A vision for OW as a full game

[stable tide]

As we all know OW was initially developed as a gamified pack opening. In my opinion this is what holds OW back. OW is the game with the biggest playerbase, it had the highest retention rate during beta, and it targets the potentially biggest market.
Yet, we say OW isn’t a game on its own. This isn’t untrue but with the way we look at it and how we monetize OW we are limiting the project in the way OW is developed. Yesterday I heard the description that OW is a gamified pack opening and therefore it can’t be too challenging. If we start looking at OW as a game, we have the freedom to implement challenging and interesting aspects. Furthermore, I often see the argument that arena can incentivize people to play OW if arena itself is incentivized. While this argument holds some truth because web3 players could be incentivized to play OW for that reason, it won’t work too good on web2 audiences because the argument revolves around speculation, roi, investments and similar web3 arguments. Unfortunately, web2 audiences don’t think like that. They just want to spend money and have a good time. For web2 only two factors are relevant: How much playtime and how much fun they get for their money. Since we want to achieve mass adoption, we must start acting in a way that makes mass adoption possible.

OW might not yet be the game that is able to stand on its own feet, but it is way closer than it might seem. The label “beta” together, with a good monetization and the desire to capture them all including holos, dh and perfect IVs could already drive players to sink hundreds of hours into OW as seen during beta. This invested time is marketing on its own but at the moment we don’t let people play OW because we think of it as a pack opening and have target prices in mind. We also saw that the arena didn’t have this impact even while getting incentivized. For web2 the other way around seems logical to me: With a lot of people playing OW, we will see a spill-over effect for arena. Palworld is a good example of this because a lot of people still play Palworld but only few of them join the Palworld arena (ofc. This comparison has some weaknesses because Palworld arena is quite different).
Now, web3 audiences expect certain prices for Illuvials. I even saw people saying we need bottom rails to prevent fuel getting too cheap. This argument is again about packs are supposed to have a certain value and in terms of packs that. Furthermore, it is important not to damage people who invested in OW during the early weeks too much. So, web3 has target prices in mind and web2 calculates value in playtime/$ and fun/$. That means web3 will say 1$ per stage 3 is super low already and web2 will say 1$ for 20 minutes of playtime is crazy expensive. So, the question is how we can increase the playtime per $ without reducing the value of assets. I proposed a solution to align these interests last year which should clear the road for mass adoption:

I think we could implement that the Illuvials we capture aren't nfts when we catch them, but we can fuse 10 Illuvials of one kind into an nft. With that you can have way more runs to play the grind game like gathering, leveling up Illuvials and discover in OW. From here on a user can decide if he wants to "only" play all the amazing stuff OW has to offer or if he wants to fuse Illuvials to generate an asset to be able to play arena, all the other games or to sell it. That way OW can be grindy, vast and a game on its own because we degenerated/uncoupled the cost for playing OW and gaining assets. So, playtime per $ increased while keeping the value of NFTs.

With this OW can be a real game in the future which brings parents to pay for their children because the children are “busy” for a reasonable amount of time per dollar.
Also mistakes in OW won't be that much of deal because the pricing is way different at the beginning which allows players to have a healthy learning curve.
Just recently I talked with a new player who barely knew what syngergies are. My answere in this enviroment had to be that he has to be somewhat carefull and should watch some guides to get a good team for stage 2 and above. In a cheaper environment an answer like "don't worry, play the game have fun and you will improve on the way" would be way more reasonable than it is now.
In the end a player would pay the same price for an nft as he does now but that player would pay that price in smaller portions with more playtime per dollar. Also, this reduces the entry for other games because the interest in OW will bring some people to catch lets say 5 Illuvials of each tier 3 line. If they now what to enter arena they basically already paid for half the Illuvials.

Impact on ILZ: Increase fuel output by the fusion factor.

[stable tide]

A vision for OW as a full game

[misty tapir]

The monetization aspect isn't really clear.
You basically want to divide cost of runs by 10x and increase the grind by 10x to get an Illuvial?

