Team RPG is our industry-first initiative to include the community in the earliest stages of game development. Ultimately, you will vote on which game mode will be launched for Team RPG.
Laguna Games launched the Team RPG prototype in Match 3 and Autobattler game modes developed by Altitude Games. The two game modes allow players to participate at different levels - proactive vs. passive playstyles.
As part of the development process, players tested and provided feedback on the two game mode prototypes. After ~(5) five weeks of testing, we now ask the players to vote on the game mode that ultimately gets built as the Team RPG.
Goals for the Initiative (Motivation)
Set up an open dialogue between the Game Developers and Players, incorporating collaboration and decentralization into the process of game development.
Engage community governance participation for a major Crypto Unicorns decision.
Introduce a new battle loop to players under the Unicorn Multiverse that interconnects with the core farming loop.
Provide a new game loop focused on Unicorn skills and roles.
Details
Following the end of the playtest period, the DAO is asked to vote on which of the two prototypes gets developed into completion. Once the DAO has ultimately decided on the game mode for the RPG feature, the LG team will be driving the effort on processing surveys and community feedback, and then proceed with the second round of pre-production to deepen the design and finalize a development plan. From thereon, we will march towards the finish line until the end of the year.
Five (5) Unicorns are needed to play both game modes.
1. Match-3
In Match-3 PVP, the player and the opponent take turns in matching orbs and using skills to attack each other. The goal is to bring the opponentās hit points (HP) down to zero.
In Auto-Battler PVP, the player places their Unicorns on a board and watch them fight the opponentās ācorns based on stats. The goal is to knock out all enemy Unicorns by bringing each of their hit points (HP) down to zero.
For more information about the two game modes, please refer to the Medium post found here or the idea post found here.
Conclusion
By completing the playtest period, we expect that participants have gained enough experience playing the two prototypes to vote on their favourite game mode. This is a significant step toward creating a truly community-owned IP. Please vote for the game mode that you believe best represents your vision for Crypto Unicorns.
I think the auto battler (AB) makes the most sense. To me it feels like Match3 (M3) is geared towards people who already like other M3 games, and if you donāt play them, it will never interest you.
AB feels like you can add so much more depth and polish if more time is spent developing it. It also feels like your unicorn matters more. I can imagine scenarios of being able to equip your unicorn with crafted materials or secondary skills. In M3 your unicorn might as well be a an empty box. It really doesnāt matter what it looks like or what the skills are.
AB is also a lot more accessible I think. The skill cap isnāt that high so its more accessible. It will motivate more people to at least try it. With M3 its massive loss when you play against an experienced player. Catching up to these experienced players is not easy either and quite hard to āself learnā when compared to AB.
Both are good and attract different users, so I like them both. Personally I like M3 games.
But in both cases, unless there is a commitment to make them work 100% on mobile (tablet or phone) then I would recommend against either of them. Casual games should NOT require a computer, graphics card, etcā¦ Unless of course you want to limit your exposure to hard core gamers only.
I donāt enjoy much match3, I would spend more time playing an autobattler if it has enough depth. Itās a good start but here are some ideas to improve the autobattler:
have maybe 3 skills per unicorn, you would have to chose carrefuly wich one to use depending on situation instead of just spamming one ultimate skill.
add a talent tree for unicorns so more personalisation and possible compositions/strategys.
add a ābehavourā option per unicorn, example : you could assign an unicorn to prioritise kiting over doing damage, another to protect a specific unicorn, another to try to pass trough the ennemy frontline and go attack the backliner, etcā¦
After winning 1270 autobattles and 309 match 3, I vote for match 3.
Autobattler is a bit of a hectic click fest and there are too many of those already!
Match3 seems like it hits an untried market for web3, while already having a massive presence in the gaming world. Itās a more thoughtful game that may help tempt traditional gamers to try web3.
Given this proposal will determine the TeamRPG battle loop we build I wanted to weigh in with my thoughts.
If I were running an āold schoolā game co and looking to just make the best game to fit the IP and marketā¦ Match-3 would be my strong preference. The reasoning is simple. Auto-Battler is a very crowded genre and there will be a lot of competition both in and outside of web3 gaming.
