Economy Design
The EON Guardians’ economy design is based on a very simple game loop:
There are a few underlying game design considerations that allow this simple loop to be sustainable but engaging enough to retain players.
Rewards for doing quests, hunting monsters, or any game objectives that result in a reward will always be a currency or crafting material rather than finished items (gear, consumables, etc).
Removing finished goods from rewards ensures that crafting is a necessary flow through the game economy, mandating that players go through the economic sinks we have designed. This will allow for greater flexibility of economic control.
Crafted items will be an integral part of allowing players to effectively go on monster hunts as well as add tons of flexibility and endless customization in terms of gameplay and aesthetics. The goal with crafted items is to have every player craft different types of items and even get to the point of specialization. Creating variation and demand for different goods is the basis of a functional and sustainable trade economy.
Randomness, variability, and progression of crafting results.
Randomness is an important element in motivating players into a trade economy. Imperfect match of needs vs. wants is created when a player cannot guarantee the exact version of an item is what they will get when crafting.
Variability of attributes and appearance of items of the same type are also important to create enough variety in the marketplace
Progression of stats and levels of an item are important for creating a range of value within items of the same type listed in the marketplace
Economic Philosophy
Economies for blockchain games must be more well-thought out since it is not possible to rollback especially when it involves tokenized assets
Much of the previous iteration of P2E projects have failed due to hyperinflation of reward tokens through unsustainable economic loops
Did not seem to have an understanding of proper sources and sinks within their game economies but rather focused on returning immediate and unsustainable yields through simple game loops
Lack of deflationary mechanics and inability to tune economy due to lack of experience of building deep economic loops
Start an economy slowly and then ramp up over time with necessary controls and monitoring in place
There is a need to view blockchain-based economies as closer analogs to real world economies
Need to ensure that the growth rate of tokens (e.g. currency) is in line with the population of the game and that users are generating AND spending tokens at a sustainable rate
The foundation of F2P games is ensuring the analytics software is in place to monitor inflows, outflows, and balances of all currencies and resources.
Limiting the emissions of tokens and resources allows the game designer to have time to make meaningful adjustments to the economy
Fighting hyperinflation after token/resource supplies are out of control is a much harder proposition than making small adjustments since the magnitude of work required is much higher coupled with handling player sentiment as the game designer is forced to make drastic changes that affect how players are used to interacting with the game
As a game designer, it is important that there are enough knobs and levers by which they can influence the outcome so designing deeper systems before the launch of the game allows for adjustments without waiting for further development to fix problems
Experience in game design gives us foresight into how to spot issues and address them quickly
It is important to reward active participants in the economy rather than have a player base that is focused on passive ROI
Passive investment will be a function of time but it must be at a sustainable rate AND is likely to be less effective than active participation
Active participation is necessary since it creates an habituation loop that is necessary to keep players coming back
How are NFTs used?
