#Burning Mechanism and Huge Issue of drop rates

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

stone hatch
#

Sorry this is a long post and has multiple messages, but I see a huge issue with the rising number of illuvials being caught which is effectively lower drop rates.

We are already seeing this issue from Preseason 1 to Preseason 2. After July 25, there won’t be any more resets, which means that the number of illuvials caught will continue to grow and grow.

I think the team is hoping that people will fuse more if the rare illuvials are harder to catch. A few problems with this, as honestly it takes a ton of time (and in the future, money) to gain the necessary experience to fuse. Secondly, the burn rate of 3 illuvials for 1 is not large enough to keep the overall numbers down. By the time you have enough experience to fuse 3 illuvials, you could have caught way more than 3 illuvials. Third, the worst part is you are never getting rid of stage 3 illuvials. Which means the overall supply of them will never go down, and eventually this will flood the market, which is not what you want.

This problem will only get worse from season to season, when you are asked to catch new sets of illuvials. Which you must, because you can’t have points carry over and you need to give people something to do. You will have people catching more illuvials each new season. For most, we will use a select few illuvials and beyond that are only keeping illuvials for points or hopefully to sell when the real game comes out (But as pointed out before, if you supply is too large selling will not be a great option either). In Preseason 1, you could buy to create sets of illuvials, but that would be difficult in the future because you need to reset the points from season to season. And if you allowed buying or trading to count, then people would have the whole collection on Day 1 of a new season. Overall, you are increasing the incentive to catch illuvials, but there is very little incentive for people to buy illuvials. Again, this will increase supply of overall illuvials caught.

#

The solution by the team right now or at least what people are saying on discord, is that the rate of spawn will decrease as supply of certain illuvial are caught. The problem with this is and I don’t mind it being difficult to catch, but if you make it essentially impossible to catch stage 3’s, the game is no longer fun. No one wants to just see 20 lynx on each level again. Many are saying that they are not going to play Preseason 2 because the spawn rate and catching rare illuvials is basically impossible.

Yes, I am aware when the real game comes out and people need to pay for stage 3 runs, that it’ll be a lot harder to get to the number of illuvials caught as we do right now. But we will eventually get to this point whether it’s two months, or a year. Again, lowing rare illuvial spawn rates is not a solution that people will enjoy in the real game, especially when they are paying to play levels.

This is a huge problem. How do you keep the spawn rates at a decent level, so that people can have fun but not flood the market with too many rare illuvials?

As the name of this thread suggests, I think you need to increase the burn mechanism of illuvials to keep the supply within reasonable amount. How do you do this?

#

a) One of my suggestions is to allow for more than 3 illuvials to be burned when fusing. Each illuvial after the first will be a flat rate of experience. This will allow for huge batches of illuvials to be burned at once. This will control the supply and for those with the money give an incentive to buy illuvials.

b) The main problem with this, is that this would increase the number of stage 3 illuvials, which I stated before as being one of the main issues. What if you allowed illuvials to be burned for points? Obviously stage 3 would be worth the most points or even better only allow stage 3’s to be burned. This would give incentive for people to burn illuvials, especially at the end of seasons, where they won’t be needed for the next season. It would also incentivize buying illuvials. If you paired it with my first suggestion, then someone might be buying stage 1 and stage 2 illuvials as well, just to get to stage 3 so they can burn them.

I know what people will say, is that this gives the whales a huge advantage. But let us be honest, the average person who is only playing a few hours a day and cannot invest thousands of dollars was never going to compete for the most points anyways. At the end of the airdrop, people might say why compete for the top points. Well, you could give out other things, such as land, skins, or just plain nfts (like trophies). Whales love to have the title of most points or get some nft that shows they had the most points or gold, silver bronze, or top 100, or top 1000.

This allowed burning for points will take advantage of a few whales who want to be the top in points for bragging. If a whale came in and burned thousands of illuvials is exactly what you want from season to season.

#

c) You can try and do what others nft projects have done, like locking mechanism for a year. Or burning missions, like topshots, nflallday, and such. But it usually just leads to a very small amount doing the burning, as the average person can only afford to burn so much. This would severely limit the amount of burning the top whales ones can do.

d) Just like with shards for fragments to fuse a master shard. You can also have illuvials to be broken down for fragments or other things, maybe an alternate fuel source, or maybe tickets to run certain stages. This could be helpful for those who might not get a ton of fuel. Or for those who want to try and play this game for free and grind. I could see someone working up to tier 0, stage 3 illuviums for free, burning them to get tickets to play the next stage.

This one might not be the best idea, as people could probably sell stage 3 for actual eth, which then they could buy fuel.