[bitter perch]

Your solution would increase playtime/$, but will OW become as much fun as Palworld or Pokémon GO so it doesn‘t become a grind ? Our games have a real steril functional feeling to them. Some of it is because of lore and chosen aesthetics, but most of it is due to lack of focus on fun. I fear that OW combat won‘t be enough, we would need way more fun interaction with Illuvials in OW and to do this for so many different Illuvials is hard.

[stable tide]

Basically the general way we monetize would stay the same and the costs would be divided by ten, yes, but you wouldn't get nft-Illuvials during your runs. To get an nft you would have to collect an Illuvial ten times and ascend it to an nft. Yes, it would be more grindy.
As described and as ape41 said the grind could be too repetitive at the moment but we would open the door for the devs to implement features that are more fun because we are not limited by nft value during the development stages.
That being said during beta people still put hundreds of hours into the game even while OW was repetitive. There are enough people out there who love the grind.
Even simple adjustments like a progression system for your own character could be rewarding enough. Palworld was also just a big grind. You had to capture every Pal 10 times, grind resourcess, farm cake to breed your Illuvials. All of this stuff is just grinding combined with a progression system.

[bitter perch]

I agree with your general trajectory. The game designers need to rule from now on, not the economists, software developers or graphics people. The founders have no game designers experience and it unfortunately shows.

[past sorrel]

I feel it's too early for drastic changes like this, adding burning mechanisms and a crafting rework can help with the ow replayability much better than something like this. In my opinion at least it's adding more confusion for questionable results

[wraith shard]

I think Multiplayer raids are a nice way to close the gameloop for OW.

Make em f2p and rewarding, end of story.

Lots of players simple prefer predictable (but hard) pve content, instead of p2w pvp

[stable tide]

Right, I wanted to address the argument from the start but missed it. Thank you for bringing it up.
I think regarding this there is no too early because the two audiences web2 and web3 have different soft spots in terms of pricing. If this hypothesis from my side is true then time won't change this.
Soft spot web2: 0.2 $ per stage 3 run
soft spot web3: 2$ per stage 3 run
(number made up)
*and this wait and see/hope which includes focus on nft value seems to hold back good/fun developments

[past sorrel]

I'm all for making the game more accessible for a broader audience, just not sure for the non nft part

[stable tide]

well, we need to monetize OW somehow and this system could be pretty close to f2p depending on the ascension factors for none-nft --> nft

[misty tapir]

yea, thought so. Thanks for the clarification.
so you basically still need an nft Illuvial to play in all other games besides the usage in the runs in overworld itself?

I don't think devs are really limited. Nothing is holding them of the create for example a dungeon crawler in the overworld or do other cool modes which would be f2p to play how long as you wish, but still the nft-assets needed to play them.
Also with such drastic changes in pipeline, you basically stop people from playing until implemented, don't say we should never do it, just for pointing out reasons.
Progression system for your own character i would love to see, could be super cool and give the grind another additional perspective.

I wouldn't rely too much on beta data, i was in different voicechats a lot with different people and many of those hard core grinder with 300+h... Majority just grinded for airdrop and are gone as soon as airdrop ends, not really realiable data we got from there.
I also wouldn't take palworld as example, sure it had a short hype phase but now they are on like the same DAU as illuvium is, right?

[stable tide]

yes, for other games you still need nfts

It seems we are getting away from the focus on nft value that is true but this is also a problem because it would be better if we could achieve both. I still think this ascension thing could achive both.

Hmm, the changes would be quite impactful, I agree, but I don't see why people would stop playing.
At the moment you get your nfts for 3-4$ in a stage 3 run. Afterwards you would have to pay 30-40 cents for a stage 3 run but wouldn't get an nft. Therefore, you would have to grind 10 times harder to get the same number of nfts. The additional grind would even increase the value of the nfts because they are harder to get. In the moment I guess most people are interested in the nft side of things anyway, which means they would invest even more before the nfts are locked behind a harder grind.

Regarding airdrop farmers I don't have access to data, would be nice to see some. But arena was farmable as well and only a few people did that.

Yes Palworld has around 25k players at the moment.

