DeFi Kingdoms AMA with Wisdom Labs (the Team Creating PVP and PVE) (December 13, 2022)
Introduction
[Samichpunch] This is a quick and dirty transcript of the AMA with Workhorse from Wisdom Labs held with the DFK Team. Wisdom Labs is partnered with Kingdom Studios to build out PVP and PVE.
Link to the AMA can be found below:
Intro
Workhorse: Got some permission to share some stuff today, just a few tidbits to satiate appetites.
Bolon: 0xWorkhorse is the co-founder and chief innovation of Wisdom gaming, the larger company, and within Wisdom Gaming is Wisdom labs. Wisdom Labs is the company that DFK is working with to build PVP and after that hopefully PVE.
We’ll be answering some questions about what they are doing, as well as possible sharing some new info.
Bolon: Should we dive in?
Workhorse: Thank you Hubert for joining and not babysitting me. Hubert will get to disclose some stuff today too.
Bolon: Excited to have both of you here, if any of you haven’t seen the Chaos cast with these two, go watch it, it will help provide some back story to this.
Link for that here:
Questions
Questions were submitted here prior to the AMA: https://talk.defikingdoms.com/contribute/wisdom-labs-ama-questions/
Will the skill tree be released prior to the game so that we can start to theorycraft before hand?
Workhorse—Yes we will give you one skill tree. It will have numbers removed, because we still have to balance everything. It will have what happens, what they are called, etc.
Talked about the Berserker Tree:
Workhorse: They were building this when the DFK and Wisdom Labs relationship was evolving.
Wisdom Labs and Kingdom Studios was going to make a bite-sized mini game, just a couple degrees further than duels. It grew into much more and at that time there was a spirit of creativity that flowed through the group and the project and the Berserker was the first one where we decided to really get into it.
Workhorse — many of you may know of several types of berserkers. One is a type that transforms into a bear and mauls people or wears a bear skin. Wearing a bear skin is much more accurate, but they possessed mythical abilityt hat allowed them to take enormous amounts of physical damage BUZZ WORD, heal rapidly and were also fearsom leaders. Berserker comes from “bear pelt wearing warrior” but there are others.
There are wolf skin wearing berserkers that behave like wolves and scout and recon. This is actual lore about berserkers.
There is a third related to Boars. More common for those with bloodlust and go crazy, kind of like if you see a boar lose its crap, they get bloodlust and don’t stop.
We took those three types and tried to build a class.
We took this approach and applied it to the skill tree
Every class has a class fantasy that you will feel as you play them. Paladins feel very holy. Dread knights feel very doom and heavy/dark magic. We want you to feel the vibe. We want you to escape into this universe that has been created.
Each class has an overarching fantasy that gets you into the mindset.
Each class has three paths.
This below image was shared on Crypto Grady’s podcast, to show what he thought the trees would initially work like.
Most of my heroes are in the 11–15 lvl range. By the time PVP comes out, he expects most will be in the realm of lvl 11–15 as well, some stam degens may be higher. But wanted to cater the initial experience to beginner magic.
You gain skill points every time you level. Every ability you want ot acquire you have to spend skill points. So most should be able to have 3–5 skills at the beginning. All of those skills float in the realm of hogwarts and you are trying to figure out how to levitate things and its not great, or QWE abilities in MOBAs that everyone knows, but they scale. By the time you are level 20 you are ready to graduate and become an adventurer and you can start to experience the real world and figure out what your own magical qualities are and you start to really dial into who you are, those start after lvl 20. If compared to a Moba, those are like your ultimates. You can’t get to those until you figure it all out. Once you get there, you can upgrade abilities that you have or you can get entirely new ones.
There are three paths, we call them combo types.
There is the Bear, Wolf and Boar paths for berzerkers. Think about class fantasy diverging into three different story arcs, but they are not mutually exclusive. Because you pick Berzerkir Mushroom at one you don’t have to pick Bear Skin at lvl 1. You can criss cross all you want. There are all sorts of crazy synergies across all sorts of things in these trees. I expect to have totally busted builds that we’ll have to patch later.
So why this? The class fantasy behind the berzerker is that there are three mushrooms they can eat. Each mushroom corresponds to one of the types of berserkers. It comes with a state of mind that the berserker represents.
