DeFi Kingdoms Team AMA (Design Team) — June 6, 2022
For those unfamiliar with the project, the DeFi Kingdoms leadership team holds weekly AMA’s with the community on the discord server.
Not everyone has time to listen to the recording or wants something they can just read instead so I’ve been writing these written summaries (mostly a transcript tbh). You can find the transcripts/summaries of the prior AMA’s in my index of DeFi Kingdom’s Articles.
A recording of the link will be posted later this week.
This week, the AMA was from members of the Design team. AMA’s have different teams present to address different topics. Join the discord to follow future responses to questions they couldn’t address on the call! Go to the questions-bus-contacts-suggestions channel in the DeFi Kingdoms Discord server to submit questions!
If this is your first exposure to DFK and you are looking to learn how to start participating in the game/economy, you can check out my unofficial beginner’s guide here and index of many other DFK articles here.
DeFi Kingdoms Website
DeFi Kingdoms Official Medium
DeFi Kingdoms Discord
Team Members Present:
https://defikingdoms.com/team.html
Team Updates and Opening Statements
State of the Project Update
Frisky Fox —It’s been an eventful week. Last week we had our round table with the community about Duels. We live streamed that. That went well, we got to hear a lot of the questions and explain a lot more about how that will work. We are hard at work with all of those things right now and entering the final stages of QA. I’ve shifted gears a bit to focus on the rewards aspect of it, like the raffles and the gold pot. I worked on that most of the weekend. We also have Austin Dcentral and Consensus happening, which presents a lot of cool opportunities for us to meet with a lot of the community and other projects and firms looking to do partnerships that are mutually conducive do our roadmap.
Bolon do you want to talk a little bit about Austin?
Austin Dcentral and Consensus Update
Bolon — We’ll be setting up our booth a bit later today for Dcentral and then Consensus is right after that. Really excited for these two events because they are significant events, they have a good turn out and are fairly big in the crypto space. We have some merch to hand out. Having a booth at Dcentral will be great. Rissen and a few others are here. I should have made Rissen come up here and talk about it. We have a lot planned. We have several people we are meeting with on the business development front. We are going to make it a productive time here in Austin.
I did want to give a moment to Jakx and Bone pillar to give us some updates on the lore side then secondbestdad on the art side.
Lore Updates
Bonepillar— we put out those pet descriptions recently but are looking to stuff that is more visible here in the near term. Jackx is here and can give an update here on that, especially w/r/t the website and building in some lore there.
Jackx — based on community feedback, we thought it would be great to update the lore section of the docs. I’m writing up the lore for that as well. I want to introduce a pretty significant chunk of lore there, compared to what is there. Raspberry Swirl is helping with that. She is put out a tweet for that, which I’ll share in the voiceless chat, which is a rough wire frame of the website that we are working on for that.
Bone — While working on that website we’ll also be updating the docs so you’ll see the lore section of the docs also updated.
Bolon — I think I speak for many when I say the pet descriptions have been really cool and fun and to be able to see the background on each pet.
Art Updates
Secondbestdad— the art time is still in the concept phase on the green eggs. The tech side of things and deciding all of the nuances of the layout is already done which makes it a lot easier to just focus on bringing in green and yellow eggs then gold eggs in as soon as possible. There’s going to be a whole bunch of them. I think we learned a lot about the rarity spreads with this previous release and we’ll be taking that info into the next release to make sure it continues to be interesting.
Bolon — what is the total number of pet possibilities?
Secondbestdad — I’m not a math guy, I’m an art guy.
Frisky — It depends on how you math it, but based on all the permutations there could be billions, but if just going based on looks, then ~300.
Bolon — I’m also going to drop a little teaser. We have a keynote we will be dropping at Dcentral. I believe its tomorrow, don’t quote me on that yet. I’m going to guess that there’s going to be some good information in it. Keep an eye out for it and we’ll make sure you are aware of it, so that you can get that information. Will make sure that any information that goes out during that keynote is disseminated to others as well.
Bonepillar — I looked it up, there should be 273 different visuals for pets so far.
AMA Live Questions
(Coolio) First question I had, obviously we are a very tight knit community now given the current crypto market. What are your biggest marketing moves you are making to onboard more community members?
Frisky— that’s more of a Dreamer and marketing Q, but things like these events and finding partners and trying to do co-marketing. There’s some stuff, I probably shouldn’t say much and will let Dreamer talk about it at his keynote. Essentially metaverse type aspects where we can integrate with other games and allow them to integrate with us. Looking at other chains. Print media, doing a push on merchandise, then a part of that merchandise push will be looking to integrate that with our NFTs and game so that if you hold certain assets in game it allows you to buy or receive certain merch. Or vice versa, sometimes you buy stuff in the merch store that will add achievements and other in game aspects, but that’s more of a question for them. I’ve probably already said too much already.
