Unicorn Fight Club - Game Proposal

Draft Proposals
1

Abstract

To create a fast paced, interactive, strategic and balanced pvp game loop in which stats matter and all classes have their strengths and weaknesses.

This pvp game loop will allow for players to enter into direct competition to win the prize pool plus a high chance to permanently capture a unicorn from the opponent’s deck. The game will utilize strategic player inputs that require both player knowledge and skill.

Motivation

LG has put out a call for builders to contribute to the ecosystem on top of LG’s various initiatives. They have made clear that racing, true RPG and other game loops are not the top priority. It’s also clear that jousting as it exists now has some challenges in balancing the meta and they do not intend to make all classes relevant. It’s time to take matters into our own hands. This proposal is to build the game loop that the community has been asking for: pvp, degen af, balanced, skill-based, fast, simple and fun.

By creating this game loop, we take the pressure off of LG to deliver a balanced meta and let them focus on what they do best. The intention for this game would be to compliment the farm sim, Tribes and jousting loops and allow players additional ways to earn from their assets based on their own skills. We can create an attractive on-ramp for skill-based players who wish to compete in head to head matches with real stakes. We can leverage the knowledge and strength of the DAO to supplement the efforts of LG and build what we think is missing.

Details

Here is the proposed framework for the game. If the proposal passes, we will work with the community to hold working sessions, integrate feedback, fine tune the balancing, and ensure the game design meets its objectives (i.e. degen, skill-based, balanced, fun)

The core component of the game will be a 1v1 unicorn battler in which each player creates a deck of unicorns from what they own to send into battle against an unknown opponent.

The mechanics will be explained to the best extent possible, but may be limited by the forum formatting rules. The full deck can be found here.

Teams

A player will be required to submit a team of 5 unicorns to complete their deck prior to entering the queue. The only requirements put on team composition is that the player must select unicorns that they own from their wallet. Otherwise, the player may choose any combination of classes or mythic tiers to craft their deck for battle. From the team of 5, the player will be required to send 3 unicorns into battle once they know their opponent’s deck and Shadowcorn Region.

Stats

Stats matter! Our goal is to create a balanced meta in which all stats have an important role to play in a match. Unicorn stats will dictate Attack, Health, Evade and Counter of each unicorn based on Power, Endurance, Speed and Intelligence pulled directly from the core NFT metadata. Unicorns will also received bonuses that correspond to their mythic tiers as well. We will undergo several rounds of play testing to tweak the battle calculations to ensure we optimize the formula for a balanced metagame.

Classes

Unicorn classes will greatly impact the outcome. Players will do well to carefully craft their deck prior to battle and select the right unicorn team and battle matchups based on the strengths and buffs of each class. Each unicorn class has a specific enemy class that they dominate. For example, Cloud unicorns dominate Crystal unicorns, but Crystal Unicorns dominate Flower unicorns, while Flower unicorns dominate Cloud unicorns. Unicorns that dominate another class will receive significant buffs in battle.

Region Bonuses

The Shadowcorns are at it again! Shadowcorns sponsor the Unicorn Fight Club and each match will take place in a specific Region of the Dark Forest. Unicorns will receive a stat bonus if they are strong against the Shadowcorn Region selected for the match.

Gameplay

Each player will select 5 unicorns that they own to bring to the battle. Upon match initiation, they will see the 5 unicorns that their opponent has selected and also the Shadowcorn Region. Each player will then select 3 unicorns to send into battle and pick their first unicorn to initiate the battle. The player must factor in deck composition, unicorn counters and Region bonuses as well as try to outwit their opponent’s decision making.

Once each player selects their first unicorn, those unicorns will fight until one runs out of health. The results will be calculated based on auto-generated Attacks, Evades and Counters working against their opponent’s Health. The surviving unicorn will retain its remaining Health and may be used in a future round. Each player will then be prompted to select a unicorn for the next round of battle. This will continue until one player eliminates all 3 of their opponent’s unicorns and becomes the winner.

Entry Fee & Winnings

Each player will be required to pay an entry fee to participate in a match. 90% of the entry fee will go towards the winning player with 10% going to support on-going maintenance and development costs.

Additionally, the winner of the match will be able to select a unicorn from their opponent’s deck in an attempt to convert them to their cause. The winning player will have an 80% chance to capture their desired unicorn (aka NFT transferred to the winner’s wallet), with a 10% chance of the unicorn converting to the Shadowcorn faction (aka become marketing material for the game developers) and a 10% of true death (aka Crossing the Rainbow).

FAQ

Who’s behind this proposal?