All numbers have been removed so that you only see X’s. There are values we just took them out, but we did leave some tidbits in here. Screenshot this and hop into discord to ask me (Workhorse).
Bear is bruiser/tanky.
Wolf is generally a lot of buffing and debuffing, like functioning in a wolf pack. One of my sneaky ones is that each living ally you gain x% increase in damage and then later you can get a wolf pack plus where you get +x% for every dead ally.
Skills 1–5 is introductory magic.
Then you get to 10 tier upgrades. These are all lvl 10 cost goods. But since you purchased the earlier versions you get them at a discount. So lets say Bear Skin + costs 10, with comes with increased endurance and evasion, however if you paid for Bear Skin that was 2 cost, then this only costs 8.
Then you get into the big things like these blue skills, and we can answer another Q that came in, which is what about heroes with the same main and sub class?
Things like Bodvar — which is loosely based on Beowulf. His ability is that the hero ate the wrong mushroom and cannot be controlled for the remainder of the battle. Typical berserk spell.
But what is that 15 one down there? So after all the ultimates you choose from, that 15 one is for those classes that have matching sub and main. Because, to balance this out, subclasses gives you the ability to learn skills from your subclass. Subclasses give you up to 15 skill points to use from the subclass (85) for the main class). So those 15, say you are a DK/Sage, go spend some skills on sage abilities that synergize with Dk. So to balance that out for those that have a matching subclass [Since they will have no additional skills] they have access just to the 15 ability.
That 15 ability has to equal the value of if someone bought a 10 and 5 from their subclass. So the Q is are these OP? In a sense yes because they cost 15, but its essentially the same as what you could get from a subsclass 5 and 10 cost skill.
Hubert: Look at how much there is here guys. He really leans into class fantasy. I love where he’s going with all these classes. It leans to a complexity level that I was hoping to have with our combat system where we aren’t really going to be able to predict what the best build is or if there is one. There should be a response to almost any build to beat a specific party. I’m really excited for this and its been really fun to get to this level of complexity. There will need to be a lot of balancing, but I think it will be worth it for everyone that we do it this way.
Bolon: Two question from Chat:
- Will there be a skill tree reset mechanic?
Workhorse — Yes and it will be cheap.
2. You talked about pre level 20 and then you graduate to the real world. Does that imply that PVE will not be available before lvl 20.
Workhorse — No, PVE will be available before lvl 20. The non-actually confirmed lore thinking that we’ve been doing is that when PVP comes out, we’ll be sparring with each other to be good, because we’ve been summer children living in a peaceful time, but then wait the world is coming to battle us and we need to be ready for it. So PVP is getting us ready to battle and survive. That will be a fun story line to lean into.
PVE will be for everyone, but you may die a lot if you are lvl 1.
Bolon — how many possible combinations are there?
Workhorse — 22 classes currently and each has 30 abilities. Each of those 85 points can be spent on any main class and 15 on any subclass. Then all the passives and actives, which we are also going to talk about. Probably bajillions.
Hubert — 2 bajillion.
Any Alpha Related to Active and Passive Abilities?
Workhorse — Allow me to scroll down.
This was a fun thing to get into. There were a lot of preconceptions about what genes could be prior to me arriving, and then having the sea change and opening up the world of possibilites. I’ve said this in discord with the PVP folks, everyone is invited to that channel BTW, these Traits are genetic traits that anyone can have.
I tried to do negative traits, Hubert stopped me. Things like a %.01 chance that you enter battle and lose. Didn’t go that way.
So how this works, we aren’t showing you what they do, but these are actually the names that correspond to the actual things.
So if you have Advanced 1 and Basic 6, if you have Exhaust and Speed. We aren’t going to tell you what they do yet, but we will eventually. They are going to do something similar to what they say though.
Transcendent 1 — Resurrection. I wonder what that does. That will be really cool and can’t wait for the interactions.
Transcendent’s are just going to be a better trait than a basic, but Basic’s are great too. They cost no mana and you can use them once. So if your warrior has Basic 3, he has the ability to drop a heal because he has the genetic trait to heal. This adds a totally new layer of complexity how standardized classes that have always functioned in Method A can now function in Method A+. Explosion, won’t tell you what that is. Hardened Shield, that will be a shield that reduces incoming damage. Could be physical could be magic, not going to tell you today. I also just told you that there will be physical and magic damage now you know there are two different types of damage.
