Every word below is important.
This message has a lot of sections, yet everything is shared quickly.
We also published an overview here as a shorter read.
This post was edited on Oct 28th, announcing a new content.
We are getting our real gameplay, the core system this time, with a playable content in November.
EXODE shares today its new model and announces a 15k first fundraising to help develop it.
The model is inspired by "Rise of Cultures" which is a high revenue PVE application.
Its developer, InnoGames, makes models of games individually gathering > 1 billion lifetime revenue.
We pick Rise of Cultures as a model to analyze because it's a successful PVE model compatible with our colonization approach. We were able to imagine how to implement it, as shared below.
This means we will finally be compatible with new visitors and free-to-play, thanks to adapting a similar approach that is highly successful in F2P.
EXODE will decentralize its premium currency.
EXODE will also propose player-made contents to the new visitors of this system. You have more information about how player-made contents will be introduced in our second post.
Our initial plan was to reward our WEB3 players by redistributing 70% of all web2 player purchases to our web3 supporters, for all pledges made to fund it, and to triple that value for our first contributors in this fundraising.
But even if the opportunity is high, we understand players need some time to discover this new gameplay and how everything fits. So we have proposed an AMA on Saturday 4 PM UTC on our Discord. Instead of pledges to make, we are also proposing a much easier way to support us, on Wednesday we are proposing a new content that will discover on our website.
Fundraising will actually start on Wednesday 29th, 5 PM UTC.
It will now propose new contents and services, which you will discover at that time on exode.io.
There is a lot more information to share.
Read below to find out more!
How does this work?
Our previous works placed us with the unique opportunity of having immense contents and programs (we have many unique card models!) but which lacked a proper gameplay model after evacuation.
We experimented a number of models before. We tried a simulation experience with commitment and longterm reports, then made their presentation more advanced. We were basically grinding down every obstacle! We were always going forward, albeit slowly.
Meanwhile, other games have transformed visitor audience, even in WEB3.
Nowadays, the audience has different expectations.
So we are adapting our concept - this was needed - mostly by simplifying everything, and are now ready to defend EXODE and our player value differently.
Fortunately, our progress and content can now be fully leveraged in this new approach.
Our mission to our players is now to apply what we find proven and successful in "the vast world", and adapt it to the world of 2325.
By applying this kind of model, we are using a rewarding model, highly competitive with other applications and F2P content, and still compatible with our PVE priority. And our colonization :)
As you can guess, it took some time to find one proper!
We are high on ethics and wanted something that will actually make our content shine.
We also conducted visitor tests this summer: this event made us gain knowledge about new player expectations, confirming what needed to be addressed.
We can now only expect success per visitor playing the game with this new model of gameplay once released: because it is free, and it is highly addictive.
We have been at work in October on this and we released Colonization Challenges, which took half of our month, while working on our new approach.
We stand strongly against "free-to-play directly mixed with play-to-earn" (such as clicking on a simple button to earn a currency) and this has not changed. This approach of many games rely on a predatory scheme that works on marketing power with a constant influx of players, until it explodes right after it reaches its peak.
But we acknowledge that free-to-play is now required to gain players.
So we conducted research for some time about how to avoid P2E + F2P.EXODE has developed a successful retention model of assets thanks to varied factions, multiple areas of value, individual value of every player collection, niches of value. It never needed to rely on marketing power to maintain player value. As all of our players understood, they were sitting on a huge increase of value as soon as we would get more players.
Our new process will add a WEB2 population, invisibly playing in a web2-to-web3, and we will decentralize its rewards to WEB3 players.
This looks highly reliable as it will be automatic (you won't have to do much to receive direct attention from players, it will be automatic), and we rely on a free-to-play approach - so the game will be free, with a high visitor-to-account ratio. We only look to have players and connect them to "a lot of content".
This streamlines our content into very edible bits of progression. This new gameplay no longer applies filters, it is pleasing and still deep into our theme.
The new gameplay
The new gameplay is deemed very accessible.
It transforms your colonists into a common pool of "workers".
It also introduces several resources, such as research that receives a +1 every hour until it maxes its stockpile of 10, when it stops automatically generating, which encourages to use your research and invest it somewhere.
You use your available pool of workers for your construction needs.
By clicking on the hammer, you access a list of buildings from your current techs.
You then validate by placing this construction somewhere on your colony.
