#1 Major Overhaul of Fuel Usage

[blissful valley]

We would like to share two complementary Proposal Ideas:

#1 Major Overhaul of Fuel Usage
#2 Removing Travel Stages

Due to the length of this post #2 Removing Travel Stages, which is complementary to this one, can be found in a separate post. While the first is more critical, it is beneficial to consider both simultaneously for a more holistic approach.


Proposal Idea #1 Major Overhaul of Fuel Usage
Pay only at mint.
 
Key Issues:

1. Players can't explore the Overworld without spending money.
2. Players lose money when they don’t find valuable items.
3. Every action feels like spending money, which is discouraging.
    
   Proposed Solution:
   Free Travel: Players should be able to travel without cost.
   **Free Resource Gathering and Illuvial Catching: **Players should gather resources and catch Illuvials without spending money.
   **Fuel Costs for Crafting: **Turning gathered resources into usable materials (like ingots) should require fuel.
   **Fuel Costs for Minting Illuvials: **Minting Illuvials should cost fuel, but catching them should be free.
    
   Explanation:
   Currently, players pay upfront for the chance to catch Illuvials and find resources. The new approach allows free exploration and gameplay, with costs only incurred when players decide to mint the items they find valuable and necessary for their progression.
    
   Example:
   Players can explore the Overworld for free and spend hours searching for Illuvials and resources. A drone collects these Illuvials and resources for the player, with limited storage space. Back in Sanctum Mesa, players can choose which Illuvials and resources to mint and which to discard. This decision can be made after each run or when drone storage is full. All caught Illuvials, ores, essences, gems, and other items remain off-chain until they are minted through The Forge.
    
   This way, players only spend money on items that are valuable to them, allowing them to play as much as they want without immediate costs.

Addressing Bots and Hackers:
Free travel might allow bots to scour the map for rare Illuvials. To counter this, make Illuvial encounters challenging and require good gear. (This assumes Illuvial Combat is implemented). The rarer the Illuvial, the more powerful it should be. For instance, a dark holo Illuvial should be much stronger than a holo Illuvial, which is stronger than a normal Illuvial, with tier 5, stage 3, dark holo Illuvials being the most powerful.
 
For this to work, it must be normal for players to fail against strong Illuvials if they are unprepared. Hackers would need to invest significant money to gear up and catch high-level Illuvials before being able to take on the rarest ones.

Important note: This is just one of many potential solutions to counter hackers and bots. We welcome any suggestions that could contribute to addressing this issue.

Addressing the Bonding Curve:

A potential issue is that players might hoard Illuvials without minting them, thereby influencing the bonding curve and controlling the supply. This can be effectively mitigated by limiting the storage capacity of the drone to only a few Illuvials at a time.
The idea is that after 1-2 runs, players must decide which Illuvials to mint and which to discard. While this system could potentially be exploited by creating multiple characters, each holding several Illuvials, it's important to note that catching rare Illuvials requires high-quality gear and possibly a team of Illuvials. Therefore, new characters would not be equipped to catch rare Illuvials easily.

Due to the length of this post Proposal Idea #2 Removing Travel Stages, which is complementary to this one, can be found in a separate post. Please continue reading there.

Author: Reven
Key Contributor: Jaganite

Proposal Idea #2 Removing Travel Stages

Important Note:
This proposal builds on the previous idea of "Pay only at mint" and Proposal Idea #1 Major Overhaul of Fuel Usage to further enhance the gameplay experience.

Key Issues:

1. Since travel is now free, the stages are no longer necessary and only add unnecessary complexity.
2. The different stages of travel are confusing to most players and differences between them are unclear.

Proposed Solution:
**Remove Travel Stages: **Eliminate the stages for Overworld travel.
**Universal Spawn Rates: **All tiers, stages, and finishes of Illuvials have a chance to spawn during each run.
**Enhanced Visual Variety: **Add more visual diversity to mineral and plant nodes, scattering them across the map for players to discover.

Explanation:
This solution simplifies the travel experience (which would be free according to the first proposal) and adds depth to the gameplay by allowing players to target specific resources they need. For Illuvials, the only change is the inclusion of T0 Illuvials on the map.

Example:
As players explore an area, they can easily distinguish between different types of mineral and plant nodes, whether they are from stage 1, 2, or 3, and choose to collect only those they need. This adds strategic depth compared to collecting everything in sight. The heat map could be adjusted to show areas where specific stages of minerals and plants are located.

For Illuvials, players will encounter any Illuvial of any tier and stage, with the addition of T0 Illuvials. Free travel allows F2P players to focus on T0 Illuvials and observe higher-tier Illuvials in the wild, which might encourage them to mint these Illuvials if they catch them.

