Poop Scrolls: Uses and Function

Draft Proposals
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Summary

The product team would like to revamp the meta around the poop collection. This will be done by introducing poop scrolls as one of the possible rewards when collecting unicorn poop in the farming game loop. There are two paths at which we can integrate the poop scrolls into the meta, but either paths ultimately allow for a more engaging experience around the poop collection feature while also enabling us to achieve product-specific goals.

Motivation

Introducing poop scrolls into the poop collection feature is expected to achieve the following:

  • Add an extra incentive for players to log in to the game daily
  • Add an extra layer of fun by implement an engaging mini-game
  • Add an additional lever that works to decrease seed output from poop collection
  • Add an extra variable to the economic depth of the game

Details

A. Base Design

  • Players have a fixed chance of receiving poop scrolls when collecting unicorn poop in their lands
    • Poop scrolls will be added to the poop collection reward table and will have a small drop chance for every poop collected
    • By adding poop scrolls to the poop collection reward table, the drop chance of seeds from poop collection will be reduced.
  • The poop scrolls will then have two main possible use cases: either as a material substitute for special crafting recipes or as an exchange item used to redeem other special items through the event quest feature.
  • Regardless of which main option is selected, there will be a set amount of daily/weekly quests that require poop scrolls as the scroll input.

B. Use Cases

Option 1: As a material for special crafting recipes

  • Each tuning release, two (2) special crafting recipes will be made available to players with a large portion of its cost input directed to poop scrolls.

    • For example, the special crafting recipe will have a majority of its cost changed to poop scrolls and a small portion of its original item cost will be retained.

      Original recipe: 250 UNIM and 5 items
      New recipe: 250 UNIM and 3 poop scrolls and 1 item

  • The special crafting recipes will change with each tuning release. The special crafting recipes will be rotated between class specific items, T2 & T3 materials, boosters, keystones, jousting items, etc.

    • As the special crafting recipes are expected to change with each tuning release, the special crafting recipes will be decided based on trends the CU Economy/Design teams observed.

Option 2: As an exchange item through the event quest feature

  • Each week, one (1) redemption quest will be made available to players. This redemption quest will require a set amount of poop scrolls to complete.
  • The redemption quest reward pool will include class specific items, T2 & T3 materials, boosters, RBW, UNIM, & jousting items.
  • Only one poop redemption quest can be completed per week.

C. Cost and Economic Impact

While discussing the two use cases, it is important to discuss where the poop scroll rewards will be coming from and how it’ll affect the economy. Instead of generating a new reward source, the rewards for using poop scroll will be seeded by existing sources.

By introducing the poop scroll into the reward pool of collecting poop, the chance of collecting seeds also gets effectively reduced. By taking the RBW equivalent of this decrease in seeds, we can then allocate reward items to the poop scroll reward pool with the same RBW cost. For example, if the decrease in seed output from poop collection equaled 25k RBW, then the poop scroll is allocated a reward pool of 25k RBW worth of items too. As this is dependent on the current price trends, the total cost of the items going into the reward pool will be carefully monitored and routinely updated.

Conclusion

Adding poop scrolls is expected to add an extra layer of fun to the routine poop collection while helping us bring additional economic depth to our ecosystem. As both paths are expected to help us achieve our product goals, we ask the DAO’s input in deciding which path will lead to better user experience and satisfaction.

9 Likes
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Interesting idea, Would be happy to see this in the future. Honestly would like to see 100% of Dev teams time and energy focused on Core game from living roadmap. While features like this are great and look forward to many of them in the future. I think all time should be focused releasing Jousting and would like to see QOL improvements taken care of from past updates like a Mythic Filter. We did not have enough time to fix SC staking so not sure how we have time to add new features. Great idea. But please stay focused on delivering what community is patiently waiting for. Please please please stay focused. Thank you

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Hello. The team working on jousting and the team working on tuning/design changes are two different groups. It should have minimal effect on Jousting. The voting options for this are the use cases - on whether we go with Option 1 or Option 2.

