rewards, but Fuel would be an appropriate reward for other leaderboards, as would things like holo/dark holo shards.
shell mason
There's some interesting thoughts in here. On a fundamental level, I don't belie...
Incredible response, thank you Blickter! You’ve actually just sparked a couple of really interesting thoughts & ideas, appreciate the level of detail & constructive feedback, need a bit to think some things over
brittle remnant
Seatin, firstly I appreciate that you took the time to write this out and all the ideas you bring to the table.
Wanna share my thoughts too and want to make it very clear that what I'm about to say is my PERSONAL OPINION and not the opinions of the team.
1. Holos
I completely understand where you're coming from in regards to the Holo Dimension but I disagree on an area where you are guaranteed a Holo. I think that Holos should be stumbled upon and quite difficult to come by. There is something to be said about a specific item being available in the end game that can be equipped to M0z4rt to increase the chances of finding a Holo which I think adds a lot to the end game (similar to Pokemon).
I do like the idea of the Holo shards and how to obtain them. I would amend the use of them to potentially give a higher chance to capture Holos when you find them. Lesser > Standard > Greater Holo shards should go up in effectiveness or even potentially a guaranteed catch for the Greater Holo Shard.
2. Illuvial Bonding
As for Illuvial bonding. I'm not completely against this idea but it would need to be done in a very thoughtful manner and we'd need to consider stages / tiers etc.
3. Holo Weapons & Shields
I 100% agree with this wholeheartedly . No changes here!
I'd even add potentially ranger skins into this!
4. Price Points
This is where we completely disagree!
I very much lean towards a low cost, high volume system.
Again, this is my personal opinion and reflects nothing of the team.
The price points I'd like to see is :
T0 : Free
T1 : $0.99
T2 : $3.99
T3 : $8.99
The reason for this is, from a marketing point of view that $0.99 is an attractive number for consumers as "it's literally nothing". This thought process leads them to spending more and more and more.
If we assume that we have 200,000 players (at some stage) and they only do 1 of these runs per day, that still results in $6 million in revenue from travel alone. This excludes multiple runs, different tiers, shards and everything else.
This makes things incredibly accessible and keeps players in the ecosystem for a much longer time which leads to a stronger emotional connection compared to "I can only afford 1 run every couple of days".
5. Illuvidex
I don't feel too strongly about this point but I agree with your sentiment that there should be multiple leaderboards rewarded weekly.
Thank you for reading this essay and I appreciate your time.
Enjoy! 😛
smoky garden
I'd like to compare run prices to the recent disk openings. Cheapest items tend to give more value in the end, because of the time component.
In order to incentivize higher tier runs I think we need to not have that big of a gap like 3-5x in prices.
I don't think anyone will be hapy only running T1 until end of times. Because I think it'll end up being the most cost efficient run.
shell mason
There's some interesting thoughts in here. On a fundamental level, I don't belie...
I 100% agree that any Free To Play Game fails because it doesn’t look after & cater to the experience of the majority of its playerbase
I understand PB2 will be different and they’ll be lots of thoughts & feedback that spark from it
From the experience in PB1, I think a good Overworld Balance lands at roughly a 1:1 for Harvesting Resource Runs vs Capturing Runs, when we had good harvesting runs on PB1, we were getting like 15-20 Shards & capturing runs like 15-20 Illuvials, granted these were after getting some solid augments
If an Overworld T1 Run is $4.99 and the ratio of Harvesting to Capturing is 1:1, first run you Harvest, then you Capture and with low tier Augments you yield 8-10 Illuvials, that seems pretty solid value for under $10, run that back again 4x for $40 and you’ve got 40 Illuvials + a colossal amount of T2’s to build a beginner deck, heck for most stuff Beginner Decks will be free as the T0 Illuvials are dope, I think it’s often a bit better to go in slightly higher on the pricing as you can always Discount/buff/incentivise or offer special deals/capturing weekends later opposed to Hiking/nerfing and removing things which in Gaming often feels significantly worse
I think it would be dope to have some Holo Drop rate in paid Overworld as hitting those 0.01% experiences really do create such wild stories & memories in the community, but I am hugely in favour of a deterministic Holo progression system that supports & upholds the rest of the Player to Player economy
I think overall it’s just a really solid idea to go into launch having multiple parsed out options available both for churn & burn, I think regardless of the routes the final economy goes down, I think contingencies should be in place on both ends and the more well prepared the DAO is the better chance we have at creating a long lasting sustainable economy, Axie failed as well because they had no aces up their sleeves, no contingencies or alternative options ready to deploy when the economy experienced a level of rapid growth.
