Hello Skyladies, Skylords and other Skybeings,
Welcome to a Halloween-Season PvE event!
I remember, long was it ago,
When I vanished, beneath earth's solemn throw.
An Event Manager once, lively and grand,
Whose absence turned into legend, across the land.
But now the Spooky Season calls my name,
Awakening my spirit, rekindling my flame.
A Lost Soul, rising from the earthly bed,
With haunting ideas that fill the night with dread.
No longer gone, I’ve returned to my post,
To host a Skylord Reborn's event, let's raise a ghostly toast.
For this Halloween, let eerie magic unspool,
A resurrection, from the land of the ghoul.
So come forth, brave warriors, if you dare,
For this event promises a spine-chilling scare.
I’m back to bring you ghoulish delight,
Happy Haunting to all, and to all a frightful night!
Quick Overview:
Map - 1p rPvE
Difficulty - 8 (Map of the Month)
Date - 01.11 until 15.11 (23:59 UTC+2)
Prizes - Boosters and the new card "Soulstone"
Winner reveal - On the 18th of November in this topic
Goals and Restrictions:
You need to play the 1p rPvE map of the month on Difficulty 8 and achieve following three goals under two restrictions:
• Restriction 1: Your first and second orb are restricted to Frost and Shadows orbs only (this means also no double frost or double shadow start)
• Restriction 2: Once you are T2 (have your second orb available), you are only allowed to spawn Lost Soul units. This also means you are no longer allowed to play tier 1 units. This restriction does not apply to spells or buildings.
• Goal 1: Win the Map
• Goal 2: Open all Gold Chests
• Goal 3: Reach T4 without Amii Monument (The faster, the better)
FAQ:
I will update the FAQ below as questions are asked throughout the event.
How can I participate?
Everyone with an ingame account can participate in the event, there is no need to sign up separately.
You just have to send in your best replay, including the player names and the time of map finish, to mHiko on Discord (minashigohiko) or the forum
(@Minashigo Hiko).
Replay name format - "mHiko_00h20m30s_.pmv"
You can send in your replays until 15.11 23:59 UTC+2.
You can find your replays here: Documents=>Battleforge=>replays
What's the Prize Pool?
The following prize pool will be adjusted according to the amount of participants.
All bfp prizes have been sponsored by @Vysnia
You can join the event multiple times, but only your fastest T4 time will be rewarded, and you can only enter the raffle once:
1st Place: 7 Lost Souls Boosters
2nd Place: 6 Lost Souls Boosters
3rd Place: 6 Lost Souls Boosters
4th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
5th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
6th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
7th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
8th Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters + 1k BFP
9th-50% Place: 3 Lost Souls Boosters
Raffle
There are two Raffles:
• Raffle 1: we will raffle 10x General Boosters among players who did not win a prize or raffle yet (might scale with increasing participation)
• Raffle 2: The new card "Soulstone" will be raffled to half of the participating players (your placement doesn't matter for this)
When will the winners be announced?
The winners under top 5 will be announced via a comment in this topic on the 18th of November. Ultralord will also host a Twitch stream, where he will show the remaining 5 runs, a quiz and some interesting data from the event.
Stream: 24th of November at 19:00 (UTC+1)
The Skylords Reborn PvP AI programming contest - Phase 1
Hello fellow Skyladies, Skylords and other Sky-beings!
We're thrilled to introduce a one-of-a-kind event that combines the thrill of PvP gameplay with the ingenuity of programming. Get ready for the AI Programming Tournament, where your submitted programs will face off in an epic showdown to find the ultimate AI strategist!
Format
The event will consist of three separate phases, with phase 1 starting now!
In phase 1, we ask all of you, who are interested in participating in this event, to fill out a questionnaire about your previous programming experience and programming language of choice.
After the questionnaire closes, we will use this information to prepare an API (Application programming interface) and document it according to your programming skills, such that everyone who is interested will be able to compete! Once the API is ready to be presented to you, phase 2 starts, in which you will have enough time to write and test your programs.
Once phase 2 ends, phase 3 will be a tournament, in which all entries we received battle if out to find the best of them all!
More information about the technicalities will be presented when phase 2 starts.
Event Details
Deadline for phase 1: 31.12.2023
Start of phase 2: Not yet determined
Link to the questionnaire: *CLICK*
Link to the event Discord: *CLICK*
Why participate?
Participating in this tournament offers a unique opportunity to not only showcase your programming skills but also demonstrate strategic thinking in a dynamic gaming environment. Beyond the thrill of competition, there are fantastic prizes at stake. The specific prizes will be disclosed at the start of phase 2.
In our effort to make PvP more approachable for newer players, we would love to add the option to play and practice against AI opponents. We are currently exploring our options, and your entry could serve as the foundation for this!
