Executive Producer’s Letter #2: The Reason for Launch Delay & 1st Wabi-Event Announcement
Huge Appreciation For the Community
Since starting Twitter on Sep 15 and Discord on Sep 26, we already have 5k Twitter followers and 3k Discord members. And I, as Executive Producer, need to thank you so much for having an interest in Labrado and joining our new community.
Many users have discussed the White Paper and Strategy Wiki on social. As one of the early adopters of blockchain game, I expected only a few % of users would read the White Paper even after the public launch based on my past experience playing other Blockchain Games. It was a big surprise that so many users read and discussed them.
My Team members and I have been working hard on refining the White Paper because we believe the White Paper is a kind of commitment form to the Community. It’s the core of our vision, philosophy, passion, and love for a Product. Many users have already spent their precious time reading the White paper, which made us happy and energized.
2-Week Launch Delay: The Public Launch Will be Postponed to Oct 20
Despite the deep appreciation for the community, I am sorry to announce today that we must move our public launch from Oct 6 to Oct 20.
Technically, we have completed implementing all of the functions for v1.0 and are at the final stage of QA to fix the bugs. Most of our investors would say, “Hey Kaz. Go ahead launching the product. Blockchain Gamers would accept the bugs as long as they can play them. That’s the Web3 culture.”
Yes, in general, that’s absolutely correct. I completely understand. On the other hand, this is exactly what I don’t like about the Blockchain Game Culture because this culture has lowered the average launch quality of Blockchain Games compared with other mobile games and console games.
My team members and I have more than 10 years of experience in developing mobile and console games. And I had to ask myself before the launch-delay decision.
“Is the quality acceptable even for mobile and console users? Could I give the team the green light for the launch even if this was a mobile game? Will the quality make our users surprised and say Wow?”
If even one of the answers is NO, then we should NOT launch the Product. It might be disappointing to the Community, especially because Blockchain Gamers invest 10x or 100x more money from their pockets than mobile and console gamers.
But unfortunately, there remains a ‘No’ to the questions above.
As promised in the section “Promise 1: We will deliver real-time information” of the White Paper, we are responsible for answering:
- What’s going on? What kind of incident is happening?
- What information has the dev team got so far?
- How will the dev team try to resolve the incident based on their info?
- How long will it take them to get it done?
I will share with you what I didn’t like as Executive Producer and why we need an extra 2 weeks to refine the Product quality:
Reason 1: Amulet Designs
One of Labrado’s appeals and differentiating points from other Blockchain Games is the Amulet’s NFT.
All of them are Generative NFTs and thus unique. But it’s not a regular NFT project you can see at OpenSea where there are 10,000 patterns of the generative NFTs. We need to prepare a Trillion (1,000,000,000,000) patterns.
Why do we have to prepare for the tremendous types of NFT?
Because the Amulet’s NFT Specialities such as Hair and Eyewear below have the impact of the Amulet’s Buffed Effects for Battle Parameters, which will have a big impact on your P2E earning. You might want to check the details of the Amulet’s Buffed Effects on “How to Choose the 1st Amulet?” Of the Strategy Wiki.
- Race
- Hair
- Eye Color
- Mouth
- Body
- Head
- FaceDeco
- Weapon on Back
- Equipment on Back
- Neck Jewelry
- Ear Jewelry
- Eyewear
After looking over the quality of the first 100,000 NFTs with the human eyes of our Data Parameter and QA Team members, we have found some serious design problems.
For instance, when you look at the Female Assassin’s NFT in the below Figure, you can’t see the Rose on the Left one, which was the old version before we fixed the bug.
Special items such as Rose and Wing will bring the big “Buffed Effects” to your Amulet, which should be the key in P2E productivity. In fact, there are Rose’s color variations, and each color has the different Buffed Effect.
That’s why we must clearly display those special items on the NFT pictures.
This type of design bug was happening at a rate of 0.9%, and we have found 941 irregular cases out of 100,000 NFTs. Now that we know why this design bug was happening (due to its data-layer structure), we have solved them, and it will be fine for future NFT variations.
However, we needed to invest more of our QA Team’s resources to solve this bug than we expected (They needed to check all of them literally one by one), and some critical QA tasks have been pushed back because of this.
This is one of the big reasons we have decided to postpone the launch.
Reason 2: User-Friendly Gem Selling Function
As discussed in the Gem section of the Strategy Wiki, Gems play an important role in P2E on Labrado. This means you must buy and sell Gems effectively based on your investment strategy.
When it comes to the functions to sell Gems, I wouldn’t say I like the following UX on the current QA version:
(2–1)
It’s not user-friendly to expect users to check the floor price one by one at the Marketplace. We should provide the function to let users see the floor price automatically more easily because users are supposed to buy and sell many types of Gems every day.
(2–2)
I don’t want to repeat the same actions to sell the same type of Gems. For instance, I don’t want to tap the Gem’s screen 5 times to sell 5 Fire/Lv1/ATK/ Aggressive Gems. Yes, we need to have the bulk-selling function like the below screenshot.
I couldn’t give a green light to launch the Product before we solved the above problems.