That hardened shield mght be on an archer, which you might think is unoptimatl, but that no mana cast might get you through a fight, or maybe on a paladin it will be totally bannanas. Its just a gift you are born with and you can only do it once and it costs no mana.
Hubert — Once per gene, so if you have the same one 2x, you can use it twice.
Workhorse — almost like summoner spells in league of legends but you only get to use it once per game.
Bolon — these are the same across classes right?
If the tree really opens at 20, will we see significatly more XP at lvl 10 profession quests, because due to the XP curve, I doubt anyone will hit lvl 20 in 2023.
Hubert — We are adding a lot of different thigns to increase XP gain, pets will automatically give you more XP based on rarity of the pet. There will be a power up for Xp gain. Lvl 10 profession quests do give more but I wouldn’t say its super significant. The greatest source of Xp should come from combat, and not profession quests. So PVP and PVE will allow that to really ramp up. You’ll have to challenge yourself to get the high XP gains.
Workhorse — Back to active skills, you can use them 1x per battle, no mana cost. Passives, you enter the battle with them, they trigger once and thats it.
So Duelist — this triggers when there is 1 remaining on your team and 1 remaining on their team. Your guy gets a buff.
Chatterbox — higher resistance to getting silenced.
Leadership — Inspires and empowers those around them.
Transcendent — second life, what could that be.
You come to the battle field with these, you don’t click a button to activate them, they just show up with a status effect on the hero.
Perma Death?
Hubert — we will consider for specific features but not in general.
Workhorse — conceptually its dope, but that would be a tough thing. I did perilous journey and lost a mythic priest and still personally blame Hubert today. There will be high risk high reward content. Yeah that may not be the content everyone plays. But maybe there will be a special event that only the truest and bravest of warriors can do.
Hubert — We’ll make sure to warn you if there is content that has the chance of your hero dying permanently. Either we’d not if you die its gone forever or if you die there’s a 10% chance he’s dead forever.
Bolon — Everyone can rest assured, we went way into depth on how PJ worked before letting people to sign up to potentially let their hero burn.
Workhorse — I’ll just scroll again real quick so people can see this:
Workhorse — if folks want clarification hit me up in discord, and I’ll share ON THE BERSERKR (no other classes).
But as it relates to other classes, Archers and Priests, you are going to get what you are expecting for the high fantasy feel we are all playing the game to feel, but some of this stuff we get to go pretty ham on.
Question — Artwork — Fitting into the DFK Ecosystem, what is the artwork of PVP?
Workhorse — I’m not actually going to do it, because Dragontea will do it, but I’ll bring it up as gesturing. So, the question I believe was how can we ensure that the art will be dope and true to the DFK vision.
When we first started, it was going to be more like a third party do what we want, but as our relationship became more partnershipy much more joint venturey that meant we got to open the flood gates on a couple of fronts. Wisdom got to bring in more art resources, which is making an impact, and then Secondbestdad also got involved. We are now in a sutation where nothing will be in this game unless Secondbestdad approves of it. So if you are seeing it, its because he agrees with it and you can blame him if you don’t like it. Secondbesdad’s wisdom and vision as he guides this is great.
You’ve seen two clips now, one was a while ago, and the second one was a test, which is how do people feel about the Paladin pulling down a taunt spell and the character was wiggling well. That wasn’t what we were testing, what we were testing was how to people feel about the quality of the spell, do they miss the pixelation? So from there we put that to bed and decided not to do higher res versions and went back to pixels. So you will see now, a video of this that Dragontea will share. What you see here is an actul animation of an archer casting an ability. On the right you are seeing a blub that is fake, that is a placeholder of something to take damage and on the left is one of my archers whipping out a bow and throwing out a sweet spell called Multishot— 3 arrows hitting a single target, each arrow doing a modified basic attack damage that has its own chance for a critical strike. You’ll see the camera movement on what is happening and then the actual animation becomes much more spectacular and the impact is much more felt.
This isn’t final. We are still doing testing, but this is a far enough leap from what you saw in the past that it was warranted to share. So this has the quality of Secondbestdad’s input and the quality of your input.