In contrast, the Match-3 genre (with our specific gem swapping mechanic) is novel enough that it will feel fun and fresh. We can point to highly successful titles like Puzzles and Dragons as well as Legendary Game of Heroes for reference. On top of this our IP I think is a natural fit with Match-3 themes. Itās very casual and yet has a surprising amount of depth.
I think Match-3 will make for a more competitive skill based game over AB which will inevitably devolve into a meta chase game. With Match-3 we really have a unique mixture of skill and RNG that I believe the AB lacks.
While Iāve really enjoyed AB (honestly more than I expected given my match-3 bias) I believe going in that direction will put us in a crowded lane with a lot of competition and weāll have to really work hard to differentiate.
This is the first real test of ācommunity led game developmentā and so itās important to think about the specific mechanics you believe will resonate with as many players as possible and also look around at the current market to ensure we can be differentiated enough.
Take the time to really think about this one Uni fam. Itās a critical decision.
Thereās a reason we have both games in a āmobileā frame on web currently. Iāve said many times that we plan to try to get to Mobile as soon as the platforms begin to allow NFT sales off platform. Both Apple and Google have taken negative stances to date related to NFT projects on their stores.
With the rise of second party app stores, etc hopefully it gets easier for us to bring our full experience to mobile with out compromising our web3 ethos.
Your comment seems to ignore this fact. To be clear - all of our games our in UNITY which is a cross platform game engine. Our experience is actually as mobile developers. We shifted to web because itās not possible to release a fully featured NFT game without giving apple 30% of a transaction. Thatās a long way from openseaās 2.5%!!
I just want to reinforce that thereās not a technical limitation, thereās a policy limitation enforced by Apple and Google as the current gatekeepers of their store fronts. I hope to see improvement soon but these things take time.
Have you tried M3 after the update? I want to make sure you are judging it based on the latest tuning.
In some ways your are right. AB is all about party composition & board positioning. Timing specials is more of a button mashing fest. In Match-3 itās more about your gem matching skill coupled with your deck. I personally think skills matter more in Match-3 than in AB.
I personally see Match-3 (the largest game genre in the world by daily active players) as the optimal onramp for people coming into our ecosystem. I believe the depth of the game play is a natural hook that does have a high skill curve (necessary for esports).
If you think about what loop goes mass marketā¦ itās Match-3. If we want to replicate Axieās success we probably want a mass market loop that goes viral. Unicorn gem matching battle game I think has that potential.
Again, like I said in my note above Iām also a fan of AB but in this case I think the success case for Match-3 is clearer.
I agree that Match-3 would be the better selection. With RPG the skill is more picking your lineup then letting the corns battle, but with Match-3 you get picking your lineup coupled with strategy in game, and hopefully once more tuning gets put in place it will allow all players to participate and have a chance to win vs those with good decks.
We ideally want onboarding to be as easy as possible and with somewhat of a low barrier for entry vs getting put into a game where you are at a big disadvantage if you havenāt put a lot of equity into the game already. With Match-3 I think we have a higher chance of making that barrier fun/competitive from day one of onboarding. The skill part is also what draws me towards match-3.
Have you tried M3 after the update? I want to make sure you are judging it based on the latest tuning.
You got me there, I havenāt actually. Iāve been a little lazy with that but Iāll check it out again.
In some ways you are right. AB is all about party composition & board positioning. Timing specials is more of a button mashing fest. In Match-3 itās more about your gem matching skill coupled with your deck. I personally think skills matter more in Match-3 than in AB.
I think itās objectively a fact that M3 is more skill based and has a higher skill cap. Strategy matters much more in AB because once the game starts, you donāt have much of a choice and itās mostly button mashing. In the current implementation thereās honestly no need to make the ability to be manual, you might as well make it automatic. Thereās no advantage to triggering it late.