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Can option 1 be done multiple times or just once like option 2. Thanks :slight_smile:

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This is a good post of what community would like tuning/design team to focus on. Knowing these would be taken care of first would likely make community very happy and much more excited for new features. Will try to keep comments focused on this proposal. Just trying to echo the communities feedback and suggestions to the team. :heart:

TheTakoyakiGuy | :united_arab_emirates::philippines: — 01/20/2023 3:03 AM

Update on Inventory Tab - Unicorns section: Scenarios that influenced my design decision: - The card view of the unicorns is too big and challenging to browse through the list. - It is difficult for players to select unicorns to send out to quests based on stats. - Some players are confused when checking mythic parts. Features I added: - List view - so users can easily view the unicorn list and compare their overall stats. (This could be helpful for breeding as well) - Hovers to view more information on stats. - Revamped unicorn info display - Added activity status in the list view to check what the unicorn is doing - Removed the modal over modal interaction to improve the experience of viewing unicorn info.

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Yep! It can be done multiple times ^^

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We’re currently working on UX improvements for both Onboarding and Nursery. Rest assured that our product team has also reviewed his past posts. These UX improvements, however, will only be soft polls on Discord - like the Farming UX. Soft polls are used for user research, ones that our product team analyze to base their decisions on. Snapshot votes are used for those that we can be implemented directly.

Edit: @timetraveler I’d also like to explain that the goal is not to introduce a new feature. Rest assured that this will not take away from jousting! ^^ This hopes to introduce a lever that can be used to address an existing economic need. Usually, changes to address these economic needs are applied directly to the game, but the hope this time is to experiment in getting the DAO involved in helping determine the best path. Apart from using soft polls for the UX changes, this is another experimental step in getting the DAO more involved.

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Thank you for asking the communities input on the changes for poop scrolls :heart:

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Hi Nessa,

Just some clarifications on this.

  • Poop Scrolls is a new item?
  • Crafting side : if its crafting is it unlimited times per week?
  • Questing side : does it require a Quest Scroll?
  • How big of a decrease on seed reduction are we expecting? total removal of seeds? or reduction? if reduction what is the reduction changes from and to value?
  • If proposal is Rejected or approved what is the “5 items or 1 Items” mentioned and what are we doing? to clarify is this just to create the potions?
  • What is special Crafting recipes? recipes for what?
  • option 2 : redemption quest reward, what is the expected items RBW,UNIM, Boosters etc required for this? can you provide an example?
  • Are Poop Scrolls planned to be sold in the market in the future? or will not be tradable? .
  • What are the teams thought in the future utilities of poop scrolls? .

Thanks!

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Hello, Keizer!

  1. Yes, poop scroll is a new item being introduced as an additional lever to help us get to our economic goal. However, as either options will help us get to the goal, we’d like to leave it to the DAO to decide which use case to implement! Hopefully, the players can decide which will be more “fun” for them.
  2. It is repeatable, yes.
  3. It’ll require poop scrolls.
  4. We can expect reduction, but not removal. It’ll be based on the trends of seed output and balances.
  5. The options for this proposal are “Option 1” or “Option 2”. The examples you mentioned are meant to show how it can affect crafting recipes. The crafting recipe where poop scrolls can be used will rotate among these crafting recipes: class specific items, T2 & T3 materials, boosters, keystones, jousting items, etc.
  6. These are existing recipes but the item ingredients are replaced with poop scrolls. As indicated above, it will rotate among these crafting recipes: class specific items, T2 & T3 materials, boosters, keystones, jousting items, etc.
  7. No, just poop scrolls but the quantity will vary.
  8. No, and they also won’t be tradable.
  9. It can definitely be leveraged for other things in the future, but there are no plans at the moment.
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Hello, nftgibby. Based on the data, the seed balances are high so it is important to introduce a lever to keep things balanced in case of possible inflation. The hope is that the “Poop Scrolls” would address this economic concern.

Instead of applying meta changes directly (as you suggested), we’d like to take the opportunity to involve the DAO in finding a solution that works best for their gameplay. It’s happened a few times before that we’d introduce meta changes and the community would wish to provide minor tweaks to make them acceptable or that sometimes, would wish to know the intent behind the changes. The hope is that by going through governance, we can communicate the intent and we can get the community’s input on which path is better to help us get to the goal. Do you have a different suggestion that will also help us get to the same end?

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Hello, everyone! I’d like to explain the rationale behind the Poop Scrolls Use Case proposal. I understand that it may be confusing since the proposal’s options are not “Accept” or “Reject” but rather, “Option 1” or “Option 2”.