In regards to Leaderboard rewards, Fuel or SILV2 is kind of the same thing, both are just credit that ultimately come out of the DAOs bottom line, perhaps a better way to do rewards is Account Bound game credit? Would ensure that the distribution doesn’t affect the SILV2 or Fuel Market and that Game Credit is exclusively funnelled into the ecosystem at a controlled and balanced rate of distribution - ILVG
Thanks to everyone contributing to this discussion! It’s really great just to hash out these thoughts & concepts, a lot of the numbers side of things is moderately impossible to parse out at the moment as we know very little about the final intended state of Overworld drops rates, really enjoying reading through this all today
tender cape
Looping in @elder pike @hazy linden @thorn junco @thorny breach
fading kindle
Regarding Overworld Prices: You mentioned the need for accessibility to a wide audience of maximum size. Let's say we set aside a certain percentage of the Illuvials in the Overworld (from the bonding curve) and let F2P players find them in the Overworld in free runs, even high tier Illuvials (we can decide what can be found and the spawn rate). When they find them however, we don't let them own them, but they would be auctioned off on the IlluviDex by the DAO. The F2P player would get fuel, credits or booster packs for a paid run and the DAO/land owners make money from Illuvial collectors. All of this could be seen as guerrilla marketing, where F2P players brag on Youtube about their finds and free money milked from a web3 game with their boosted paid runs. These players might become long term Illuvium players and we are less seen as a cash grab from the NFT haters. After some time the Illuvials set aside for F2P are all found and we can decide if we want to start a new marketing effort with a specific number of new Illuvials (it could be lots of T0 and T1 with only a very small chance for a T5, a special holo season …) or let it run out. This can of course be farmed, but we have control over the amount and difficulty and for marketing purposes it might even be beneficial.
weary chasm
First off, a big shout out to Seatin for making these well thought out points. Just wanted to comment on prices since a lot of people are saying the proposed prices are too high. People are saying $1.00 a run. For me that is too cheap. My reason is only because this is a pc game. We have already limited the player base substantially because it is on pc and not on mobile. I think for most pc owners $3-$5 is very cheap for an hours worth of entertainment and digital ownership. If this was on mobile I would totally agree a dollar would be the right price.
smoky garden
First off, a big shout out to Seatin for making these well thought out points. ...
What hours of gameplay? 1 run is like 20-30 minutes. If I go to play for like 8-10 hours over the weekend I'd have to drop 50-80 dollars. This is the price of a full game... Do this or buy Diablo 4 for example.
fading kindle
First off, a big shout out to Seatin for making these well thought out points. ...
Your argument is to charge more from a self inflicted smaller player base. Hm. The players might not like it.
smoky garden
If the prices are good people will come. There is no need to milk already invested players. Those should be constantly rewarded. And more and more people will come to the game when they see the appreciation of the player base. We have a chance to be better than web2. We should take it.
fading kindle
If the prices are good people will come. There is no need to milk already invest...
Is this your comment on my idea?
smoky garden
Is this your comment on my idea?
I wanted to add a bit more to my point and I took in mind what you said about not overcharging the player based.
fading kindle
Everyone is so worried about making money with Illuvium in the short term. We need to do it like Amazon, create a large customer base first and then monetize them in a „fair“ manner. I think we underestimate how much marketing will be required unless of course web 3 gaming starts to take off in the next few months. Then we are best positioned and can just watch it, like you said.
frozen fable
It looks like Blickter made most of the points that I immediately thought of regarding this above so I wont repeat them again.
