#Mindset switch

1 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

serene wind
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I think it's time for us to really understand where blockchain works for us and where it fits.

It's clear to me that whilst there will be a dedicated pay to win/whale crowd that plays leviathan, which will bring demand to the rarest/highest stat illuvials from OW, the majority of people want to battle it out on skill and gameplay, rather than on who spends the most and so the current focus on capturing illuvials to sell to Leviathan Arena players is misguided.

There will also be demand just based on rarity/collection, however, the vast majority of illuvials will have little value, and that's fine. People under the current model should have only ever expected to recoup a portion of their OW fuel cost spent, with a few skilful ones capturing the rare/high stat ones and selling them to leviathan players. Maybe there's a small amount of utility gained by illuvials = arena skins.

Blockchain allows us the marketplace, but it doesn't change the fact that most people want a fair playing field when gaming and some form of gaming progression (and are happy to pay for that). And most games monetise cosmetic items that can be traded, but won't have an effect on who wins.

And we dont need blockchain functionality everywhere in the game to make it work. We can have F2P modes that just focus on the core gameplay with a level playing field, but allow purchase of skins etc which can then be traded. See Off the Grid.

  • Zero makes sense to continue as is.
  • I'd like to see a storyline progression akin to pokemon yellow in OW. Will need to work out how fuel fits into this. In the same way people would pay to purchase a Pokemon yellow gameboy cartridge, they'll pay to play a Illuvium storyline with quests, bosses to battle in each region and a story related purpose for being there.
  • Focus on both F2P arena (with skins/cosmetics) for skill players and Leviathan for the pay to win crowd, with fewer than the current 8 game modes.

No new game modes until we've nailed OW.

fair silo
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I agree and this is where I see people have been trying to focus the attention on progression mechanics and other f2p or gameplay mechanics.

One thing is we've NFT'd too many things and barely have any mechanics that aren't pay-to-play or pay-to-win. For example, unless you're ok with just losing a bunch of games in Leviathan or paying for OW runs to gain XP, that's basically the only progression system we have to level the playing field right now; it's absolutely not a fun experience.

We're so out of balance in terms of the relationships between player agency, skill expression, pay mechanics, and progression mechanics, it boggles my mind when people suggest or hang on to ideas and systems that further push these relationships out of balance. It's wild!

serene wind
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Yes, 100% agree - it’s not a fun experience.

There’s so much potential but it’s all out of whack - and needs quite a substantial mindset shift to get it into whack.

Unfortunately we were taken over by the play to earn/web 3 crowd whose sole purpose is to make money.

They played the game to make a profit and so gameplay mechanics/progression weren’t as important.

That implementation of blockchain tech won’t work, partly because those people playing it don’t understand the economics and expect they can all profit.

As much as listening to the community is good, listening to a portion of the community that will lead you down bad a bad path certainly isn’t a good idea

dreamy idol
# fair silo I agree and this is where I see people have been trying to focus the attention o...

I don't think we've nft'd too many things.
All the eco is set up to deliver a 2nd world feeling and let people emerse in this beautiful world, everything you grab, mine, catch is actually yours and holds a certain value. The more time you spend in that world, the stronger you get the more equipement you collect etc.

Leviathan could be way more than just a mode for 10 whales to compete with each other, most people just missed to see that because right now there are like 20 people spending time for their teams and newcomer getting smashed by them. But that's mainly a problem of a very very low playerbase in general and people without vision just seeing what is now arguing it's always just those 20 whales. Leviathan could basically be the arena mode for everyone not f2p who wants to play with his collection he collected over time and compete with others and their collection, is it a whale or a shrimp.

There's also not really an imbalance of skill expression or pay mechanics imo.
The focus in latest months was to improve casual gauntlet which es exactly what you are asking for. Pure skill nothing else.
You can explore every region for free even capture a big part of illuvials for free, if (when) there is a story mode coming i'm pretty sure that's coming in the f2p mode aswell.

fair silo
# dreamy idol I don't think we've nft'd too many things. All the eco is set up to deliver a 2...

I think I should be clear about my stance on Leviathan mode as I am not against it nor do I think it's just a mode for whales in its ideal state. I've come from plenty of gacha games and this is nothing different as the entire player base in those games compete in the same ladders, from f2p to the most Giga of whales. The difference is they usually have a smoothed out progression system to convert f2p into spenders. For most of my recent responses as of late, my concern has been with the strategy we're taking to convert f2p players over to paying/ownership being insufficient mainly because the intended design for OW is oversaturated with paywalls, microtransactions, and RNG.