Summary of Both Proposals:

1. Free travel in the Overworld.
2. Pay fuel only when minting.
3. Remove stages of travel.

Addressing Current Problems:

1. The game is largely behind a paywall.
2. Onboarding is difficult due to complexity and costs.

These proposals aim to simplify the game and make it more accessible, while maintaining the economy. **Moving the paywall further into the gameplay loop **lets players enjoy the game more and only pay for items they find valuable. This reduces frustration from paying for unwanted items and encourages strategic spending.

Additionally, this approach will lower the supply of T0, T1, and T2 Illuvials, as players will only mint what they need, helping maintain their market value.

These changes also benefit game developers by providing more design flexibility. For example, adding RPG-style quests becomes easier when travel is free, as players can explore the world and engage in quests without worrying about travel costs. Free travel allows developers to use zones for more than just resource gathering and Illuvial catching. This might also come in handy when implementing multiplayer, raids and other features.

Biggest Challenge: Countering Hackers and Bots

Addressing hackers and bot farms is critical but beyond our expertise. We hope the development team will discuss these proposals and explore solutions to prevent cheating.
We believe these proposals will enhance player experience, simplify gameplay, and provide more design freedom for developers.

Closing remarks:
We recognize that these proposed changes are substantial and may impact the current development process. Therefore, we present these ideas as a starting point for a constructive discussion between the community and the developers. Our goal is to find common ground and implement measures that are acceptable to everyone. We welcome all feedback, which may lead to adjustments in the proposed ideas.

Author: Reven
Key Contributor: Jaganite

[narrow fossil]

ive talked about my concerns with the pay-to-play model
and recently the high starting price

the feedback i had "you want to change the whole system this close to launch?"
"price will go lower"
well here we go
first impression matters
and im afraid ILV gonna be remembered as an expensive game

[median spade]

This change make even this airdrop system rn looks WAY better. Whales would be inclined to invest into better teams and searching for rarer illuvials, web2 would have a taste to experience overworld and retetion and playtime would incrise. Send it, i have a land and inclined to stake ilv to vote on this proposal. 🤝

[blissful pulsar]

This proposal is very similar to mine (https://discord.com/channels/760344898200666112/1267401157521833996), so looks like different players looks in the same direction. Hence I think it's still ok to have some minor payment for travel.
I will leave my thoughts here to consider them as well:
Right now nearly everything that is collected from stage will be minted and developers put and energy limit for single run because of it. As a result quite high price of the run kills all the fun of OW as player now need to calculate what is more profitable to catch/gather instead of just playing the way he would like to. Alternative approach would be to allow player to collect everything that he wants but as digital non-NFT assets, than player will need to put fuel on top to mint or craft with that digital assets. Currently we can see this already being implemented with ore which only converts to NTF when you put fuel to create an ingot. I do not see any reason why this should not be the same with other resources AND illuvials. This will also allow to make stage run price significantly lower as extra fuel will be spent on NFTs. So in the end each player can play the game the way he wants + price is more accessible for more players to join + no market speculation is possible as there is minimal fuel price inside each NFT. And this will also make less load on Immutable infrastructure, so less issues with failed orders

[narrow fossil]

yea theres a minting limitation with IMX.
cmiiw we created a custom order and it is limited to 15 queries, thats why we need to relaunch the client to refresh the queue, otherwise the team need to mint it manually.
solution:

1. Migrate to zkevm imx
2. taking everything off chain, and let players mint what they want instead of everything

[blissful valley]

Agree with that however I believe there are further benefits to keeping travel free vs little cost. Here is a quote from the second proposal that will be posted in several hours.

"These changes also benefit game developers by providing more design flexibility. For example, adding RPG-style quests becomes easier when travel is free, as players can explore the world and engage in quests without worrying about travel costs. Free travel allows developers to use zones for more than just resource gathering and Illuvial catching. This might also come in handy when implementing multiplayer, raids and other features."

[blissful pulsar]

I would definitely prefer free runs, but if this is impossible from business perspective I'm ok to pay kind of "subscription" fee if it's reasonable + pay for anything that I would like to own as NFT asset

[blissful valley]

I do not believe that it is impossible from business perspective. The idea is to move the cost from travel to mint. The cost per Illuvial/Resource can stay relatively same if so the dao desires. What i would like to achieve is to move the paywal further down the gameplay loop so that players can experience gameplay before spending dollars.

And also, spend money on what players want, not on what they happen to encounter during a run, which can be worthless to them if unlucky.

[blissful pulsar]

I agree that there are different options for business. As a recent example I'm playing Warcraft Rumble which is completely free, full high quality content available for anyone to experience. New content is coming out regularly and game is relying on purchases from people who are willing to pay for fast progress or top of the leaderboard. I would never started playing it if there would be similar pay wall as in Illuvium. So team needs to be focused on creating more fun for players for free, so those who are willing to pay will arrive eventually.

[blissful valley]

Posted the second proposal in the first comment so that it is available to read until i repost it in a different thread later today.