In case you were wondering. Art is last. It’s not finished, but (2) it kind of looks like art, so what does that mean? [Samichpunch note: hint to how far along the game might actually be]
Bolon — Chat is super reactive this.
Workhorse — There’s a couple of clues in there for the folks wanting to break it apart if you have screenshots.
There are early drafts of UI and how that works.
Early battleground mock up.
There’s a monster with different resolution, but its just a placeholder, don’t give that much thought.
There’s the beginning of something evolving, actual buttons that can be pushed and do things. We are in a good progressive place as a dev team. Our work with Hubert and SBD and Beetle and Magnus has been awesome and has gotten us to a great place and thinking feeling that people will start getting excited about stuff.
Bolon — there is a request to separate out the one tab on the spreadsheet that you shared and make it available.
Workhorse — Sure we should be able to do that.
Question — Pets — will they all play a role in combat or only those with a combat bonus — also can you reveal anything about how pets will work?
Workhorse — Combat pets are the ONLY PETS THAT WILL BE INVOLVED IN COMBAT.
Hubert — a small caveat to that, the XP bonus could still apply [Samich note: even without a combat bonus]
We are still working on pet bonuses, but in general its the kind of bonuses that can work with any of the levers that we are adding to the game, such as bonuses to evasion, bonus to damage output, resistances to certain things, there are a lot of options and I don’t have a complete list of things so I’ll just give you a sense of the flavor, then with the rarities, the higher rarities will have a higher range of the possible bonuses that you can get. [Samichpunch: Alpha alert]
Questions — Potions — Right now there is swiftness potion that impacts agility. Will there be potions for the other 7 hero stats?
Hubert — I do think we will keep that close to our chest. There is more than just the one. We have the toughness potion, which is like an endurance buff, the HP potion is like a Vit buff, and magic res and MP potions relate to WIS and INT.
Question — Need for Transaction approvals vs having fluid gameplay and how that effects on and off chain activity.
Workhorse — At beginning of fight you’ll be prompted for a transaction, like a mining or gardening quest. Then again at the end. There’s a bunch of secret proprietary stuff happening in between, but the idea is that it will be as smooth as possible and accessible directly in the Serendale and CV interfaces.
Questions — Ever possible to reroll traits and genes?
Hubert — Other than the tainted genes that need to be rerolled, I’m inclined to say no. I will leave it open for possibility in the far future but at the moment we have no plans for that.
Question — Any idea about what the playstyle will be like, any comparable games?
Workhorse — It’s not going to be exactly like anything. But in terms of inspiration, but definitely early final fantasy turn based vibes. But also darkest dungeon is a high point of inspiration. I pull a lot of inspiration form league and heroes of the storm, none of that applies because its a moba, but more in the sense of how I see gameplay and battles is influenced by that. I’m keen to have the PVP experience feel like you are in control of your own destiny. We make lots of jokes about it, but we are making decisions to make this competitive and almost like an e-sport. Not saying we are putting all attention to that, but our goal is that its fun to watch and there are think tank moments where you really need to be thinking about what you will do and the announcer will be trying to guess what's going through his mind.
Question — Any commentary on how tokens will be integrated into PVP and PVE.
Workhorse — That’s a ways away. We aren’t there yet.
Hubert — There’s a lot to say there and we have a lot to work out.
Question — Experience of the Wisdom Labs team in terms of development and game development.
Workhorse — One of the cool things, Wisdom gaming has been around for 3.5 years, we’ve done tons of big productions, broadcasts and tournaments and high end stuff for Riot and Blizzard, and Epic and Nimble Neuron and all sorts of publishers and the way that we’ve hired and built the company, instead of just hiring people that are good at camera ops and live video we’ve pulled in Talent from the spaces. So tons of ex pros and former commentators work at Wisdom, tons of folks come from previous developer or publisher relationships. How we function is that we try to develop as much talent as we can that truly know what's up. I say that because Wisdom labs is only 5 months old so we haven’t been able to ship anything yet. The part that gets me excited is this romantic element of how DFK will be our first title, which is exciting because I’ve been a fanboy since week one. That means the partnership between our two groups is profound.
In terms of the people working on the game right now:
- Wisdom labs is comprised of over 30 people, 12 of which working on DFK. Not a small team but not a gigantic team. It substantial though.