  • jbp3 = project lead responsible for the delivery of the game. He has an extensive background in software development having founded two software development firms in NYC over a decade ago and building out software for over 35 startups for clients. He has supported web3 gaming products as the lead for business development at Hawku and active participation within many games and DAOs. He’s been a member and active player of CU since before launch and currently sits on the CU DAO Council. He comes with an existing network of software developers, blockchain devs and game devs that he’s worked with in the past who will support in the execution of core parts of the game.
  • Development team = jbp3 has lined up a powerhouse team to support in the development of the game. He will be taking the lead on Product & UX. He’s locked down a development partner that he’s worked with several times in the past including building software for well funded startups. They bring over a decade of experience building world class software including working with global companies doing 9 figure revenue. jbp3 has also brought on board a web3 lead who has previously work on a cross-chain NFT marketplace and additional support from a member of the CU community who has already built some powerful tools for the game.

Wen?

This is going to depend on the timing of the proposal approval process and how long it takes to receive the funding. Based on initial conversations with the LG team, if the proposal passes this next session, we would begin work at the start of the new year and have the game playable in Q1. Full release may come in Month 4 depending on the timing and iterations required to meet our objectives. We plan to create a working prototype that allows for playtesting and tuning changes prior to full launch. We expect to get that playtest ready two months after project kickoff and then have one month for final tuning and upgrades as well as completion of the smart contract integration work and extensive security reviews and audits.

Are you seriously considering making the Fight Club for babies?

Actually, yes! We’ve considered a version of Unicorn Fight Club that is Babies-Only. Aside from the hilarious marketing memes that become available by having a baby fight club, we think there is a very fun balance that becomes available with a baby-only metagame. We plan to explore this further with the community.

How do you plan to balance stats and all classes to create a fun game?

We have some ideas + we have some geniuses in our community who are more than willing to give their opinions :slight_smile: Seriously though, we plan to build the game in a way that allows for frequent tuning updates and iterations to ensure proper balancing and enjoyment.

Proposal Cost & Deal Terms

The team is requesting 64 eth $150,000 total for the completion of this proposal. (edit: costs have been updated to USDC per the comments below and discussions to ensure that if the bullrun really takes off, the DAO is not overpaying for that. I’m not sure if this is allowed after the proposal goes live, but I did it anyways :rofl:):

The cost for the proposal will be broken down into the following phases:

- Proposal passed: 16 eth
- End of month 1: 13 eth
- End of month 2: 13 eth
- End of month 3: 13 eth
- Full game launch: 9 eth

  • Proposal passed: $37,500 USDC
  • End of month 1: $30,500 USDC
  • End of month 2: $30,500 USDC
  • End of month 3: $30,500 USDC
  • Full game launch: 21,000 USDC

If the payouts will come from the Ecosystem Development Fund and will be paid out in RBW, an equivalent amount of RBW will be paid out in accordance to the price of RBW at the time based on the above schedule. If the DAO is able to move quickly on this, the payouts might look like Jan 1, Feb 1, Mar 1 and Apr 1. We develop in an iterative and open process and will having meaningful work to share with the community by the end of Month 1.

As a third party game developer, the team will continue to work closely with LG while also completing our work independently. Given that, we propose that we follow a similar and accepted format of payback and profit share to what was established with Surf Labs. Depending on market conditions, the success of CU and RBW and our ability to execute, we expect that it is possible to reach the 50/50 split with 18 months of beginning work.

The operational framework is as follows:

  • All expenses from CU are recouped 100% prior to any profit share.
  • Once recoup is achieved the development team and the CU DAO will split the profit 50/50 in perpetuity.

Conclusion

LG wants builders to build on top of their core game loops. This is how we do it. A degen game that is pvp, balanced, skill-based, fast, simple and fun. This proposal will pave the way for other builders to build on top of the CU IP, and we will give the players an alternative way to earn on their unicorns that is separate from the main game loops.

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Hey CU Fam. I’m here for the all the conversation and questions around this proposal. I tried to be as thorough as possible with the official proposal, but also created this notion page as a home for all the progress that is already happening. I’d suggest heading there for some early visuals and to get a better sense of how this is starting to take shape.

Looking forward to working with you all to get this built!

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Hi Jbp3. Long time lurker but I saw this hadn’t gotten any replies for a few days so I thought I’d hop in. First I want to say thanks for writing your proposal and for trying to make a game for CU! My following response might be taken as harsh, but it is simply because I want the best for our community. Here we go

Game Design: So my initial impression here is that this is a very simple auto battler that just combines stats with RPS guessing the opponents moves. I find this game to be very redundant with jousting, team rpg auto battler and most likely the upcoming unicorn arena game that Aron has teased. Ultimately we have seen little participation in games like these without emissions or incentives. You proposing a 10% rake will simply not be enticing to the majority of players. We’ve seen this with jousting where only the top few participate. Players want a skill based game and I feel like this is just not enough skill influence to warrant players to come in and play at a loss if they perform average.