(Coolio) As far as art goes, seems like the majority of the community updated the marketplace. Is that an expansion that we plan to roll into other locations on the map?
Secondbestdad — intent is to move into that direction but our focus is on forward progress and new features and it doesn’t make much sense for us to focus too much on that when we have so many features to come, but eventually we will focus on things like that.
Frisky — I really like the style and would love to see more zones like that. I think that the focus right now is with newer features that we put in having a revamped art style, like lands comes to mind. With lands feature we will have the ability for players to basically enter into their own land zone and see all of the stuff that’s there as far as resources and what they are able to do and harvest and they’ll be able to set up their land how they want it to be and those lands will give bonuses to them and guild members and will be used in our travel system as well. There’s a lot of things there that we are working towards that will have this newer art style.
(Nous) I love the pets, I love the artistic direction. Is there anything int he works to allow pets to be authorized or validated profile pictures on twitter. Might help people tweeting about it a lot more and getting on reddit more. I think it would also help visually to have those pets everywhere. Is there anything in the works for that?
Frisky— would love that. Had a diff approach for these where they are more of a static NFT image and having them show up in explorers is something we are looking into. I’d love to see them for that and for heroes too. I was working on a hero APi that would show the images and then you could copy that PNG/SVG into anywhere you’d want. In terms of verifying them, there’s all sorts of projects that are doing that, you have to work with the Twitter API for that and haven’t gone too far into that but will add it to my list.
(Nous) For the new animations and self contained aspect of them, you mentioned in the duel preview that there would be some new animations that will be different than how they are now. Could you share any sort of teaser that would show people how that might look?
Frisky — Duels will just be using the cards as they are, but Combat will be a new look. You’ll have to represent all of the classes and all of the genes in that. They’ll have animations like attack, using as kill and other things.
(Nous) Anything you have to share on that would be big, saying it is one thing, but showing it does a lot on Social Media.
Frisky— will talk with art team and see what we might have in the next few weeks.
(Mettez) I was wondering to follow up on a Q I asked on the previous AMA. Bolon already mentioned it and I’m guessing you won’t be able to answer it completely, but wanted to follow up on the locked J question. You mentioned then that you would have a tokenomics meeting about it and was wondering if you had any new insights on how the locked jewel item may be addressed.
Frisky — we ended up talking mostly about Duel tokenomics but it's on our document and we started a document where we’ve been putting all of our ideas so far. Not sure if it's very helpful at this point to share things, but we’re talking about things like using locked Jewel earlier on more things in game, or creating enriched locked jewel, where people could lock their Jewels for longer and receive rewards. Mr. Faun had a bunch of ideas and I’m sure I’m misrepresenting them, but this and other similar questions are high on are list. We’re looking into how we can soften the impact. I saw that some ideas were sent from the community, which I need to go look at. There’s also a proposal on our build sight about in game economics. Things like that we are looking at. We are having another tokenomics meeting today and will bump that and see if we can flesh it out and share with the community.
Bolon — there’s ideas being read. Everything you send to us is being read. Suggestions form. Build site. If you have ideas, there’s multiple methods to send them to us. DM me, DM a knight. All of it gets seen and heard.
Frisky — The tokenomics committee in general is new so we have lots to talk about. We’ve been talking about Duels, Pets, Lands, Quest and how the things we are doing impact the economy. You’ll see a lot of our new features come with a utility driven approach rather than just adding new assets. Even with pets, while it was a new asset class, the tokenomics around it were favorable for Jewel and other in game tokens. We’re close to the update where pets will be able to impact questing and things like Combat. A lot goes on in those meetings and they usually go for two or three hours even though scheduled for one.
(Mettez/Coolio) Any internal idea for implementation of eternal pages? Any deadline for finalizing the story? Anything you have to share on this?
BonePillar— eventually you’ll be able to taking them and create a final item with them. That is the intent. As for the actual timeline of when that will happen, right now I would need to check in with the mechanics team because there are some mechanical aspects to it. I believe we’re looking to sometime around the August time frame, but I’m not 100% sure about that.