[fast kraken]

Come on guys, it's fun to read all these major overhaul ideas but have you considered the technical side of it at all?

Let's say one of these big ideas would get approved (I am putting all ideas with major changes in this category such as make the game free to play, change fuels, make travel free and only pay at mint etc.). How long do you think it would take to rebuild the whole game to suit these changes?? We would probably need to halt the game that was just launched for months, at the very least. How well would that be received by the player base? What would players say/do who invested significant money into the game as it is today?

It's super easy to write a big idea, it's even easier to vote for it with a thumbs up, but just how realistic do you think implementing these major changes would be??

I may sound like a douche who is discouraging the sharing of ideas. That is not the case at all, we need fresh ideas. But maybe ideas that can realistically be implemented would be more useful. Just my 2 cents.

[misty surge]

The immediate consequence of this would be that players absolutely SPAM runs, and only the best/rarest assets ever get minted. Subpar stats? Ditch it. Not holo/dark holo? Ditch it.

I'd be concerned about turning gameplay into nothing but loading up runs and looking for the absolute rarest Illuvials out there.

Removing stages sounds easy, but it would actually be really hard to balance. How do you make an encounter for say, a T5S2 Illuvial balanced for a new player who has a doka and the ranger? Part of what stages do is allow players to progress into harder content when they are ready without getting walloped. You'd need some kind of dynamic system that evaluates the power of your team to scale the difficulty of encounters accordingly.

You do mention bots and potentially making combat harder, but in autobattler combat, there will always be a setup that is the cheapest and fastest to accomplish a goal. I mean currently, most players can get through S3 combats with a $20-$30 team. If you make combat harder, maybe that's a $40-$50 team, because people will optimize around whatever team can get the job done for cheapest. If the requirement were to move to somewhere like a $500-$1000 team, we would have effectively gated anyone not willing to spend that much from having any chance to compete in the end-game of Overworld.

I do understand the core idea and I think there could be an implementation similar to it that has merit, but I don't see this implementation making anything more fun or more accessible for players.

[blissful valley]

Firstly, I 100% agree with your point here. And this is what was written in the proposal:

"We recognize that these proposed changes are substantial and may impact the current development process. Therefore, we present these ideas as a starting point for a constructive discussion between the community and the developers."

But we have to start somewhere. We are days from launch and all of us, players, investors and team members are trying to absorb all the feedback. One thing that is heard a lot is that the game is behind a paywall. If we all agree that this is an unsurmountable obstacle for major adoption then brainstorming a change should begin early so a change can be introduced later.

If you like the idea but think it requires a lot of work then this is a great start anyway.

[blissful valley]

Please note that the proposal assumes that Illuvial Combat is implemented. Since we dont have the details how it works, it is hard to talk about balance.

[misty surge]

Sure, and that could absolutely change the way combat works, but it doesn't change the incentive to repeatedly load up runs and search for/capture everything until you get perfect assets, at which point you mint those perfect assets.

[fast kraken]

Yes, its a fair point too. And as I said, I'm not trying to be a troll. But I still think changing the existing mechanics of the live game once we have people invested in it is too late.

We can, on the other hand, think up additions that would make the illuvium ecosystem more accessible to the masses. And I think the team is already going in this direction with the free2play gauntlet.

We can perhaps build other free2play modes of even more popular game formats and expand the universe in this direction.

[misty surge]

I think we might just need to do a better job of signaling to players that Overworld is not THE game. If I loaded Illuvium up with no context, I don't think I'd find Gauntlet or understand that it's a F2P game mode where I could play and compete without having to own anything.

With the way the tutorial is set up, the opening menu is set up, we're very directly telling players that Overworld is what they should play, and they play until they hit a pay wall. We don't really direct them to other games. The number of options when a player clicks through the Arena screen is pretty overwhelming, and it shouldn't be a surprise that it's hard to understand what any of it means. Leviathan doesn't signal anything to anyone, for example, if they aren't familiar with Illuvium.

Optimal scenario is that we direct players to game modes where Illuvials matter, they get to see and understand why Illuvials matter, and then, with that context and incentive, they may be willing to pay for travels.

[blissful pulsar]

So let's stick to the game with 100 people playing? How happy would investors be when no new players coming into game? I know that it's maybe too early to evaluate how successful it will be but it can be too late in some time to start changing what we have

[blissful valley]

Isn't that the fun part of the game? Running around the world for hours, searching for that perfect scoriox you want to capture? That's the point. People want to pay for things they value. Instead we ask them to pay for things they dont need. The only concern here is the hackers that could find these automatically and this was mentioned in the proposal too.

[blissful pulsar]

If OW is not game Illuvium is loosing half of audience, is it ok?

[fast kraken]

We have the best art team in the world. Having a few artist create awesome-looking and easy-to-understand game guides geared towards new players could be a worthwhile task.

