#Game is too costly to play

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

marble idol
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The game is just too expensive to play, and when you do runs the drop rate is insanely low for rare illuvials. I played a lot the first day to test things out but have significantly slowed down, because I'm waiting for them to make adjustments.

I understand that people have been saying that we shouldn't expect to make money playing this game. I don't think you should be able to make a living off this game, but like any web3 game, you need it to be a bit profitable. I understand that if it was too profitable, then bots and farmers take over, and it kills the game. But at this rate where you are losing money on every run, who is going to play this game? Even getting the rarest illuvial right now is still a net loss.

I posted a few times about how the pre-seasons with infinite fake money was going to not give you an accurate picture of how this game was going to work. Now with money involved you need to make adjustments so that this game is profitable or at least break even. If it's break even, then individuals could be competing for airdrops, where they could make a few ilv and then make a small profit.
I have a bunch of money invested, and I truly think illuvium is an excellent game, but I think if it stays this way, no one will play it. Maybe arena, which is free, but not much else.

Here are some suggestions:

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  1. There isn't infinite money anymore, so players don't have infinite shards. it's actually very hard to get good shards, and then it cost a fortune to make them.

I was trying things, so I did a few stage 3 runs, to get shards. Very costly but stage 2 the chances of getting even an epic shard is next to zero. I got a few resplendent shards, which cost a fortune to make.

Then I did a lot of stage 2 runs with the scanner on to find rare illuvials. The drop rate is insanely low. The best illuvial I’ve seen was a tier 3, stage 3. I used a resplendent shard and didn’t get it. I’m still kind of pissed about that.

Here is my point, getting shards is super costly. Find rare illuvials is super costly. And even if you do both, there is a good chance that you aren’t going to get them. How is that fun? You think people are going to continue to do that?

My suggestions are to change one of the two things. If you want to make it super costly to get shards, then make them more effective. So, when you find rare illuvials you are going to catch them.

Or probably more fun and better for the game, to increase the drop rates of rare illuvials. Without infinite resplendent shards you aren’t going to catch them that often, but at least you get to see them and try. I would keep playing if there was more rare illuvials per stage. I wouldn’t have resplendent shards, but I’d try to catch them with epic or rare shards in the hope to catch them. The trade off is that I find a bunch of cool illuvials but know my chances of catching them are pretty low with rare shards. Honestly epic shards are hard to come by.

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  1. You could just lower cost of traveling to each stage as well.

The only reason I can think that they haven’t done this already is that they are afraid that if the supply is too high then you probably crush the market.

But it all has to do with supply and demand. If it’s too expensive to play, and you have let’s just say 1000 people playing. The problem there is no demand to buy either as there isn’t enough new players coming in. If you decrease the cost, and let’s say 10k people start playing then there is more demand and new player are coming into the market.

Yes, if you make it too easy and too cheap to play then you could have a supply problem. But for the economics to work you need new players and ones that can’t afford to put in $1000’s.

Again, the game needs to be profitable or at least break even.

Which comes to the most important point.

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  1. I’ve made multiple posts about this before, but you must take advantage of the whales who are fighting for the top spot on leaderboards, and give them some cool rewards, like a trophy nft, or land, or a crazy ton of ilv.

For those who are going to read this and say that the little guy then has no chance of winning. Sorry, you never did, look at how the game is now. How are you going to create a set of tier 5 suits, without putting in 1000’s?

Make a burn mechanism and incentives buying on the marketplace. Whales will buy which will drive up the market and make it profitable for the little guys. The whales will get their prize and will be happy too.

I’ve made a huge list of ways you can increase the burn mechanism of this game. If you want, I can rewrite those.

Multiple burn mechanism means you can increase drop rates, which make the game fun, without oversupplying the marketplace.

If there are rewards and whales are competing the game will be bit more profitable as well. If it’s basically break even, people will play, it’s a damn good game.

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  1. Also, I would change the milestone missions from “catch” an illuvial for each season to “catch or buy”. Yes, this gives the whales the edge as they are the only ones that can afford to buy illuvials. But this would create demand which would make the game profitable.

“Catch or buy”, so that each season it’s not just having the illuvials in your account, but you start over, which will create new demand.

I think maybe "buy" must be in your account at the end of the season, to make sure that there isn't repeat selling.

This might cause a huge supply dump at the start of each season, but is why I think burn mechanism is probably the most important.

I think there needs to be clarity on the 6-month airdrop as well. Does each month get a reset?

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  1. If you really want us to focus on catching lower stage illuvials, and then leveling them up to evolve them. Then you need to do a few things.

a) Allow you to grind a bit more, without having nerfs on the illuvials. Right now you can only fight so much per stage which makes it super hard to grind.
b) The damn gems for tier 4, make it annoying. Even if you manage to catch 3 of them, and then gain enough experience, you need to play stage 3 land in order to have a fraction of a chance to get the correct essence and gems.