As everyone knows, we’re working on progressive decentralization. While we’re still years away from actually being fully-decentralized based on the current RBW distribution, we are a huge proponent of taking steps towards that goal. Right now, we’d like to start getting the community involved in the building process more. We’ve initially started with getting feedback for UX changes and SC Throwing Shade using soft polls on Discord. This experiment on design-related proposals is being taken as 1) design changes are necessary to maintain the economy/balance to begin with and 2) they will not take away from the work being done on the future features (ie. Jousting) and 3) they affect how players play the game. In the past, we’d design changes in response to economic needs. This time, we had hoped to get the community involved in some design changes by presenting a selection of “options” to choose from that ultimately have the same effect to the economy. The hope is this would:

  • Provide context on why a change is being made
  • Give the community control on how this change will affect their gameplay
  • Allow the community to take the first few steps towards gaining control over the product

Apart from these design-related proposals, we’ll also be presenting you with two types of gameplay for the TeamRPG soon. Everyone will be able to test these two versions of the game which will ultimately lead to a Snapshot vote between Option 1 (Match 3) and Option 2 (Auto-Battler) - much similar to this. Ultimately, this is another experimental step we’re taking in our road to decentralization. I understand that some feel like decisions like this is best left to LG, that’s also a valid sentiment. As this is an experiment, we can decide on the next step after we review the reception for this proposal.

I hope this helps provide context. Please feel free to ask me questions if anything is unclear.

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Funky poopie time !
My choice goes to Option 1

I like the precious seeds that poop actually gives, but I also like this proposal !
The fact that the poop will provide some kind of blueprint and new crafting recipes, allowing more flexibility during crafting, is indeed more fun and will involve additional math.
I’m not scared of the “loss” of these seeds with the new meta, since the scrolls will allow reduced use of materials in the craft recipes.

Right now, some players need a certain type of seeds because they have unicorns of a certain class, while others can use all of them (because they have all unicorn classes).
For those who are specialists of a class, I see this as an opportunity : rather than receiving a series of seeds not adapted to their unicorns and directly sold on the RMP.
Other + : “crafting recipes will be rotated between class specific items”. Combined with Quests, I guess it would allow to get almost all the materials, if not all.

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Just a quick question as I am on the go rn and dont have much time…
I hope i got it right, that you are planning to further reduce seed yield - if that is the case:
You guys do realize that we all have to buy seeds for 65+ RBW all the time already (at least once a day for me) as we do not have any seeds left when farming 3x a day + also crafting where like… everything… requires seeds now ? And if you also do some quests on top you´re out of seeds 24/7 anyways

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I’m curious about the data on seeds. I’d like to understand properly the numbers on how seeds are inflated and by how much over time.

  1. What is the inflation rate of seeds over the past months that’s creating this concerns? I’d like to see the numbers on how this has changed over time.

  2. Weren’t the changes to Quests with seed burning quests supposed to alleviate this issue? If not, then why not? Wouldn’t tuning Quests more to burn seeds be the ideal route?

  3. Won’t making seeds more scarce result in a general push of prices upwards? As it stands, prices of RMP indicates a demand for seeds due to quests. Isn’t this contradictory to the inflation of seed supply?

What baffles me is there’s an oversupply of seeds but the prices don’t indicate that. Maybe leaving it as is will result in a price shift down not up as oversupply meets low demand. I point this out because if we do lessen seed production, I can only see prices of seeds going even higher and that affects entry players who have to deal with these high prices.

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As I want another game sinks to be introduce to the game, my concern is same with everyone else.

You’re nerfing 1 of the only 2 way to get seeds in the game currently (gathering carts and unicorn poop)

There’s an on going scarcity on seeds already, why pushes another game sinks that lowers the chance of getting seeds inside the game?

I would suggest to find first a solution on the seeds supply. Imagine with the current DAU of 1,000-1,500 we are able to push the value of seeds to around 3x of how much it was before. Imagine if this DAU double of triple.

In short, before heading on creating another game sinks, make sure it won’t affect the already thriving way of the players to gain a very limited supply of seeds in game.

Looks like there’s no option to vote no on this as this looks like a sure game sink that is just waiting for approval. But I will say no eitherway to this as not all game sinks should be welcome if it will just cause chaos to an on-going economical issues players are already experiencing.

This is just my opinion as a player

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Posting for JRB so they can remain ANON.