[blissful valley]

All other ideas are welcome and will surely move us towards our goal of major adoption.

[misty surge]

Maybe we should make players want or need the things they are capturing, for gameplay reasons. OW currently needs 8 Illuvials, everything beyond that basic team setup is evaluated on its' resale value.

[blissful valley]

I think many people will disagree that Overworld is not THE game. I know that the original idea was to create a card pack opening experience but this idea is long gone. The team plans to introduce multiplayer and raids and it would be best to have those merged with Overworld. Overworld will evolve into a multiplayer rpg.

[misty surge]

I think it's a UI and UX issue more than that guides don't exist, personally.

When you start playing, as an example, Hearthstone, they don't direct you to pack opening out of the gate. They put you into the intended gameplay loop for most players and show you why cards matter. You get a feel for the part of the game where cards matter, and when you come out of the tutorial, you have context and a basic understanding of why you might want to buy some packs.

[misty surge]

Yes, in the future Overworld could absolutely be the main offering, but if 100's or 1000's of people are capturing Illuvials, and only need 8 each, and are able to pull 6 per run, there's an obvious shortage of demand, because gameplay doesn't require anything more than that.

[blissful pulsar]

Exactly, Arena players think that OW is not a game, but I'm here only because of it

[fast kraken]

I already stated in my first post why we can't just change major mechanics. Just look at how much effort/time it is to develop much smaller changes than these. I understand our point, but it does not make it more realistic to implement major overhauls. We can adjust, build additions etc. These will also take time but won't require the rebuild of the whole game (and I'm not even just talking about the overworld, zero is also connected to the current setup)

[blissful valley]

Agreed. We need actual utility for Illuvials.

[blissful valley]

But we can talk about them. 🙂 And we should.

[misty surge]

I mean don't get me wrong, I'm garbage at Arena, and I vastly prefer Overworld's gameplay. It would just be really cool if the hundreds of Illuvials that aren't on my 8 Illuvial team did something for me in that context. Future games have obvious opportunity there, but I think there's probably solutions within what we currently have as well.

Just as like, a throwaway idea - Gauntlet where ownership matters. You could choose one Affinity bonus to permanently apply to your team, maybe you could even swap it during a match. That bonus could ramp up from 0 to max benefit based on how many of the available water Illuvials you own. Gives a sense of progression and some player agency to gameplay based on things you own but aren't actively playing. Systems like that make you feel like you're doing the right thing by acquiring and building a collection.

In a system like that, catching a random non-holo T2 isn't the wrong thing to do, because it supports your gameplay, not just your bottom line.

[golden hornet]

exactly, game is doomed if it goes on in this direction, i agree 100% with the proposals.

[prime bone]

Read entire thing not against it at all just addressing potential shortcomings

Shortcoming 1:

-isn’t free capture and paid minting, just like opening all the pokemon card packs at the card store browsing through all the cards for free and only paying for the rarest cards?

[weak hornet]

I love OW, but I find myself constantly making economic decisions instead of gameplay decisions and it's killing the fun. A web3 game needs to be fun to play (or highly profitable) or it will die.

Blickter makes a good point re: spamming runs and cherry-picking the best illuvials but there are ways to mitigate that. You would still have to build a solid team and learn how to play to catch the best illuvials. As a beginner, if you run into a T5S3 you should have no chance to catch it yet. The encounters should make you want to build up.

A time limit and small holding pen before minting seems like a good idea too.

I'm no game designer, but as much as I love and support Illuvium and very willing to spend $ on it (lots of land, staking, and now OW fuel) it seems doomed to either be a tiny whales-only game or dead if it stays as it is. Something needs to change IMHO. I think these proposals are a very good starting point for rethinking the game and I'd like to know what Aaron thinks about changes like these from a developer perspective.

[tulip talon]

This!

While I get the idea behind making it free to play I don't think that would be a good solution for 2 reasons:

1. This would be a lot of work on the technical side and would throw us back by at least 6 months and probably more.

2. Then we could just remove NFTs. The concept to get everything for free but you cannot use it for anything unless you pay for every little item in your inventory doesn't sound very appealing to players. Then just remove NFTs at all and go another way for monetizing the game. (web2) Players hate NFTs. And this monetization will give them another reason to do so because it makes not much sense imo.

The team made a game design decision and we have to adjust it. But it is too late for massive changes

[weak hornet]

We're now in public beta. I doubt anyone considers this the final game design. That said, if big changes are made then the DAO would probably have to consider some kind of consideration for the early adopters.

[rotund flame]

Not rly, since it is stated the game is in beta, so changes are to be expected

[misty surge]

Yeah, changing acquisition is inevitably going to burn someone. I'm so much more keen to address demand (by making owning more appealing through gameplay) than I am to do anything drastic to supply, because there's no way to adjust supply and make it fair for everyone. We already have systems built to allow everything to reach market prices, the only missing ingredient to allow market forces to reach equilibrium is time.

