Put incentives to play Gaunlet

[zinc fable]

I write this after looking a twit saying that leaderboards and tournaments won't be ready till april.

Why? why do you have to drag things out so much? Why do we have to wait 4 months more to begin to play?

It is a reality that Gaunlet is not the best autobattle game. If you ask me, I prefer to play TFT (Team Tight Tactics) than Gaunlet by many reasons. So, if I enjoy more TFT, why I'm going to play Gaunlet?

Unlike a web2 game, web3 games have the advantage that they can generate incentives to attract players who could improve or amplify their statistics basis. That happened, for example, during preason. Illuvium created an incentive for collecting data that could improve the Illuvials spawn rates, so, why don't they do the same for Gaunlet?

I do this question because I don't understand the reason behind the delay of the next airdrop season. I have played Gaunlet and it looks well. It brings the enough quality for being playable. There are things to improve, but it would improve very much and fast if it had a big base of players. So, why don't use the same strategy?

[icy hatch]

Does TFT have some in-game incentives (maybe weekly/daily quests or something else) that could be replicated somewhat here?

Not sure what players would earn though. ILV is one option, but that's already the longer-term plan for leaderboard rewards.

Incentivizing every day players with ILV doesn't make too much sense to me though, it should be something in-game. The only real option that comes to mind for me right now would be fuel.

Seems possible the DAO could set price target on fuel, at which they purchase fuel to be used as player rewards and also serve as a bottom price rail. I think players need something to do with it besides play overworld first though too (need the OW pack opening minimum). Would be tricky to ensure enough supply though if fuel prices start to go up and another mechanism would be needed to maintain fuel inventory to reward players....or DAO just buys as it's earned possibly. Would need to be minimal amounts similar to reward values in other games.

[zinc fable]

1. TFT doesn't need incentives. It's an excelent game by itself.

2. ILV shouldn't be the incentive in long term. In long term, Gaunlet must be a competitive game that keeps players by itself, just for fun, not for money. Money should be the hook for attracting new players, and these new players would help to improve the game till it becomes in that competitive game.

[zinc fable]

Until we achieve it, why are we going to play? And how are we going to get it? if there is nobody playing.

How are going to find bugs if there are just few players in it? How are we going to balance synergies if there are few players testing it?

And most important. What else does Illuvium have to do for needing 4 months for next season?

[vague jewel]

You answered yourself with the second point. Gauntlet needs to be in a good position to keep the players long term before any 'incentive' or rewards. Otherwise the tokens are just dumped and the players move on from the game, achieving nothing.

[zinc fable]

It seems you didn't read anything.

[vague jewel]

What part you didn't understand? Gauntlet is not polished enough yet in order to attract new players for anything other than the incentive. After which it is dumped on the market and move on to other games or back to tft, resulting in net negative for illuvium. Once it's in a good state the incentives can roll in. Hope that helps.

[robust verge]

And any incentives for OW?
Or simplify... any incentives? 😉

Rewards: No need ILV... you can offer skin, smiles, batlleboards, morphopods ... (any can be bounded / unbounded)

[night nymph]

Tell me more about these "smiles" 😏 - seasonal rewards would be a good way to go but always taxing on the art team to design consistent new in-game rewards (definitely possible though)

Rewards will definitely encourage players to join the ecosystem, but fun gameplay is important to maintain players vs. Extraction of rewards ($$)

[robust verge]

Smilles / Emotes for Arena (attached), or any "Cosmetics)... Or "I dont know", premium smiles or role (with special gold color for example) here for Discord (if Discord account was connected with game account - much of games have this option).
Or any Beyond thinks (T0 Illuvitars, "low" Illuvitars acesorries) for Greater player involvement in this ecosystem as well etc etc... These is many and many good and perfect options which type of rewards this game can offer!

For example more info was there in my old topic:
#1309491026364465172 message
The idea is simple:

1. Let's take the existing Daily/Weekly Quests or Milestones... and collect PTS (like in Season 1 / 2 for example). (Minor adjustments would be great, but they are not absolutely necessary)
2. Let's do a battle pass (for example 30 days, currently ideally "Christmas" until the end of the year). Price e.g. 10-30 USD.
3. People will collect points according to point one and receive rewards (but not money, only skins/smileys/board-skins/D1sk/etc...):
   For example: (milestones PTS as season 1, or daily quest as season 2 = no new mechanics needed)
   Rewards will be for FREE / and + for those who have a paid Battlepass
   1M PTS: Skin of Carablu with winter hat / + Atlas with winter hat
   1.5M PTS: - / + Smile of Atlas with hat
   2M PTS: Slappin with skates / + Stabbin with skates
   2.5M PTS: - / + Slashin smiley in winter.
   3M PTS: Mjoll in fur coat / + Mjoll with "reindeer antlers"
   5M PTS: Rhampy with icicle / + Rhampy frozen in ice cube