What's this about capturing a big part of Illuvials for free? This is the first time I've seen anyone mention anything about that unless you're talking about Stage 0, which is intended as the demo.

fair silo
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I've stated before that the idea of a digital card pack opener is not a new and unique concept, as gacha games are fundamentally working on the exact same principles and have had at least a decade to figure out the ideal mechanics for player acquisition/retention. Many of those mechanics and designs have not been implemented on open beta release, communicating to me that the team was confident in and heavily reliant on the assumption that people will flock to Illuvium because you could "hit it big" with NFTs, such hi-res graphics, and look at all this ownership! We saw that Illuvium barely made it off the launchpad in the attempt to hit the target goal of 100,000 players despite all the initial hype.

On the contrary, we've just witnessed OTG make waves on early access with web2 reception being on the positive side. We haven't even seen how their web3 systems will be integrated yet but I'm willing to bet their debut will be more frictionless and accessible than Illuvium's. What does that tell you about the priorities of their studio compared to ours? And what does that say about how much they care about a seamless integration for web2 to web3 when they debuted the web2 portion first?

dreamy idol
fair silo
dreamy idol
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should that be the case... probably not.
you should be able to play better than last rank, but shouldn't be in top rankings with t0 in your endgame comp in my opinion

fair silo
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So do you often see tier 0 Illuvials being comparable to higher tier Illuvials when stats are equalized?

dreamy idol
serene wind
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Kieran mentioned a totally free to play overworld mode during the permissionless keynote

dreamy idol
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since tier is not only the rarity but also strength differentiation.

fair silo
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And is it after the recent patch that they are now seeing more wins or was it like this in the previous patch too?

serene wind
dreamy idol
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there was a patch when t0 illuvials were meta even...

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but that's really not what it should be.

fair silo
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But that must have been totally unintended

dreamy idol
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lowest tier should be weakest...

dreamy idol
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balancing really got a topic just lately

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i don't think they cared really about balancing before launch

fair silo
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Hmm, it seems hard to judge when balancing hasn't reached the desired outcome yet

dreamy idol
fair silo
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Based on what I've seen, we're still missing that part since the intended OW design is so RNG heavy and with so much of the emphasis on reward incentives instead of gameplay progression mechanics.

wraith galleon
dreamy idol
fair silo
fair silo
serene wind
fair silo
serene wind
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I was hyped too - and really believed there would be a story line to follow - that’s where my disappointment lay tbh

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It’s just a huge desolate world with no purpose if you don’t want to play leviathan or try and make a profit

fair silo
serene wind
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The thing is they made a great pack opening/album collection game in beyond.

Which I thought was a great standalone product.

Beyond is better than overworld at the moment

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Zero is good too - and they can actually get loads of players playing F2P if they focused on people paying to get ahead/beautify their plot

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Arena with a f2p monetised by skins alongside leviathan works

It’s just overworld in the middle of everything that unfortunately is s***!

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And their insistence on trying to tie all the games together with illuvial ownership - not every game mode needs to be tied together/incentivised by illuvial ownership! Especially when OW is nowhere near good enough

fair silo
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I think there were just a lot of misguided understandings about what gamers want... I really want to see what Kieran has to say about OTG because their brief debut really challenged a lot of assumptions made about web2 reception of crypto games

serene wind
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100% - I’ve been saying this for years. That’s it not that so called web 2 people will not accept it, it’s that so called web 3 people are positioning the benefits of blockchain tech in a game very badly.

The streamer said it right, it’s just a better way of architecting a steam marketplace.

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With some other nice benefits too that are a step change on previous architectures

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Somebody needs to ask Kieran this asap - re OTG

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It’s also a misguided understanding of ‘ownership’ too - and how that fits into a game

fair silo
serene wind
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Will do

serene wind
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@fair silo presumably you think the aidrop was a really bad idea too

fair silo
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Yes. I don't mind getting free stuff but I don't like that direction one bit

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It's such a weird incentive structure. I should be rewarded by the gameplay, not because I expect to be paid for it. I literally only played Zero and got 4+ ILV. My brain doesn't comprehend that tbh

wraith galleon
serene wind
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100%

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Incentivise for gameplay - not for monetary rewards

severe field
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And if they do they’ll expect profit

fair silo
# severe field Crypto bros don’t get that web2 gamers don’t give a flying fuck about an ecosyst...

