Hello Stee- ahem- Ecency!
It's been awhile since I put out a post for the crypto world. Quite a lot has happened in my absence. I'll talk about my observations in future posts but for now I want to talk about a blockchain game I recently found. The game is called Skyweaver and it's built on the Ethereum blockchain (someone correct me if I'm wrong on that).
Initially, I found a similar trading card game that is also built on Ethereum called Gods Unchained. I found that one of its cards traded for over 60,000 USD and my curiosity was piqued even more than it already had been. I started scouring the internet for other examples of games in the space and umm... unfortunately I found a bunch of trash (sorry Splinterlandians, I couldn't get into it). There are many blockchain games whose gameplay loops are shallow and they felt more like an investment than a good time.
I was starting to give up on the space, at least for now, when I found the closed beta for Skyweaver. Please don't ask me how I found it because I don't remember but I am SO glad I did. This game has everything I wanted: deep mechanics? Check. Card ownership? Check. Interesting visuals? Check. Available on browser and mobile (this was the big one that took me away from GU)? Check. So I found the Discord community server for it and began to sink some time into its concepts, eventually inviting a few of my friends to create accounts and now I'm addicted. Like a-baby-who's-had-liquor-put-on-their-gums-to-stop-them-from-crying-addicted.
"How do I get addicted?," you might be asking. Well, first you boot up the game and realize that you don't have enough cards to construct a deck. That's when you figure out that if you play the Discovery game mode, you can play with pre-built decks which are randomized according to the faction(s) (in this game, "Prisms") that each hero represents. Initially you play because the devs announce that they're giving the top 500 players a special, limited edition gold card that won't be available after the game's soft launch. You tell yourself, "I'm gonna get to top 500 no matter what." At this point you're thinking about that $60,000 card in Gods Unchained and you're telling yourself that even if this special card is only worth <100 USD, where else am I gonna find a fun game that essentially PAYS ME for playing?
So you gain levels and unlock heroes until you have all 15 of them. You play a few matches with each of them as you climb the ranks but then you hit a wall. This wall is where all of the amazing players that came before you and their swarm of alt accounts live. They're just floating around waiting for you to come along so they can eat you alive and take your top 500 lottery ticket. BITCH PLEASE.
Now you're scheming. How can I break into the Master rank, where I can comfortably sit and await my gold blessing? Well, I came up with a plan and over the course of the next few weeks I'm going to archive it here on Ecency. My first step was to figure out which heroes have the most consistent playstyles so that I can focus on using said heroes until I get enough cards to construct my own deck.
At this point I've narrowed it down to Lotus (Wisdom) and Ada (Strength). The heroes that use two Prisms (eg Zoey, Fox, Mira, etc.) are all feast or famine. They each pull from a pool of 200 cards and so the strategies they employ are variable as hell, especially compared to the monotype heroes that pull from pools of only 100 cards. This rationale limits our choices to Ada, Samya (Agility), Lotus, Bouran (Heart), Ari (Intelligence). Well, I've played each of them and found that Ari's cards are extremely versatile and complex, meaning that he might be good with a Constructed deck but there are too many variables for him to be consistent in Discovery. Bouran's strategies depend on him having particular cards in his deck which he can base his play around and if you know what those cards are, he might be a good choice for Discovery- I do not because I am a n00b. That leaves Samya, Ada & Lotus. Samya plays in a way that is trade heavy and trades often give her advantage- this could be good but it creates a similar problem as Bouran where you have to know which cards in your deck should be traded and which should be kept. I'm not messing with it for the exact same reason as Bouran.
Ada and Lotus, on the other hand, are consistent in the size of their card pools as well as in their game plans in that it either works or it doesn't. Sure, their comeback potential isn't great but you can build solid aggro/control strategies respectively and come out on top pretty frequently. I think I lean toward the control side of the spectrum so I'm gonna play him and update you guys with my progress. Wish me luck!
Keep up
iQ