Something that many may not be aware of is that Holozing is a lot further in game logic and implementation than the visuals we plan on adding to it. Meaning most of the funding and attention has gone towards the prototype and soon a closed alpha version with a few invited gamers we hope will fine-tune and balance the starter creatures and healers up with us.
This will of course also mean they'll have to continue using some borrowed assets we're currently working with which is one of the main reasons it'll be a closed alpha to start with while we continue raising funds to create more game assets and implement them.
I wanted to discuss a little bit about one part of the game logic today, which may give you an overview of how far we've gotten in that regard and maybe something other gamers may enjoy reading and poking holes at.
Mana in Holozing will be scarce and important.
Your healer mana is scarce, you won't get to use your healing abilities like in other games where they are there all the time, this is done this way on purpose. Leveling creatures up is meant to be difficult and time-consuming because these assets are going to be used in many different ways in the future. Leveling them to optimize their stats is going to be even harder so don't expect to just endlessly grind through enemy creatures and one-hit KO'ing them like in other games you may have played. Not saying that will be impossible but while it may be fun now and then long term it won't be in your favor.
We are kind of getting ahead of ourselves there though because in the beta version of the game, encounters are going to be somewhat limited.
The gamification aspect of attempting to earn as high stat as possible upon a level up by using your creatures against creatures of a stronger type compared to yours is meant to eat at your mana. Abilities that may be quite strong and do a lot of damage even on creatures of the stronger type will also have less ability points. Luckily there'll be quite a few different items and consumables for you to use to recharge mana and ability points.
Now you may be thinking "Omg that's pay2win!" and we don't disagree that some aspects of it do help if you spend some money, at least to make things go faster in the game, but compared to other web2 games and potentially many other "web3" games in the space, all the proceeds go to the players as they're in charge of crafting these consumables at the cost of their own progression.
"My healers are all low on mana and they're recharging it slowly while I know there's a few monster encounters ahead of me, what should I do?"
Check the marketplace for mana potions for your healer's level, some players who don't need it for their healer are selling them for Zing. There may even be a few materials available there or from friends to allow you to craft the potions yourself if you have the skills.
"My healer and creature have ran out of ability points and I still wanna fight a couple more creatures before going to sleep and letting them rest, what should I do?"
Again, there may be ability potions or food and drinks in the marketplace, all crafted by other players in the ecosystem who will gladly take your zing in exchange so you can continue fighting and hunting rare creatures.
Before I go off track again and start going into professions, let's go back to some of the game logic I was meaning to discuss.
Let's say you have your Grass-type Raccoon (name tbd) in the battle and you're fighting a fire type creature, you're taking a lot of damage from its fire abilities and hope RNG will be in your favor next turn so that stupid AI picks a normal type attack to give you some time to breath and not have to spend your turn on healing but to attack instead. You bring the enemy creature down to 50% but decide to not continue because your mana is low so you switch your Grass-type Raccoon with a different monster in your inventory, this one a fire type as well making it an even "fight fire with fire" battle.
The game is implemented to record and save the data of the previous creatures fight and influence on the battle, i.e. it will record that Grass-type Raccoon did 50% of the damage on Fire-type, meaning weak vs strong type battle. Now you're battling with your fire-type creature and it's not taking as much damage so you can finish it off without needing to spend more mana on healing, the battle is over, the monster is defeated.
What happens now is that the game assigns XP to your creatures and healer, your creatures will get different xp based on what creature types were used vs the enemy creature. In this example, the grass-type creature is going to get more XP than the fire-type creature (even though they both did 50% damage on the enemy creature) and more importantly, it will get points based on the matchup. Weak vs strong gets the highest point while neutral types (the type is not weaker nor stronger than the other type) and strong vs weak gets the lowest points.
Okay, so what happens during level up exactly?
The points mentioned above aren't just regular points that add up to something, they'll be unique points. Let's call one of them 1vsS-50% which refers to the example above of it having done 50% of the damage on a weak vs strong type matchup while another one could be called 1vsN-50% for the other creature that was in a neutral matchup.
These points will combine to give you a roll chance on the stat gain you receive when you level up.
