Illuvial Home Within Your Drone

[raven hemlock]

Sanctum Mesa is a beautiful hub, and with multiplayer it will feel more active and fun, but I think we need a more comfortable home within the Overworld that we can customize and hang out in (solo or with friends you invite). A place where your selected illuvials (max of 5?) walk around and can sit in your chairs or hang from small trees in the front yard of your building/layout, maybe even interact with you. The location could be within your drone (if it can capture illuvials, where are they going? Ideally a nice cuddly customized home that you helped craft for them to hang out).

Benefits:

• Financial Opportunity - You could have base models of trees, walls, staircases, etc. that are free, and offer premium custom assets.

• NFT Added Value - The level of detail is breathtaking, admiring my illuvials in my inventory 2D view, but I want to see them interact with the environment and play around. It would provide entertainment when I want to be in illuvium but want a more relaxing experience between runs. It would also help build more character and a bond with the illuvials, and feel more of an ownership of the asset.

• Free Players - Would have more to do in the world, and admire the free illuvials they've captured. It would add value to more players where they may consider buying or capturing tier1+ illuvials.

• Marketing - I could see streamers showing off their homes with illuvials walking around, which may capture more attention from Web2 players.

I think the game is very fun as is, but it is struggling with having enough for f2p players to do, and adding more of a metaverse relaxing/fun vibe would be helpful to feel immersed within the world. This doesn't provide as much financial opportunity as many other ideas, but I think we need more reason for people to hang around and stay interested/immersed that doesn't involve buying fuel or NFT's. Having more reason to want the NFT's would be a good value add IMO.

[real ermine]

I like the idea of a "housing system" ... I don't think "inside the drone" is the way to go, but the core of your idea is really good.

[raven hemlock]

Or maybe you can regularly travel to your base/housing system wherever your drone sends your illuvials. I don't know if we could have a home in Sanctum Mesa especially when multiplayer arrives, or maybe expand Sanctum Mesa with reserved areas for 10+ homes (1 per player in the instance and your settings load into one of the 10 plots)

[spiral wave]

This is probably not high priority but it is a great idea, and I think it would be a lot of fun for players.

You say it's for F2P, but I can also see that you could add more value in customization of your house. Maybe another utility for skins, maybe they could be used to make custom furniture or other things in your home.

Maybe if you did own land, depending on tier, you could have a bigger house, which allowed you to have more illuvials and more things.

[raven hemlock]

Agreed not high priority. I think it's important to have it be F2P just to add more to do so the overworld feels like more of a complete game (this would be a small element of that), but definitely have paid add-ons for customizing, etc. I was just thinking the base entry to having a customizable home shouldn't cost money, since it's partially to help add value to owning illuvials and seeing them.

I could see owning land giving some sort of benefit, but I wouldn't want to restrict larger house models to 20,000 players. vs it being a payable upgrade for millions. It would take some thought for sure.

[spiral wave]

For sure have it free for everyone. And then add ons. But having customizable makes it feel more personal. Again I like this idea but for the future.

[teal mortar]

Have you guys played Warframe? They have a concept similar to this where the ship you travel in is essentially the hub. It's small enough for you to get to all the important utilities like finding missions, crafting, fusing, and changing equipment setups all in close proximity to each other. They've done well in designing it that way so you don't have to run far and wide just to access specific terminals to do things, plus it acts as a "home" for you to decorate and customize.

To me, features that accomplish a lot and efficiently usually make for a better gaming experience. I'm not particularly a fan of the "home inside of your drone" part, but I do agree we need an f2p friendly housing system to keep things interesting and to open up opportunities for extra utilities and benefits in game.

[raven hemlock]

I haven't played enough warframe to know the reference. I'm also a fan of efficiency, I don't mind the current feature locations in Sanctum Mesa just because our character can travel quite quickly and there is a teleport beacon near the obelisk, but I think a home should be separate from the main hub. I think shortcuts to those features in your home would be a nice add-on for efficiency, but would that hurt the eventual social multiplayer integration where everyone should go to the main hub to hang out and see other players (hopefully with their illuvials out). Ship for a home could be a cool idea if it works with the Illuvium lore. Lots of potential ideas.

