Lordmancer II dev log. Chapter 7
While the dev team are releasing a new game build every week to run the trading system in Lordmancer II as soon as possible, I will tell you about the game economy and how Lord Coin will be used by players.
Lord Coin is an ERC20 based token which is used for in-game trading inside Lordmancer 2. One of the unique features of Lordmancer 2 is an open game market where players can buy and sell game values in exchange for either a game currency or Lord Coin.
In order to explain how Lord Coin is used inside the game, I need to tell you a little more about the game economy and in-game trading.
Lordmancer economy
Like the majority of the other MMO RPGs Lordmancer 2 has its own in-game economy which includes a variety of in-game values and based on different players activities. In general, it is considered that players invest their time to get these in-game values from the game. In other words, they exchange time for in-game progress.
Player progression is a function of time spent playing the game. It is the common formula.
Lordmancer 2 has quite a strict formula of a player progression. If you complete all the daily tasks, you will get a certain amount of experience and different resources. So in 60 days you can achieve 50th level. But the fact is that the level is only the first “dimension” of hero development. To be effective at the maximum, you need to have the best equipment, improved units, spells and other skills.
The basic rewards you earn each day support your hero with only a basic set of equipment. Let’s say you have a 35 level hero which wears “green” equipment of 30th level which has been enhanced for 4 stars. If another 33 level hero has “orange” staff which have been enhanced for 10 starts, you will definitely lose in a battle. It is the basic motivation to have better items. Of course, you can spend extra time to loot and craft new equipment and finally you may succeed in it, but there is always another way — buying resources and items on the in-game market. Who will sell you these values? Other players! And you may sell any resources and items that are not needed for your hero anymore. If you reach level 40, you can sell items of 30th level.
Moreover, the game is designed in the way that it is almost impossible to collect all required resources by yourself as they are located on different lands and it is hard to gather all together.
In addition to the fact that you need to find proper items, you can enhance them from 1 star to 30 stars. If you play games like Lineage, you should know how it works — in general, it is a kind of almost infinity action based on a random chance.
There are 8 slots, 50 levels, and 30 enhancement tiers of equipment. Also, you may have different equipment sets for different situations: for example, one for PvE and the other for PvP.
In total, you are always in need of resources and items. You can either spend months to farm them, or you can just buy them from other players. Is it a “pay to win”? Nope. We have a system of “reflections” that prevent beginners from facing high-level players. If your hero is developed not really fast, you can still play Lordmancer II.
Will be there truly unique items?
Sure! Some calculations are below.
To craft a 50-level red item a player needs to loot resources during 1500 hours. If a player spends 4 hours playing Lordmancer in a day, it will take one year. Another way to get an item is to loot it from the bots. According to the existing rules, it will take 7000 hours which is more than 4 years.
Even if a hero has this 50-level red item, he or she needs to enhance it up to 30 stars. A mathematical expected value says that on average a player needs to spend almost 2 billions of gems to get such item. I won’t tell you how many years they need to spend in the game to farm such amount. It is almost impossible.
Moreover, the developer can create items having truly unique sets of characteristics. We will introduce such items as rewards in periodical PvP events.
What will happen if players farm even more than enough resources?
As players can craft and enhance items using resources farmed and looted from the game, they can farm enough for every player and lost their motivation. Or can not they?
The answer is that the game is a live system like real countries. Even if players craft or loot enough resources, we know how to cope with it. The developers will constantly update the game server, add new items, resources, lands and widen the level cap (which is currently only 50, but we are planning to extend it to 200 step by step). And turnover of trading will grow.
What players can buy with Lord Coins?
The common in-game trading can be made with either Lord Coin or in-game currencies (which are not in the blockchain). Why do we allow to use soft currencies among with Lord Coin?
As you probably know, only 5–10% of players do any purchases in free-to-play games. We expect that there will be a kind of a “pyramid”: 5–10% of players will spend real money on buying Lord Coins (and someone even earn money from the game), extra 20–30% will use them for in-game trading but never withdraw Lord Coin from their account and the rest will probably not even use them. These players need a way to get familiar with the trading and one day they can decide to trade for the cryptocurrency.
Based on the data from Lordmancer I we expect that the most valuable items will be traded only in exchange for Lord Coin. If you were lucky enough to get a unique sword, you will agree to exchange it only for something real which is definitely Lord Coin.
Moreover, not only can players trade with resources and equipment, but also they can sell heroes and lands. And there will be a strong restriction and players will be able to trade lands and heroes only for Lord Coin.
Conclusion
As mentioned above there are many values that are truly rare and even unique in Lordmancer II and it is expected that players will actively trade them. The values include resources for crafting and enhancement, equipment, heroes and even lands. The developers will constantly be observing game data and correct the game balance to make both the game and the trading exciting.