[misty tapir]

You are right, people could just keep playing.

Yes, as i said airdrop points was all people were interested and overworld play gave most points by far for your playtime.

[stable tide]

ok, sad, but can't be helped. I agree on that underlying argument that OW maybe isn't able to stand on its own yet, but the pricing problem would persist even if OW would be able to attract masses on its own. At that point we would just block our success. For that not to happen I would like to eradicate stumbling blocks

[bitter perch]

The Palworld 25k players should be a stark reminder that whatever game Illuvium develops on its own will have a hard time to become a success story and it will fade soon.

This is why we should focus on getting our Illuvials/Illuvitars playable in as many existing web3/web2 games and create a larger pool of genres of games for our assets in a shorter amount of time.

We should see our assets not just as NFT values, but as a community of gamers behind these assets. Other existing games could be interested in getting our still rather rich web3 community to play their games and spend extra money there and our NFTs gain value from having access/utility in more games.

I don't think Illuvium can make it alone. Look up Faraway, they try to get these kind of partnerships working.

I tried to connect Faraway with @warm sand, but he did not respond.

[bitter perch]

I agree, but making this a fun experience is still a lot of work.

Illuvium tries to embed tokens into any interaction with their games, kind of like real world economies work. But this goes against developing really fun games and pushes away casual gamers, who would spend, but don‘t want to be forced. When you start a game you want to escape reality and not think about value and money again.

[fast oasis]

Personally I have little interest in arena / gauntlet… Im just not that interested in the format of auto battling… first person / 3rd person open MMORPG with illuvium as the IP sounds super interesting, I’m slightly addicted to overworld already, just a shame it’s priced currently too high with little end game experience, which just incentivises price undercutting on the market, give illuvials actual use case and the overworld more dynamic gameplay and features, much like actual pokemon games and you have a winner in my eyes

[bitter perch]

Just to give you an impression what OW will soon have to compete against:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eNgj4QskX1Y https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ebDtnauo4e4

[stable tide]

Hey @hardy lodge I hope it is ok to answer to your post #1269137697939652659 message in this thread to get some eyes on this idea.
Love the idea of expanding the idea to not just go for two different prices for the two audiences but also go for two different price systems because web2 usually isn't too fond of complicated and unfamiliar pricing systems.
Do you have a good idea how to change the pricing system without causing further chaos?
In general I am a fan of subscription for web2 but we would have problems with bots and the prices for nfts would fall. Maybe, the easiest would be to just have one sort of fuel instead of three?

[hardy lodge]

More than welcome to keep the discussion going

[stable tide]

Hey @quaint sleet,
I pinged you here because of your message #1269137697939652659 message and to not let this post die.
I would love to hear your opinion on this idea because you also mentioned playtime per $ in your post. To me it also seemed that you are the type of gamer that needs to be onboard to have a realistically chance at mass adoption.
Ofc. we could just reduce pricing to a point that normal nft-Illuvials aren't worth that much anymore to increase accessibility for the masses. We just would have to increase fuel output for lands to keep ROI for land in the same dimension, but I think at this point that has some disadvantages:

• Early OW players would lose a lot of money
• Expectations from the web3 audience in terms of pricing aren't met (Most still see OW as a pack opening only)

On the other hand this would give us the oppertunity to develop OW as a standalone fun game for the future without touching the econmy or entrance price for other games too much. So, lets say OW creates enough fun for people to catch each Illuvial 7 times. This would mean they already paid 7/10 of the full entrance price for arena without even thinking about arena. We basically would offer the same nft-content in smaller pay portions to increase playtime per dollar.
I get that people want to wait and see, because some crucial pay features, and a decent amount of land development are missing, but I think time won't change the underlying problem to satisfy both audiences (web2 and web3).

What I forgot to mention is that this isn't something that needs to happen right away, but the team could develop OW as a standalone with the knowledge that a split like this, which protects the interests of all parties, it possible

[wraith shard]

Yeah I think I should stop using the term raids.

I'll create another feedback post later to eyplain a quick & dirty solution to extend/finalize the GameLoop of OW.