Reason 3: Desktop UX
When I play Blockchain Games on the Desktop, I am used to opening 2 browsers: one is for playing, and the other is for checking the White Paper. Of course, I don’t like it. It’s not user-friendly at all.
That’s why we plan to provide the Desktop UI like the one below, where you can enjoy playing Labrado and checking the logic and numbers on the White Paper.
There will be no need to open the double browsers anymore.
Regarding the dev resources limitation, we were planning to launch this by early November.
I had experienced the UX on the QA version but couldn’t stand it without this function. The UX was so bad that I couldn’t let Desktop users, who are most likely heavy users, experience the same way as on the other Blockchain Games.
We need to implement this from the first version. I couldn’t go ahead with launching without this as an Executive producer.
Reason 4: Wave Data to Analyze
As promised on the Raw Data section of the Strategy Wiki, You can go to the Desktop version and tap the tab “Analyze the Battle Data.” From there, you can download all the first-hand data in the format of CSV files.
You were supposed to download only limited Battle Data on the first version because of the Dev Team’s limited resources. With the experience in analyzing this data, I needed to say, “I would go to Dune to get more detailed information to earn more.”
It was disappointing to me. This was not the UX I meant to implement and deliver to the Community.
In short, to provide the following information to analyze and discuss in the Community, we need to have more time to implement:
(A) $LBRD distribution to each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (A) for the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
(B) TOP10 users to earn best on each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (B). There are TOP 10 users who earn best on the Fire Battle Filed of the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
(C) # of Weapon’s Elements on each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (C) for the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
(D) # of Weapon’s Types on each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (D). There are # of Weapon’s Types on the Fire Battle Filed of the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
(E) # of Amulet’s Sexes and Jobs on each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (E). There are # of Amulet’s Sexes and Jobs on the Fire Battle Filed of the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
(F) Weapon’s Level Distribution on each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (F). There are the Weapon’s Level Distribution on the Fire Battle Filed of the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
(G) Amulet’s Level Distribution on each Battle Field per Wave
The below Figure is the example of (G). There are the Amulet’s Level Distribution on the Fire Battle Filed of the Season 1 / Day12 / Wave4 on Oct 31, 2022.
Reason 5: Localization for Japanese & Chinese Versions
We were supposed to provide only the English version in v1.0. However, it was a happy surprise that we already have many users from Japan and Taiwan.
The localization is essential to develop a Community for each country. We have decided on the Japanese and Chinese versions from the v1.0.
Reason 6: Official Giveaway Campaign
We were supposed to have an Official Giveaway Campaign after the public launch. However, as more and more users join our Community, we would like to have more users start enjoying from Day 1.
We have decided to have a Labrado Official Campaign from Oct 11 to 17. The Campaign details will be announced on Twitter and Discord.
However, note that even Winners from the KOL Giveaway Campaign can get Extra Amulet and Weapon NFTs. This means some users might be able to get more than 2 Amulets and 2 Weapons.
Wabi (詫びる) Culture from Japan
When I was working on a project of a Mobile Game Developer located in Tokyo, I discovered the culture called the “Wabi-ishi”, where the developer will provide the Paid Gems or Content to users for free in case the users’ experience has a serious bug or schedule-delayed.
“Wabi” means an apology, and “Ishi” means Gems in Japanese. It’s a Japanese tradition and the developer is responsible for offering the Paid Contents to users for free as an apology by sacrificing their revenue.
I like this culture of giving respect to users. And so, I have always implemented these campaigns/functions on Products I have developed, even after I left Tokyo.
It’s unfortunate to introduce it now before the public launch. But let me explain how to show our apology to the Community for the 2-week launch delay.
1st Wabi-Event: Free Minting Campaign from Oct 20 to Oct 22
As the 1st Wabi-Event, users will have a chance to get a Free Minting Ticket to Mint either Amulets or Weapons from Oct 20 to 22. When you get the Free Minting Ticket, you must pay 0 $LBRD to Mint a new NFT.
The possibility of getting the Free Minting Ticket depends on your Discord Level. For instance, when you have invited 100 friends and are ranked as “Savage Labradian,” you will have a 50% chance to get a Free Mining Ticket every day from Oct 20 to 22.
To see more details, check the Discord Channel #roles and #rank-check.
Labrado Event Calendar: October 2022
The below Calendar is the Labrado Event Calendar for October 2022. For more detailed information, we will update them one by one on Twitter and Discord. Don’t forget to follow our socials to check the latest Event updates!
https://twitter.com/lbrdofficial
http://discord.gg/lbrdofficial
Preparing For the Next Letter
As detailed in “Promise 2 of the White Paper”, I plan to send a Weekly Letter to the Community after the launch.
I am happy to answer your questions on the Weekly Letter, so feel free to let our community manager know your questions on Discord. I will do my best to answer your questions and remove as much FUD (Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt) as I can.
In closing, as Executive Producer, let me apologize again for the 2-week delay. Our Team members and I will do our best for the remaining 3 weeks to prepare the best quality Product to ensure you enjoy Labrado.
Our hope always is that Labrado becomes something that not only connects you and your friends but also strengthens your bonds.
Thanks for your time and patience.
Executive Producer
Kaz