[weak hornet]

I hear ya. I think the pay wall is the biggest problem to opening it up to a bigger audience. Coupled with the perception of it as an "NFT game" and there's no way to get past that or really get a good taste of it without spending a decent amount of money. T0 OW is not really that exciting and if that's all you do you never see the cooler stuff.

[golden hornet]

hard decisions must be taken to ensure the future of the game, evvery one spending money now knows its a beta and things are subject to change.

[prime bone]

Increase harvestable assets and time spendable in each instance by 100%

Find the right balance, right now time spent in each stage and harvestable resources feels too little and incomplete

But it cant last forever with infinite harvesting as that would be boring, burdensome and cause infinite inflation

[tulip talon]

Check out my idea. This is a different approach and should be less effort for the team to implement

https://discord.com/channels/760344898200666112/1267872454177456188

[narrow fossil]

the lore should guide us to the current end game, which is arena. just as how WoW started as mission-game, to dungeon, to finally raids.
currently, theres no sense of purpose or clear direction that is guiding us to build team and craft weapons/suits to battle other rangers.
maybe the stages should have been progression-gated, maybe something like diablo where people finish the game on easy/normal to unlock nightmare, or WoW mythic dungeon system

players like me just did S0 to craft the gears then went straight to S3 to farm resplendant

another point,
Auto battler is niche.
For the longest time i thought OW is the game, and arena is just the mini game.
I believe the majority of players out there expect the same

the sentiment i gathered indicated that people do mind playing a pay-to-play game.
it doesnt matter if we intended the OW to be just a pack opening, people make their own first impression.
maybe, it would be different if the fuel price is so much cheaper, hopefully.
im not discrediting pay-to-play model entirely, we have examples like big time's dungeon (skins gated and token gated)
and diablo immortal's elder rifts (crests).
the huge difference, OW doesnt offer that dungeon fun experience, yet at least

to think about it, diablo's crests modifier system is not that bad

[icy salmon]

I didn't bother to click and read that, but if it's like collect a bunch of stuff and only pay to mint what you want, I am on board!

Like, make the purifier when you get back actually mean something, and you choose right then and there what you want to use your fuel on, rather than the entire run?

[narrow fossil]

the purifier is perfect as a checkout system

[blissful valley]

Only add choice and cost

[humble bolt]

IMO
As you say ‘pay to play’ people/users don’t like it..

Couple things that I think of top of my head is:

1. It’s new and no one is use to it, look at mobile gaming in 2010 everyone was like WTF no one is going to pay for in app transactions that crazy… now look at it
2. I haven’t read all comments but what if people could experience the whole thing stages 0-3 for free but the assets they collect are not NFTs so you can experience the whole loop but no ownership?

🙃

[obtuse abyss]

First up, I really like this economy overall change overall. I have explained the existing system to friends trying to get them into the game--and they are like this game is AWESOME! Until I explain the travel costs to them... then they are like, ehhh... I'm too poor to play this game. Literally had two friends tell me this.

EDIT: Not sure when the team is going to implement the combat system, etc. Removed my suggestion to ramp T0-T5 illuvials with more illuvials on the board to fight. But if we used the existing fighting on the board system, it could be done similar to Stage 0-Stage 4 runs with better illuvials summoning more illuvails to fight with them.

The changes to the minting system are good overall. The marketplace would also be less full low quality illuvials.

The existing system is very nice from a business earning perspective, but Illuvium's current problem is that the monetization system makes onboarding new players, especially web2 players that don't understand crypto. This new system would drive new player adoption much better imo.

Also, Illuvials would probably establish some kind of base price for the NFT based on how much fuel the illuvial took to mint, so it should hold its value better relative to price of fuels.

[obtuse abyss]

This is definitely a concern of mine as well. The key would be imo to find a way that is fair to grandfather in the existing illuvials/resources that didn't piss most players off.

But realistically, this would have been so much easier to implement this change if it was over a year ago.

[obtuse abyss]

Well in hearthstone, actually they do give you like 5 packs to open right away (right before or after the tutorial you open them). To me this action equates to T0 illuvials being free. These packs would normally cost money, but you are absolutely right. The pvp gameplay tutorial for arena is the absolute beginning of the gameplay experience.

In Illuvium, it would make so much more sense for a PvP style step by step tutorial to pop up soon after intro cinematic (mastery points, illuvail stages, tiers, and an explanation of the basic affinity counter system, as well as an example explanation of the classes), to introduce them to a sample awesome deck they coudl use against an AI opponent (like you are barrowing another person's already completed deck with T3-T5 cards).

At least a prompt to take you into such a tutorial would be a really great.

