DeathRoad AMA (12/18/2021) — CryptoZin Discord
Happy Holidays, Racers!
On Saturday, December 18th, the DeathRoad team’s CEO Cam Pham and lead developer Hoang Anh joined in for a wonderful AMA at the CryptoZin Discord. For those of you who couldn’t join in, we’ve prepared this Medium article as a transcript and summary about what we discussed.
What you’ve missed out on was a livestream where the game was showcased by a skillful player, and some exciting prizes for the chosen community questions and $250 in giveaways!
Harpa: Great to have you here @campv and @hka. Would you like to introduce yourselves and tell us a bit about how the DeathRoad project came to be?
Cam: I’m Cam Pham — CEO at DeathRoad where we build a series of real racing and shooting games that reward skilled players, and a metaverse where all racers can interact with each other in a virtual city.
Previously I was a former lead blockchain researcher at TomoChain and lead developer at the Arcadia Group (a smart contract and security auditing firm).
HKA: Hi guys, my name is Hoang Anh. I was also a developer of TomoChain, currently working on the DeathRoad project. I’d be glad to invite everyone to play our game, you’ll definitely like it.
Harpa: Oh, so you’re both very experienced in the blockchain and crypto sphere! How about the rest of the team — how many people work on the project and what roles do they have?
Cam: We have 10 developers, of which 5 are blockchain devs and 5 are game/unity devs. 4 artists for game and web app designers. The rest around 8 members are from marketing teams. This does not include admins.
Harpa: That’s a sizable team! How many of them are working full time on the project?
Cam: Most of them are full time, except 3 in the marketing team.
Harpa: So you are definitely in it for the long term!
Cam: Absolutely.
Harpa: What would you say are your biggest challenges right now?
HKA: The biggest challenge right now is to bring a bunch of ideas into the game, make it more attractive, and attract more players. Besides that there’s the maintenance of the community, because as you know, this project is long term, and it will cause the impatient to leave soon.
Harpa: The economics of a P2E game (or race 2 die game!) is very important to consider to make it attractive to both newcomers and to make it sustainable long term. What are your plans in regards to striking this balance?
Cam: This is a hard but definitely interesting question. As you see we have a dynamic rewarding mechanism. The purpose of this is to adapt the reward to the racing skill of players. So for a not relatively good racer, the reward mechanism tries to increase the rewards to reflect a reduction of difficulty, so he can earn enough.
Also in next updates, we will have further updates regarding rewarding to make xDRACE sustainable. I think at the moment, please just wait for our update as we are finalizing it.
… Well, we might introduce a new type of NFTs
I’ll keep it secret now as we are still discussing and finalizing the idea.
Harpa: People have been very positive about the coming update to lower the amount of turns (10 -> 5) and raise the rewards (2x). What is your vision in regards to how much time a user can or should spend on the game?
HKA: Many people complain that they spend a lot of time in the game, because they have to play 10 games a day for a car, an average of 5–6 minutes a turn. If you have 5 cars, it will take about 4 hours.
It’s a real barrier for new players to join the game. We always listen to players, and decided to reduce it to 5 turns a day, and double the reward. This saves players time and helps DeathRoad compete with other games.
Harpa: The free-to-play version is coming soon so everyone got a shot at collecting NFT:s. Some people are worried this will inflate the market and make the bought assets worth a lot less. How are you tackling this balance?
Cam: I think for the F2P version, the value that brings us is a bigger community of racers. So in the first 10 days where users can get higher scores, we can see more racers coming to the games. We are making a referral program for F2P users. So they should get at least a number of referred users to play the game.
And there will also be a limited number of NFTs that can be opened for F2P users. I think this would incentivize F2P users to play more to complete daily quests, but also help us spread the game to more users. Anyway, as I said earlier, we are discussing internally introducing a new type of NFT and F2P users can get it too.
Harpa: Another feature coming soon is the racing room — a PvP system where people can challenge one another and earn rewards — if you’re good enough. It sounds like it can be really adrenaline inducing and exciting. Further down the line — will the game be focused mainly on PvE or PvP, or will there always be a choice to play whatever way you want?
HKA: We intend the game to follow the way of Axie. Players will be rewarded mainly from PvP. PvE still has rewards, but it’s mainly for players to practice. This will help the reward not to be inflated, and the project will go for a long time.