[plain dagger]

Is OW have good retention compared to arena because of airdrop just incentive to play OW for points and give money to OW players ? If arena would have a bigger share of the cake. Wouldnt have a bigger retention than OW ? Im bored to shot rocks.
Not saying we need to incentive arena but data are biased because of airdrop structure.

OW as a full game makes sense in Web3 with marketplace but we need a huge progression line that hold people playing during years. While for now it is. The more money you have the more you can rush the game and be done in 2 weeks. While spending time to level up your ranger. Level up your illuvials and boosting them is missing.
OW was overkill for a pack openning but would have a lot potential as a full game.
Can we get some "gameplay" increase in that project ?
Its only about art and lore. While i dont care about it in a game haha.

[wraith shard]

#1273591945989591164 message

I'd like to ask y'all to take a minute to evaluate my Idea

[quaint sleet]

To me, what's missing in turning OW into a standalone game is progression. I have little interest in a pure grind-fest whose only goal is to farm and sell the highest-quality Illuvials. (Sure, some people do enjoy that. And if you do, thanks for keeping me in this job 🙂 )
For me it needs a story, it needs goals (not just the daily mission kind), it needs permanence, it needs more player agency in order for people to feel that what they do in-game is meaningful. I've played a lot of different games that take different approaches to those ideas - some are entirely built around a story (most RPGs), some combine story and grind (most MMOs), and some just give you a starting scenario and let the story emerge on its own (Rimworld and its followers), but in all these cases the game responds to the player in a permanent manner. If playing the game today is exactly the same as it was yesterday, it gets boring fast.

I especially noticed this when I spent some time playing Fallout 76 - turning the series into an MMO was done poorly and it lost a lot of its character. I gave up on it after a few months. OTOH, SWTOR built on the excellence of the KOTOR series and the greater Star Wars universe, and added tons more content, to create something very compelling that I played (and paid) for years.

The good news is, that's coming. You've already seen the tutorial and faction-select screen when you create a new character, and the occasional log messages when you're roaming around a region - that's the beginnings of some actual worldbuilding and storylines where you start to discover more about the world of Illuvium and your place in it. We'll see if it turns out more like Fallout 76 or SWTOR, but if we can pull off the latter we'll be raking in tons of cash 🙂 Or maybe we keep OW as it is and release a separate RPG-type game that can develop these ideas further. The possibilities are only getting started here...

[stable tide]

All of this is true, and I am happy to hear that stuff like that is coming, but the answer does not really touch the pricing topic. I guess that is on purpose.
My point really is that the pricing was calculated based on the pack opening thought. And 5$ for the most expensive pack is already pretty cheap, but the comparison between a pack opening and OW is so extremely off the mark.

Pack opening pricing
Stage 3 - 5.5$
Stage 2 - 2$
Stage 1 - 1$
Very reasonable and I guess the pricing is calculated in tandem with Illuvial nfts target pricing

OW as a game would have a completely different calculation:

• The Average gamer needs like 200 hours to farm all Illuvials (I know that can happen faster, but I think this fairly accurate)
• 200 hours on the highest possible stage, because the highest stage is always the final target for any game, would mean around 600 Stage 3 runs.
• Let’s say the average gamer has a budget of 100$ per month and plays around 100 hours per month (slightly less than 4 hours a day)
• that means after 2 months the average game collected all Illuvials and invested 200$ in 600 Stage 3 runs. This should be the target for our game.
• The corresponding stage 3 price results by dividing the 100 hours through the needed 300 runs needed to fill this time and therefore gaining the 100$ of an average gamer.
• Stage 3 = 0.33 $

With the 20k players who played OW during beta that would mean 2M $ in revenue.
Instead, we got like 500k from 500 people who are willing to spend 1000$
We already lost the effect of the first two beta airdrop seasons because of this pricing.
Ofc. the system can correct itself over the next months, but with the wrong target prices in mind the fuel production will still be off, and potentially hinder/limit future player influx.