Also, I think that if this major change was implemented, the team could put like 4x more illuvials roaming the map, so that half the map isn't dead/unrealistically empty.

The player could then search through a vast number of illuvials searching for the prize in the haystack of many, many choices.

All of that to say, I don't know that I can support any change of this magnitude without a really great plan to grandfather in the existing resources for players that spent money already.

I'd also say the biggest advantage to this new model is it would be so, so much easier to onboard my friends into play the game, especially if we could then go explore in co-op mode.

[obtuse abyss]

Yes, but the browsing of cards in a store is quick and done in 10 minutes. If you are hunting for the highest quality illuvials, then it will take many hours of gameplay to find the perfect team. Many players will settle for minting a "high quality not perfect one" as it may be many hours of gameplay until they find one that is better. When they find a better one, they can sell the slightly lower stats one on the market and play with the one with better stats instead.

It's a really good gameplay progression system that would keep the market flowing with new iluvials, but not with too many of them--like the current gameplay loop. No one is gonna want the current gen illuvails with bad stats until they become so rare years later (at least that was the idea), but if there is not enough playerbase then the demand will be less and the value of those low quality illuvials will likely just keep going down and down.

Overall, this idea is fun to talk about, but I definitely think we should let the existing system playout and see how well it does in the first 2-3 months. Perhaps make changes to the existing system. Addons. Improvements.

Then we potentially talk more seriously about this idea if the game is not performing as well as we hoped.

[narrow fossil]

pack opening is one click
OW need effort to open the pack
doesnt matter how we intended it to feel like, it doesnt feel like pack opening, it feels like pay-to-play

[humble bolt]

It's odd that you say this pay to play model doesn't work when I look at the numbers this is a huge success, no?

[obtuse abyss]

It is a success imo, but the true tell of success will come with time. Does the game retain players? Do people play long term? Does arena get a loyal and dedicated following? Is the general number of active players going up or down? Can't really tell yet, but over 10K players in less than a week passes my bar for "basic level of success"

[narrow jackal]

I like these ideas a lot. I think it would solve a lot of the issues while making it more accessible to non-whales. I think it's a pretty big turnoff for new to not even be able to enter the higher levels without paying, and this would solve that and probably help draw more people in.

[humble bolt]

Fuel prices will come down over time so no rush

[acoustic maple]

I kind of like the mint in purifying window approach, basically everyone could clear the whole map, and choose at the end what he wana keep, and spend his ergon energy there.

But also:

• Overworld is a supply game like zero, it isn't intended to spend 24/7 in overworld.
• You would alter the whole economy, 90% of the assets would be unusable except for perfect stat assets which also results in the game feeling way more grindy than it already is

i agree, many people would try it and it out if there's basically all content for free. It could possibly even explode in not paying dau short term, like palworld. And after 2 weeks it will go down again... like palworld... because there is no content after you farmed all your nice stat illuvials and forged 3 weapons and 2 suits for your 4 different teams.
Statements like "boring" will be made... Questions will be raised like where are the raids, where are the dungeons, where is my cooking station to increase my cooking skill, i can't find stormwind isn't it in brightland?

Imo marketing in illuvium has to change drastically.
Market Overworld as what it is; a supply game to play here and there a few runs to get your assets for the demand games like arena and hopefully soon a few more. (and stop using those fancy words like blockchain or nft's or web3... but that's a bit off-topic 😄 )

[humble bolt]

The downside is that it removes some of the excitement. We have only be live for 5 days we need more time and data, there is literally no rush on this

Marketing should start heavy after 1-3 months somewhere in there when the game is in a really good state and everyone is back from holidays

[acoustic maple]

yea absolutely, data would be helpful for making decisions 😄

[iron night]

How is it successful when it is generating only 6% of the revenue to even sustain the DAO?

[acoustic maple]

would have been interesting to see what happend if zero would have had the chance to ramp up fuel production, and the game launched with a 50% discount of the top rail.
Numbers for sure would be better now and with incoming tournament seasons it could be enough revenue to survive for further developement.

[humble bolt]

Most businesses loose money for the first few years after launching

we have 15 months to make the full amount of revenue. EVERYONE NEEDS TO CHILL and let the team do it's thing and just provide feedback in a postive way 🙂

[iron night]

Well the revenues are constantly going down after the launch so something has to change

[humble bolt]

That's because there isn't really use cases for the Illuvials (THEY LAUNCHED 5 DAYS AGO!!!) and TBH revenue isn't really going down ☺️

• Spend per person is HUGE
• Retention is AMAZING!

