Ah nice.
While reading the first part about the path along the branch of a tree, I was wondering about dual speccing and then respeccing in case you make a mistake experimenting with your playstyle. Answered both of them right afterward.
Balance will be a big factor as it is in any game where there is no distinct I WIN button or most powerful creature/skill/combination. Neat that out-levelling your healer with a creature will have negative effects to prevent this. Not sure I have seen that in a game yet.
So awesome to catch the little snippets of progress and development as the game gets developed. Another perk to be on Hive where the game will live.
Pokemon did actually have that, but not sure to what effect (monsters not listening to a trainer), it may have been based on gym badges per 10 levels rather than solely on healer and account level the way we're planning. I.e. if you're on a brand new holozing account, you should buy a lvl 1 healer + creature from the market (if you don't wanna buy a starter vial), because buying a high level healer and creature while your account has no history of battles will be bad. Both healer and creature may disobey you in that case cause you're a total noob and not worthy of their presence xD
Ah yes never played Pokémon. Makes sense.
I bought a vial the moment they were available and been stacking so I can do all of this stuff the right way.
So you are building up your account and not just leveling the characters! Neat!
but also to discourage cheaters, i.e. you need to grind your account to a higher level just like everyone else did starting from level one rather than coming late and looking to purchase max level healers and creatures to compete in high end pvp and pve. Since the grind to max level takes a while, if your caught cheating in some way or breaking our ToS, we will flag the account and items unusable in-game and in the markets so you won't be able to sell them off anymore and not play - thus you have a lot to lose if caught cheating, both all the effort to get to a high level and all the value of your nfts and creatures.
That is some cool anticheat/manipulation for sure.
The risk you run with no pay-to-win is the hardcore gamers not wanting to get in if it is not first day. That feeling of being left behind and underdog don't work well with powergamers. There should be some later stage entry that enables people not in on day 1 to catch up a little for their experience, game lifespan, and money coming back to the development team to keep innovating. You probably have this all planned out though.
It can be partial, as you may have noticed we're not too "moneyhungry" probably to a fault, like, new players can join and at some stage in the game's progress they may not need a vial at all but can purchase "second hand" healers and creatures to play the game with. There may be a small fee to prevent abuse, similar to splinterland's spellbook requirement, but point is new players may only face the level requirements so they'll be forced to buy a lvl 1 healer and creature but not necessarily through us and instead through the market from other players who bought many vials or put up creatures they captured on the market. I.e. you won't need a starter creature to start playing at some point in time but you will need 1 creature at least and a healer, if you mint them directly and pay us or buy from the market from other players is fine by us as long as you buy something. This helps bring back additional value to player's assets long-term.
Eventually they may also be leasing and trial period "spellbooks" as well.