[night nymph]

I know it's just the word "smiles" sounds funny - it might be the translation

In Fornite, COD, Runescape etc. People like their characters doing emotes/dances 🔥

[robust verge]

Yeah, I use translator, it isnt perfect 🙂

All is possible: You have team with free time for "dancing character"? Do it! Or make new "winning dance of ranger of illuvials after battle. And make hard to get it 🙂
with some burning mechanics or PTS gain 🙂 Or preferably both 🙂 5M PTS + need to burn 1 illuvial of each type (= 205 illuvials), or again, you can have 5 "tiers" of dance ... And you need to burn all T1 illuvials for T1 ... all T2 Illuvials for T2 dance... and all T5 for T5 etc 🙂

As I say, there is many possibilities of rewards... some cost money (ILV airdrop), some cost admins/creators time (skins, emotes, dancing...) and some cost "absolut minimum time/money" from team and may be, it will bring new players to Beyond (illuvitars).

Or if your creators team doesnt have a time, you can create a design competition for players to create new graphics bonuses (again like many games, e.g. Axies).

Players (community) like emotes, cosmetics, dancing and similar bonuses 🙂

There should always be something going on for the players... otherwise they get bored... and then

A) They spam discord with "When will season 3 come" questions 😦
B) They leave... 😦

[night nymph]

Well right now focus is on Gauntlet - and then Rewards, then shifting to other aspects

Right now, there needs to be a game that sticky, polished and encourages players to want to grind it. Then marketing push with tournaments and rewards could be utilized to bring in new players

Those players will come back when rewards are back up and running, but right now it is not wise to have rewards if the game is not near end-state. P2E and P2A are great incentives, but people jump around to make $$$, we don't want that (again my personal opinion that many share in the community)

Rewards are needed 100%, ranked leaderboards, hunts, tournaments, something exciting - but it needs to be leveraged for community/player growth

[robust verge]

If you make account bounded cosmetics or simillar rewards... you eliminate "Extractors" but still you will massive you will support the activity of existing and new players. With minimal costs.

[zinc fable]

I am saying to put rewards like they did in preseason. In preseason players helped to improve OW, so, in the same way, players can help to improve Gaunlet.

If anybody play how are they going to build a balanced game? How are they going to balance Leviathan mode? it is going to be considered Illuvials level in this mode? How can they take statistics if anybody play?

[zinc fable]

Exactly. Anything. They are waiting that people play Gaunlet just because yes. By love to art. And not just that. They are expecting that people stay loyal to the proyect with such negligence. Really. They announce and airdrop of 6 months, and in the second month they postpone it for 7 months later. It is a joke.

[ionic marlin]

As far as I know, Airdrops are canceled as they didn't achieve enough value for their cost for Illuvium. Instead those rewards will be used for leaderboard rewards and tournaments / events. So a more competitive approach than just rewarding playtime with airdrops - which ended up being very harmful and extractive with bots and multi accounters abusing the system.

[blissful coral]

What do you think about gauntlet giving illuvials XP on par with OW? Ideally you'd be able to choose which illuvials to level too but since that would require work something as simple as modifying the XP values in this exact implementation would still be a meaningful reward/encouragement to play the mode for gauntlet in this state before the improvements come.

[night nymph]

Overworld runs = more XP for the more you spend

How would you suggest it working for Gauntlet? Different tiers costing fuel or items to give XP? Just thinking out lour hear

[blissful coral]

Tie it to rounds played, 10 rounds = tier 1 run worth of xp, 20 = tier 2, 30+ = tier 3, this is not meant to have anything to do with OW, this is meant as a form of rewards for playing gauntlet while it's still in the buggy crashy state

The best thing IMO would be gauntlet games not giving xp to played illuvials anymore and instead giving items like rare candies in Pokemon, but that requires a lot of dev time, this one just requires some value changes some intern could probably do it in 5 minutes.

[ionic marlin]

Why? why do you have to drag things out so much? Why do we have to wait 4 months more to begin to play?

I asked the team to give more info about why it takes so long. Here is the answer:

Building multiplayer servers is taking up the bulk of the time, it required a complete code refactor, plus a whole bunch of new code. That puts us in a position to start building new features like carousel, global augments, spectator mode.

So the essence is, that we are getting a MAJOR update with many features combined, that's why it takes longer than expected. it's not just one feature that's incoming. They come bundled up which is more effective on the development side of things I believe