The Team Game Development is not easy and you have listed no one with any experience in that field to work on unicorn fight club. In fact you were very vague about all the people working on this game and didn’t even specify the “member of the CU community who has already built some powerful tools for the game”. If this is not Venticello then I’m a bit confused as to who it could be. It comes off as very strange to me to not name this community member unless it’s someone who has a poor reputation. This proposal ultimately gave me similar vibes to the “ice station” proposal, with a lot of promises and not a lot of credibility.

The Cost The cost you have listed for a game of this caliber is absolutely egregious and feels like purely a way to abuse the DAO for some easy eth. If your team has believers then you would at least have a prototype and demo to show us. Yet you don’t even have a fleshed out white paper with detailed game mechanics. This is screaming inexperience and not taking this project seriously. You’re asking 16 eth before you get started, based on just an idea with 2 unicorn pictures pasted into a doc. A decent dev could whip this game up in 2 weeks. You have nothing about contract audits, solidity devs, smart contracts or any reasons for these expenses. Expecting to payback the huge amount of eth you’re asking for from just a 10% rbw rake is insane. This is not comparable to surf labs at all and will not have anywhere near the same reach. As someone who has been in the game industry for over a decade, I find this proposal absolutely predatory in its current state. Not to mention if your team was to be paid in rbw then we would see massive sell pressure immediately. A more reasonable option would be a commitment to at least stake this amount for 1 year to show good faith.

Ultimately I applaud your attempt to bring more games into our ecosystem but I could not be more against this proposal in its current state. With the lack of liquidity we’ve gotten for every other game, the very large price tag and the undoxxed and unnamed team members, I would absolutely not support this proposal.

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Hi Henry. I appreciate the thorough response. I see a desire to do what’s best for the CU DAO, and we are aligned on that front. Thanks for the chance to address this all directly. Queue the long reply (with a tl;dr at the end):

Game Design: Your point is well received about more active gameplay and greater impact of skill on the outcome. Definitely a top priority, and we’ve started identifying potential solutions to address this.

I understand your concern with the lack of participation on the non-core games we’ve seen to date. Fair point. Our community is small right now, but it’s certainly not the intention to stay that way. I’m proposing to build a different type of game - wagering unicorns and direct pvp competition makes this distinct from candy-crush style games for leaderboard rewards. I could write a whole dissertation about utilizing web3 for what it’s good at, but I’ll leave that for another time.

Team: Like it or not, there are still people who are uncomfortable associating their names or companies with web3 projects, especially here in the US. Even more so with a DAO and with LG and CU specifically. There’s extra risk and liability that some choose to avoid. I support my team’s desire for anonymity, and as someone who doesn’t share that concern, I’m willing to take the lead to get it done. After a decade of building software, I wouldn’t be putting my name on this if I wasn’t confident in what would be delivered. I’ve done my homework to put together a rock solid team who wouldn’t normally come near us but are putting their trust in me to make this work for everyone.

Cost: I’m glad to be able to clarify here as I find some of your points disconnected from reality. My intention as an independent builder (and heavily invested community member) is to build a game that fills a gap in the CU ecosystem taking on the open invitation from the DAO to do so. Signing up for several months of full-time work and putting my nuts on the line is hardly a way to “abuse the DAO for some easy eth.”

Let’s start with what’s been done already. I chose to personally put 50+ hours of uncompensated work into the game creation and development and the proposal process, including helping LG iron out some processes for outside builders. That doesn’t include the time invested by various development teams. Of course this isn’t all going to come through in the proposal as it’s not the right format or its purpose, but that doesn’t “scream inexperience and not taking this seriously” as you have suggested.

If we were to do this a more traditional way, I might ask for 10 eth for game discovery and take a month to come up with detailed plans. We could then have costs with line items that check all the boxes you think we haven’t considered like smart contract work and security audits, a whitepaper, detailed game mechanics, etc. I chose to take an accelerated approach to getting things moving quickly and efficiently. In my experience, it’s better to build and iterate than to get bogged down with every little detail. If the DAO wants to go for a full exploratory path, we can certainly consider that.

Next, and I suspect you know this if you’ve been in the game industry for over a decade, if it were possible to have one decent dev whipping up a game in 2 weeks, we should be funding 10 of them right now. Why would we be paying Surf $50k / month and why would LG have 100 people on payroll? If you can point me to any web3 team who built their game in 2 weeks, let me know. However, I feel confident about what it would take to get something like this built while allowing space for iteration and playtesting to ensure that we produce the best game we can.

