Now that's some headline!
Welcome pilots to this new article. We have been mostly silent as we have been mostly working.
But hot things are cooking in EXODE !
And like with the best plates, we cook it, we taste it, and then we spice it better.
So what is there for dinner?
What is hot and spicy?
Read and find out!
March was tough!
Before we get to the happier news, we have to say that March and first half of April were working through hard events.
I lost two family members - members of the in-law family - within a four weeks time.
Of course I did not share it, but now I do.
Both events were unexpected.
Yet there is no need for condolences or to really make your day less bright.
It is my will is to bring you happiness, game fun and player value instead!
This is my role to you and a commitment I happily provide.
But I had to share it because without sharing, people would not know and not even have a chance to understand, so now you do. In all cases: it's life, and we work through!
Rest assured: everyone else is as safe and sound as can be!
I realized I worked through many events wtihin the past six weeks as we all do certainly.
March development & crunch time did turn out with content, but less than planned.
Every day also brings its own joy and happiness and work power:
I also set up a higher ground for EXODE:
as we are soon unlocking several major growth pools!
I discuss the growth options here so now I will detail some of our new features!
New Refit cards
Before we continue, I wanted to mention that new REFIT abilities will be mentioned in our Discord.
The next card with talents revealed should be one of the epic syndicate cards!
Gameplay: with EXODE Factions!
Back to EXODE gameplay!
We begin with an article about our staking/improved/simpler gameplay: Factions.
When?
We released a demo in February, and in March we aimed for mid-April for the next Factions demo.
I know all players would like all of it to come out hot and ready - and to include our planned card opening too in it!
But I am refining gameplay and presentation and still adding a few ideas into it as we speak. Some of it is shared below - if you read through to the end!
I prefer to mention "when it's ready", but actually next demo is planned for soon.
At the moment development may require to push into the end of the first week of May.
We'll see what we can package in preview and testing.
What?
Next demo will include missions and mission completion.
This is a main target in our game loop.
Why?
Even if no one asked us "why this and not that?",
I of course expect it to be a question in people's minds.
So:
Why this and not something else?
Factions is the mean to maintain player value and utility while targeting broad collections utility. The factions tool can browse large collections with ease. And we intend to use that development for market tools too!
Just recently we also added for instance "a find cards" mechanic which connects to a new feature in the collection tool to directly search for offers on specific card models. This is no big deal of course but a good example in how we will connect a development to other features.
Gameplay:
Factions targets a very accessible game loop while still using all factions and cards of our large universe. All of 2325, in a more accessible format!
About broad collections:
Colonization is a game loop but it's one for 10 - 20 cards played in a longterm game and giving as many different situations as there are cards.
Your personal colonial adventure, with mysteries to reveal, investigations to lead, space to explore and situations to survive... one of the big strengths to come!
Factions is a game loop faster to develop and complete, for 10 to 10k+ cards in a daily completed game, restricting the situation "to clicking on a mission, placing 3 cards, and then "GO" ".
They are complementary gameplays.
You can't play 100s of colonization games at the same time (I mean that you technically can but this is not our target, one game should take some focus), but on the other hand, you can use your large collection in Factions and play a colonization game at the same time.
Staking?
Yes, Factions is basically a staking mechanic but also goes far and above that duty.
I think Factions is basically staking++ or in a boasting formula:
Value = A S ²
... with A for Assets and S for Staking.
This is something to consider for all games.
The "²" means that if staking is good (> 1), it multiplies the value a lot, but if staking is bad (< 1) value of assets go down ultimately. So you need staking to be positive, better, and to become a reliable strength.
I insist on a "better staking formula" because in my opinion, if you want staking to really succeed in the mid or longterm, it needs failure chances in missions, game mechanics, ways to separate player skills, multiplayer confrontation, ways to collect and deepen more varied gameplays... ays for you to ensure staking has enough ways for you to adjust how it works.
Factions is basically an automatic resolution system:
you receive a Mission Briefing, you place agent cards, you click Play.
So the base is, and should be, simple.
We will not explain mission resolution in this post - and what happens after you click Play - but this will be in a next article.
But as you will read below... there are other secrets here.
Factions may be staking, but it's maybe breaking some walls too!
Some points
To use your collection:
Factions determines that cards have more "stars" if you have more copies. So when you play one card, you play all its other copies too. And its elite cards as well, with elite cards unlocking "orange stars" with more power.