But it could be burning stage 3 for some sort of unique item that can be used in crafting or maybe certain skins.

e) You can try like others to do some sort of raffle as well. Like burn illuvials to go into certain raffles. Some people don’t love raffles, especially sacrificing stage 3’s to maybe win nothing.

#

There are probably other ideas too, but the overall point is that you must incentivize burning more illuvials, so that you can manage the supply. We have seen in 1 month, how much illuvials can be caught if people really put the effort into trying to catch them.

Burning more illuvials will also allow you to keep spawn rates a bit higher than they are now, which will make it fun for people to play and earn rarer illuvials. No one will play this game if they must pay x amount of fuel to play a level but have basically zero chance of getting a rare illuvial. You also can’t just increase spawn rates or you will risk flooding and then destroying the market.

If you can effectively control the supply of the illuvials by incentivizing burning. You increase the reason for people to catch illuvials, and then sell/buy illuvials. Both things we need if we want this game to be successful.

Yes, the one downside to burning is you are giving whales a chance to use their money to get a bigger advantage than regular players.

None of my ideas above are perfect and I’d like to expand on them, but I see a huge issue, especially with spawn rates and the number of stage 3 illuvials in the future. Hopefully this is a starting point where people can come up with better ideas to solve this massive problem.

tidal spoke
#

TLDR
The rising number of illuvials caught is lowering drop rates, making rare illuvials harder to catch, which is discouraging players. Without resets post-July 24, the illuvial supply will grow, potentially flooding the market. Increasing the burn mechanism is essential to maintain balance and keep the game enjoyable.

spice hound
#

There are a lot if things you can do for controlling capture rates: increase travel's cost, decrease capture chance rates, increase battle's difficulty...

#

Spawn rates is not the only one factor that determines the amount of Illuvials that are going to be in the market.

#

You can modify the amount of energy that rest of a battle too...

balmy spoke
#

Entering a Region in overworld is like opening a pack of magic cards, or pokemon cards.
Most people do not just open cards and do nothing with them, they buy the cards to get a deck to play the game.

Same in Illuvium, you go for runs to farm for either creating your own team for arena, try to sell them on the market for a profit or just for collective reasons.

  • If you cought/crafted your team for arena stop farming overworld and go have fun in Arena (More games to come in future)
  • If you don't make profit in selling assets stop selling them until it is profitable again (Market regulates itself)
  • If you completed your collection stop farming overworld and start flexing you got them all. (New collections will be realeased after some time)

It is not designed all players in illuvium just open pack of cards and are going to sell them on markets, that's not how it works.
Illuvium is not like many other web3 games where it guarantees you to earn a certain amount of money in a certain period of play time.

spice hound
balmy spoke
stone hatch
# spice hound There are a lot if things you can do for controlling capture rates: increase tra...

Two things. If you increase the cost of maps or encounters will price most people out. This game will be even more “pay to play” which is the exact opposite point of Web3 games. This would give whales a huge advantage over regular players, even more than what I suggested. Secondly this wouldn’t fix the problem but only extend the time before high numbers are reached. With no way to reduce stage 3 numbers. Regardless of cost you will eventually reach high numbers which will lower spawn rates.

#

If normal people can’t eventually reach stage 3 runs and can’t afford to get stage 3 illuvials, this game is not going to work

spice hound
#

Bro I am trying to complement your idea. I am only saying that change spawm rates is not the only way to regulate the market.

stone hatch
#

Sorry, thought you wanted to not have burn rate but it just increase costs

stone hatch
balmy spoke
tidal spoke
#

@stone hatch when u say burn for points, ru talking about airdrop points? wht about when the P2A ends?
maybe burn for stat increase like pokemon candy?

stone hatch
#

Yeah that’s a good suggestion too. Burn for rerolls in stats as well. I also suggested burn for materials or special items that make skins. Really the more burn mechanism you create the better chance you have at controlling the supply.

stone hatch
#

Just thought of another huge issue with decreasing drop rates over time. How are we going to attract new players, when there was such a huge advantage to those who started early (which I assume will be everyone who is playing now). But in 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, 2 years, how are they going to attract new players? Especially in 6 months when the airdrops are done. If new players find that they cannot catch rare illuvial at an effective rate, and it seems impossible to catch up to players who have been playing for a while, they might give up before they really start.

#

There is also another issue with farmers. A lot of crypto games, if they get popular, it attracts the vultures who quickly figure out how to make the most profit. This causes a massive increase in users all trying to make money, which then causes a massive over farm of the game. Even if you decrease drop rates over time, we will reach super low drop rates quickly. Once these vultures/farmers can't see a way to make money, then they drop everything, destroying the market. Especially in illuviums case where right now there is no way to reduce stage 3 numbers, it could get out of hand quickly.

How do you avoid vultures and farmers? The problem is the only way to avoid them is if the game doesn't become popular, and then the game is kind of screwed anyways. So you kind of have to plan for vultures/farmers to be playing.

