[ENG] Steemnova vs DrugWars

These are my thoughts about steemnova, after i saw popularity boom for drugwars. This post is more or less translation (to fullfill my promise to @ecoinstant) of my earlier post, so if you read polish version then move alone ;)

Pay 2 Win or Win to get Paid

Nowadays we have a lot of games that work in P2W schema. It is like this, because it give better, and more secure income for developers. But it gives less fun for players (in my opinion), because you can play this games, but mostly you wont get high rank without paying a lot of money. Two people on steem @mys and @fervi came up with an idea, that our cryptocurrency is giving us an opportunity to revers this change in online gaming, and even more. So, they took OS version of an old good online strategy game: Ogame, and made with it integrated with steem MMOSG: @steemnova. It is browser game where not only you get a piece of old fashioned good gaming (well there are some bugs, and maybe its UI is a little to much old...), but you can also earn crypto by playing and wining in it. They created (first?) strategy online game, where you can Win to get Paid. The income was, and still is coming from daily steemnova post with statistics (you can ready about it more here), but the game didn't get much support from whales so this income was and is well very low. There are still some active players (new one and this who started at the beginning), but it is not very popular, and the prizes is not motivating to play it hard...
And here we have drugwars. They also think about how to use our steem blokchain to give gamers something more than only game, but also an income. The difference is that they didnt thought about it as an opposition for P2W schema. Contrary they wanted to have this element on their game too. What is more, they made game (not finished yet of course), that was nearly impossible to play without some (small) investment. What is even more important as they say, they didnt thought that their beta game could bring so many people, including very reach people. This boom, and the construct of beta version of the game make from it something close to Pyramid scheme (i strongly recommend all of you to see statistics from @jacekw.dev here. And it is not good, not at all. I am saying that even though I already earned nice amount of steem by playing this game.

So we have 2 games that wanted same thing for players, but both (in my opinion) in some different way failed. DrugWars have developing team and serious money and motivation so they still working hard on game and maybe we will see one day really good MMOSG with honest opportunity to earn some steem, and i wish them best. In the other hand Steemnova dosent have money, the project from the beginning was social and open sources, what mean that only with active community with ppl who are good in programming etc it can make progres. It is sad, because in my opinion this Ogame like game can give players much more fun then DW.

I am not a programmer, so i cant help this way, but i have some ideas that maybe could help SteemNova to be better in rewarding ppl, and in the way that wouldnt destroy entirely the idea that this game shouldnt be P2W game.

Market

We have in game marketplace (many thanks for @dotevo), where ppl can trade with each other (there was no such thing in original Ogame) with their resources and fleets. It dosent work ideal because it can be abuse to "fleetsave" and because there is not much reason to use it now. There is also in game something that is called market, and this is place, where you can trade with "program". You can spend special resource called Dark Matery to exchange for example Metal to Crystal with constant conversion rate. There is also Fleet dealer, when you can without DM exchange your fleet to resources but loosing 30% of their value. In early state of game it is to expensive to use these market, cause you need this DM for better things likes Officers, but in late game time, if you started at the beginning you have a lot of DM and not much thing you could buy for it. Bugfix for abusing marketplace is in progres, but i have an idea for this second problem with connection to low steem flow in game. To make marketplace more popular we should firstly give official way to trade with other ppl using their steem. It wouldnt break game because it would be still resources from the game, so someone need to produce them first. What is more, you can trade this way now, but official way would give you more security, and make the proces easier. And there is also place for game to earn more steem (so it could give more of it to players), from this transaction some small provision should go to steemnova. Second idea to make marketplace more interesting is to make harder to deal with Game Trader. Dark Matter that is used to trade in this way, shouldnt be given to player for free, but it should be bought from steemnova. It also should be apply to Fleet Dealer, so you should spend some DM to use it. To prevent this change breaking game this option should be firstly available when you will build some new building, and this should be possible after some time(best way would be to correlate this with an expedition where you can earn DM from game). The beginning of the game is most intense, and in many case it is time when you can establish your top position. So it wouldnt be good if you could with money make easier for you to get to the top.

