In the hopes of resuscitating Town Star and shaping it into the type of game that could see mass adoption, some of us have put our heads together and come up with some ideas we believe would yield that sort of success.
We need to identify the barriers before we can knock them down, and so we can classify 3 primary groups who are becoming increasingly dissatisfied with the game in its current form.
First is the newcomer, who begins building a town only to realize that once they put in the effort to solve the puzzle of gas production they are barred from any competitive placement because of the volume of expensive and limited-quantity NFTs owned by people who got into the game before they did — NFTs which entirely alter the pace at which you can build and produce, which everyone agrees to be “pay-to-win.”
Second is the NFT owner who has spent money on NFTs of various utility and a range of rarity scores, which until recently translated into a degree of earning. Hyperinflation for the token, which led to the suspension of minting, and the reduction in the frequency of competitions has largely nullified the pretense under which people were convinced to purchase these items, “play-to-earn.”
Third is Gala Games, a company that makes games in order to make money. Gala has poured time, energy, and funds into crafting and marketing the game. Yet the majority of the sales for Town Star items were in TownCoin, which (for obvious reasons) the company has elected not to exchange for other currencies that could provide for these expenses.
Town Star as a tournament-style town-builder game.
Using money to purchase buildings to produce items to sell for money and points (stars) makes for a great game. The core of Town Star is a lot of fun for a lot of people. We don’t really see the problems until we come to a Tuesday morning tournament launch. There is a mad, script-ridden scramble to find an acceptable location to fit the current meta. Then once you have a location, it’s time to buckle in for a 60–132 hour marathon of town-building and hardware/connection maintenance. Why?
Ostensibly, it’s to allow the people who don’t have NFTs enough time to build the infrastructure for crafting the top tier products. But for most, this victory is swallowed up by defeat as it’s too late to score enough points. And since the town is destroyed at the close of the session, there is no sense of accomplishment for almost anyone outside the top 1000. In a world of 3 billion gamers, that’s a lot of people who are getting nothing out of the game.
The long and short is that nobody is having fun and nobody is making money, and anything categorized like that can’t endure. Without discarding any of the pieces of this puzzle, we endeavor to rearrange things in such a way as to reinvigorate the community. The following ideas have been developed with the intention of seeing Town Star provide exciting gameplay and reasonable earnings for all parties involved.
Alteration #1 — Eliminate the land rush
Instead, each player can be given a choice of a few different starting biomes, and those options would be universal for all players for that tournament. There would no longer be an advantage given to the savvy programmer whose script locked in that space with 4 river sides. Some people have even suggested allowing for an inexpensive one-shot purchase (in TOWN) of additional features like mountains or rivers. This is by far the simplest adjustment we’re putting forth, but it would bring greater parity to the competition and make the game more fun for the newcomer.
Alteration #2 — Eliminate the marathon
There are many parts to making this work, but by shortening the duration of each session we actually open up a number of other ways to improve the ecosystem. More to follow.
Alteration #3 — Introduce experience-based player progression
If players can be credited with some form of account progression, then there is still advancement even if there isn’t any gain of reward. Player level can be used to unlock a number of features and benefits within the play structure.
Alteration #4 — Introduce ways that all players can gain access to all NFT utility
People paid large sums of money to have ownership of limited-quantity items that in most cases provide utility AND earning potential, but we have an elegant solution that allows for mass adoption and parity in the competition, as well as maintaining the inherent value of supply-capped NFTs. Here is where we’ll begin to flesh out the concepts above.
Season System
- Instead of concurrent gameplay for a long tournament, allow for asynchronous gameplay over the course of a season.
- The season should be 2 weeks long, but each player has a 24-hour countdown timer within which to build their best town.
- The timer starts each time they log in to the game and stops each time they log out
- A player’s final score when time runs out is posted to a rankings list.