#

I'm not sure what the solution to vultures/farmers are. I mean if you have good burn rates, at least it keeps the system rolling. Yes these vultures/farmers will profit, but at least the game will be playable and can continue to grow and then hopefully a solution will be found. Although I'm not sure there is one, as there have been tons of crypto games launched and they have all run into this problem. To be honest I think the solution is to make the game fun enough and have a big enough following that it can sustain a good % of vultures/farmers. But the game has to survive long enough to be self sustaining. The only one I can think of is axie infinity, which had a crazy big run, then has drastically drop but still has a decent following.

balmy spoke
# stone hatch Just thought of another huge issue with decreasing drop rates over time. How ar...

New Sets?
As far as i See it, everything is Setup for longterm.
I think what you See looking for is Shirt term sinks so the farmers you talking about can Make Profit all the time. And thats just not the case.
If there is no demand, you won't sell and you won't Farm anymore (in the pov of someone just playing for money.
Illuvium is more Setup Kind of a Web2 pov than a web3 short term money printer

stone hatch
#

And how is it more like a Web2 rather than a Web3? The game is literally set up for you to farm fuel on land. Use that fuel to capture illuvium to sell or use in arena. It has better economics than other web3 but its complete set up as a web3 game.

#

How is it set up for long term? By changing drop rates?

#

I’m not saying you are wrong. I’d just like to know because maybe I’m missing something and there is some big plan to deal with supply versus demand but also keeping the game fun to play.

graceful cypress
zinc creek
graceful cypress
zinc creek
graceful cypress
# zinc creek Depends on end demand for the assets. If illuvium develops like a battle royale ...

Sure, the more demand the better! I hope it doesnt sound pesismistic but i still think if its profitable people/bots will just play more until its not anymore

Cases in counterstrike used to be 40/65% expected ROI. People still oppened them a lot because they pay for gamble/experience. Now imagine what would happen if a case is 110% expected ROi, even just 70% (the highest it would be across all case), people would speedrun oppening to them until it drops. It always will find its sweet spot not matter what and that sweet spot is negative ev imo

Keep in mind that our supply of pack/cases is literally infinite

tidal spoke
#

a P2E need a sustainable inflow of new players

stone hatch
# graceful cypress Sure, the more demand the better! I hope it doesnt sound pesismistic but i still...

100% agree, as I stated I don't think you can stop the farmers.

My worry is that it won't be 40/65% expected ROI, but as time progresses it'll be much lower. How do you keep expected ROI at a reasonable level so that people will want to keep playing and keep the market alive. I agree that you want it around 60% expected ROI. Not high enough that farmers come in and ruin the game, but not too low that actual players are still having fun, gambling on getting rare illuvials.

We agree that regardless of what they initially set expected ROI the farmers will do so many runs that it’ll drop it to 40/65%. At that point the number of people playing will have stabilized as well, meaning the huge number of farmers will have dropped. Let’s say at this point (doesn’t matter if it’s 1 month, 6 months, 1 year, or 2 years), you will have a huge issue of supply and demand. If there are 1,000,000 illuvials caught at that point. And say 10,000 stage 3 illuvials. With very little opportunity to reduce these numbers, and right now it’s impossible to reduce stage 3 illuvials. The expected ROI will decrease with each illuvial caught.

Someone suggested releasing new illuvials, because their supply will be zero. But it’s not like they can release new illuvials every few weeks, because arena is built on strategy, and you can’t destroy the balance and skill of that game. Also, releasing new illuvials is a very short-term fix and will only lead to more supply issues. As people try and catch the new illuvials, they will catch old illuvials driving numbers higher.

I keep coming back to incentivize a better burn mechanism. This way you can keep drop rates and expected ROI at an acceptable level I don’t see how else you can run this game without a better burn mechanism to control supply.

I get the hope is that people won’t just be playing OW, but it’ll be a huge part of if illuvium is successful or not.

devout marlin
#

maybe fuse stage 3 into eachother to get like an enchantment bonus and could be many lvl of this?

graceful cypress
balmy spoke
balmy spoke
lament steeple
#

One thought i had was to get rid of gems and just use illuvials for that purpose. Would create another sink for them.

graceful cypress
heady yoke
#

Bad post

stone hatch
# graceful cypress Good point Hats, Remember that we should have new sets every ~6 months iirc an...

I want Illuvium to be successful and I do wish to be playing this game for a while. I do have incentives, as I own tokens and land.

But for a lot of players, and if we want this game to survive it will need to attract new players as well. They will not own the token, nor own land. They will not have the same incentive to stay in the game as many of us have.

For most this is a Web3 game, so if it’s not fun and/or not profitable, they won’t stick around, and you won’t attract new players.