I do want to talk about pricing a bit because I have a bit of a different perspective.
I actually like the idea of the T1 run being around the $5 range. I agree with Seatin here that we are getting around 10 Illuvials per run which would put the average T1 value in the $0.25-$0.50 range. I think this is a good price thats comparable to common cards in most trading card games. Anything significantly less than this for T1 value ($0.10 and below) starts to feel valueless and doesnt trigger the meaningful feeling of ownership since its basically not even worth the time it takes to list it for sale.
Now for the Higher stage I think the pricing presented here is WAY too high, at least considering the current overworld build. I had a very hard time finding T5s in the stage 3 travel, usually taking 2-3 travels to find a T5 shard and Illuvial, and sometimes not even encountering a T4 on bad runs. Now if I paid $50 for the most expensive travel and didnt find a single high tier Illuvial that would be a very bad experience.
Considering that the higher tiers are already very limited because of their ingame rarity, something like $25 for the Stage 3 run seems a lot more reasonable. That would still put the average price for a T5 S1 Illuvial around the $50 mark and considering that T5 Illuvials will basically be required for highly competitive decks, it keeps the entry price for arena players manageable while still enforcing a good gradient of rarity.
Of course this could always be balanced on the flipside by having a higher price, but more common high tier Illuvials and shards to maintain a similar value ratio.
.
Isnt this too cheap for the rarest Illuvials in the game? - absolutely not
Keep in mind this is the cost for obtaining a single T5 s1 Illuvial. If somebody wanted to complete a full collection they need to collect 13 copies of each Illuvial to fuse for one of each stage. So 13 copies x 5 lines = 65 Illuvials at $50 a piece for a total of $3,250. Now I know whales like to whale but $3,250 per set every 6-12 months is a lot, especially considering that there will be holos for those wanting to spend above and beyond the cost for a normal collection.
Yes we want to have price points that appeal to our big spenders, but it absolutely cannot come at the cost of a reasonable barrier to entry for people who want to play arena at a competitive level.
shell mason
Isnt this too cheap for the rarest Illuvials in the game? - absolutely not
Keep ...
There’s a lot to balance and when you get creative a LOT of really cool ways we can balance stuff! I think it’s really important we respect that we can’t just churn out 150 more Illuvials instantly and be conservative, calculated, but have multiple solutions to any inaccessibility or pain points that really start to surface from the community post launch
rocky ridge
Everyone is so worried about making money with Illuvium in the short term. We ne...
I agree with Illuithor, i think we have too few games and more investors in the community. A health gaming economy is one were the players agree that the amount of money paid is worth the fun, not the value of the assets.
rocky ridge
I said that to say, the first part is to make a fun game that even if 100 runs are needed for a rare illuvial you still enjoy it. Low entry fee and decreased drop rates would be good. That way when you get a holo or a high level illuvial you don't feel like you currently do in Illuvium Beyond. Holos are not as special as presented, I think the drop rates should be lower, people will cry but when you get one it will feel that extra special.
On the monetary said, I think everything should be based on fuel. The game should be “The Fight for Fuel” and that should also be included in the story line “e.g ranger were fighting for fuel as it was a valuable resource to get around”. That will cover a lot of issues related to crypto. Also balance it in a way were even if the land holders a getting value, they can’t crash the economy. As a land holder I understand the games economy is more important.
Inconclusion, I have listened to a lot of discussion on illuvium and I have noted the positive view of the future. But the biggest issue I have noted, is that it leads to people being too concerned about the future and the pay-out. Currently we need to be focussed on a fun enjoyable experience. With out that, its all a dream about how this will be like Pokémon and compete with bigger games. At the end of the day illuvium should be a game where you happen to own your assets and not a Dfi project that you can play.