[stable tide]

This means at the moment the fuel production should be 16 times higher to hold the same ROI as we would have with Stage 3 pricing of 5.50$ (I assumed that the fuel production was calculated with the target pricing of OW in mind).
Without adjustment in our minds and pricing regarding OW every feature is meaningless, because it would be behind a crazy paywall which no normal player will climb.
The marketing incentives with 180k ILV are now, and this has still the potential to attract many players and create a lot of revenue. Especially, if we get another high variance luck-based mission that brings people to spend too much, because of the dream to get the big reward. BUT as I said for that to work the pricing needs to be reasonable in regards of playtime.
I just posted this idea to protect people who want to see high nft values, but maybe this is truly too complicated and not wanted.
The pricing was wrong 9 months ago when I first started to argue against the price ranges the community and team had in mind, it is wrong now, and it will be wrong in 9 months. Not because I am cheap, but because the pricing blocks people from playing at all. There is no feature in the world that can bring people to pay these target prices. Waiting costs, us time and players. We could adjust our pricing now and start rolling.

Maybe, I should start a new proposal which doesn't protects nft value, but achieves reasonable pricing
:

• Increase fuel production and storage by a factor of 20 to reach a target pricing of 33 cents per Stage 3 run.
• Also re-announce the Illuvial hunt for the next two months to get people to overspend on OW for the dream of hitting the jackpot.
  With that people would start buying fuel and invest hole days in OW again. ROI on land would remain the same.

That doesn't mean that Illuvium as project is in trouble because the combination of gauntlet f2p, big tournaments and selling T5 land will bring a lot, but OW is in trouble, because the paywall is too high.

[quaint sleet]

Sorry, I can get long-winded on philosophical topics 🙂 Let's try again...
The thread topic is about seeing OW as a standalone game. That implies that OW drives its own demand for players. Right now the demand is dependent on other factors - collecting Illuvials for airdrop, for Arena, for profit. Maybe there's some set of players who genuinely enjoy the farming, but I doubt it's 100% of even the currently-active playerbase.
You asked for my opinion, and I say it's too much grind and repetition, not enough fun. I'm not all that interested in airdrops, or Arena, or profit. I play games to take a break from the world, not to run spreadsheets on ROI. If OW is to be its own game, that I would play just for the sake of playing, then changing the pricing won't make a difference. There's no price, not even $0, that would entice me to spend a lot of time in the game in its current state. I play it now because I essentially get paid to, and even then it's only part of my duties as a dev to test my work. In my free time I play other games that are more fun. Someday, when the story bits are in, maybe I'll enjoy it. but for now there's little incentive.
(Note, I don't mean this in any way as a disparagement of the game or the team. They're awesome. Just saying that OW as-is is not my thing)

[frank root]

They said they want to create games for every gamer type.
I stay for overworld, i like rpgs
Right now the OW is boring and in no way is close to an rpg
Add combat, add weapons, make the suits do something when you equip them

[fast oasis]

This comment gives me hope.. Let the devs cook

[still juniper]

ur a GOAT for being honest.
very exemplary!

[still juniper]

i agree, ILV is still expensive even with fuel price this low.
needing 13 illuvials each line to play ascendant is a tall order

[hardy lodge]

In your previous message you said maybe a different game has these elements and I think thats the right path. Its all interoperable anyways. So the Overworld is your environment where you jump in and capture Illuvials. And the Illuvium: Story is a world where you level up, use your illuvials in battle and go through some sort of adventure. thats how I see the future at least.

[plain dagger]

Oh i never though about separate the OW to an MMO.
All time considering an update of OW to make it better. But separate it and start from 0 where you can bring your assets from and starting to have a "progression gameplay" would make sense. Changing my perspective.

I feel there's just lack of gameplay vision atm. With what we got available.

[stable tide]

tbh. I always thought of a wow 5 player mythic like dungeon crawler in which you can be one of your Illuvials 😄 (but that is obv. not close and a kinda unrefined idea)

[quaint sleet]

Absolutely. Like I said back in the other thread, the most amazing thing about Illuvium is the vision. It's not just OW, Zero, and Arena, and then we're done. It's OW, Zero, Arena, kart racer, card battler, dungeon crawler, mascot fighter... name your favourite genre and there could well be an Illuvium game there someday. And they all work together. So OW doesn't have to be everything to everyone, but Illuvium will be.
Maybe OW will never stand on its own, maybe it will always be a feeder for these other games. And that's OK 🙂 Farmers will farm, others will buy, and the economy will churn along.