This construction will auto-assign a few workers to it and it will be constructed in a few minutes. The building will have "connection nodes" to nearby constructions, enabling adjacency bonuses which are fun to play with.
Adjacency bonuses are similar to a backpack battle model, where placing a building near another gives a bonus.
Leisure buildings, for instance, will be useful when placed near houses and living spaces!
Once built, you can left click on the building, which will reveal its production slots.
You can then drag and drop workers into it to start production of what is allowed in this building.
The one below is taken from Rise of Cultures itself (from InnoGames) only to give you an idea.
Most of our timers will also be very "player-friendly", to be adapted to every style of play. This is something that this school of game brings: a way to respect any kind of speed for the player.
This is very similar to german boardgames with a worker placement.
Buildings are, like in a german-school boardgame, a place with worker slots, and you assign your pool of existing workers to them. You will select and build food the same way, by drag and dropping workers into a cooking area.
What is even more interesting is how it streamlines progression, makes it connected to a fun manipulation mechanic and allows to be detailed in many little steps that the player goes fast through.
Normally in this model you receive more workers by building Housing.
You also unlock more Housing capacity with tech.EXODE also has a Housing model of course (look at our Happy Five and Octohome! :) ) so this is highly compatible. Your ship wreck is also considered as starting Housing capacity.
Only difference is that you won't generate new workers this way: you already begin with them! This is one main difference as EXODE has a highly valued approach where every worker has its personal bits.
EXODE also has a happiness model where you can drag and drop workers to leisure activities too.
There will be more about that later!
There are additional mechanics to invent and introduce, some examples:
- Your ship wreck will allow to place workers in a slot to convert them into "away team" characters instead of workers, removing them from worker pool while they are busy in an away team.
- This means away team assignment becomes "graphic and gameplay"! which makes it more fun.
- Away team people are the ones you can send on mission when clicking on the "map". The "map" and our away teams will replace the exploration/conquest of these F2P models in a way we find extremely fitting.
- Your ship wreck also allows a "debriefing/decompression area": you can drag and drop away team members there, to convert them back into workers!
- This transformation of assignments is very similar to what you have to do in EXODE Manager to build a team and send them: but is so more graphic and funnier to use, in a manipulation players will find compatible with the regular mechanic. Normally this is how addictive games are made.
Use of free currencies
Our freely earned currencies are food, materials, water and energy, used for construction, production and buildings.
Quests can also reward you sometimes with "exospresso", a premium currency that can be used to end any construction timer or restore stamina to characters.
Exospresso has been planned for 2 years already and this is the first time you will be able to use it. You will gain some of it thanks to testing our builds.
To avoid lenthening this article, we will share more about another item in our Wednesday article.
Some of these new items will be automatically distributed to our WEB3 players according to their collection power, as a gift (this gift that has from 5 to 99 USD value compared to its WEB2 cost).
Other units will be distributed during the fundraising.
Use of premium currencies
The main premium currency is used for about everything in these models. This is essentially to avoid some of the grind and have "a better progression".
We don't want our designer views to play as a strong limit to these game sales (understanding they benefit player value). But we also want to keep our ethical views.
For the success of the model we still need to make sure F2P players have access to considerable payable progression. So there will be.
But we will make sure to propose a lot of content available to them too, and to be generous about it.
This is thanks to having A LOT of unlockable characters, characters fragments, and purchasable content. EXODE definitely has a lot of models, and this new gameplay gives a strong value to it.
But even in a less predatory/grindy format, we could still aim at success with this model.
We will use EXOCREDITS as a premium currency.
So your existing EXOCREDITS have immediately gained a lot of value!We will accept EXOFUEL (all EXOFUEL and EXOCREDITS have a valuation to USD).
There is no loss by owning EXOFUEL compared to EXOCREDITS ; and vice versa.
A lot more player value too
There is a lot of elements to announce today!
All of that information take time to understand. All these news are positive.
We will basically deploy a WEB2 gaming environment that will be powered up by your existing WEB3 assets and will be giving them a huge value.
- Workers for F2P players are "basic workers". They are individual game character slots but without a character card.
- F2P players can gather fragments of characters during gameplay, and receive bound cards this way once they gathered all fragments of individual characters.
- Players can also pay premium characters (taking your cards and others).
- Once they get a card, they can assign it to one of their worker slots, replacing it with "this skin" and the bonuses of this card (such as faster research, faster construction, etc).