To me it looks like you guys chose to implement 2 games with a unique twist to see what people like more. The ātwistā you chose for M3 (swappable gems) is much better than the twist for AB (triggerable ability). The latter is somewhat meaningless in a game because thereās only one correct way to use it (press it ASAP). If, for example, the latterās twist was that you could target certain corns, it would have been much more strategic. Especially if you could get specific corns to target specific enemies. Then it suddenly has much more depth. Combine this with maybe single use items that can be crafted which is manually triggerable and then suddenly you also have mat sinks. I thought of these just quickly, and itās not fully fleshed out. But with M3 I canāt think of more stackable innovations other than gem swapping. It has an extremely high skill cap, but low innovation cap. With AB, to me there seems to be an endless amount of ways to make it āfreshā and integrate it tighter into the economy.
If you think about what loop goes mass marketā¦ itās Match-3. If we want to replicate Axieās success we probably want a mass market loop that goes viral. Unicorn gem matching battle game I think has that potential.
While I agree with this I also want to keep in mind of the demographics. Itās pretty common to see older parents (or grandparents!) playing M3 because itās so easy to pick up. I suspect the numbers for M3 is huge because itās such an inclusive game. But these demographics will never even consider an NFT based game. The hurdle is way too high. So within our target demographic which game is better? Personally I mostly see extremely casual gamers, i.e. those who never play any ārealā games, play M3. AB attracts a lot of serious gamers. That would be the nuance here I think is also important to consider.
P.S itās nice to see you share your thoughts here because itās quite important to know a game devās perspective as well.
So far my vote goes to the Autobattler! I love Teamfight Tactics with all my heart and I just wish my unicorns just auto-casted their abilities like it.
I definitely had lots more fun with the Autobattler compared to the Match 3 type! I found it more fun to watch my unicorns spar/duke it out with the other unicorns since Iām not being absolutely decimated in under 5 seconds in Match 3.
Features thatād be pretty nice to see in the autobattler is:
1.) Different movesets for different parts
2.) Faster animations (if the skills arenāt autocasted)
3.) Toggleable autocast (if autocast is implemented)
I have NEVER suggested to create a native app to be distributed in the App Stores. I have only suggested that there needs to be support for mobile BROWSERS. Even running inside of the Metamask Browser on these platforms should be possible. Not sure why you get defensive about your position when I am simply stating the fact that I can not access your games remotely and that there is tremendous growth should you decide to develop the games to support mobile BROWSERS.
I wish your team luck in your continued development efforts.
I played each 15-20 times - I really enjoyed both. I would prefer Match3 get built out because i think there is a wider audience of players, less competition for this mechanic in crypto, and more of a skill based component which imo makes things interesting. People like to compete, especially with their minds.
I do not feel super strongly either way, but given Aronās comments as well I think we should roll with match3.
Iām curious. do we have like some data, market research, or any information to support claims of Match3 now more popular than an AB type of game genre? .
Maybe im living in a rock i dont follow much on the trend and was looking to know further about this.
On the trains here in singapore, there are usually some people who play games on their mobile, and usually its sims, [build stuff] , clash royale types, war games., fps, moba .
I would honestly admit i do see candy crush in some peopleās phones too. [gees i sound like a creeper!. lol .]but in comparison to like AB, i feel like there is more AB types than M3 types.
another form to look at this is what target audience we have right now and what target audience we are looking to hit? . is this going to be a retention type of game where we cater to current players or get new players on a certain environment ?
very curious about your thoughts on this . I am currently half and half in M3 and AB but iām biased in Competitive playing hence i want to pick AB. plus i feel like when I loose to AB I feel more like breeding or buying unicorns because i want stronger corns and win. compared to M3 where i just feel that i need to skill based on my skills instead of buying new unicorns.
as an example right now. the recent tuning for AB has encouraged me to change teams and now planning to buy other higher stat moons because Moon is meta. compared to M3. i didnāt even change teams at all. regardless of its tuning.
on our internal group discussions there were people saying LG may have want M3 because its less maintenance compared to AB. plus the development cost and balancing in AB is higher compared to M3. im not sure about this since its just a table talk but would like to know your thoughts about this as well.
thank again for your ideas. really appreciate the read thru and new knowledge.
Match 3: 108,394,630.49
Auto-Battle: 20,440,776.09
Total Votes: 128,835,406.58
The team will now proceed with the second round of pre-production to deepen the design and finalize a development plan for Match 3. We will be working on Team RPG until the end of the year. Thank you very much for those who tested the prototypes and voted!