I personally am interested in an ecosystem but not as the main premise of the game. If I start playing a game and see "earn with NFTs" and microtransactions being shoved in my face, it's an immediate turnoff.

I always like to use the analogy of the frog in boiling water. If we want proper adoption, the web3 stuff needs to be integrated in subtler and more elegant ways, with the game being the main focus. Again, it's a night and day difference between Illuvium Open Beta vs OTG early access in terms of reception for a reason. It's not because "web2 just hates us," it's because we didn't give them a reason to like us.

fair silo
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And before I forget, I was about to post this earlier but I lost track after getting into all these discussions. You can't make this stuff up, coming from the horse's mouth on Axie subreddit.

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serene wind
# severe field And if they do they’ll expect profit

You’re so right, they all EXPECT a profit - it’s pretty much their only motivation to be in crypto in the first place.

They’re all 18-35 and are out to make money.

So they want the token to go up, they want to capture NFT illuvials and definitely turn a profit. They want to profit from land, from leaderboard rewards

And if they don’t profit, it turns toxic

It’s a horrible atmosphere to build a GAME

serene wind
# fair silo I personally am interested in an ecosystem but not as the main premise of the ga...

So true - it’s about how to position the benefits of blockchain - and how to integrate them elegantly into the game. Not shoving them down your throat.

There was talk of abstracting crypto for ages.

Then we had fuel that you could only buy in ETH, huge marketing around NFT ownership, an NFT land sale that provided a monetary return on investment and the expectation that the gameloop was simply pay money, build a team in a not that fun game, then fight in leviathan, a play to win autobattler.

All whilst incentivising people with monetary rewards, an actual non gameplay crypto token, that took their mind off intrinsic enjoyment of the game and turned everyone into playing for money.

No wonder we didn’t get a huge player base

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And posts like this always get larger downvotes - which suggests to me that the crypto people outnumber the non crypto people, and are trying to protect their short term investments.

No long term thinking allowed

fair silo
north robin
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a game is a game.
you either enjoy playing it or not.
lets forget about some kind of grandiose vision of what it could be in the future. just be or not to be, that is the question.

fair silo
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That's definitely the easiest way to integrate blockchain into gaming in a very mainstream friendly format.

I think there's definitely a way to keep Illuvial NFT ownership a thing while being mainstream, but people aren't going to like it because any foreseeable solution is probably going to tank top end prices. Anyone who invested heavily into perfect stats early are the majority voice in this community and we won't be making those kinds of changes without some kind of upheaval.

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IMO, we made a mistake trying to create such a market based predominantly on exclusiveness and rarity. We should have been more commodity based in our approach to Illuvials and control the demand via in-game balancing and meta shifts.

serene wind
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I think we can cater to both still.

Keep a leviathan arena game which functions as demand for top of the line illuvials, then alongside it run a f2p arena with skins as the monetisation.

An elegant 1-2 punch.

And avoids the upheaval that would clearly come by removing leviathan and devaluing the work done by /money spent by a lot of crypto people so far in building their leviathan decks.

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I agree the majority voice being the leviathan crowd is what the team need to look past when they’re considering he viability long term.

Yes they’re important, but it can’t be all about that

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And I would then add a purely overworld gameplay loop in addition to the current OW/Arena gameplay loop combo of catch illuvials, play leviathan or sell to leviathan players

serene wind
serene wind
# fair silo It's such a weird incentive structure. I should be rewarded by the gameplay, not...

Id add to this that we had a whole section of the community who just wanted to pay for fun (the old Pokémon nostalgic crowd) and capture illuvials, and the aidrop monetary/crypto incentive took that intrinsic motivation and swung it towards play for money, don’t play for fun.

Which actually just hugely demotivates people long term.

It wasn’t just a bad marketing strategy for new entrants, it was a really damaging marketing strategy for the members of the community that had been there for 3+ years and just wanted to play for their own enjoyment

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2 negatives in 1.

I am a loud advocate of stopping the aidrop for anything other than professional esports

north robin