Whether you're a seasoned programmer or just starting out, this tournament welcomes all skill levels. We will provide enough documentation, such that everyone can participate with at least a basic program.
Please note...
We are aware, that this is not a gameplay event and that only a minority of the community will likely be interested in competing. For those of you, who are looking for more gameplay-oriented events, don't worry, we will still have those in the future!
For those of you, who will participate, please be patient during phase 1. We want to make sure, that everything works and all technicalities are figured out by that time, so expect a delay between the end of phase 1 and the start of phase 2. Do not expect phase 2 to start at the beginning of next year, please allow us enough time to prepare everything, which might take some time!
Special Thanks
Big thanks to @Kubik for providing all the technical stuff necessary to make this happen!
Questions
Reply in this thread if you have questions, we will answer them as soon as possible.
Best regards,
The Skylords Reborn Team
More info about the technicalities will follow when a post for Phase 2 will be made, but it will probably all be run on my Desktop PC.
If you manage to use some fancy algorithm like reinforcement learning with the API, I think that would be fine, but please wait for Phase 2 for more concrete info.
Boosters bought between 22.07 and 04.08: 1,567
The cost of these boosters: 1,567 * 450BFP = 705,150 BFP
BFP earned with quests between 22.07 and 04.08: 1,077,675 BFP
Boosters bought between 11.08 and 25.08: 8,799
All editions Booster with discount: 3310
All editions Booster without discount: 3505
Mixed editions Booster with discount: 500
Mixed editions Booster without discount: 391
Pure edition Booster with discount: 516
Pure edition Booster without discount: 577
The cost of these boosters: 4,261,750 BFP
BFP earned with quests between 11.08 and 25.08: 1,745,425 BFP
BFP earned with the daily boost + stored boost between 11.08 and 25.08: 2,950,013 BFP
BFP earned with the reserves between 11.08 and 25.08: 492,486 BFP
BFP earned total between 11.08 and 25.08: 5,187,924 BFP
Amount of players who bought at least x boosters between 11.08 and 25.08:
Amount of players who bought at least one booster: 1481
Amount of players who bought at least two boosters: 1066
Amount of players who bought at least three boosters: 827
Amount of players who bought at least four boosters: 684
Amount of players who bought at least five boosters: 569
Amount of players who bought at least six boosters: 477
Amount of players who bought at least seven boosters: 406
Amount of players who bought at least eight boosters: 345
Amount of players who bought at least nine boosters: 302
Amount of players who bought at least ten boosters: 218
Amount of players who bought at least twelve boosters: 188
Amount of players who bought at least fourteen boosters: 143
Amount of players who bought at least sixteen boosters: 96
Amount of players who bought at least eighteen boosters: 82
Amount of players who bought at least twenty boosters: 68
Amount of players who earned x BFP from the daily boost and reserves between 11.08 and 25.08:
Amount of players who earned any BFP via the daily boost and reserves: 2632
Amount of players who earned at least 250 BFP: 2001
Amount of players who earned at least 500 BFP: 1595
Amount of players who earned at least 750 BFP: 1348
Amount of players who earned at least 1000 BFP: 1171
Amount of players who earned at least 1500 BFP: 878
Amount of players who earned at least 2000 BFP: 667
Amount of players who earned at least 3000 BFP: 354
Amount of players who earned at least 4000 BFP: 148
Amount of players who earned at least 5000 BFP: 38
Amount of players who earned at least 6000 BFP: 9
Amount of players who earned at least 7000 BFP: 3
Introduction
The economy is a delicate and mind-bending thing which is undoubtedly hard to control, a job I don't envy our devs for. It takes little effort to complain about complex topics like this, much more to suggest possible solutions and unending efforts to resolve the issues for good.
Without further ado, here’s my take on the game, its progression system and economic stability.
In this post I’d like to address following topics:
The games dual currency economy gold & BFP
Upgrade disenchanting / gold rewards
Gold with no end
Inflation of BFP
The possibilities devs have to influence card prices
Possible solutions for an arising problem
Various booster packs and their pricing
The games economy
We have two currency systems in Skylords reborn: Gold and BFP. Both Gold and BFP are “earned” by simply playing the game. When I say “earned” I mean created by the server which has an infinite supply for both. At this point we need to look at those two currencies separately which is easily doable since they do not interact with each other in any way.
Gold
Gold is not tradable between players and used for upgrading cards, essentially fine-tuning and end game progression. There is nothing that stops the community to greed for gold. The more the players play, the more gold will be distributed. It’s a nice closed system which allows a steady progression for the players. For some it’s too slow, which is a point I will not discuss. However, how this gold is distributed I’d like to discuss. Without messing with the total value of upgrades too much I suggest to normalise the disenchant value. This would probably not prevent Guns of Lyr “goldruns” to be the most efficient way to farm gold but it would allow to players to play their favourite map to farm gold without feeling cheated when only common upgrades show up at the end of the map. Here are chart of the current disenchant values and another chart with my suggestion. Note: these values are not chosen at random, but with a more even distributed gold reward in mind. The target would be to not add or subtract a significant amount from the rewards over all maps combined.