I fully disagree with your viewpoint about building a prototype behind the scenes at our own expense before bringing this in front of the community. This would not make us “believers”. It would not only be foolish and costly, but it ultimately says nothing about our belief in what we’re doing. I want to build WITH the community, not in the shadows. And if coming with an existing prototype is a requirement to build within the LG ecosystem, this is the first time I’ve heard of it. This would surely prevent any other builders from coming forward. I’ve chosen to invest my time so far because I believe there’s an opportunity to make something great here.

Finally, your statement regarding “massive sell pressure immediately” causes me to wonder if the focus on the project cost is more about the short term price impact (and its effect on you) or the long term success of the DAO. Your concern about funding builders and sell pressure is valid. We have a multi-million dollar Ecosystem Development Fund for builders to come forward and build with that is mostly unused. I also know Aron has made clear that the short term price impact is not a concern. I fully believe that having a thriving ecosystem of games one year from now far outweighs any short term price fluctuation. Additionally, it is irrational and irresponsible for a builder to stake their compensation for a year. No one is coming to your day job and telling you that you won’t be getting paid this year and hopefully next year all will be well because you are a true believer.

tl;dr

Here’s what I’ve taken away from your feedback:

  • A desire for more active gameplay and skill based outcomes: in the works

  • CU non-core games in general drawing little participation: sure, but our community is small now and I believe this game is a very different animal.

  • Concerns about the team: I get it and also respect people’s decision not to be publicly associated with web3 projects. I stand behind my work and reputation to get this done and people’s desire to remain anonymous.

I fully disagree with all of your points about the cost (except for the sell pressure by using the EDF), but that’s the beauty of public discussion and a DAO.

I want to fill in a gap in the CU ecosystem with a game that allows players to earn from skill and by utilizing all unicorn classes. My preference is to get this done quickly and with the input of the community. And I believe that what this makes available to us is exactly what the development fund has been intended for.

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Hey Jbp, I think some of my core points weren’t conveyed well so I’ll try to reiterate them in a different way

  • I do not believe this “game” is different enough from the other VERY similar loops we have to differentiate itself. What you’ve described is yet another shallow auto battle experience, except the barrier to entry is even higher than previously. You not only require 1 unicorn but 5, most likely all with high stats. I can promise you no one is buying 5 high stat unicorns to play an autobattler with a 10% rake and the chance to lose 1 of your unicorns you just bought. You cannot claim skill-based and balanced when you have pay 2 win elements. Your game is as skill-based as jousting and picking a stance

  • Not doxxing your team is totally fine. What is not fine is telling us how you’ve recruited a huge builder in our community when there is only 1. Venticello. Since he is not attached to the project, then who is it? I’m not asking for their personal details irl, if you can’t even give their discord name then that’s a big red flag to me. I’d like to know what they have built and why they can’t attach their discord handle to this project. Also none of these members have any experience making games at all? And you expect us to believe you’re going to make a whole “different beast” of a game that is balanced, skill based, fun?? But is also stat based, net negative to the players involved and has 0 active inputs?? This is just contradictory to me. How many failed autobattlers does this ecosystem need? At this point, anyone from the community could make the same claims you have made, submit a proposal and pocket the 16 eth. I respect people who put their money where their mouth is and deliver first. We’ve had enough people who over promise and underdeliver.

  • I stand by the cost being egregious. You’re right in the fact a real game cannot be pumped out in 2 weeks. However this is more of a gamified experience than a real game. You have basically combined jousting and twilight tactics which have been some of the most disappointing experiences we’ve had in CU so far. You have the zone bonuses from TwT, the rng auto battling from jousting and the stat incorporation from both. This is not a full game. I fully believe a competent dev can create the game interactions with programmer art in a very short amount of time. When I suggested coming with a demo, I was not encouraging a full prototype available for the entire community. Simply a 2 min clip conveying gameplay interactions and why this game is fun and would add value to the community. This does not need any web3 interaction, art, polish, proper balance or anything that would take a lot of time. I consider this the absolute bare minimum. If your dev isn’t able to deliver on even that without receiving 16 eth, then I do not have faith.

Ultimately I don’t even think you believe this game will be successful. Why would it? The square peg doesn’t fit into the circle hole. Maybe we try the square peg again for 64 eth just in case? It’s easy money for you and your team, but thinking a game that will only be played by the top 5% of players will do anything for us is foolish.

Take 95% rev share and no upfront if you and your team are confident this game is a hit. A builder who wants a pat on the back and 16 eth for putting 50 hours into thinking about a game is not someone i have confidence in

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Thanks for clarifying your core points. I will proceed to answer them all directly and in good faith, after I address the statements that you made that are not based on any facts whatsoever. Also, I want to come back to the core objective of this game.

What I am proposing is building a game which is fast-paced, balanced, degen and fun. I believe that this is missing from the LG game suite and roadmap, and I want to build it. I believe that the value to the DAO to have this game built is well worth the small percent of the Ecosystem Development Fund required to build it.