Let the team iron out some things and then slowly bring in more players as fuel prices go down and boom everyones happy

[iron night]

The wallet is getting less and less eth per hour, how is that not going down? https://immutascan.io/address/0x2208850ea5569617d5350f8cf681031102c1d931?tab=2

[humble bolt]

BUT
I'm sure there will always be something that people complain about

[narrow fossil]

we need $200k of revenue per day to cover the burn rate

[humble bolt]

I knowwwww… 🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️🤦‍♂️ you expect that to happen straight away? Haha

[narrow fossil]

hype usually peaks around the launch
then it diminish

players move on to another launch or airdrop

we can look at the token chart
not just me lol

heres illuvial trading volume

number of unique owners getting flatter

shards

[obtuse abyss]

That heavily depends on the game. Some games ramp up over time massively, while others fall off. It mainly is determined by player retention long term. (edit: and player recruitment long term obviously).

Loyal playerbase is much better than quick players who play for a bit and abandon the game.

A big problem we will have to deal with is long PvP match queue times if we can't increase the overall playerbase size, which is why I do like overall proposal so much.

[humble bolt]

Obvs this will happen and go lower because there is no use cases… our airdrop lasts 6 months and what other PC gamers are going to go to another game in web3 that is ‘fun’ compared to Illuvium

Wait till gauntlet leviathan comes out gives use cases for the illuvials then marketing kicks in and try and get the TFT players in.

They are on the right track in my opinion

I have personally stopped playing because I’m already at stage 3 and max sorta illuvilas

I need combat multiplayer and so on.. but I’m not going anywhere because there is no other good web 3 games imo

We need to target web 2 users next and the game isn’t ready yet.. I would say in 2 months it will be close

[narrow fossil]

the loyal player base need to spend more

[humble bolt]

The loyal player base spend per head is massive… this isn’t the issue

[narrow fossil]

u got numbers to share?

[narrow fossil]

fun is subjective but here are some other pc web3 games

• big time
• MPH
• nyan heroes
• bloodloop
  i personally like MPH and nyan

[narrow fossil]

wait what
u stopped playing and is selling your illuvials and ur saying all this

this is exactly why we have threads like this because prople stopped playing

[humble bolt]

I’ve stopped playing because there is not much more i can do unless i want to collect all of them..

Selling them if someone wants to buy so i can redo it all otherwise im just going to wait and do runs here and there untill new features come in like gauntlet and so on

[blissful valley]

I think this is a valuable discussion regardles of presumed financial success or failure. The issue I am getting at is me not being able to convince my irl gamer friends to play the game. This should never be the case but it is. And it is pretty crazy to think about. How can we onboard millions if we cannot onboard irl friends?

[tardy willow]

This is really well thought out, I really like it.

Your 2 sub points here addressed my greatest concerns.

I still think that no Atlas would be minted ever since you'd only choose to mint the most rare illuvials, giving this weird distorted effect to things that are catchable and have been caught in the game. But if you could remedy that I think it could be fun

[acoustic maple]

Just out of curiosity, was it Like:

• too expensive
• lack of content
• i don't Like autobattlers
  Or anything else?

[forest tinsel]

how do u address massive inflation if running stages is free?

and how will our lands be when fuel are not that much in demand?

[blissful valley]

The idea is to move the fuel cost from travel to minting your captured illuvials and gathered resources. So nothing is free, we simply move the cost further down the road and you decide what you mint and what you discard.

[blissful valley]

They didnt like the idea of paying each time they load the game. One problem is that no other game does that so they are not accustomed to it. And honestly I am not sure if this change would make it much better because paying for gear that i have already looted is a foreign idea too.

[ornate elk]

But Overworld is THE game 🥺
Only if it was more rpg-ish

[acoustic maple]

I see...
I guess it's where you add the focus when you advertise it to friends. Thanks for the Info mate 🙂

[tulip talon]

You are right. Illuvium builds 3 games and in the end the players will decide what THE game is. The studio can't tell anyone what they have to play and what not. So it is a huge missed opportunity imo to prevent players from playing OW. Nobody can play OW only if they wanted to without continuously putting in money. And that won't change when fuel prices get lower because player would still need to spend. For now OW is only interesting to players that want to trade or play arena too. This massively reduces the playerbase.

I think Illuvium should offer many game modes hat can be played but don't force every player to interact with the economy and other game modes to have fun.

[ornate elk]

I agree with you. I play ow not because it is fun, but because i want to mint items. I am an rpg fan, so i would like ow to be an rpg game where you fight like in any action game. Then i would play for fun

[tulip talon]

You are right.
The idea to onboard players in arena is fine. But there you only see the creatures that exist. Part of the bonding with these creatures is the lore and the journey you experience with them. That's how you fall in love with an IP. But players can't experience any of this when they cannot play OW because it is too expensive.

[ornate elk]

I have no chance of getting a roi 😂
I already spent too much money i want to admit

[tulip talon]

I think you aren't the only one that did this 😂
Getting a roi should be a bonus in a game and not the primary goal like it is now

At least not to a point where you can't keep playing without roi

[acoustic maple]

The economy didn't even really Start yet.