I see that there will be people like me who will play for a while without new illuvials. My plan is to grind OW if drop rates are decent. Those starting on July 25 will have the greatest advantage as the drop rates will be at the highest. I plan to transition to arena after.

But for most if OW is not profitable, they won’t play, and you won’t attract new players.

My honest opinion is, NO, I don’t think new illuvials every 6 months to a year will be good enough for the public. A year is probably more reasonable for developers so in my example I’ll use that.
In the real game because it costs money there is no way we get to the illuvial count we have now. This timeline is hypothetical of course and depends on costs, how many players, how many farmers, formula for drop rate, how many bugs the game has, etc. Hopefully we can have decent drop rates for say one third of the time or 4 months. If the drop rates are decent, you’ll see an increase in users trying to profit. Say for the next 4 months the drop rates are what we hope to stabilize at 40/60%, then you are probably maintaining users. The problem becomes the last 4 months when drop rates are less than 40%, how many users will leave the game, and you are not going to be recruiting any new users.

#

I’m just talking OW here, and I hope the arena brings in lots of players. But you can’t expect most of the population to be able to afford to buy their teams, especially if they want to be competitive. OW is where most must start.

Let me be clear a proper burn mechanism is not a complete fix but will only extend these timelines. There is no burn mechanism that will keep it at 40/65% forever, that’s not possible. But if you extend it so that instead of 4 months of bad drop rates, you only have 1 or 2 bad months, then you can potentially not lose a ton of users. Especially if you make an announcement when the new season is starting, lots of players will wait for 1 month.

graceful cypress
#

Again, i totally agree with the way you see it and overall i would be supportive of an extra burning mechanism

I disagree that people will have to play the OW though. I believe the illuvium interoperable ecosystem of game is an awesome experience and i will surely play the full loop myself but ultimately i think most will only come for a given game, like now arena and then other games too. Some people will only want to play OW and others only zero too, dont get me wrong

As overworld is a pack oppening and will soon cost a lot of money to play i dont think overworld creates most of its own demand. I think that demand mostly all come from arena different modes and than our subsequent games

Most tcg or tft players that will come to our game wont want anything to do with ow or zero, they will come for their strategic, competitive game

I hope the price of decks ends up in a good range but if done correctly buying a decent deck for ascendant would cost just like buying a game or buying a decent deck in tcg's. Going to play OW yourself on the other hand would cost you more as its oppening packs with negative expected ROI

stone hatch
#

I should have clarified that new users who don't or can't put in a ton of money, will need to start in OW.

I see your point and I hope you are right. I hope Arena (and in the future the other versions) can carry this game alone.

My fear is that if the top team cost X amount, how many new people will play? And isn't that "pay to play" model, not what we want?

But maybe you are correct and people won't mind paying X amount to play a great game.

stone hatch
# balmy spoke Can't catch set1 illuvials anymore when set2 releases

I personally don't love the idea of closing off sets. I think using a formula like they are now would be best. Depending on numbers will change spawn rates. Each new season the new set will be 99% of the illuvials on each stage. And over time as numbers change as more new set is caught, and hopefully by the end of the year you'll have a 70/30 split (70% new, 30% old)

This is a new idea and I honestly haven't thought it out as much as the other questions. So hopefully what I say next makes sense.

I think there are some pros and cons with this idea and I'm not sure which side I'm on.

Pro - This would reset drop rates and solve that big issue. And the team could then readjust the formula.

Con - For new players it'd be really hard to get certain old illuvials. For instance, if there is some OP illuvial that everyone wants from the old set, and you could then only buy it. It would drive the market up big on that one. Would new users get pissed if they felt they were at a big disadvantage?
Also would need some of the old illuvial to be OP, as you couldn't make them all inferior to the new set, as you'd piss off the loyal users who spent hours capturing them.

But maybe that's the benefit of being a loyal player? And if you balanced the first set with the second set, new users might join as long as you have OP illuvial from the new set as well?

I think this is an interesting idea.

Not sure, but I think if this games every gets to set 5, I think you'd still want a chance at set 1. I'd be a very low chance, which would make them special.

graceful cypress
stone hatch
graceful cypress
# stone hatch True, thanks for the new perspective. Gives me a bit more hope. I mean I'm sti...

In the testnet you mean? Probably 99% OW but that doesnt mean anything about the games because the first airdrop phase was only incentivizing OW and not all games are incentivized but OW is by far the best one

Even someone like me, who aspire to be professionnal arena player and put 2000/3000+ hours in the arena didnt play arena in the last 2 months because of the airdrop structure

balmy spoke
stone hatch
#

But I do understand you’d want to give value for long term players and those who have been playing since the start. And we both agree it would help a lot with drop rates and inflation