- Skins are an existing mechanic in models like Rise of Cultures, they are a cosmetic with a mechanical bonus, lasting usually last 10 days.
- Aramea card renting will be proposed to equip them with these skins.
- For other cards, an EXODE character is a "permanent skin": permanent skins" have a huge, huge value in this model (they mostly don't even exist in these models).
- This means all cards now have a minimal value of a few USD, considering most of them won't even be accessible by grinding fragments.
A character card for instance, now becomes a permanent assignable bonus customization for a basic worker.
This leads to 2.99 USD being considered a base value for a minimal card.
Boosters (a pack with 5 permanent random worker or building skins) are now premium packs with a lot more value, from 9.99 USD to 19.90 USD.
Starters (a pack with 9 permanent worker skins) will have a 29.90 USD value. We'll deploy them in events once we have a good enough playerbase.
Contract packs which produce cards will all be removed from shop: they have an uninimaginably high value in this new model, so we won't sell them any more after Wednesday (edited: we will give a grace period until you can experiment this gameplay). Because they produce cards.
ALL the content above will be progressively removed from our shop.
SOME content will be re-proposed at a superior value later, in an ingame shop and possibly with a promotion.
In addition, content purchased by WEB2 players, such as cards, will be removed from web3 once purchased by them, diminishing the number of circulating mints every time (it is as if they are burned to be applied to their game).
This means that we are, right now, entering a huge valuation gain circle! I think we need time to let that information sink in!
Note that starters may also unlock a cosmetic theme for colonization buildings fitting the Origin theme. Because it makes sense. And this style gives it further value. But we will do that later, as soon as we have time.
Huge increases of value
I use this word so much in this article, but this is true.
You can expect a considerable increase of value, and the rotation of offers described in our other post will also be attractive.
After this article we will focus our upcoming gameplay.
Colonization Challenges
Colonization Challenges is a gameplay that was released this October to our testers.
It will continue and be reserved to our WEB3 players, and will have rewards.
You can read more about them in this post by 
This new content is unchanged. F2P players will not have access to Colonization Challenges at first, but they will unlock their first challenge when they have high level accounts and enough "cards".
Players with planets can access this content right after logging in:
Then view their Challenge list:
10 challenges were generated for this first test!
every player received a few random ones.
Then send characters to participate:
You can check VeryanPrime's article for more info!
Contract Packs
Contract packs produce cards that can be sold to new players of this model.
I can't begin to share the value of contract packs once this model is deployed!
Genetician Packs
Oh Lord. Huge value here again, because assets you make will be unique!
We are also adding a specific section for the sale of hybrid cards .
It also gained value with Challenges, as you can identify several missing trait combinations that only genetician packs can deliver.
Selling cards
Selling to WEB2 will be automatic.
You'll just need to activate a status on your card, the system will tell you the price you'll receive once sold, and then you can just wait.
Aramea Station
As we hinted, there will be a Colonization Challenge model too for Aramea players.
Cards rent from Aramea will also become a base flow of "temporary skins", lasting 10 days, that you can apply to your workers and buildings ; so they will be purchased by WEB2 players even more. More about that later!
So much to assimilate!
This is a lot to unfold!
Potential player value is overflowing here, because this is a new innovation:
web2-to-web3 apps should be rare and we have hundreds of characters suddenly gaining utility from this model.
Note that it is normal that WEB3 players are considered privileged when compared with WEB2 payments. WEB3 ownership is of course of very high value compared to regular web2 users.
Last details
[edited]
Fundraising will begin at 5 PM UTC on Wednesday October 29th.
A new content will be revealed at that time to our shop.
We have decided to give a grace period for our shop contents and to players, to let some of the huge positive changes sink in, and for players for them to experiment the new gameplay before we remove content from shop.
You will also have our AMA this Saturday 4 PM UTC on our discord.
That's all pilots!
Wow!
Also please note that most elements are still subject to adjustments!
Now I can't take some rest - I have some Colonization Challenge code to complete, to share your final score! Thank you pilots!
EXODE is a science fiction game in development and currently played on HIVE.
It can be played with just 10 USD by taking any of the beta starters!
This gives access to all of current gameplay.Or, while supplies last, you can engage in other packs to get rarer factions.
Feel free to try it here, or to join our Discord if you have any question!