• Zero will produce and sell fuel.
• prices will fall to a Level where as many people think it's worth it to pay to keep the price stable with the supply Zero creates

That's why it was planned to release Zero earlier, now with started AT the Same time and likely less than 30% of all Land and probably mostly just low Tier plots being played prices still AT top rail. ( Remember, top rail was Set (or should have been Set)to a Level to keep worst case scearios away from the player Base.)

Just needs a bit of patience, to get actually data about economy which is worth something. Atm i feel we all can just guess.

[obtuse abyss]

Where can we see the range for the fuel prices? Is there a bottom rail as well? T4 plots are still upgrading there shit, but will start selling fuel when it starts flowing faster than upgrades require. I might run into that wall soon on my T4, now that I am producing 1000+ fuel a day on it.

[narrow fossil]

the economy has started.
theres a supply shock of fuel, however theres a lack of demand.

people are selling T5S1 below the cost to cure T5 shard

[obtuse abyss]

You don’t need a T5 shard to capture one. 3 T4 shards will do it. Plus, vets are using silv2 to cure those shards, so they paid for them less than the price in eth would be.

[obtuse abyss]

Also, no hardcore players wants to buy crap stats T5 illuvials on the market. And new players probably just won’t spend money on T5 illuvials until they get really invested, and then they will want one with good stats.

I’d say the current market makes bad stats illuvials worth a lot less than the cost to capture, while good/great/perfect stats illuvials will cost vastly more than the cost to capture due to needing to capture 10-50x of them to find ones with good stats.

[fluid sage]

How about you mint and it's random stats. So you still take ages to find the perfect illuvial, but atleast there's risk and incentive to mint more frequently as you don't know how good it's going to be. That way there are also poor/average illuvials on the marketplace

I think the team needs to look at the stats and tell us if we need to change or if things are cool. Right now it's too early to tell, we are comparing a peak Saturday to a weekdays in terms of users/mints, not smart. I think give it another 2 weeks and the team will know if we need to change how the system works.

[twin pewter]

ff

[obtuse abyss]

This would help protect the existing illuvials that would be grandfathered into new system, as players also did not know their value until minted. Interesting idea.

[obtuse abyss]

Give it 10 weeks imo.

[fluid sage]

To be accurate, there is a way to see stats before capture. hold shift on illuvial before you battle, but I think only 5% of players know this. I only found out on a scoriox steam and he only found out from a community memeber. Either way I don't think it's an issue grandfathering illuvials in, its still beta at the end of the day.

[obtuse abyss]

Oh, interesting. Yeah, that changes the capture mechanics entirely for the current system. I will need to play around with that and form a new opinion

[tardy willow]

Hahaha. Yeah I can't believe I hadn't noticed it before

[wispy stirrup]

As Jag wrote here #1267812264271155221 message
OW is THE game and not a pack opening. OW had the highest playercount and a growing playerbase. People played it for more than the airdrop. We wanted to catch them all. Let people catch them all. We can't get better marketing than people wanting to catch them all. Again OW is THE game with the highest playerbase and we are turning it into a stepping stone for other modes?
Let people play it. Value for assets (Holo, IPs, DH) will be based on invested time, luck, playerbase and accessibility (extinction of Illuvials over time). That is a natural way of creating valuable assets. Putting big price tags on OW isn't creating value.
I don't really like the suggested overhaul in this thread. It is too complicated just as the current system. 15$ per Month and OW will slowly grow into a playerbase of millions. Also there would be additional income for skins/battleboard/fast2play mechanics/market transaction fees.
OW already had a growing playerbase because everybody liked playing it. It got streamed everywhere. Compared to the market OW can open the arena games will never have this potential. Pokemon games aren't that much different or better. Ok, they have a little more story but maybe the team already has that prepared? We just need to let people in.
I invested hundreds of hours into the testnet phase. I would have never done that if I disliked the game. The airdrop wouldn't have been enough to motivate me (and others).

[misty surge]

Not against that, just pointing out the reality that everything is structured around OW being Illuvial acquisition, and it's going to take more than "just make it free" to ensure we have a functional economy. The impacts of changing OW to a $15/month service don't just affect OW, they affect IL:Z and Arena.

I'm not anti-change, but I'm definitely against doing anything hasty or rash, I think we owe that to ourselves and our players. Every piece needs to be thought out and functional before we go making drastic changes.

[wispy stirrup]

Agree, and I get why a run based approach might looked good at first. It is just that it is such a pack opening/mobile phone approach. OW isn't any of that and PC players are used to simple paying system which are capped somehow (aka full price games/subscriptions).
In terms of ILZ I would proposse a burn mechanism. ILZ gets x% of the overall revenue and this portion of the revenue gets distributed based on the amount of fuel burnt by each player.

I get that we will wait a little longer to see that the current system is indeed to complicated for mass adoption