Let's say it took 10 battles for your creature to level up from lvl 10 to level 11, your creature did 100% of the damage each battle and each battle was vs a stronger type creature: 10x 1vsS 100%. Your creature will have (potentially(not fully decided yet)) a 100% chance to get the highest amount of stat gain during level-up. If its Attack stat at level 10 was at 100, and the stat gain of Attack at level 11 is minimum 6 and max 12, it will gain 12 Attack making it a total of 112 Attack at level 11.
Now imagine a scenario where you fought a creature with a weaker type than yours on one of those 10 battles, this means that during level up you will have a 90% chance to get max stat increase and a 10% chance to get minimum due to that one battle you took an easier type on.
Changing creatures mid-battle is something we also don't want to discourage so healers can optimize their mana and strategies, the reason we decided XP gets shared based on damage done is to avoid players gaming the results of the creature they want to max out on stats. There won't be an "XP Share" item in our game. (:P)
For instance, if XP wasn't split up based on damage done but just evenly based on which creature was out in battle at one point in time or did at least a little damage, you would just have the creature with weak vs strong type out first, then change into a creature with strong vs weak type next (even if changing creatures costs you one round which would result in the second creature taking a hit by the enemy), then defeat the enemy creature easily and share XP gained with the first creature that did no damage that you're attempting to "boost". Instead, the first creature in our case would get no XP and no "level up points" but you just wasted some HP of the second creature for nothing switching between the two.
This is all still not set in stone and we're looking at open alpha to help fine-tune it all and potentially add more functionalities and math behind everything to both make the game fun but also rewarding for being consistent and taking the hard path forward when training your creatures. For PvP on the other hand, XP might still happen but points aren't assigned so that you can go all out on strategies and creature switching to win the battle as that's what is important there.
Healers on the other hand will get a combination of XP based on creature-type matchups that happened and if healing was used, compared to creatures, they won't get different stat gains upon level up but will have to rely on healing items they find, craft and have equipped. The XP they need to level up will be significantly higher than for creatures so users are incentivized to level up a few creatures along the way rather than only focusing on one for a healer and its roster.
Anyway, that's it for today, feel free to let me know what you think of our game logic in this regard so far and I'll try make another post about some other aspects of the battle and progression system over time. At least those we've somewhat decided on thus far and are certain to at least make the alpha. Like always though, we're more than happy to listen to the community and adjust things based on suggestions for improvements.
Images and banner were made with Midjourney for this post alone and don't reflect on the game.
How do you plan on testing the mechanics of the game economy prior to launch?
It seems like in every WEB3 game there is at least one or more developer assumptions that gets disproven, and subsequent rebalancing is needed.
Is there even a reasonable way to test this before going live?
Yes, big things like ingame items and and crafting/professions will go out live in stages after being properly tested, both for bugs and technical issues and also to see how players use them and if they can abuse them.
What if we did the open beta using some junk token like fake-zing that everyone gets X of when joining the beta. Assuming beta will end in a wipe, it might give a chance to try out the economy on the equivalent of a test net.
I haven't thought carefully about all the ramifications, and maybe it would require too much work for the small team. Just brainstorming.
Yeah we definitely plan on that and already have a test token on h-e.
It's great to see that solid game mechanics are being developed and - soon - tested BEFORE the game's release, and even before the graphics! How many projects sell "games" which look nice, but then aren't fun or are full of broken mechanics?
Imho it would be nice to have a way to bring the percentage to 100%, even if it would be expensive: imagine someone spending lots of money and time to perfectly level up one of his creature, just to see all his work riunied by some unlucky RNG in the end... it would be frustrating, to say the least!
Maybe getting a 100% chance could become tougher the higher the level of the creature.
Also, having an energy system it's interesting, but will be there activities to do even when your energy is recharging? Because if the game is addictive, free2play players will surely love to have ways to keep playing without having to pay something.
Lastly, do we already know how much the starter pack is going to cost? :)
the percentages in the post example aren't completely true to the sense of what 100% is/means, the reason we may not have fully 100% is because creatures captured at a certain level may be a certain amount off from having all 4 stats at max and by playing the hard way you should be able to get them to a higher stat rarity when reaching the higher levels. In a way doing it the hard way will get you more than 100% so that your creature's initial stat start isn't the one you end up with both on the upside and downside.