Statements disconnected from reality:

  • “You cannot claim skill-based and balanced when you have pay 2 win elements”

    • Are you stating as fact that a game with p2w cannot be skill based and balanced?

  • “I can promise you no one is buying 5 high stat unicorns to play an autobattler with a 10% rake and the chance to lose 1 of your unicorns you just bought”

    • That is a bold promise for you to speak on behalf of everyone. 1,129 unicorns died in Twilight Tactics for the promise of soul gems that have unknown value. Clearly there are people who value their unicorns differently than you.

  • “What is not fine is telling us how you’ve recruited a huge builder in our community when there is only 1. Venticello.”

    • Venticello is not the only builder in our community – see below

  • “We’ve had enough people who over promise and underdeliver.”

    • Who are these people and what they have over promised and under delivered?

  • “However this is more of a gamified experience than a real game. This is not a full game.”

    • Who determines what is or is not a game? Is jousting a game? Is the Shadowforge a game? Anyways, see response below.

  • “Ultimately I don’t even think you believe this game will be successful.”

    • Absolutely false. Where are you getting this from?

  • “It’s easy money for you and your team.”

    • Again, this is your projection about the effort required to build.

  • “but thinking a game that will only be played by the top 5% of players will do anything for us is foolish”

    • I do not think this will only be played by the top 5%

  • “A builder who wants a pat on the back and 16 eth for putting 50 hours into thinking about a game is not someone I have confidence in.”

    • The 16 eth has nothing to do with the 50 hours I put in. That is a sunk cost for zero compensation. You made an accusation in your original response that I was “asking for 16 eth before you get started” in which I responded about the uncompensated work already put in. The 16 eth is to pay the team for the first month of building if and when the proposal is passed. I would never ask my people to work for free, nor should anyone.

Your Point 1: Differentiation

You feel Unicorn Fight Club is similar to the other loops. I do not. Skill-based, fast, pvp in which players actions greatly impact the outcome is not similar to jousting. If you’ve been involved in the jousting conversations you know this. A large subsection of crypto is degens who like to take high risks for high rewards. That might not be you, but I want to make sure CU has a game that caters to this audience as this can bring in some big spenders.

Your Point 2: Team concerns

Venticello is not the only person who has built tools for this community. Believe it or not, there are others who have created powerful tools as well, but they were just not made public. This particular person I’m referencing also submitted a proposal previously to build tools for CU which was never surfaced to the DAO. They made a handful of technical recommendations to improve gameplay and performance since launch and even silently reported major game breaking exploits. If this person wishes to come forward and name themselves, I’ll let them do that. But suffice it to say that, as good as Venticello is, he isn’t the only technical person in the CU community.

I understand your concern about my team’s ability to deliver. While we don’t have the co-creator of Farmville on our team, it’s also not fair to say that “none of the people on the team have any experience making games at all.” I put together the right team to execute on this proposal and have full faith in our ability to deliver.

Your Point 3: Cost

I think something is getting lost in translation. This is a business proposal to build for the DAO. The DAO has 95,000,000 RBW in an Ecosystem Development Fund for builders (It started almost 2 years ago with 100M). I’m requesting funds for this proposal to build what I consider to be an important and missing game loop. The 64 eth will be used entirely to fund the game development after the proposal is accepted - not to pay myself retroactively as you seem to believe. Talented teams do not come cheap and I believe in paying people what they are worth. These people do not need to spend 2 weeks creating a 2 minute clip to prove what they can do. They’ve been doing it for years and have plenty of work knocking on their door.

I believe the upside that this game would provide to our ecosystem far outweighs the risk of unlocking stagnant RBW from our EDF in terms of both the game itself and the opening up the pathway to attract other talented development teams to build with us.

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Wow I am seeing a lot of back and forth and honestly both sides make good points.
The issue is I feel like were lacking context to this entire conversation, and context is key.

So I’ll list a few valid facts to get us all up to speed and on the same page, only then can we proceed with proper discourse.
For context:
The ecosystem fund is made for builders to build on and expand the CU ecosystem
There is currently very little usage of the ecosystem fund.

Jbp3’s and his team’s credibility.
This is something that you learn from interacting with the community, jbp3 has historically been a very positive presence in the community (which is mainly the discord)this isn’t just some random person.
This is someone many of us have known for over a year now and have grown to trust.
So much so that he is actively involved in the DAO as a council member.

While it’s fair to inquire more about a person’s background, when it comes to his team he is the face of it. And as such we should look to his experience and qualifications.

Similarity to other gameloops
While I can see why someone would bring this up, the reality of the situation is that this gameloop is similar to what jousting was supposed to be… Not what it is.