[teal mortar]

I would say the social integration should come from guild bases, trading hubs, or town hubs. That would make the most sense to me if we kept certain aspects of gameplay distinct to each area. That's why I see the home dedicated to features that are personal to your character and account, whereas the other various hubs are dedicated to social or world gameplay features. For instance, guild bases can be centers for researching new weapons and upgrades, can serve as trading hubs, or be a place for Illuvials to train/work. Town hubs can serve as places to offer missions/co-op missions, be a center for gaining reputation with factions through various activities, serve as NPC marketplaces for cosmetics or upgrades. This certainly isn't anything new and has been done before, but for Illuvium, I tend to find Warframe to be a great reference for such things.

My thought is we don't need to reinvent the wheel just because we're in the web3 space. I think we'll find much more success if we utilize what web2 has already accomplished and then ask ourselves how to implement the world of blockchain and crypto into it.

https://youtu.be/J5cM11VqL0U?si=6LHKb8kfgaf_EJzB

Here's a gameplay video for reference... I think from 6 to 7 mins onwards is where I would start if you want to see how missions and co-op could look like. 10 mins onwards for open world exploration.

This video is actually quite old and the game has only gotten more impressive since then. So if you can imagine coming into the open beta release of Illuvium knowing what the competition has already got locked down more than 7 years ago, PLUS they have creature capture gameplay too... Illuvium: Overworld is VERY behind...

[fading trout]

You are comparing an 11 old game to a 1 month old OW, that was designed as a pack opener

[teal mortar]

Yes, you're absolutely right. But i think that's exactly where we went wrong when we designed OW to be a pack opener and nothing else, especially if the devs knew what they are already competing against. Yes, things could obviously change and for the better given enough time, but after 3 years of development, 1 year of runway, and an abysmal open beta release, we need all the help we can get to get this project underway. And if that means we need to start referencing other games and grabbing ideas left and right to get focused, I'm going to do just that.

[fading trout]

For the moment they are competing against autobattlers, which the arena modes are capable of doing. Ow was never supposed to compete with mmos.

Turning ow to an rpg or mmorpg will take several years, I don't think it's wise to flip the switch in the current situation.

[teal mortar]

Well, I don't know then... It certainly feels like OW is a bit overkill if Arena is the main focus, like... Why add ranger customization, intro cinematics teasing a bigger story arc, faction selection, action RPG gameplay tutorials... And not do anything significant with it?

[fading trout]

I don't know man, I also think we should have released 1 year or more ago, with just card pack openings and develop ow as a stand alone game later on, but that's not the teams vision for the project. It can still work, we need strong demand for the illuvials, and that comes from competitive play rn. Easier said than done, but let's see how the finished arena modes look like before doing U turns.

[teal mortar]

Well, I really hope they get arena in shape... Still hoping for that Palworld style arena cause I have basically no motivation to hop on OW right now 😢

[fading trout]

Me too, quite possibly many others as well. Launching without finished arena modes was probably not the smartest move, but no point dwelling on the past.

[raven hemlock]

I think leaving OW as a pack opener and not adding to it over time would be a waste. Maybe an MMO would be a totally separate game under the ILV brand, but they built out this beautiful world that is on its way to becoming a monster hunter, I'd like to see it evolve over time even over the span of years to have more features and add more immersive fun (competitive and more relaxing). It is fun as is, but it gets boring quick because there isn't enough to wander around and do in the world. The autobattlers are constantly being improved but I still think the other games should grow alongside polishing

[fading trout]

Sure ow can be a stand alone game eventually, let's get there

[slender bone]

I've played a little bit of Warframe, but I played a lot of SWTOR, and I liked the Stronghold system they had. Actually, that's one of the reasons I started subscribing, to get past the credit cap and have enough cash to buy a cool house (ok, all the houses 😅 ) You could decorate your house with loot and rewards you picked up in the game, or buy decorations from the shop, and you could invite other people to your house or even use it as a guild base.
Something like that in Illuvium would be cool, maybe even integrate it with IZ somehow (you own a plot of land, might as well build a house there...). And if you have one of those rare but useless NFTs like a xenoprint or region unlock key, that would be a cool trophy to hang on your wall.
Neat idea, but probably a long ways off on the to-do list

[raven hemlock]

hmm, I like the idea of needing to capture resources and turn those into home cosmetics, maybe use the rock resources we shoot in stage 0-3 runs to build beautiful walls out of glowing stone/rock/gems. Hang loot rewards on the walls. The graphics in OW are so insane, I'd love to make use of cosmetics as much as possible. Buying decorations from the shop and using a big house as a guild base would be very cool as well. Definitely more pressing things to be worked on ATM but it never hurts to brainstorm and get player feedback for future features