Evolution of the EtherOrcs Gold Faucet

This is a short one, but wanted to introduce some new thinking that we will be unveiling over the next month in the EtherOrcs ecosystem.

As you know, our goal is to create the most interactive, fun, and engaging Web3 game possible. EtherOrcs is not “P2E” or about earning; it’s a game. And in that game you happen to own your assets.

A critical part of this has been transitioning from passive primary gameplay to active primary gameplay which everyone has already been enjoying with Dungeon Crawls since May.

(Game Economies are made up of a few economic systems like faucets, sinks, marketplaces, convertors, and backpacks. We currently have ALL these elements with more coming!)

Observations

One thing we have noticed as we’ve matured and collected more data is that there is a “faucet” problem in the way that farming and crafting potions/dummies/runes currently works.

You can set your character to passively farm or craft indefinitely, and show up at any time in the future to go retrieve your “loot.”

This is fine when everyone is actively playing and engaged, but we have found two things that have made this not ideal:

1) Over time in crypto there is a relatively large attrition rate of participation across the network. We didn’t fully see this originally as it was masked by high levels of burn and activity in the active portions of the player base.

2) There is a significant change in user participation across all NFTs due to the bear market. Depending on the comparison, overall activity / transactions are down 40–50% for total NFTs.

What this leads to is a growing pool of “forgotten” Orcs and Allies who have been left farming or crafting for months. Eventually, perhaps as they choose to leave crypto or de-risk their NFT portfolio, these people come back. They remember they have these assets and sell off their ZUG.

While we don’t focus on or prioritize ZUG price, it is certainly not ideal for a fraction of the game economy to be tied up in assets that are in-active.

So what’s the solution?

1. Keep Farming and Crafting primarily passive, but add the requirement of some level of interaction weekly to maintain
2. Ensure that this weekly interaction is not constraining, punishing, or annoying for users
3. Maintain all existing ZUG boosts and Crafting bonuses — your asset’s relative production will remain the same
4. Provide incentive and potentially reward for those who show some level of engagement with Dungeon Crawls
5. Over time add more rewarding additions to the Farming and Ally Crafting experience in the form of professions (fishing, mining, alchemy)

We are doing this fundamentally to reward active and engaged players as well as to continue to attract new players who wish to engage with the future of the game.

Right now our “faucet” produces ~85K ZUG per day…

Our run rate of burn is 30–40K per day. Those that are actively playing and burning are only in control of 40% of all productive assets.

This change will ensure that those numbers remain in balance and that we do not force excessive burn on one group of players to overcome the “inaccessible” ZUG that’s produced by inactive players.

What does this mean for you?

If you’re a current player who is crawling, crafting, customizing your builds, and participating even semi-regularly:

This will be net neutral or a net benefit. We are working hard to make sure the implementation is clean and not a chore. Eventually, we would like this to be a rewarding experience in its own right. Imagine the added benefit of getting to bring a fishing rod and try for some fish while farming for example…

If you’re an inactive player (gone for months+), you’ll continue collecting ZUG or Consumable items passively until we launch the new Farming and Crafting contracts. At that stage you can still claim your ZUG or Potions for at least a month before we shut down that capability and fully transition to this new system.

What we promise: We will give plenty of warning before making any of these changes.

The change to semi-active farming and crafting will happen NO EARLIER than September 9 2022.

Afterwards it will become semi-active. And we will give one full month to claim the ZUG you have farmed up until that date (October 9).

This is an important step forward in our ecosystem and know it’s something we have talked about in the community at length.

Appreciate all the feedback and thoughts that helped drive this decision.

We will provide more information and details on the exact mechanics over the next month and continue to bring awareness to this change for those who have not been active in the game recently.

ZUG ZUG!
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