Jousting while being directly integrated into the ecosystem does NOT fulfil the role of degen high risk gambling. In fact nothing does, there is zero adrenaline high or dopamine rush from Jousting. You don’t look at jousting and worry about the outcome of that 1 match with apprehension… It’s a gameplay loop where you look to cash in on breeding and look at the EV etc etc. People play poker and lose for the fun of it, and while I’m not comparing this to poker the fact is we need games where people are willing to play for a -EV, because they think they MIGHT win.

Regardless, we should realize that Jousting is not the be all end all of CU games. In fact it’s okay for us to come to the realization that we need a better autobattler. Or at least something different than what we currently have.

Cost

The ecosystem fund is there for us to grow the CU ecosystem.
If someone is building in that ecosystem we have to assume they are somewhat willing to be invested in CU overall (and in jbp3’s case he already is). The argument of a 16eth price impact is somewhat short sighted.

  1. We do not know that jbp3 and his team will instantly sell.
  2. The impact of MFGA is much much MUCH more than 16 eth and we have barely complained about it.
  3. The fact is the development fund is in RBW, if this is an issue than it should be in USDT or ETH or even BTC!
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Sorry I am not convinced by buzz words of fast and skill-based. This is blockchain and pay 2 win, it is contradictory. We already have SIX different CU related loops with even more to come with tribals and the expansion of the Unicorn Party. Segmenting the already small player base is not a good idea.

I also did not realize you were part of the group that caused all of the drama months back about the botting activities. The community developer is the person who created the botting system correct? I do not think hiring someone who was the main cause of that is smart. While I don’t know them personally, to me they came off as rude and arrogant. Also very anti-Crypto Unicorns. I understand why you do not want to name them, but their involvement has now lost trust from me. While this proposal may be voted through due to your involvement with the large rbw holder, I would not personally feel safe connecting to the gamified experience. Thats where I’m at.

We are all waiting for our rbw to reach the greatness of pre-launch levels, and while I was not around for that, I know we need games that appeal to a large audience. We need more rbw holders. We have already ran this experiment and we know that loops where you play at a loss do not work. We know that heavy stats limit who will play by a lot. I cannot vision a scenario where this gamified experience justifies spending 5 million rbw at the price of writing this.

If other folks decide to chime in please try to be flexible to their opinions and not hold such a rigid stance. We all want whats best for the dao, and if you want this proposal to be received well then you need to be willing to compromise. Thats where I’m at

That’s it from me I think I’ve said all I can to contribute. Best of luck with this project and I appreciate your honesty and positivity in the community.

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No.
Devs should have built turn based battler it like they were supposed to.
Cost is whatever. Its principal. I wont vote to pay someone else to do it.

Gejni is right also . non related point. why do they keep the treasury funds in their shitcoin that they insist on tanking. yes they insist. bejewled, solitaire or bingo or whatever geriatric horse S#1t .

slow rug

as always

No from me. make the team do it.

oh and sorry man love you but no

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I personally find this proposal interesting and the game promising.

My concerns:

  • The timing. I feel like waiting for tribe gameplay to be available and have the “full core game” would allow for a better assessment.

  • I do think this would cater more to the richer and more established CU players, maybe some external whale since it’s a pretty high risk model. Unless there’s a practice mode for people to experiment before going high risk. But not to the small to medium player profile, UNLESS, match making is really smartly designed.

  • With only the proposal as is, it is a bit hard to see where this game would differ from Twilight tactics or jousting in its core design (pick corn(s), queue up, win or lose).

  1. What decision during a match do we do? Does cards have powers, some form of decision-making that can influence the match. Other than picking the right corn.
  2. How will be match making? (Do I get matched against someone with 5 2k corns if I queue with, 1600 corns).
  • The 100% chance of losing a corn if losing a match. I’m fine with risking it but feel like a system where you have some form of control on what you will lose. Maybe give a small change of the unicorns staying with his master. Maybe allow to signal which of the 5 corns are up for grab. Possibly, 3/5 are in the “risk pool” at the end of a match. But overall I like the idea, it’s like pogs or marbles when we were young.

My pros:

  • I really don’t want to see Laguna Games put energy in a card game. Mainly because of the design executions we’ve witnessed on other loops. Also, the balancing in most loops is weak. So I think it would be wasted energy from them since card games is not something they have worked on in the past at all, even before coming to web3 for my knowledge.
    So having another team come with a fresh eye. To build something that is not exactly a Heart stone clone but still a card game could be a great fit in the ecosystem.

  • Over all, I think 69 ETH (155k US) at current rate to build a game is modest budget, if not small.

  • The impact of it on the Grant fund is small. Assuming the funds, regardless of how they are handed by LG (RBW, ETH , or USDC), won’t be liquidated mindlessly onto the market in a way that hurt our charts, like a one time 16eth dump. The price impact shouldn’t be too bad. This would sure be added sell pressure, and we need as little as possible to draw our “bull run recovery chart”, but this shouldn’t kill it anyway.