We would like your agents to evolve individually, but we'll get to that in later demos, as we don't want to lose our focus here: our main focus in next demo is mission completion.
Factions also proposes many mission sections unlocked by your contract packs and your origins cards. They have more stars if you have more assets.
.
Factions merges gacha concepts and progression system with the large, "story-capable" universe of 2325.
My brain screams thinking at what will happen when everything will merge together: such as the EXODE Novel with a gacha concept introducing the characters encountered in that novel! New tutorials introducing Nimodia Galatan, one of our novel heroes!
And your packs, and your own player-made stories.
WEB3 going totally crazy and concepts going through the roof.
But let's calm down. Maybe you already knew everything about what was shared above. If you played the EXODE factions tutorial, you did know many things already.
But there is something more: which was added recently!
New player ownership options!
The Mission Procedural Context is something added recently which we are improving.
It includes the ability for the engine to generate persistent mission locations for players.
While it's already working it does need a few more information.
But it needs to something more and wider.
Mission locations by itself is a great tool for Factions.
It gives to mission resolution a lot of other dynamic factors: the player could make decisions according to the location and what he currently knows about it. And maybe new actions will also reveal more information, or location specifics will vary what he would like to play
And also:
Missions locations can evolve.
Not only are they generated for the player, but they can improve themselves as a consequence of each mission and event.
In this example, Malvin is a persistent colony leader for the persistent "Puni" site, an outpost on a planet called Jambuage. Yes, EXODE can create planets with many included parameters quickly, it's its main job after all.
Malvin may appreciate you more or less depending on the success of your missions.
It may look innocent but since value is earned with staking, this basically means that with an account (your account) comes the added value of your accomplishments in missions.
What you did in missions is then added to your account value, as it gives you "more options" and more rewards for later. This is a quite innovative concept.
Now, it's not exactly something which was that hard to develop - adding fun into it will also use a number of ideas and playtests to further refine it.
And it's customized, not overpowered ; a location can evolve, or yes possibly regress but in original ways if several missions fail.
Your mission content and Mission Locations can become a NFT on the chain.
It becomes part of your account ownership. And can evolve with you, as you deepen Factions gameplay, and why not... be traded?
Trading Mission Locations is something we can aim for in the future.
This means introducing a limit in how a mission section generates new locations, or a way to make a mission location become "tradable", similar to what we plan for colonization. If you can improve mission locations, or customize mission sections, we believe some of it should become tradable.
EXAMPLE
So in this example there is a colony, with a colony leader, and you are sending agents to help them in various missions.
You receive that objective among others:
Once done, and after several missions, the colony will grow.
Maybe once the colony thrives missions will become more difficult but reward you with different assets, some also usable in other EXODE areas. Gaining resources for colonization can also ultimately make sense.
In that case your mission location will have gained a lot of value!
Improved gameplay is the target!
All above will be checked again for its gameplay value.
In mission completion we mostly work on mission conditions, what bonuses can be had, what strategy can give it, and how it would be displayed as simple and intuitive options for players. So NFTs and trading is not part of this objective, and we'll weight our priorities here to focus on gameplay; but it still looks like a very powerful mechanic again allowed by web3 revolution.
In addition, and this was our main target here, we worked on a new presentation of mission objectives (pictured above), mission resolution and new mission mechanics.
Mission tasks, called "objectives", have a better displayed difficulty, a number of rounds to be completed and also give mission tags to react with your cards.
Stamina is going to be added to cards,
And other features (we are working on "character feedback").
The new presentation is OK but it is improving every day, and we cannot be sure yet of when we'll "make the cut" and stop refining it.
This is blockchain.
New ways to own.
New ways to trade.
We are all pioneers!
EXODE is a science fiction game played on HIVE.
Feel free to try it here or to join our Discord if you have any question!
You can also find more information about Factions , but also, and this is important, more information about our currencies in one of our latest articles.
The added options/assets for Participant Ownership are an exciting prospect! Thank you for continuing the hard work and keeping the community informed.
When will we actually have a playable colonisation experience.
There is so much new stuff I can't even keep track of it all but every time I try to actually play the game there is nothing really playable.
I understand that development takes a long time but Splinterlands had a basic fun playable game from very early on.