Rather than host everything on-chain, each item in-game will be evaluated to determine how it will be utilized as an NFT
Soft Currencies (gold/spark) and Materials are the most commonly awarded valuables during a gameplay session. For this reason we feel these should be web2 hosted exclusively, the transaction rate would scale unreasonably regardless of what blockchain it is built on
Additionally - allowing materials or play-currencies to be directly traded exposes the key tuning points of the economic model, which allows players the ability to manipulate the economy
Crafted items will not necessarily reside on-chain immediately. They will first be minted on chain when the player makes the decision to list it for the first time on the marketplace
Crafted items can be fully utilized on the player character itself even if it is NOT forged into an NFT
If a player wishes to trade or sell a crafted item, it will need to be forged into an NFT before it can be transferred
One of the main reasons for this forge mechanic is to keep blockchain network congestion down and to ensure scalability and performance of the game
Revenue Generation
Almost all of F2P revenue comes from the direct sales of In-App Purchases (IAPs). Since most F2P games are closed economies, F2P developers are focused on generating the highest volume of sales possible but this has some profound impacts on game design
Power creep
The best way to sell digital goods is to constantly increase the effectiveness of items deprecating the usefulness of older items. For long-lived games, that means that the power level of items in the present are usually orders of magnitude more powerful than older items as it tries to incentivize the most amount of users to buy the shiny new object of the moment. However, over time this can be tiresome to players who either spent large amounts of money and/or effort to grind to acquire the item. As soon a new item releases, it almost always invalidates the usefulness of the older items
Additionally, since developers are often incentivized to sell the most quantity possible, there is rarely a supply cap and the developer will allow as many players that are willing to spend to do so. For competitive games, this leads to scenarios where players that are not willing to spend are eventually priced out in playing the game and are likely to churn
With open economy games in blockchain, the mindset of the developer should be to shift to scarcity and rarity of items relative to the player population of the game. Creating differentiators between items and also not allowing every player to acquire the best items allows for scenarios where the power curves of items are relatively similar. Revenue flows back to the developer in the trade market as rare/scarce items can be sold at player-determined prices with rarer items likely to sell for amounts higher than would be reasonable for a developer to charge the player directly. The idea of peer-to-peer pricing is important to be mindful of as it removes the perception of price-gouging by developers.
Gacha mechanics
Many F2P monetization models utilize gacha mechanics to make the most powerful and sought-after items have the lowest chance of acquisition. Oftentimes, F2P developers will create models that result in astronomical pricing due to the percentage roll in a gacha pack. For example, an S-rank rare may be acquired at 0.5% chance at $10 per roll. The expected value of the gacha to get an S-rank would be $2000. These are often paired with Star Evolution mechanics that require multiples of the same S-rank rare to be combined to create more powerful versions of the item. This is a highly exploitive model that only allows the biggest spenders to participate and often requires that game designers make S-rank rares by far the most powerful items in the game. This is exacerbated when the developers are incentivized to create new S-rank items to be able to sell, leading to a vicious cycle that eventually burns out all but the biggest of whales
For EON we would like to replace gacha with a more equitable design that allows any player, regardless of wallet size, to be able to participate and get rare items. Through engagement within the game, there will be times where a player may get lucky and acquire a rare resource through killing a monster that allows them to craft an S-rank item. Due to scarcity and rarity, the player can choose to keep the item OR decide to sell/trade the item on the Auction House. The player can set any price they desire and the market will decide whether it can be sold. The player will actually be able to capture a large portion of value just by playing the game and EON will be able to capture a portion in transaction fees as our share of revenue. We believe this will lead to a great experience and become a major retention mechanic. Additionally, we believe converted and happy players often act as the best form of marketing to grow the game,
How does EON Guardians make money?
Primary Sales of NFTs
Almost all of F2P games make money through primary sales of digital goods
EON will initially start with primary sales of NFTs as it is a fairly familiar business model for the company and the players
Will likely cap supply of NFT sales through the primary market and at approachable price points (e.g. not hundreds or thousands of dollars per item)
Capped supply will benefit secondary sales in the future
Will NOT be gacha-based for player benefit and for compliance reasons
Primary sales at high price points benefit largely the developers
Primary sales may eventually be method where collaborations with existing communities & projects happen
Example: Collaboration with Moonbirds to have owl pets that follow your avatar around be purchasable or redeemable for $20
Helps to expand market reach and community growth
Provides a transparent entry point for those coming in from other communities
Over time, moving away from primary sales and getting rewards strictly via playing the game makes sense. Shift revenue model towards secondary sales
Secondary Sales of NFTs
Where the goal of primary sales-based revenue model focuses on driving the greatest volume through merchandising and power creep game designs, a revenue model based on secondary sales is focused on designing and facilitating game engagement and eventually trade between players
Collecting a % of secondary sales allows players to capture more upside for items that they craft and find within the game
Hypothesis is that players will feel this is meaningful value compared to traditional gaming models and will become fully converted and engaged players
This model allows us to focus on transaction volume and transaction velocity which is much healthier and less exploitive that traditional F2P designs long-term
Season Pass
1-time purchase per player per season (1-2 month cycles typically), can be made via fiat or $EON
Low-value purchase, targeted for first-time purchasers
Tried & true design that self-perpetuates a first-time payer into a long-term retention + high engagement user, even if their LTV is low this purchase can recoup the user’s cost of acquisition and they are pivotal to maintaining DAU/MAU target metrics
Rewards a nominal amount of $EON spread out over many levels of rewards. Cumulatively adds up to the $EON amount it costs to purchase the next season pass.
