Been a while since I've posted about @holozing, although that doesn't mean I haven't been spending a lot of time on it behind the scenes!
I wanted to discuss something we've decided to implement to the slow rollout of the beta that we recently came up with, by me I kinda mean myself for now as this isn't something I've talked with the whole team yet but I'm sure they're not going to mind!
By slow rollout I mean once the beta releases, which will be where all progression and "fake" nft's get wiped and everyone starts fresh, there won't be too much of the full game yet as we're still quite a small team for a game and ecosystem this size but don't want to keep things unreleased for too long. Thus wild creature encounters will be the first thing to be released! This means that on a daily basis players will be able to fight against a certain amount of creatures. As we've mentioned before, players will be given an option to "focus" when these encounters occur at a certain time so you won't get caught off guard by a wild encounter notification while you're doing something important and feel bad for potentially missing the creature.
The amount of battles you get each day will also vary, slightly based of RNG and that randomness slightly in your favor based on how much Luck gear your healer is wearing! Luck will however not increase the odds of creature increased rarity so that will remain the same for everyone. Luck will, however, help you out when the time comes to capture a creature that seems worthwhile to you.
Let's talk about the recent plans for addition for now though, as I mentioned the game will be slowly rolled out, after wild encounters we will begin implementing PvP and hope we have some basics for gathering and professions by then. This begs the question: how can you gather professions if all you can do is merely battle wild creatures?
While we do have an "open-world" planned for the game, again, small team so it's something that'll come in a bit later and we're preparing for it!
The idea is that, as you've noticed with our slow roll-out of our first in-game material: Holo Dust, during the December event, to give healers a chance to already start collecting materials as soon as possible so they can start working on progressing their professions and trading craftable items. Thus we'll be implementing gathering materials in the game after a battle ends!
You get in a game, you defeat the creature, or it flees or you manage to capture it and this will award you with some Holo Dust! Our creatures are Holographic after all so during fights some fragments of their holo-ness stays behind in the arena and you're able to collect that with your capturing device! The amount of dust will depend on a few things, battle duration, battle results (did it flee, did you capture it or did it faint) and the rarity of the creature. This means that even if you end up not capturing a creature it may give you a small hint of how rare it may have been just to put some salt in your wounds or to give you a better idea of how they perform in battle based on their rarities!
Once the battle ends, you'll be able to scout the environment (although you can do this during the battle as well) for some gathering materials that go with your profession. To give you an idea of the gathering professions we've planned so far: Botany, Mining and Scavanging. These will slightly depend what kind of environment/arena/zone you're battling in, if you're out in a forest you can naturally assume there'll be a higher chance for some flowers/herbs to pick rather than getting lucky finding a mining ore or parts to scavange and salvage! Thus after the battle, you'll look around and see if you can spot any herbs you think are harvestable, we will however not make it easy on you, the spot for them will change and they won't be highlighted making it easy for you to spot!
You will then be able to use your capture device to extract resources from the source you believe you're seeing. You won't be able to know the level requirement for that source or how much you'll gain from it and every attempt to harvest will cost you laser "ammunition".
We believe this will make it more fun for players to keep an eye out and put in some extra effort to come out of a battle with extra loot!
This will also place some costs similar to creature capturing attempts to the economy in the form of burning resources and zing, therefore most crafted items, captured creatures, etc, will all have an average "cost" to them and some risks and limitations if you're not doing the best you can with the information provided to you by the game and community!
For instance, crafting capturing ammo will require a mix of different materials and professions, if you don't have these professions yourself you'll have to ask a friend who's an alchemist to concoct a liquid to be used as a laser along with a forger to craft the magazine, etc. Crafting Professions will also cost not just to craft things but to also level up by doing repetitive crafts, while those leveling up professions will let you get away with no fee cause they're leveling up, once they've mastered professions they may start charging you even if you are friends. ;)
Thus when attempting to capture creatures, laser will be spent on every attempt. Some times the creature may get away after a few failed attempts and you've now wasted 8% of your ammo for nothing, thus every successfully captured creature has a base cost behind it since capture ammo costs to be crafted. Most crafts will also require some zing to be burned in order to make the "holo magic" work correctly on top of gathering materials and Holo Dust!
Anyway, just thought I'd share this recent idea. I'm really not trying to add more and more stuff to prolong alpha and beta release but as you can see some things are kind of a must to give the players a nice experience and things to do in the game even as it is starting out with a slow roll-out!
Let me know what you think of it!
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