- Team members have experience both big and small, some I probably shouldn’t talk about, some is probably not worth mentioning. But the people are no joke some of the biggest brains I have ever known. The cool extra part to this is that when we got into the room with Kingdom game and how high their potential is and how much was already done on the project that was massively complicated and forward thinking was omega inspiring to knit the two groups together.
- So is this game in good hands? Holy crap, yes. Not only are there people with experience doing this stuff, but they are passionate about this game and community and making people have a good time.
Hubert — To add to that form my own perspective. Since we began this partnership with Wisdom, everything has felt right. Up until this point we have struggled to get things going, there’s been some changes in direction, some that caused us to restart, but this has felt really good. Every time we have a meeting about PVP, its generally the most fun part of my day. From my own perspective, I come from engineering myself, so I don't’ have much game design beyond what I’ve done with DFK, but we have people like SBD who do have a lot of game experience and fill gaps. We are smooth like butter, I don’t know what else to say.
Question— A long time ago in a galaxy far way in the docs ot the game there were descrition ot each of the 8 stats and they rpesented the stats representing a certain aspect o fthe game. Will those remain the same or are there new formulas?
Hubert — We have somewhat diverged from what is in the docs, but it is fairly close to that and we will share formulas and how it works once it is balanced out. There are too many scalers that could change.
The biggest change is that Dex is tied to accuracy, which is not in the docs, so that is something to consider.
Workhorse — We’ve taken great pains to make sure that everything has value, which I’m sure is broad and maddening thing to hear, because it is a meme to talk about how everything matters and why woudl you care more about one thing than another, but that is a true goal. All 8 basic stats apply to at least two important modifiers in the game and happen in battle and those are felt and are impactful. No stat left behind. If you have a paladin with extra wisdom that matters, if you have an paladin with luck it matters, an archer with strength it matters, it comes down to being good at the game.
Question (Starbuck) — Is a certain hero good?
Workhorse — it could be, if the player is good. We are pushing for a perspective and philosophy that is healthy and focused on rewarding those who are execllent at something and not just having excellent resources. Having better classes and higher rarity does matter, but someone that can outplay their opponent it may not matter as much.
I talk a lot about MTG in our design discussions. It’s one of my favorite all time games, i love how key words function, there are keyword mechanics in this game. You could show up with a pauper deck, well not a pauper deck, but a cheap net deck, at an FNM versus someone that has the best deck and you can still beat them. You can show up with mono red that cost you $30 and beat someone with a $500 deck. That is the mindset we are bringing to the table. So go big, that’s fine, but you better be good too.
Quick Plugs
Bolon — Check out the chaos cast from Wisdom previously. Like and subscribe to the DFK Youtube channel please. Also follow workhorse on Twitter at 0xWorkhorse. He drops a lot of good stuff on there. Follow Hubert on there, he doesn’t drop anything on twitter, but you can say that you follow him. You can follow me but I just retweet DFK and Workhorse. Please like and follow it helps get the word out there.
Closing
Workhorse — Thanks for having me, being on an AMA is pretty fun. We are just very happy to be here and I’m excited to start showing some of these things. You have no idea how hard it is for me to not be constantly showing the crazy stuff we are working on. The thing I said in Chaos Cast is that this is tip of the iceberg stuff. It’s going to take a long time to do, but lots of things to do along the way. PVP will be in the not to distant future but our hope is to constantly engage and provide little windows into what it is we are making and why we are making those decisions. Follow all these goofballs and myself on twitter and we will keep you posted.
Hubert — I’ll warn anyone that follows me on twitter its tumbleweeds and will probably continute to be so. Other than that happy to be here on the AMA and happy to be working on this project. Really excited for what we have to come. The evolution of the game that’s going to come after this point is going to be significant and energize us as a team in terms of content and just having fun with it, and also the community who can enjoy and do more things with their heroes and have more of a game experience.
Bolon — we still have our normal AMA on Thursday. Tune in there after you’ve liked and subscribed to this one. Thank you both for taking your time to come put up with me. Thanks for doing the Chaos Cast, the information shared in this is incredible. This video is one that I foresee people rewatching multiple times, continuing to find more alpha each time, as well I’m sure as multiple screenshots taken. I know everyone listening right now also appreciates it and the excitement is palpable and looking forward to continuing that. This is not he last time you’ll see Workhorses face up here.
