As you all know, we are releasing the first version of the Steem Monsters 1-on-1 battle system today. In advance of the release we want to set expectations about how the game works currently, which features will be included in the initial release and which will come later, and our future plans for the game.
Steem Monsters is a Deck Building Game
While Steem Monsters has many similarities to other popular TCGs like Magic the Gathering and Hearthstone, the actual gameplay is very different. In MtG and Hearthstone, deck building is certainly a big part of the game, but actually playing through each battle, turn by turn, is where most of the action and decision-making takes place.
In those games that leads to a quickly established "meta" where only a handful of decks are competitive. When we played Hearthstone, we really liked the deck building aspect of it, and got bored when trying to move up the ladder playing the same few decks over and over.
Every once in a while a new expansion would be released with new cards and sometimes new game mechanics. That was always our favorite time since there was no "meta" established yet and the focus was back on deck building and trying to find interesting and winning combinations of the new and old cards.
In Steem Monsters, since the actual gameplay is currently completely automated, the entire player interaction and decision-making component is focused around creating your deck of cards. Build you team, watch for under a minute, go back and iterate your team. This is a game of strategy and less emphasis is played on chance and tactics.
In Steem Monsters we use the term "Team" instead of "Deck". This is because you are not creating a deck that gets shuffled into a random order from which you draw cards. It's more like creating a sports team where you choose your players and which specific position and role they will play on the team.
Battle System Walkthrough
Variation
In order to try to avoid a "meta" being created where only a few teams are competitive, we plan to vary the game rules in a variety of ways on a regular basis. This way we hope that it will be similar to what we described above when a new expansion comes out in Hearthstone. Initially we'll limit rule changes to mana cap changes, but over time we'll put in a far more varied set of rule variations.
Therefore, the more skilled Steem Monsters players will be the ones who are able to quickly identify and build winning teams within an ever-changing gameplay environment.
While this is the goal, please keep in mind that to our knowledge this approach hasn't been tried before, so it will likely not be perfect at the first release. We are opting to release it to all of you earlier rather than later, and then quickly iterate and improve the game based on how the initial release goes and all of your feedback.
Balancing Changes
Despite doing a good deal of gameplay and balance testing on the test server prior to launch, there will no doubt still be certain cards or gameplay mechanics that turn out to be clearly either under or overpowered.
Situations like that can take all of the fun out of a game like this, so we will not hesitate to make changes wherever necessary in order to address those issues. Please expect that balance changes may be made on a relatively frequent basis during the first month or two of the initial release, and possibly even farther into the future.
We understand that changes may affect the market value of certain cards, but ultimately the value of all of the cards will be determined by the success of the game as a whole, so that is our first and foremost concern.
Future Plans
As we mentioned above, at the initial release the gameplay will be completely automated; however, we don't plan for that to always be the case. We have a number of different ideas, some suggested by the community, to add more player interaction both during the team building phase and during the actual gameplay phase and we expect to implement some of those over the next few months.
Obviously our next major project will be building the tournament system. We have some significant prizes to give out for those and we want you to start winning them as soon as possible! We commit to getting tournaments out before the end of the year and will strive to get them out as quickly as possible (hopefully by the end of November or early December). We will keep everyone updated on our progress.
Last, but not least, is a mobile app version of the game. Currently the game is built for desktop browsers, which was necessary to get something released quickly, but we realize the importance of having a mobile version for both iOS and Android. We plan to use a significant portion of the funds raised to have a mobile app built in parallel with our other development priorities.
Ranked Play Reward System
In addition to the tournament rewards, we also plan to implement a reward system for the regular 1-on-1 ranked play. The goal is that players will be able to level up their cards through gameplay and not just through pack purchases.
Since, unlike traditional games, the cards can be sold/traded and have value, we need to be very careful that cards or XP cannot be "farmed" by bots and players with a large number of Steem accounts.
This is our first pass. It's subject to change. We will be hosting a "season" of play through the rest of October. As you play you'll earn "rating points." As you move up in rating, you will enter into different leagues. Your rewards at the end of the season will depend on the highest league you attained at any point during that season. The initial set of rewards will be as follows:
Bronze League (100+ rating): 1 pack
Silver League (1000+ rating): 2 packs
Gold League (1900+ rating): 5 packs
Diamond League (2800+ rating): 10 packs
Champion League (3700+ rating): 20 packs
These are beta edition packs and will be removed from the pool of 900,000 total beta edition packs as they are awarded.
Additionally, we'll be updating the leaderboard page to show the rankings for previous seasons, so all can bear witness to your skill and glory on the field of battle for years to come. Do well, and be immortalized in Steem Monsters history!
See you on the Battlefield!
We're really looking forward to seeing (crushing) everyone on the battlefield very soon, but we also want to remind everyone that, as part of the Steem community, we are all in this together. There will be issues, bugs, things that certain people don't like, etc., and we ask that you have patience and understanding and that you work with us to try to make Steem Monsters the best blockchain-based game there is!
Thank you for your continued support!
Steem Monsters Contact Info
Official Account:
Website: https://steemmonsters.com
Discord: https://discord.gg/CAFJRjY