Frisky — There’s also talks about achievements, which could then unlock certain quest lines. We’ve also talked about merchandise and being able to unlock certain merchandise based on achievements. Also with achievements we are looking into an in-game authentication. We have a proof of concept up on one of our test sites. But it allows you to authenticate with your MM, and that will give you a logged in session ID and that will be used by all kinds of things like in game chat systems, guilds and being able to interact with other players inside of the game and see their achievements. Sending whispers, and even a guild chat. I’m excited about adding more stuff from the social aspect of our game so that people can do more things inside of our game.
Bonepillar — One thing we’ve said is that we’ll let players use those to get more lore in the future. We are planning to use those more going forward.
(Mettez) Based on what you just said you mention that you could use the pages to get more lore? Would it be useful, maybe not functionally, but maybe more lore from having multiple of the same page?
Bonepillar— It’s a possibility but the intent for now is more of getting a full set and trading extras with other players who are trying to complete their full set. The different pages will give you access to different lore, but having multiple of one page probably won’t give you access to more lore, but it’s an interesting idea.
(Sentius) It’s sort of a question and sort of feedback, but here it is. I know that there’s different series of the pets coming out and you guys are probably going to wow us on each one, but I had one specifically regarding Shiny. On Hero cards there’s multiple variants of Shiny and they are awesome. The Shiny on pets are all exactly the same. Is that something that we’ll see be different each season or will it be the same for all of them.
Secondbestdad— I wouldn’t expect anything different for this season but going forward we could have some different shiny effects for future seasons.
Frisky — The pets also have some data associated with them which is this idea of a randomness seed, which could impact future abilities. We could always in the future use the seed to contemplate future shiny effects.
Hubert —The system is designed to allow us to have different shiny effects per season, and multiple effects per season. This season just has the one.
(Sentius) I saw a pet that had a top hat. I remember mentioning to you Secondbestdad that Penguin top hat was needed. If its not in the RNG, I’m asking you for a penguin with a top hat.
Secondbestdad — there’s legal implications (joking) of accepting suggestions from someone, so that won’t happen. Only the gentleman crab!
Secondbestdad why are you so handsome?
Secondbestdad —I don’t know. Scientists have been studying it and haven’t figured it out!
(Bluidy) There will be diff seasons of pets, but wasn’t sure, let’s say I keep a blue egg from right now and then the next season opens up, will the egg I got in Season 1 but opened in Season 2 be a season 2 egg?
Frisky —I’m pretty sure the way it works with seasons is that it depends on when you open it rather than when you find it.
Hubert —It would be a season 2 pet. If you hatch during the season 2 period.
(Adamantine) Could you add a way to travel between the two markets like at the end of the road to just click on it and walk between the two areas?
Secondbestdad—That’s been started already. That was originally the thought, but it didn’t make it into the release.
Frisky — I had the exact same thought, and it was in the original plans, so it will be added.
Closing Remarks
Jakx —super excited to get that lore website rolling.
Secondbestdad— that’s it from me, just going to keep grinding on pets. Want to emphasize that a lot of the comments about the general vibe of the pets will be addressed. I would expect garden pets to be more of a garden vibe and cave pets to be more peculiar (just to tease that).
Bolon— appreciate all of y’all on the stage and everyone taking their time to listen to us. If you are in the Austin area, make sure you come and see us while you are here. Excited for this event and for all of these features. I need to collect every pet, but that’s going to take a lot of time. I’m going to treat it like a game that starts with a P and started in the 90’s but let’s just say I gotta capture all of them!
Frisky Fox—I need more eggs too. One of the things we are looking at is whether there are ways to add more eggs into the game rather than just profession quests such as through Duels or otherwise. Just wanted to have a quick note that as you can see from prior weeks, we aren’t slowing down our pace at all with releases and cool features. We’ve shipped more in the last month than in any other prior month. We are really close to Duels. Dreamer will be speaking a bit more about that tomorrow at his keynote and I’m excited for that because its the first time in the game that we’ll have any PVP elements. Opportunity for new flairs on profile, achievements and new questlines. Excited to have my butt get kicked by most of you in the community. Speaking of Duels, we listened to a lot of the feedback on that. We will be revamping stuff as we go and seeing what works and what needs to be adjusted. One thing we did was the gold pot, which I’m almost done with, which allows you to trade your tickets in for gold and have that actually be profitable. Still here and excited for all of the things that we are building. Still building an ecosystem and lots to still draw people in. Then with utility of Jewel, always focusing on that with all the releases that we work on. Happy to be here and building. Feeling energetic and bullish about the future of our project. With that I’ll wrap it up with Bullish.
Check out my Index of Samichpunch DeFi Kingdoms Articles For a list of all of my other articles. You should definitely bookmark this index. Follow my medium account to get updates when they go live!
