This is a big long theoretical discussion enter at your own risk. haha
I know this makes me seem totally nerdy but it only took a few minutes... so i ran the numbers. Just want to put it out there and let the community and the creators of the game kind of put things in perspective.
STATS
The statistical average XP from a pack is right about 225xp The lowest you can get is 135xp (4 commons and 1 rare)
BETA XP RATES
- 15 Common
- 75 Rare
- 175 Epic
- 750 Legendary
The moment someone opens a legendary obviously that can go way up to like 750xp+ which is really cool for them of course. It also means that completing a quest is a different reward to different people and i suppose that unknown is part of the excitement.
But Right now they're statistically giving 225xp to a player every day they play and win a quest which right now quests are 5 games of a certain splinter.
So right now each win is about 45xp (225/5)
And each win above 5 quest wins is worth = 0 (unless you're actively looking for those seasonal bonuses... i'll discuss below)
Also someone who wins 5 games in bronze gets 225xp the same as someone who wins 5 games in Champion. However you can earn up to 6750xp for reaching the top level of champion leage meanwhile if you complete all 14 quests during that time even if you never leave bronze leage you get an average of 3150xp
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE FOR A MOMENT
Right now for example silver league takes about 80ish games to get to about 50 wins and you get 4 packs which is 900xp statistically. Which means for your 50 wins you're getting about 18xp extra per win. So in total each win is about 63xp ... but obviously that's not a perfect number because you could have a really bad win loss record. But for the best players out there it's probably more like 63xp per win. I submit that's a TON. That's like earning a pack for every 4 games you play. And a game is about 2-3 minutes. Maybe someone fast can do them in 90 seconds let's say they also have a great win loss record because they're high caliber players playing with an alternate account at bronze league level. They then have a 80% win rate which turns that 6 minutes into something around 7 to 8 minutes. Making them have what is essentially about a $15/hr earning opportunity if you value a pack at $2. Seems a bit much to me but i'll let you decide if you think it is... or if my math is good.
THE CASE FOR PACK REWARDS
It's nice to flush the system with cards in hopes that the excess leads to people creating extra accounts and getting their friends to play, or giveaways etc.
It's fun having that unknown of opening a pack and getting something of big value 1 pack may seem to have more value than the statistical 225xp average even if it leaves you with only 135xp
It gets us through beta edition faster and on to new cool editions.
You keep the super rare max alphas as super rare. (probably the biggest benefit)
THE CASE FOR XP REWARDS
People stop playing when they finish their quest... what if you had a way to keep them playing a whole lot more and incentivizing grinding longer.
You could still put a cap on the XP you can earn in a day and perhaps that's something like 225 or perhaps even 300 knowing that they're adding to the game liquidity (meaning they're playing lots more games)
You make packs seem to have more value in this system. Packs right now are given out like candy... they're loosing value and that can be seen in the number of pack sales since the system came out.
You could incentivize game variance... meaning give people a reason to play certain cards. They play that card because they want it to level up.
It helps align incentive structures.
Right now someone who starts a new account and wins 5 games gets the same reward as someone who plays 5 champion games... there's very little incentive to stay in high rankings. Hit them to get the bonus packs but then come back down to complete the quests.You could incentivize higher game play by giving more xp for winning at bigger levels.
EXAMPLE:
Give 1 XP to every card used in a winning team for low levels... then go up for higher leagues.
Let's say the average is 5 cards per match and let's say you have a good 60% winning percentage.
20 games = 12 wins * 1 points * 5 cards = 60xp
but if you gave 2 points for a silver level win and 3 points for gold and 4 points for diamond and champion... Well then at champion you're looking at 240xp for those 12 wins.
SOME THINGS TO THINK ABOUT
Giving out packs as rewards is a huge inflation to the system much than XP could be, while XP helps standardize benefit given to extended game play and create more game liquidity ... however with packs you're inflating with only the newest of cards and you're not inflating for example alpha cards and if alpha card holders don't want the BCX of the alpha supply to be diluted then they may not like this. However if alpha holders want to grind their way to higher cards then they'd like the XP rewards.
Think of it this way it would take you playing AND winning 1000 games with one particular legendary level 1 card to get it to be a level 2... (at the highest level perhaps 250 games with a 4xp per win) people will realize it's probably easier to just to buy the card and it increases the value of the card.
Also remember there's a CAP on levels right now. Maybe this makes things interesting at the highest level... maybe you will see more people playing with cards 1 step down from the highest so they can earn XP with them as opposed to those playing with max cards because they want the competitive advantage to win and they're looking for the bigger picture rewards.