JRB — Today at 10:21 AM

@darthschmitty Here’s the best contrarian advice I can give you: Don’t make any changes to seeds. Why? 1. This promotes new users to buy land and collect seeds, which brings people into the game. It’s soft touch yield. 2. Scarce seeds forces game theory to play out. 3. Game theory suggests that people will trade seeds to get the seeds they want (this gives you 3% on each trade aka ammo to reward new users). 4. Game theory also suggests that people instead of trading their seeds and taking the -6% haircut on the seed trade will breed new class unicorns (also promotes rare + mythic lands), so they can use the seeds they collect instead of the seeds they wanted. This is a UNIM sink. It’s painful to be the policy maker or to see markets become somewhat irrational (we’re not there yet, as well it’s that hype that draws in new users). My recommendation is letting the invisible hand play out a bit before you intervene.

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Hello, @everyone! I understand there are questions and concerns regarding the poop scroll proposal. Since everyone’s concern seem to be similar, please allow me to try to answer in one go. Please read on for the rest of the insight from the design team.

First off, I would like to thank everyone for the detailed thoughts & analysis of the Poop Scroll proposal. Conversations like these are ultimately what will contribute to our success or failure as a DAO. At the end of the day we are all stakeholders in Crypto Unicorns and we should all be focused on steps we can take to enhance the associated experience, whether that be through economy, game design, partnerships, or player acquisition decisions.

This said, I would like to provide additional context into our theory around the poop scroll feature and the niche we see it achieving to continue our discussion. To begin, let’s discuss the 2 main goals this proposal seeks to achieve: enhance the poop collection feature with an engaging mini-game / increase daily login & decrease seed output from poop collection.

Enhancing the Poop Collection Feature

As we develop the game, fresh takes on existing features will always be vital. While the poop collection provides a fun moment of joy, mostly comical, there are areas in which we can improve it in nature. Simply speaking, revising the existing reward table to add more desirable rewards will directly achieve this goal without the need for further DEV work. In the case of this proposal, poop scrolls would be the first desirable item.

Decrease Seed Output from Poop Collection

Out of the 2 prescribed goals, this was largely the most scrutinized. Referencing our Data Warehouse, we can see that seed balances (particularly class & material seeds) have been steadily inflating since launch while DAU growth has remained stagnant. Ideally, we would like to see this balance scale with DAU but generally this has not been the case. I want to emphasize that seed inflation is not a major issue but is one that we would like to begin taking steps to correct over a multi-prong approach.

This in mind, let’s discuss the culprits behind seed inflation. Very high-level, players are obtaining more seeds than they are using, regardless of the acquisition means. Given this, there are currently 3 main sources for seeds, Gathering, Poop Collection, & RMP Buys.

Many responses referenced players “hoarding” seeds in anticipation/speculation of future demand or events. While this is true currently, it doesn’t paint the full picture or explain the full source of inflation.

It is important to account for the fact that poop collection and gathering bundles aren’t land specific meaning that crystal main players will obtain crystal seeds at the same probability of every class seed. This leads to a scenario where specialized players exhaust their classe(s) corresponding seeds quickly but are left with a surplus of the unrelated class’ seeds. While players need access to all seeds for crafting, quests, & events, they will always have the highest burn-rate on seeds that correspond to their classe(s) to maintain/improve the operation through breeding/evolving/gathering/energy regeneration.

While we like the dynamic of players “trading” items they don’t need for items they need via the RMP, this method of exchanging seeds is inefficient for mid-low players as they will have to save up 50 seeds of one type before they can trade. Effectively, players in this situation have 2 choices, they can wait until they hit 50 seeds of one-type and exchange for the seeds they need or they can purchase additional seeds via the RMP.

Wouldn’t it be great if there was a third avenue?

The poop scroll implementation is interesting in the fact that it nerf’s a portion of the poop collection seed output and consolidates it into one like-kind item (poop scroll). Using this item, players will be able to complete daily/weekly quests and either special crafting recipes or redemption quests using poop scrolls as an input.

This allows design to establish a third avenue to obtain needed items (whether seeds or items) through regular tuning pushes. Referring to the example above, if I am crystal main and haven’t been lucky on my poop collection or gathering seed pulls, I have been actively obtaining poop scrolls that will allow me to obtain crystal seeds, crystal berries, or items that require those inputs. Note that the items redeemable via the special crafting recipes and the redemption quests will rotate to coincide with tuning pushes, while poop scroll daily/weekly quests will function similarly to normal quests.