Both make it so hard to even grind to make rare illuvials.

Again, not super fun. I have no problem grinding. I would grind a bunch of stage 1’s into stage 2’s into stage 3’s, if it were possible, but honestly, it’s not.

I really think illuvium is the best looking web3 game. It’s fun to play. But you need to make adjustments now that real money is involved. This game is just way too costly to play.

dusky garden
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These are solid points. The milestone list needs to be handmade, not this generated crap, especially not two months in a row. Fix it tomorrow, before it's too late!

thorny badger
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The gas (crypton, hyperion, solon) that are being used in the game is off-chain they said before the launch. If so, then all money from fuel exchange goes only to their wallet. What's the plan with those? are they going to add it as a liquidity to ILV token or have other plans?

low cloak
thorny badger
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am still looking forward from what they said, the..... $0.6 for stage 1 travel, $5 for stage 3. as of now, am seeing twice the value

dusky garden
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I would contemplate paying those prices for a different map. 🙂

plucky robin
nocturne mango
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So if most ppl will be in the profit, where does that money actually come from?

Its a zero sum game. If you make profit, someone will loose money

dry olive
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A good flywheel need sustainable inflow of new players
entry cost need to go from low to high with adoption so most can make profit along the way

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if entry cost goes from high to low, u need to keep selling as price and cost goes down otherwise you'll be holding the bag

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for fuel price to go from high to low u need
Growth of demand lower than growth of supply

low cloak
low cloak
dry olive
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just basic economics
the same applies to general economy, thats why managed inflation is good

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the opposite is japanese decade of deflation

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so the question is how do we create demand?
the missions and milestones are dominantly creating supply.
craft and catch.
need to create demand to buy and hold

mortal bough
low cloak
marble idol
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Web3, regardless of what you want this game to be, a huge portion of it will be if it’s profitable for people. That is what Web3 is about, getting away from EA, and the money pits of games, where you continue to pay and pay and pay.

For people to be profitable, where does the money come from?

  1. At the beginning of projects, the money comes from the company. It’s basically why we have airdrops now. Most start up companies lose money for the first year (if not years). They will start making money with advertisements, sponsorship, investments, buyouts, etc.
  2. If you can create a cycle of new players. The new players put in money that helps make the old players profitable. After a while they become older players and new players come in and they get paid. But you need to actual start this cycle. Right now, everyone is losing, no one is making any money, which means no one is joining. People are literally leaving right now.
  3. As stated above and probably the most important, most of the money for a lot of these projects comes from whales. I played big time for the first 4 months, and the top guys, spent fortunes trying for the top place. Yes, they got back big time tokens, and other cool nfts, but there was zero chance it was going to be profitable. They did not care, they spent millions of dollars. This allowed for basically most players to get paid.

If you gave out not just tokens, but some sort of trophy, or a specific 1/1 skin. Trust me the whales will compete and spend millions trying to win.

marble idol
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I know certain games attracted new players, because their token went crazy or there were instant profits.

I think Illuvium has a big enough fan base that it doesn’t need to go crazy. Also, of all the web3 games, Illuvium is an actual game. It looks amazing, it doesn’t have a ton of bugs (yes, there are things wrong but minimal compared to what I’ve seen), it’s fun, it has a plan for the future, new games are supposed to give more functionality, their tokenomics is well thought out, and it has profit sharing.

All things that make Illuvium stand out, beyond most of the games out there right now.

I think the team honestly believe that people will come just because the game is fun. That is naïve for a web3 project.

It needs to be clear how people are going to make back their money. Even if it takes them a month, or a few months. Honestly, I think most wouldn’t have a problem breaking even, but besides land there is very little to indicate how you can make back any money.

Even if we had more details on the airdrops, like is it monthly, and how much does each person get? For instance, for a regular person if you put in $100 dollars, but the airdrop was going to get you around $100, that would be fine. I've seen a few projects make it super clear how much and how to get tokens, so people knew how much to invest.

Right now, we have no idea what we are going to get back, and each run is at a lose. Yes, it’s been two days, but as the market stands right now, with very little incentives to buy, prices are going to get worse and worse.

thorny badger
dry olive
thorny badger
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am I wrong?

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Sorry, please tell me if am wrong. If I missed to read or hear something regarding fuels being off-chain. am serious with the discussion and I am all in to Illuvium, so I'm trying to understand everything

mortal bough
thorny badger
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yes, I do know that they will give influence once fuels are onchain, but as of now, off-chain means they have control over it(the dev), right?

dry olive
thorny badger
dry olive
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idk how we can verify it haha

silk bear
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Shard cost
Common 10 = 0.08
Uncommon 20 = 0.17
Rare 40 = 0.33
Epic 160 = 1.34
Resplendant 1200 = 10.04
Master 5000 = 41.85

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i definitely think the price is too steep, and these are from fuel alone, not including the shard itself...