For instance let's say you catch a creature at level 20 and it's stats are 10% off of max stats it could've had at that level. A similar creature at lvl 20 that was trained from level 1 with max stats would have about 10% more stats than the one you caught but over time and levels it will be able to catch up to the one caught at max stats at lvl 1.
This is why we would in that case include some RNG so not all epic stat creatures 10% off of max level would be trainable to max stats over time and there's some luck involved and various other things (like imagine it's not just type vs type encounters but maybe also some certain creatures that act like a weaker type specifically to that one creature among other things).
No costs yet, it'll most likely be in Hive or HBD. It won't be too cheap (1-2 hive) but also not too expensive (30-40 hive) but somewhere in the middle of that because the packs will be able to be kept closed and offer some better creature stat odds and other rng compared to packs/starters sold later in the future.
Ok, this makes sense and seems very reasonable, I like it! This way maxing a creature won't be either too easy or almost impossibile.
I'm close to 20 Hive thanks to my ZING trades, so I should be almost ready for one starter pack! Thanks for this info :)
I think it is good that you are working on the mechanics before you have all the visuals down. I invested in far too many projects over on WAX that looked pretty but ended up never coming back with an actual game.
oh, that 'battle memory' factor sounds like some well thought out stuff. NICE! can't wait to try out this game!
Thanks for sharing! I think it might be clearer further down the road when some of us are able to test the alpha stage. All the best!
If I don't get access to play ALPHA, you'll become my enemy number one @acidyo
Here in the Hive community.
You don't want to be in front of alokkumar.
Think you doxxed your alt? :p
What is doxxed?
Damn, I m getting excited ... is it too soon? 😀😅
I don't understand if the healer will always be the same one chosen at the beginning or, during the game, other healers will join, always controlled by me, to form a team
Not during the game no, a healer will have its own team of creatures but you can assign them to different healers on the website/inventory. You'll be selecting which healer + creatures you'll be playing with when encountering PvE creatures or PvP battles. There'll be certain restrictions and requirements along with synergies between creature + healers for players to strategize over.
I think I will ask my son to play this game first so I can see how the game logic works in practice.
I wonder which of your sons will volunteer to play the game for you. 🤔😅
!LOLZ
Most likely, the second.
!LOLZ
lolztoken.com
But CAT scan.
Credit: marshmellowman
@savvytester, I sent you an $LOLZ on behalf of rzc24-nftbbg
(2/10)
Maybe you want to let your other sons play the game too. 🤔🤓
!LOLZ
That's fast, I thought It would next year
!hueso
!hiqvote
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!LUV
@newnow497, the HiQ Smart Bot has recognized your request (1/2) but the mana is too low. Try again later.
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I need the pass for play 😁
It seems the XP and level up system is complex, and I love it. You adopted a lot of concepts from Pokemon, and tweaked/improved on it. Judging from the other parts, it seems it will be like a MMORPG, and people can be potion makers as well. This is looking to be very big and ambitious and I am looking forward to it.
Maybe you should add a potential limit for each creature, for example, when the creature reaches lvl 5 it reaches the level limit, unless the person buys a stone to break the limit for 100 Zing from an NPC, but to access this npc you need a membership of 500 zing per month to access this place. So at lvl 15 you need 3 stones, at lvl 25 5 stones... Maybe the first stone the player will get for free by completing a mission...
It's fascinating to read about the game logic and mechanics in Holozing, and it's clear that a lot of thought has gone into creating a unique and engaging gameplay experience.
I personally loved the images and banner and I hope we'll get to see better things on the game.
The futuristic world in games is interesting, I like your publication, it looks like the pokemon game but very developed jj
Very interesting how the use of mana will be managed, one will have to be cautious and make good decisions before continuing on the path.
I had a question, will the game have an adventure mode or story mode?
The EXP theme during battles is also perfect, it makes a lot of sense, it will be more challenging to get the best stats, but it will also generate some satisfaction every time you do it, because of the effort applied.
This is great. Check out my post how to get Zing fast
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so excited for this game would love to get access to alpha. I am a huge pokemon fan and i see similarities here. I think this game is going to be huge
Really looking forward to a game with XP like this. With Splinterlands all you can do is combine cards, but this idea of experience points can be very rewarding for those who work hard at battling.