These numbers are a significant gold contributor such as finishing maps, which are the main tools for devs to control “late game” progression of skylords reborn and ultimately pace the endgame grind. The system is quite beautiful since it allows a nonstop grind and constant progress to achive fully upgraded decks.
Inflation of Gold
“I’ve got every upgrade I can wish for, what do I do with the gold?”
For the 0.1% of players who have hundreds of thousands of gold and those who only play a certain deck, it’s a bit of a bummer there is no ultra-endgame usage for gold, but since this currency isn’t tradable, no one really minds.
Question for you, the reader: Should there be a currency sink (a way to delete significant amounts of currency for little effect) for gold?
One option would be additional booster packs which progressively get more expensive: first one would cost 100’000 gold, second 200’000, third 300’000 and so on. If you’re now asking yourself why anyone would ever buy 10 boosters for 5.5 million gold, then this problem does not affect you.
Battleforge points / BFP
In contrast to gold are BFPs tradable between players and somewhat limited by the rewardsystem. Let’s focus first on the big picture:
Players “earn” or more accurately generate BFP daily by completing quests and since the last big patch also with playtime. These points are used to either buy cards from other players (with the auction house or direct trade) or to buy different booster packs from the server for X amount. You don’t need to have a degree in economics to see a difference between gold and BFP: With enough time, the market will be satisfied with most common and lesser used cards. Those will lose value until they’re basically worthless. On the other hand rarer and broadly used cards will significantly rise in prise. We can see this effect right now and could see it 10 years back with EA at the controls. Only difference being, BFP could always get generated with real life currency at a fixed rate and nowadays we have a timely limited supply due to quests.
Maintaining value of BFP / Expected booster value edited 19.08.20
By tying BFP to a fixed booster price our valuable BFP will never lose their value. In a perfect economy the expected value from opening a booster is near but always below its price. The difference in value comes from taking a risk: When opening a single booster you will lose value in the big majority of cases, in some you'll go even and in rare cases you'll profit. How this risk is valued depends on the individual. In general wealthy ppl are more likely to pay for risk and the poor rather play it save by selling boosers or not buying boosters (even on discount).
We could very well calculate the expected value of a booster to confirm this by pricing every card with the actual marketprice, weighting their value by multiplying with the chance to opening this specific card in a booster and add all of them up. Why didn't I already do it you ask? Because we're not in a perfect economy, prices are hard to track by hand and fluctuate immense as well as rapitly due to the small-ish active playerbase. And lastly because of diliberate marketmanipulation/pricefixing by players who rather play the economy than the game (nothing wrong with that, I loved to do this myself in various games too).
Market liquidity edited 19.08.20
The economy will - to a certain extend - balance itself but the effects described above are getting more drastic over time. We can slow this effect down by rewarding players with booster packs directly instead of BFP. As @Ponni pointed out, a higher supply keeps the market liquid/speeds up the economy (many trades are being made because of players competing over prices and undercutting).
On the other hand we can also slow down the economy and therefore speed up the effect described before. By rewarding players with only BFP. Why that is, you ask? Well it’s a fair question to ask and a tricky one to explain. There are many additional human factors influencing this besides demand and supply. As I said, with BFP bound to booster packs they won’t ever lose value, but with more available BFP ppl tend to save their treasure. Thus slowing down the market by not spending it on cards or boosters which will lower the price of undemanded cards and raise the price of cards in high demand. Since the last patch this is what we are seeing. Note: I don’t have any data to back any of this up but would be very interested if there is some to monitor prices of certain cards to watch the effect.
I’m not sure what the reasons were behind the change to reward players with more BFP than cards directly, in my humble opinion: This is the wrong way to wander. There are different approaches to keep the economy liquid, forcing more cards instead of BFP is one of them by creating more supply and less currency in circulation. Another approach would be to trick the market: Instead of increasing the supply we can change the trade system to our wishes. By increasing the auction time significantly supply will increase due to less active players staying in the market for more than 48h (current limit for auctions). Increasing the limit from 24h to 48h was a step in the right direction. Note: I’ll talk about the prices of specific boosters later in this post, just keep reading.
Inflation of BFP
Now we can discuss inflation. This system is inflating, that is a fact. You don’t need to understand economics to see in the picture above that there are more and more cards and BFP circulating the player base. What this system needs is a currency sink: A way for players to get rid of huge amounts of currency for little upsides. Like the suggestion in the gold section of this post, this is meant for players who got it all. By giving the 1% of players a reason to spend their treasure you also even out the playing field for the rest (side note: If you think forcing players to buy more boosters is a solution, you didn’t pay enough attention). So yeah, what do you – the reader – think? How would you get rid of BFP? What’s the thing you’d pay horrendous prices for even if there’s a way less expensive alternative?
