With property development just around the corner, the Upland team is getting ready to test our new building interfaces and ability to place 3D buildings on the Upland map! Instead of just waiting until every part of the property development system is complete, we’ve created a new series of competitions designed around a “property development sandbox”, that will allow Uplanders to interact and compete in completely new ways: The Sandbox Wars.
These competitions will pit neighborhoods against each other in a unique new game of strategy. Players will have to build alliances and work against other organically formed teams, scoring points for your team, and attacking the points of your opponents. The winning neighborhood(s) will receive a prize that will boost that neighborhood’s development rating (read more about neighborhood development rating in our roadmap to property development).
The Sandbox Wars will come in two flavors: The Neighborhood Tournament and Armageddon.
The Neighborhood Tournament
During the neighborhood tournaments, players will associate with one or more neighborhoods, as they compete for glory and prizes.
The tournament will happen over 2 competitions, in 2 weeks.
- Round 1: Battle Royale
10 Neighborhoods will compete against each other for a shot at the championship! The top 3 scoring neighborhoods will move on to compete in round 2. - Round 2: Sandbox War: Neighborhood Championship
The top 3 Neighborhoods from the previous round will compete for a grand prize that will greatly boost that neighborhood.
In the tournament, players will not be able to spend UPX to speed up development. They will have to strategically use their limited Spud (the temporary sandbox form of Spark, the building resource) and form a well planned alliance with others. Players will have to base their strategy on a balanced approach to building time, points scored, points deducted, property placement, and more!
While teams will technically be organized around neighborhoods (as the neighborhood itself will win the prize), players are free to associate with any neighborhood they would like, at any time during the competition. In order to effectively compete in the Sandbox Wars, Uplanders will likely have to team up and form into neighborhood alliances, coordinating their resources and building strategy. All buildings will be demolished after each event.
Armageddon
After the initial neighborhood tournament format, we will have a Sandbox War event called Armageddon. Rather than being a competition that ties players to a specific neighborhood, this will be a free-for-all: all player against all players. Since it’s every player for themselves, the winning game dynamics and how players interact will be dramatically different than the previous events.
In Armageddon, players will be able to spend UPX to speed up development. This event is not for the faint of heart. There will be betrayal and trickery, as cunning battle strategies play out across the San Francisco map! After Armageddon, many Uplander relationships will never be the same.
Construction Process
In order to build properties, each citizen in Upland will receive a certain amount of spud, based on their status and a few other variables. During each Sandbox War challenge, that spud can be used to construct different types of buildings.
When you use spud to construct a building, you are “staking” it. This means that the spud is utilized while it is staked against a building’s construction, but once that building is complete, your spud can be staked against another construction effort (learn more).
Each building type will also have a price tag in the form of spud hours (SPDHR), which is the number of hours it would take if one single spud were staked against it. The more spud staked against the building of a property, the faster it will be built!
You can build more than 1 building at a time, but each project will have a minimum amount of spud required to begin construction. You can only construct buildings (of any type)on your own property.
All building models will be centered on the property they are built on. Players will also be able to control the color of the building as well as the direction it is facing. You can not pause construction of a building and resume later. You can however, stop construction, which demolishes the building that has progressed so far.
Properties with ongoing construction can not be sold. If you sell a property after construction of a building has been completed, then the building will also change ownership with the property. This means that a player could buy a property with a house on it in a competing neighborhood, and then demolish that house (in order to reduce the competing neighborhoods score).
Note: The models available for the sandbox events are beta-models, which will be upgraded for the full property development feature. All numbers are being tested and are subject to change.
Winning the Challenges
Each building type will have a number of points associated with it. These points will be used to score the challenges. At the end of each tournament phase, the neighborhoods with the most cumulative points from properties will win!
However, it’s not as simple as scoring points by building. Players must also protect the buildings in their neighborhoods from the construction of cell tower that will lower their neighborhoods points. Instead of staking spud toward buildings that score points, players may also use their spud to build cell towers. For every cell tower in a neighborhood, that neighborhood will lose 1 point. If a cell tower is within x (tba) meters of another building type, the cell tower will nullify the points that building would otherwise contribute to the neighborhood. Cell tower distance will be measured from the center of the property the cell tower is on, to the center of other properties. You will not have any in-game indicator that you are building within range of a cell tower, or that your cell tower will impact any particular building, so you’ll have to carefully measure and use maps as a reference for distance.
Neighborhood Champions
Each participating neighborhood will have a neighborhood champion. A player with this status will have 2x the starting spud they would otherwise receive. In addition, they will be able to allocate additional spud to several other players.
With the exception of cell towers, neighborhood champions can only build within the neighborhood of which they are champion.
Neighborhood champions will also get to choose where the winning neighborhood prize is place, should their neighborhood win a statue in competition.
3 players have already earned neighborhood champion status, by winning 3 minting competitions: Nichiren, Noice2MeetYa, and JunJunPnoy57. These players will get to select the neighborhoods of which they will be champions. We will not yet reveal how additional champions will be selected.
From the same series of competitions, 3 junior champion statuses were awarded to players. Junior champions will get a 1.5x boost to the amount of spud they otherwise would have received and can build on any property they own.
While the properties built in the sandbox events are temporary, the prizes from the events will be big, and will have a lasting boost to the winning neighborhood. We will communicate more on the prizes before the events kickoff.