Ultimately, by adding this “save” mechanism, players will be rewarded for simply being active and they will have a steadier acquisition means for items that correspond to their operation.

Economic Impact

Another aspect of this feature, and a mind set we should all be in, is that adding additional sources for new features that are introduced is not sustainable in bear markets with stagnant DAU growth.

This means that for every feature we add, the associated source will need to come from an existing allocation. In the case of this proposal, we are suggesting that the poop scroll reward pool is “funded” by the RBW equivalent of the nerfed poop scroll seed output.

Conclusion

To conclude, we believe this feature will be a step in the right direction for correcting seed inflation, enhance the excitement of poop collection, and help ease the process of specific seed accumulation for mid-low level players. Ultimately, however, we are a DAO and it is imperative to get everyone’s input into this matter. If the community collectively decides that this proposal is not warranted, we can look for alternative ways to achieve the stated goals.

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I think I am for option 2 as it rotates through recipes faster (each week) hopefully making game more balanced for players. If 1 class gets advantage for entire period until next tuning update (option 1)it would give advantage to certain classes for a long time. Also limiting the amount that can be redeemed (option 2) gives team ability to change and tune poop scrolls easier and more timely.

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Hi community!
First of, I want to say I’m happy to see that the community is thinking and actively working on things that would improve the game. However, reading through the proposal, I am inclined that we are looking to appoint resources to a non-issue. Let me explain.

(lgNanessa, I’m replying to you as you have done a great summary. All my comments are directed at the issue and not towards you personally.)

1. ‘‘Very high-level, players are obtaining more seeds than they are using’’
Isn’t that the point of becoming a high level player? If the output/rewards were the same at all levels what would be the motivation to upgrade your lands? I think this is working as intended. If obtaining of seeds is reduced, it has to be reduced all across still having high level players obtaining more.

2. ‘‘Many responses referenced players “hoarding” seeds in anticipation/speculation of future demand or events’’
That’s how the RMP was designed. You buy items when they are cheap and you sell items when they are expensive. If people are sitting on seeds that they are not using, they are either waiting for a higher price or are expecting to use them in the future (for quests, crafting or planting). Why is this an issue?

3. ‘‘poop collection and gathering bundles aren’t land specific’’
Yes, and that’s by design. It’s an economy with a marketplace at it’s core with a small fee that goes to the game bank. The more RMP is used, the more funds for events, expenses and whatever else LG team sees fit (sorry, not familiar with how the game bank fees are really utilized).

4. ‘‘exchanging seeds is inefficient for mid-low players’’
I believe many ‘‘high-level players’’ have gone through being ‘‘mid-low player’’ phase. And that’s the part of the game. There is an RNG factor involved. You can either wait to have 50 seeds so you can sell them, or you can plant them and sell berries sooner. At this point it sounds like the start of the game is too slow and we want to change the system in favor towards impatient.

5. ‘‘poop scroll’’
The lore behind poop is that Unicorns love berries and they sneak a couple as a snack while you are not looking. That’s why they poop seeds. But now they will be pooping paper? I agree this might not be a major issue of course, but if we are really looking to build IP with a solid lore, we have to think about these things too.

6. ‘‘special crafting recipes and the redemption quests will rotate to coincide with tuning pushes’’
Why do we need new items and new mechanics to tune poop? If we want it land specific - let’s do it. If there are too many seeds in poop - let’s nerf. Team has a great vision and a challenging roadmap ahead with a lot of exciting features, I’m personally fully against robbing those new features of resources to focus on… poop. Literally.

7. ‘‘players will be rewarded for simply being active’’
Active players are rewarded now too but getting the enjoyment of picking up more poop that inactive players.

I really do appreciate the creative approach, but I think we don’t have the luxury of spare resources to throw at items just for fun.

TL;DR
With this proposal we are complicating a feature at hand by not really fixing anything. If we are worried about seed inflation, we can balance the poops, no need to rob the exciting projects on the roadmap of resources.

P.S.
Since the core issue seems to be seed inflation, maybe there’s someone who is tracking seed prices and could share a graph in this discussion?

4 Likes