  • I also think that Jbp3 is a trustworthy member of our ecosystem, and this attempt at building upon CU IP would help encourage other builders to join.

Overall, the project seems great, and I support this proposal. I’ve added in the above paragraphs what I think would improve on the suggested model. So hopefully this get refined a bit.

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11

Replying to everyone in this thread. Really appreciate the conversation and dialogue. Going to share what’s happening behind the scenes in a separate reply.

@VonNuemann – I respect a man of principle. If LG had built this, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, so I get it.

@Henry – thanks for the conversation. It was helpful to take back to my team and hear what’s there for you. Cheers.

@TheGenji – appreciate the kind words sir. I’m not going to comment on some of your criticisms of things outside of this proposal, but we agree on a lot there.

@aume27Rrpmp.nft – thanks for the balanced and nuanced perspective. I will address some of the concerns in my next reply. Others are factors are being worked through and will be considered. Also, I very much agree

12

Big Update:

You all have fired up the team based on these conversations. What this is morphing into is a light-weight turn based battler. The challenge I put in front of the team is to add maximum interactivity and play inputs with minimum impact on cost and timing.

A very early mockup of powerups

Here’s where we’ve landed so far while we’re still working through a lot in real time:

On a player’s turn, they will be able to choose from one of three possible actions: something like Offensive Stance, Defensive Stance or Special Ability. The Offensive and Defensive position will effect certain stats and optimal gameplay will depend on situations and matchups. We are working through several ideas for the Special Ability feature. This might be “card” based where each player gets 3 Special Ability cards they can use throughout the game. Or it could be “class” based. We’re thinking of things like Double Attack, Shields, Healing, Increased Evade, etc.

The ultimate goal here is for a fast-paced game that only takes a few minutes while balancing the skill and player interactions to keep it entertaining.

Some other observations based on feedback and conversations:

  1. Open sourced battle code that is simple and transparent
  2. Need to have a non-degen mode where unicorns won’t be at risk
  3. Design it for fair matchups (not against 2500+ beast corns every time)
  4. We want this to be applicable to more than the same 12 people who run jousting
13

Based on some of the conversation with Goliath, Sparkly, Bahis, Zyori and otheres, we decided to take a more entertaining approach to card design for powerups and make things much more fun. Here’s a first pass at some card designs to bring some humor to the game…

Updated Card Designs (with hilarity)

We’ve also been working on some more details of the game mechanics and player interactions to bring more strategy and fun into the game. Will share more once it’s more polished.

14

Saw some of the first pass re: adding humor for a card deck. The first pass looks cool.

Might be good to add more updates and consider pushing this to the next vote period.

15

This particular person I’m referencing also submitted a proposal previously to build tools for CU which was never surfaced to the DAO. They made a handful of technical recommendations to improve gameplay and performance since launch and even silently reported major game breaking exploits. If this person wishes to come forward and name themselves, I’ll let them do that. But suffice it to say that, as good as Venticello is, he isn’t the only technical person in the CU community.

This seems like a red flag to me. No one is asking to dox the person. But sharing the handle of this person will only add more trust to the proposal. Unless of course the name doesn’t add trust.

In general I find it shady that that the involvement of said community member isn’t highlighted. Would feel like I was rugged if, after the proposal passes, it’s revealed that this person is not someone the community trusts. So might as well get that process over with now.

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16

Thanks for the response and I understand the concern. Our community is full of its share of drama. There’s time where everyone gets along nicely and there’s times where people are out for blood and there’s finger pointing in every direction. It’s part of the beauty of the community the DAO, and it’s also quite annoying and difficult to have productive conversations.

At the end of the day, I’m the one leading the project and I’m asking people to trust me to get this done. If passed, I will bring in this person in a consulting and advising role to help with security and architecture based on their specific knowledge of CU and blockchain games. I very much trust their expertise in this area. Others may or may not depending on the day and which way the wind is blowing.

So again, I’m not going to out this person. Some, I’m sure, are already aware of who it is. If this person wants to chime in, they can although I fully understand why they may not. I trust this person in their particular area of expertise and ability to help this proposal and game. And I’m asking you to trust me to get it done.

17

Glad you’re enjoying the direction to bring in more humor and entertainment into the design. LG has given us plenty to work with in terms of comedic assets, and I know the community already has lots of ideas for this as well :rofl:

As of right now, I don’t plan to push to another voting period. I’m curious what’s there for you. Are there specific updates that you are looking for either as a councilor or a player that you think will help make a more informed decision?

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  1. We are likely moving into a bull phase. It’s highly probably ETH is going up. Possibly significantly. Would you consider a set price (USDC) vs pricing in ETH?