Oficers

If you have DM, on the beginning of your game, you defiantly should invest it in officers, they give really nice boost to your empire. But if we make Dark Matter not free and equally distributed but resources that you can buy (in future maybe it should be SMT?) we need to completely rewrite this module of the game. I think we should make them more like real person, that will evolve. Like it is for example in Endless Space game. But because it is browser game, evolving them should look like lvling cards in for example SteemMonsters. So i see this like this: we have "deck" of our cards, and there should be cards that are giving one bonus like +5% mining metal - standard card, and unique cards which would gave you more bonus. From the deck, you can choose only for example 4 officers (but they must be different) that are active at the moment. Lvling card should be more difficult for each lvl, and at the same time the boost also should rise more and more slowly. So for example we to lvl Metal Miner to 3 lvl we need 5 card like this, and bonus would rise from 5% to 8 on second lvl and 10% at the 3 lvl. What bonus they should give? Now we have a lot strange bonus, from mining to free planet slots, I think we should cut this to only most standard bonus: mining, fighting bonus, energy production, and technology speed. Exception from this would be unique cards, which should have one standard boost, and one additional from this one: fleet speed, construction speed of buildings, ships, and defense.

Ok but how you would get this cards, just buy? No, i think there is a better way, but buying should be allowed on the market. So it should be possible to trade your cards with other players (and the cards should be written on the blokchain as your property. But the way to obtain them from the game should be different. Instead of buying cards, there should be boxes, at least 2 kind that would have different chance of getting unique card. BUT to give better chance for players that dont want to pay anything, this boxes should be given for all players from some simply daily in games activity. Free boxes should be given like one for 5 or 7 days. To make this boost even less influence on the game, there should new building that would allow you to activate them, and of course building should have max 4 lvls, each for one new officer. First lvl of this building should be not easiest to build but also not to hard. But cost to build next lvl should rise exponentially.

Dark Matter

What else we can do with DM in SteemNova? we can buy for it time boosters, but i dont like them much and i think we should just delete this option. And thats it. Or maybe, they could be put into boxes as an drop option, but boost should be definitely smaller, they could be tradable like officers card and only one could be active at a time.

Now. If we turn this DM resource from free to paid one, we will move game closer to P2W game, but i think that if we make it the way I presented they wouldnt have so much impact on the game. This obviously wouldnt by like in DrugWars, where you can instabuild for your steem. But i see more potential in this resource. Firstly, to give even more chance to this who wont pay anything we should leave possibility to earn DM from expedition. We should also implement something that SteemNova really is missing: mission system that would help new players. If we would have something simple, but not too simply (to avoid bot abusing) like bulid your first ship, colonize your first planet, win your first fight, maybe something for late game also? like destroy moon, use phalanx. And all this missions should give you some rewards, and for some of them we should give players DM. Secondly this resource should be possible to trade, but not like other resources, but only with steemnova. This mean that players could buy Dark Matter, but also sell it back. It would be great marketing move for the game, and i think it would attract many players. It would be also just like in steem blokchain ;) But how it should be constructed that the game would generate profit, and didnt go bankrut becouse of selling back DM. So price of DM shouldnt be constant, it should be something like this: sell price of 100 DM = 0,1% of "heist" worth, buy price of 100 DM cost 1 SBD + 0,1% of "heist" worth if Sell price is ≥ 1SBD. Heist is place where SBD are going from players who bought DM.

Steem Flow

Implementing this would give SteemoNova 3 source of income:

1. Daily posts
2. provision from the marketplace
3. Trading Dark Matter

This mean that we should have 4 accounts:

1. Dev accounts where would be automatically transferred something like 10-15% of all incomes (DrugWars is tacking 20%)
2. @steemnova account that would have same purpose as it have now.
3. Marketplace account that would deal with market transaction, and which would transfer all income (beside dev income) daily to steemnova account which would then transfer it to ppl like it does now (maybe if amount os steem would really rise it could be once more be daily payout.
4. Dark Mattery account were would go and stay all (beside dev income) income from selling DM to players, so it could be transfer to this players who would sell DM back to steemnova.

Is it possible?

I dont know. I am not a programer. I think this are good ideas. But ideas are not enough to proceed. We need money, people-programer, and motivation. Game needs better UI, bugfix, etc. So even if someone implement my ideas it wouldnt be enough i think. But nevertheless, it was nice to writ all this here, and i am waiting for yours opinion :) And i know that my English is far from ideal.