- There should be at least 3 different tiers of competition — common level, rare level, and premier level. The level of the competition restricts the rarity of NFTs that can be used in the tournament (more below). Access to each level has to be earned via the level progression system (Alteration #3).
- Each player should receive a free pass for the common level tournament at the beginning of each season.
- Once a person’s timer runs out (or they destroy their town), they would be able to purchase (in TOWN) a new season pass for any of the different competition tiers that they have access to.
- Players may attempt to improve their score as many times as they like within the duration of the season, but only the highest score in each tier per account will be registered for the purposes of ranking.
- Only common NFTs can be used in common tier competition. Common, uncommon and rare can be used in the rare league. All rarities of NFTs are usable in the premier league.
Cloning System
- Level up through gameplay to unlock NFT utility of certain rarity
- Allow people access to all NFT utilities for a low price ($1 in TOWN per NFT?)
- Cloned NFT effects endure for a single use of a season pass
- TOWN spent to clone NFT utility is pooled according to the NFT that provides the utility
- At the end of each season, a portion of each pool is burned, a portion of each pool goes to Gala for administrative purposes, and a portion is added to the prize pool for the appropriate competition tier (common tournament = common NFTs; rare tournament = uncommon and rare NFTs; premier tournament = epic, legendary, and ancient NFTs)
- The remaining TOWN is fractionally distributed to each NFT holder (original NFTs, not those made from blueprints) who played in one of the tournaments with a sufficient degree of success (recently 50k stars was chosen as the threshold for qualifying to receive NFTs in the current tournament system).
- Whereas a player should be able to progress to the point of access to any and all types of utility, we’ll need quantity limits on cloning multiple copies of NFTs (no towns with 150+ Sugar Stations); maybe 1 per account to begin with, and then through experience-based leveling a player could unlock as many as 3–5
Blueprints
- Level up through gameplay to unlock blueprints allowing a player to assemble NFTs that duplicate the utility of existing NFTs.
- Blueprint-crafted NFTs have no rarity score and do not earn TOWN via p2e and cannot participate in the cloning pool distribution
- Players could purchase these individual blueprints via the Gala Store for a low price ($5-$10).
- Parts would be mint-able items that a player would gather in order to complete the prescribed formula on the blueprint for a particular item.
- Formula complexity would be based on factors like on-chain rarity and highest Gala Store price
- Blueprints for the utility derived from an NFT of any given rarity will require parts of matching rarities and all lesser rarities. As such, there are 5 rarities of parts — wood (common), water (uncommon), lumber (rare), iron (epic), energy (legendary)
- A player would earn parts through gameplay (p2e server challenges or paid season pass tournament entries) and parts could be distributed to the Town Star nodes
- Only one blueprint-crafted NFT of each type would be usable in a town, regardless of how many are in a player’s wallet
Final Thoughts
TOWN distribution would resume on the p2e servers, as well as with the Town Star and Founders nodes. Both the faucet and the sinks would be adjustable in order to ensure stability within the ecosystem — the sinks via price control for things like season passes, blueprints, and cloning costs, and the faucet via the Town Points system already in place.
Depending on legal requirements, we have also talked out a number of adjustments that could be made in order to ensure compliance. The focus here has been to reconfigure what is already in place without cutting too many features from the game so as to make it unrecognizable. So much of the game would continue exactly as it is now, with the major adjustment being the accessibility of game-altering utility for all players that doesn’t compromise the value of the NFTs sold as limited-quantity items.
Certain items would need to be addressed specifically, such as the skins and the dragons, but the overall pattern described here will work for nearly everything that a player would hope to use to operate at a competitive level. With the vast reduction in p2e mechanics, Town Star would at last become a game with a primary emphasis on skill and commitment, where tournament earnings would be equally accessible to new players and OGs. It’s our belief that a level playing field will work to breathe new life into this game that so many of us have already come to love and enjoy, and we’re offering this up as an encouragement that a balanced ecosystem is entirely possible.
Written by Kamrar The Farmer and Family Man
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