Fuel Sink Proposal (1) - Sponsored Travel | Illuvium | Page 1

I'm submitting two separate posts for different features, but both serve to address the same major issues.

Rationale: Two of the biggest complaints about the game are 1) The barriers to entry for F2P or low resource players (have to pay for higher stages), and 2) the lack of demand for fuel. This is a proposal to add features for fuel usage that would positively impact both the size of the player base and fuel demand.

There is a massive fuel overhang from things like fuel crates (40,000~ S3 travels in just the free Crypton), sILV2, and fuel created by the DAO. With the addition of cold wallets, many dormant players are starting to develop their land, and the fuel supply/demand gap will likely continue to widen.

I've personally spent many hours on S3 Auto-Scanned runs, and am struggling to spend nearly as much fuel as I planned to (whether it's from ILZ land output, crates, sILV2 saved, etc.). There are likely numerous others who want to spend even more fuel, but simply can't.

Adding Sponsored Travel
I propose adding a simple way to sponsor the travel of other players. For example, add an option below the Travel button where you can select from a list of Travel "Sponsors" or "Financiers" (or other phrase) who ask for X% of your spoils. The free market would naturally decide the exact % that is worthwhile for both parties.

A 20% cut would randomly mint 20% of the assets to the traveler's wallet and the remaining 80% would get minted to the sponsor wallet (or vice versa). This offers opportunity to both parties, and a F2P player with no money could theoretically get to keep something highly valuable and sell it to buy fuel.

Ideally there would be a password option or similar function for those who want to reserve their sponsorship for a specific player or agreement.

This would serve to both massively improve the gameplay experience for F2P players, allowing them a way to enter the same realm as P2P players, AND greatly increase fuel demand.

Risk Factors and other thoughts:

This could create an opportunity for bots to do sponsored runs on other people's dime, but I believe the reward of tapping into a much larger audience/player base outweighs this downside.
Might be hard to implement- I suggest implementing the simplest way possible to start and making it more robust later on.
Bad actors could take on runs and maliciously waste the fuel without acquiring any assets. Probably can implement countermeasures for this. This might also just lead to more private runs (i.e. F2P players might ask around on Discord and someone might be willing to sponsor their run).
I know the team has wanted to stay away from anything like Axie's scholarship system, but ultimately I think players want some form of this, and this may be an easy way to provide it. I believe Illuvium is already a vastly better gameplay experience than Axie ever was. This simply gives F2P players a way to access the full experience at the partial cost of those willing to share/invest excess fuel.
Sponsors could get depleted by an onslaught of F2P players, but mostly I think the free market would handle this (commissions could get very high or very low). It might also result in specialized channels and interactions for finding "better" travelers which I think would be a good thing for community engagement and interaction.
Calculations might be difficult and there may be some nuances, like if a player catches a few Illuvials and does nothing else, they could end up with nothing if they roll poorly.
Probably many others but exact details can be discussed with council

#Fuel Sink Proposal (1) - Sponsored Travel