So a particular card is good in the game meta promoting a raise in prices... and then more people want to play it because it is more successful in game play and because it could earn them more money raising that BCX. More overall XP/bcx comes in for that card but and overall market cap for that card likely remains the same but price probably comes down.
CONVINCE ME OTHERWISE
I see the benefits in both directions. Right now I happen to prefer XP rewards... I think pack rewards doesn't help diversify strategy enough. I think it inflates the overall XP pool too much too quickly and doesn't help enough with game liquidity (aka the number of overall games being played) I think it's weird that the incentives are almost stacked barely on the side of wanting to stay at lower levels of game play. I can see some of the most stocked Alpha holders hoping that alpha XP never gets touched but i think quite a few others may be interested in XP rewards... maybe it makes alphas more interesting to new buyers.
However I'm open to opinions and could be convinced the other direction.
BIGGEST ARGUMENT
I think the biggest argument is protecting XP/BCX of particular editions. However the overall XP of the entire market is gonna go up just the same or more and given out in a less even and less properly incentivized method.
And if that's the reason you want to hang your hat on ... i'm ok with that. But it does have consequences to game play.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
This game does have have inflation of XP ... which could deflate prices to a passive investor unless you're active and stay involved in the game ... aka Game Play.
No one is knocking there being a reward structure for the game... it's needed.
But i should say to the big holders of cards... your cards need to be working. Get them playing and earning rewards. Get your friends and family playing with them. Sitting there they will still have value but they won't infinetly go up in value just sitting there as things stand as long as XP is being introduced into the system as a reward mechanism.
This post was just random ideas by @jarvie
MONSTERWORLD
If you'd like to be a writer here contact @jarvie ... you can presently get 100% beneficiary for your posts and together we create a great fan content blog.
I don't know if you noticed, but the XP model just change with the start of the Season 3. The numbers were scaled down; a hint that they dropped the model which was allowing the cards to earn XP in battle...
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Not sure they ever allowed XP to be gained in battle.
No, cards were never building up experience, but they had it in mind before Season Two, when they decided to scale up the XP levels for all the cards.
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Thanks for the discussion and feedback. One thing that I think you have wrong though is the concept of inflation. You write:
But really giving out packs has zero inflation to the system. There are a set amount of packs that will ever exist (900,000 in the case of Beta) just like there is a set amount of Bitcoin that will ever exist. When we give out packs as rewards, that's us giving out some of those packs for free rather than selling them as added incentive for people to play.
If, however, we give out XP as rewards, then we introduce unlimited inflation, and this is exactly what we want to avoid. It also disincentivizes combining cards, which I don't want to do.
Ultimately, this comes down to the core difference between a blockchain-based game with scarce digital assets vs a conventional game. In a conventional game, of course we would give out XP through play, we would give it out left and right because we don't have any assets with values to protect.
A blockchain-based game, or any project really, is about scarcity and value. That's the main innovation that blockchain technology introduced - digital scarcity. So, being a blockchain-based game, I see the scarcity and value of the assets as the primary focus and I don't want to compromise that by adding unlimited inflation to the assets through XP rewards.
Very valid point... and that one point may indeed be the one point to go against all the benefits that XP has over Packs.
Maybe there's a solution that gains the benefits XP has without the drawbacks of packs. Not saying I know what that is. haha
It seems to me that the real point you are trying to make is that the quest rewards should increase at higher leagues. Currently the same, relatively large reward is available for completing the quest at any level. The only solution with giving out packs would be to give out even more than 1 pack for completing quests at higher leagues, but that would be far too much.
The solution then is to give out portions of a pack at lower leagues, which is not possible now, but may be possible in the future.
I agree that the introduction of XP rewards would somehow compromise the approach that the Steemonsters card should be scarce and valueable in the long run. The combining mechanism should be the only method to level up cards. That said doesn't mean that we shouldn't consider a second income stream besides Card Packs rewards. I could see a system based on SMT that allow players to get "Game Credits" which are worth something in the open market. These Game Credits could be used to purchase more cards on the open market. This would nether inflate the BCX of Cards nor would it inflate the amount of packs given out. It something like peakmonsters did with introducing Credits for purchases its just another little incentive to purchase more cards.
I'm looking forward to this discussion and its crucial to the further development of Steemmonsters.
jarvie the card packs that we give away are taken from the same 900k pool. XP wouldn't be and would favor only the best cards at high level.
Yep and that's part of the drawback to XP
And by that we mean SPECIFIC XP ... because packs are just random XP specified to the newest edition.
If you would change to XP then MAXED cards would take a huge hit as they would lose a lot of incentives. That is not really that good an idea to be honest.
I like that you are out there discussing the things that you are thinking as you are playing the game.