PS. Overworld needs to go to mobile (even due I use a pc) use Ganesha as a reference, even if there needs to be an overworld lite with call of duty mobile graphics.
slate prism
Apologies if some of this has been covered, but thought I'd chip in as I had a similar discussion to this regarding pricing recently with some gamer friends so may be relevant...basically I think it boils down to: web3 people and investors might think it's perfectly fine to pay 10 dollars plus to play a game for an hour, but normal consumers and gamers will not. People have very clear notions of what playing a videogame is and should be, and also what it should cost. If you want to tempt people to try this new thing then you need to go cheap. We should be focusing on making a fun game people want to play, that makes money with volume, not an investment vehicle where all the focus is on money and how much they can sell their illuvials for.
fading kindle
Apologies if some of this has been covered, but thought I'd chip in as I had a s...
Somewhere I saw someone making this distinction: Mainstream gamers are used to leasing in-game items, web3 gamers want to own and pay for them. With leasing they probably mean some some sort of subscription, which gives you the most powerful character for a small monthly fee. In web3 you would either have to own that character or rent it from a web 3 owner, possibly also for a monthly fee. It kind of makes sense, when you think about web3 gamers basically being investors in the game studio by owning NFTs that a mainstream gamer would hopefully like to play with. Which also means that mainstream gamers, who don't want to invest in a game studio (yet), should have way to play on the highest level by e.g. renting good in-game items from the web 3 investors. Does that make sense?
slate prism
Somewhere I saw someone making this distinction: Mainstream gamers are used to l...
I don't think mainstream gamers are used to leasing in-game items. I think if you asked them they'd say they do own their skin, or special mount, or cool weapon or whatever it is. Granted they can't sell it, but that isn't what ownership means to most gamers, and I think we need to consider than when pricing our game. The fact that you can sell assets in our game should be a cool bonus feature for people, not something we use as an excuse to justify overcharging for basic gameplay.
Long term I think we need to stop thinking of our customers as web2 and web 3. We want players. There's a multi billion dollar industry that's been doing just fine for decades without focusing on web 3, and if we want that customer base we need to adapt to them and build from there. Once the game is up and running and the economy is functioning as intended the web3 people will come, as far as I'm concerned they're already taken care of. So we should be focusing on what will best bring in outside customers. I don't have the answers, but I think cheaper is the way to go, especially if the plan is to port the overworld to mobile at point.
This is just my personal opinion btw, speaking as a consumer and someone who was completely unfamiliar with anything crypto related until I joined the team. Not speaking for anyone else on the team or for the game.
fading kindle
I don't think mainstream gamers are used to leasing in-game items. I think if yo...
I agree with you on skins, weapons or even mounts. But the powerful main characters in Diablo IV are given to them for "free" for paying the 100 Dollars or a subscription in other games.
slate prism
I agree with you on skins, weapons or even mounts. But the powerful main charact...
Totally understand that, but what percentage of the player base is actually paying for that? I'd guess it probably isn't massive? and I doubt the game and business model is sustaining itself on those players?
I could be totally wrong though, I'm not super up to date with gaming monetisation strategies, just thinking out loud. So if I'm totally off base then please just ignore me hah
fading kindle
I am just trying to make sense of what is going on and thinking out loud, too. I try to see Illuvium from a web 3 perspective and from a mainstream gamer and try to find ways to bring them together and are actually becoming more optimistic the more I think about it.
fading kindle
Maybe we can win them over more easily by sending out the message that NFT ownership isn't just the character or skin, but really a membership and investment in a game studio organized as a DAO. This is one of the reasons why I think everyone should have the chance to own a real piece of land in Illuvium with earnings and potentially voting rights and not just a T0.
slate prism
That still screams Web3 to me. I'm not convinced most consumers want an investment opportunity, they just want to play a game. An investment, and voting and governance implies extra work, and that's just as likely to turn people off as invite them. It's also potentially problematic as there's still a lot of hostility towards NFT's, it's always going to be risky leading with anything to do with that.
Am very glad these aren't decisions I have to make, it's a minefield! :p
fading kindle
That still screams Web3 to me. I'm not convinced most consumers want an investme...
The most important point you made "risky leading with anything to do with that". Maybe we should focus on web 3 first and let Yuga etc. do the leading into mainstream.
thorny breach
What hours of gameplay? 1 run is like 20-30 minutes. If I go to play for like 8-...
The gameplay is free. You are paying for the cards you collect.