Tokens
$EONIUM is not a fixed supply but rather will be emitted through the course of game and based on user population and engagement
$EONIUM ($EON) is the main gameplay token in the EON Guardians universe. Nominal amounts of $EON can be earned by players through: fiat purchasing in limited quantity per season, and sale of crafted items in the marketplace.
Tournaments
Skill-based tournaments with reward pools created from a portion of secondary market revenue streams
More equitable distribution between developer and player
Global Bounties
First-come first-serve quests shared by the entire player population
Not released all at once, can be seasonal - difficulty will scale up as population increases. Targeting top 5% of player pool.
Seasonal emissions
Direct purchase fiat→$EON
A limited amount of direct purchasable $EON may be made available per season algorithmically based on MAU/DAU analytics
Algorithmic Supply
Rate of generation for resources and $EON token must be controlled tightly depending on the population of players and game activity in EON Guardians
Strategies we are considering in our design:
Rather than an unlimited supply of monsters to hunt, there can be a rate of monsters generated for the game server at analytically tuned times
Risk: possible for the game to feel “empty” bc aggressive farming depletes the supply of respawned monsters immediately at respawn times
Daily/weekly maximum harvest caps - instead of controlling spawn rate of monsters, we simply cap the number of materials that can be harvested at various rarities/categories.
Risk: This can be abrasive with users, feeling too transparent a mechanic to rate limit their rate of accumulation
Drop rate scaling - if the player goes on the same hunt successfully over and over, the drop rates can adapt and shift each time the player manages to pull the rarest material in the loot pool.
Risk: Can be tricky to find balance that doesn’t feel unfair to the player
Difficulty scaling - we can make the same hunt more and more difficult with each success. Shorten time limit, increase aggro rates of monsters, increase quantity of monsters to hunt for a successful hunt.
Exploit: how do we prevent over-kitted players from buying gear above their current player progression level, and then being able to barrel through lower difficulty hunts
Difficulty scaling can also apply to party + player’s individual power level.
Considerations: Any difficulty scaling will need clear UI/UX feedback so player knows what they are committing to
Trading
Players will be able to list any of their crafted gear items for trade, so long as they are not currently equipped on a character.
Players will not be able to list consumable items for trade, this prevents a need for us to economically balance scarcity of commonplace materials for core gameplay items like healing, traps, ammo, etc. By not making consumables tradeable - we prevent motivation to farm crafts that need to be easy for basic gameplay.
Players can set a minimum flat price for instant purchase
Players can set an auction duration to accept offers in, with the instant-purchase minimum acting as a minimum required offer for auto-sale to execute
Secondary royalties will go primarily towards game development funding
A portion of royalties will go towards a community wallet that will fund:
Live ops events
Tournament/competitive mode prize pools
Special content initiatives
Item Durability
One gameplay mechanic to consider is weapon durability
As player utilizes a weapon in monster hunts, gradually the items utilized by the player will start to degrade
Degraded items will lose their effectiveness in battle until the item reaches 0 durability, at which point the item cannot be used by the player until it has been repaired
Items will never “fully break” and will always be able to be repaired for a cost in terms of resources and gold
This creates a soft currency & materials sink that is a part of core gameplay, becoming a very effective system of control for us as game designers to rate limit farming of materials/currencies for crafting
Appendix
Table of Valuables
Faucets
Sinks
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