  2. What are plans for marketing the loop? We already have low engagement with recent loops that have been added.

  3. Can you provide us with any examples of any previous games or work developed by any of your team?

  4. What are your plans re: audits/safety from potential exploits?

  5. What plans do you have in place for the game loop ownership if your ‘company’ choses to no longer support it?

  6. Are you fully doxxed to LG team?

20

Appreciate the thorough questions. Very helpful to explain more about what I see here…

  1. Yes. That is correct. Repayment first before the profit share kicks in.
  2. I would actually greatly prefer if it were based in USDC. In the current form, I am taking on a lot of additional cost risk heavily dependent on what happens with the markets. I asked for eth because that’s at least more stable than RBW, but it terms of costing out this proposal, $150,000 in USDC would be greatly preferred over 64 eth (it just wasn’t clear to me if this was an option or possible based on the Ecosystem Development Fund). Even though I also believe the bull run is imminent, it is much more preferred to eliminate that form of risk for the benefit of ensuring we get things done.
  3. This will require a bit of a longer answer, but the short answer is that this game is designed to be appealing towards the degen audience and maximized for dopamine hits. Each match will take a few minutes and have a direct payout. This is in direct contrast and compliment to the grind of the farm loop, twilight tactics, tribes and breeding which take days and weeks to make significant progress. As of now, most of crypto gaming IMO still comes from some sort of degen / gambling appetite as early adopters. The plan is to go after them specifically and design marketing to gain their interest. The biggest problem is with the other loops that I see right now is that the queues never fill up. It kills any momentum. Fight Club is 1v1 so we only need two people and will be easily enough to make sure we always have a filler (my personal opinion is that LG should hire people very cheaply to fill the queues when they are ready for growth of these loops). To sum up the quick version of the marketing plan: focus on degen with guerrilla tactics (considering things like airdrop season, sponsored tournaments, boosted payouts, etc) that show a pathway towards earnings potential with skill and fun.
  4. Yes. My previous software development shop I ran worked on a few gaming / gamified learning platforms (Wavicle was the name of a client, but they shut down a few years ago). I also built two different gambling and betting sites through that company. In my role with Hawku and prior to that, I worked with a lot of web3 gaming founders on strategy, product and testing at some of the earliest stages of development.
  5. Safety is a top priority as we will have token and asset transfers. We will have a full audit of the smart contract work prior to anything going live that will put assets at risk. We will work with a credible third party to provide the audit. We will continue to monitor the game, win rates, player trends etc for exploits and iterations needed to ensure fair and competitive gameplay as I know our community is quite skilled at finding any potential exploits.
  6. Interesting question. We were advised to submit this proposal as a third party developer. That means that we will own the IP of what we build and will leverage the IP of the CU DAO. In this manner, we are incentivized to continue to support the on-going operations and success of the project in perpetuity. If we are no longer able to support the game (for any unknown reasons), we would transfer the IP, knowledge base and smart contract ownership to the DAO for them to continue to grow and maintain the project. I’ve been growing my CU assets prior to launch and have no plans to go anywhere. A successful turn based battler IMO would add significant value to CU in the short and long term and I’m here to make that happen.
  7. Yes, fully doxxed. The proposal, if accepted will be done through my US-based LLC with all proper documentation, contracts etc to avoid any shenanigans.

Thanks again for taking the time to review the proposal and provide these great questions.

21

Thank you jbp3 for the additional info. Just a few more Q’s. :wink:

  1. Would you be willing to amend your proposal now to request the payment amount, per draw, and total in USDC valuation? I’m not sure what token team would pay out in, but at least the DAO would know the fixed price.

  2. Would your team be in charge of marketing? Or would you be coordinating with LG for marketing efforts? If LG, have you spoken with Mitch re: any potential competing priorities for marketing? Where would funding come from for incentives and or LB rewards?

  3. Even though plans are to support this long-term, plans can change. If you were no longer planning support the game (for any unknown reasons) and would transfer the IP, knowledge base and smart contract ownership to the DAO, would you be asking for a royalty or 100% turning full ownership and profits to the DAO? And if a royalty, for a fixed time? Or perpetuity?

Thank you on the confirmation re: repayment first before the profit share kicks in. Although at 10% rake, I question if it will be paid back. But 150k is a relatively small risk.

Re: Previous work history examples, DAO can decide if that is enough info for them.

And, good to know you would be fully doxxed.

Last thoughts… I do have concerns re: stat based/mythic boosts potentially having a negative impact on liquidity and ability for newer players to be able to compete. If this is approved, hopefully your team can find a way to balance in a way that supports an influx of players at different levels.

I appreciate you listening to the community and trying to make a loop that the community might engage in. And the switch to humor could be a fun twist to it.

Thanks!

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