Currency sinks
Promo cards. My suggestion will not make everyone happy, it removes the possibility for lucky players to get promo cards with boosters. Now hear me out before you burn me alive: Firstly, removing promos will rise the value of every other card in the game available through boosters since they’re still bound to the 450 BFP cost of the boosters – thus help normalise the market prises of cards. Secondly, promo cards would still be available for everyone in the store for a set amount of BFP and will be accountbound/non-tradeable. Further I suggest that the fist promo card purchased from the store (not a player, this is very important since player interactions are net 0 trades) could be somewhat reasonably priced with… let’s say 5’000 BFP. The second one will cost you significantly more: 10k BFP. The third 15k and so on. This would give even regular players the option to buy their favourite promo cards if they wish to. At the same time it would delete enormous amounts of BFP from player who already own what they want.
Additional – but way less effective – currency sinks would be significant auction house fees. Make them cost significant amounts of BFP (~5-15% of sold price a.e.). I’m completely fine with our current auction house. I think our community is a bit too small to make fees a significant contributor to deflation.
Dev market manipulation
A similar system could be implemented for all non-promo cards too. A static card shop where all cards are available to a fixed price. Those cards would of course not be accountbound and would be tradable, but their prices will be horrendous at first glance. I’ll make another example with numbers which I have not put much thought into: The vendor would sell every common card for 375 BFP, uncommons for 750 BFP, rares for 1500 BFP and ultra rares for 3000 BFP. I know, you would never ever buy an Eliminator or Kobold Inc. for 750 BFP. But what about a Shaman? Seems like a quite reasonable price, right? The point is, by creating a fixed upper limit for cards you ensure the market isn’t inflating over a set limit.
Conclusion
Without implementation of a currency sink (does not have to be my suggestion) there is little to nothing the devs can do to fix this games economy. The only sink we have today, are people abandoning the game and never come back. I think we can come up with something better than that.
I need to point out, reducing the amount of BFP players get from the reward system is an option, but only slows down the inevitable. Furthermore reducing the amount of BFP rewards would slow down the “early game” progression of players. When I started this beta the progression seemed a bit slow to the point I considered multiaccounting (don’t tell the devs). I think slowing this progression down even further isn’t considered an option for the devs. I cross my fingers I’m not wrong about this…
Lastly here’s how the possible economy could look like:
Various booster packs added 19.08.20
This topic is not as related to the economy as one might think, but has a couple of shared points, that's why I decided to include it here.
Since last patch more specific boosters were introduced which limit the cardpool to either a race or faction. Currently the basic booster (without any cardpool restricitons) is priced at 450 BFP, race boosters are set to 155% of the base price and faction boosters 220% respectivly. These values are open for discussion according to devs and here's my opinion to the matter.
Note: I will not discuss the set price of the basic booster nor include the booster discounts right away. The basic booster price is the backbone of this games market and not topic in this part of the post. However I will go into the upprices of the newly introduced booster packs.
Why they exist and how they are priced added 19.08.20
Adding specific boosters is comparable to the suggestion I brought up earlier to have a specific card vendor. It's an attempt help the economy balance itself more consistan.
I recap: In a perfect economy the value of the basic booster is the average value of its content times a individual risk factor. Now I make deliberately a false assumtion to make my point clear: All 539 (correct me if I'm wrong) cards in Skylords reborn have the exact same value. This would mean even with a restricted cardpool in race boosters (approximately 240) and faction boosters (approximately 110) every booster should have the base price times a factor to compensate risk. The factor rises while risk diminish by limiting the cardpool further (making the outcome more predictable).
Let's make an example: When the prices of "Harvester" and "Infect" rise to oblivion, at some point it makes more sence mathematicly to buy "Shaddow" or "Lost Souls" booster packs even when they come with a high upprice.
Conclusion added 19.08.20
Higher prices of specific boosters will push prices prices of specific cards up, while on the contrary lower prices of specific boosters pull prices of cards down.
My suggestion for risk factor and booster prices added 19.08.20
I will try to make some calculaions with an example to have an actual suggestion on how much these risk factors should be with reasonable market prices for specific cards. Unfortunatly I don't have the time right now to do so. Stay tuned.
I hope you enjoyed the read, I’m curious about your feedback.
Regards
Myno
References
For folks interested in virtual economies, check this YouTube channel out:
MMO Economies - How to Manage Inflation in Virtual Economies - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W39TtF14i8I
MMO Economies - Hyperinflation, Reserve Currencies & You! - Extra Credits
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sumZLwFXJqE