[still juniper]

i dnt think the map was designed for dungeon in mind. at least for me as a wow and ffxiv player, i cant imagine doing that in existing regions.

altho, maybe the dev can use existing maps, and cut it into smaller sections to make dungeons.

[stable tide]

Either that or maybe they would be able to pull it off with some adjustments. I guess we wouldn't have as much movement as we have now. Maybe we could be a little smaller to make the walking distance feel longer.

AB is basically perfect for this. You could put three bosses in the northern tunnel. One on the plateau in front of the the tunnel. 2-4 at the sides and the Endboss spawns in the southern current.
Crimson could use the tunnels as wings with bosses at the end. Parties could then decide if they want to take the outer ring to the next boss or start through the tunnel again.
Brightland is a little more difficult, but I guess you could also just put bosses on different plateaus

Just dreaming 🙂

[still juniper]

ur getting me excited lol

did u play flight of dragons? I quit after SL, i had high expectation

[stable tide]

no, uff, I have played several addons and stopped often in between. Let me think. I played classic, WoL, Cataclysm, Legion and Shadowlands

[still juniper]

WoL was the best expansion, change my mind

[cobalt gorge]

adding this here. These are just IDEAS, hoping to spark more ideas. But an open world basically where T0 is no travel/loading screen where players can interact with each other. LAND loads in OW with its builds, and player can interact with the gyms etc, but once you leave the base area thats where you are in the OW screen, maybe loading in and out of land, can mine/catch and energy goes down. BAsicly the Nexus is a pokemon center for each land.

#1269137697939652659 message

[hardy lodge]

Thats how I feel too yep!

[last fern]

Just gave a thumb up to this. OW game needed to be live, too much time burning people in both sides, but clearly we need changes. To me, OW is the game to be focus on since arena is nitche. The more we split both genres in a future, the better. Keep autobattler as it is, but forget that will be loved by the masses. I think before launching any other game (karting, battleroyale whatever) OW needs to be able to sustain the entire ecosystem. OW needs progression, meaning, story driven playtime... Not just polishing and new features. You need a purpose to capture illuvials and not just collecting them. There are people with the
entire collection already, then the holos or dh if you can afford but then what are you going to do other than speculate in marketplace? Spawn is too crazy, every illuvial available at the same time and no clear goal because of the lack of story/progression program. I would agree with the ascending thing proposed to have NFTs more valuable since now the bonding curve is not adapted to existing playerbase. IMO as a grind game or card opening style we won't survive, and we are in dangerous terrain now that the game economy is live.
I would focus on OW hard and in a very clear path rather than adding new features as patches, like npc or OW battles without any new purpose. Yeah I will love them for sure, but they won't change the core problem. Things that are really needed can be added, like multiplayer, but if there is no solid meaningful game to justify the expected expenses by average player, then I don't see the hype lasting long and marketplace will collapse. I guess this could take a long time. Team is aware for sure but I'm not really sure if they share similar concerns about the deepness of the changes.
Anyway just my opinion

[plain dagger]

Imagine a quest "capture an Atlas". You would answer to the NPC. I got already 10 Atlas for what would I capture it...
We dont need to incentive people to play more OW. But we need an OW where the core is not to capture and farm. As scoriox said. We would need a game where we uses thoses for a story and spend hours on it for fun. And if we want to do this story with a ramphy. Then we go in the OW capture it.
Npc that gives quest as the milestone that ask you to farm ressources and capture bring nothing fun.

[last fern]

Indeed, that's why I think adding more npc just roaming around or proposing superficial quests adds nothing. You need a purpose for each character. i don't say they don't have it already, since the lore is based in a novel like story according to Aaron, but you need to drive the story and guide the player. This thing of discovering the lore through grinding doesnt work imo