Harpa: About the Racing Room, will it be “who gets the furthest” or will it be an entirely new way of playing?
Cam: Highest score always. Killing enemies and bosses give much higher scores.
Harpa: A lot of arcade shooters have interesting systems to entertain users, like boosters and various weapon systems. What is your stance in regards to implementing stuff like this?
Cam: That’s part of the new NFTs we are discussing 🙂
You know in PvP, you need to compete with lots of other racers, right? Then there will be boosters and different weapons for players who want to earn more.
Harpa: Later this month a top down 3D version of the game is coming. Initially it was planned for next year. How did this change in development speed come to be? And will the old version be supported or will only the new 3D version be supported?
HKA: We see huge community interest in this 3D version and it will really attract new players as well. Let me leak a bit, we are going to the final steps (completing the graphics), the 3D testnet version will be out soon, stay tuned!
Cam: Both 2D and 3D will be supported, as not all people would have strong enough phones to play 3D version.
Harpa: You are implementing more advanced systems in regards to scholars in the next version. How will the sub-account system work in relation to the coming garage and rental system? Is the sub-account concept an idea that will be used until the renting is out, or are they both meant to be used in different ways parallel to one another?
Cam: It will be most beneficial for guilds and those who have many cars but do not have enough time to race, and yes we are onboarding guilds.
Harpa: In systems where real money from real people is involved — security is of the utmost importance. What system do you have in place to detect cheats or bugs and what do you do when you detect them?
Cam: We have implemented a few things including encryption to avoid cheating, and collect feedback from people to fix if there is any issue affecting the fairness of the game. Well, more importantly, we run our system daily to scan any fraudulent behavior. Those accounts will be temporarily banned.
HKA: Please note, if you hire someone to play the game for you, and that person cheats the game, your account will also be banned, we are not responsible for finding out who cheated.
Community questions:
Sos Chadguy: 1. So is there going to be a weekly or monthly map where racers can compete to get a limited edition NFT or reward? I feel like that would be a super cool idea to implement and would cause a good retention rate. I know that personally I love limited edition collectibles and that’s a great incentive.
2. And also is there going to be like an added feature to where you can get different designs and art things you can put on your car to customize it?
3. Oh and are you going to have a system where you would be able to rent out your car? I remember hearing that maybe a week ago or for some other project.
Cam: 1. Not finalized yet. Yes we are discussing of rewarding top racers with limited NFTs that can boost their cars and weapons
2. This is in our discussion too, but it might be our next year as our roadmap is full already for this year
3. Once the sub-account system is out, you can definitely use it to rent cars/weapons for other racers
Lord Humungus: Regarding boosters, are there any plans to implement systems such as extra boxes during races that will instead grant you different bonuses, such as immunity for 10 seconds, triple bullet speed and other such fun add-ons?
HKA: Yes, everything was planned from the beginning of this project.
WorkFromYourComputer: Is the platform for free to play different than earn to play?
Cam: Yes there are a few things to mention:
1. Players are equipped with a car 1* and a gun 1* to race in map 1* medium only
2. Players need to complete daily missions: play max 5 turns to get a total score of 1000 for the first day, every day after, the mission score raises 5 percent from the previous mission
3. Each mission complete, players earned some NFT points
4. No need to buy turns as players have 5 turns per day to complete the mission
5. Players need to refer more users to play the game to be able to open car/weapon boxes, as the number of boxes is limited, it’s best for F2P racers to complete missions quickly and refer as much users as possible
Lord Humungus: Also given the turns per day get halved, will the total turns get halved as well? Will there be any type of rewards for those that have basically “wasted” their cars by doing twice as many races and receiving less rewards?
HKA: The total number of turns will be halved. However, the turn’s price will double.
About DeathRoad:
DeathRoad is the first Metaverse Racing Game on Binance Smart Chain network and is considered as one of the most promising projects in terms of NFT Gaming and Metaverse. Unlike many other projects only focusing on Play-to-earn mode, DeathRoad aim is to build a Metaverse where racers do not only utilize racing skills to enjoy the real racing experience and to earn tradable valuable digital assets but can also really “live” in it by owning lands, opening garage, and opening rental services.
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