Blockchain gaming sucks. Games are either expensive to play, annoying to interact with, put too much emphasis on theoretical economies that promise generational wealth for all involved, or all of the above. Although the general consensus is that these issues are fundamental flaws with the idea of mixing gaming with blockchain, we do not believe that is the case. Our game, Sovereignty, will offer a solution to all the issues mentioned above while also bringing massive changes to how the blockchain can be used for gaming. But before we talk about that, let’s first go over each current issue in more depth.
Whether it is due to high entry costs or transaction fees, blockchain games are expensive. Most current blockchain games cost thousands of dollars to play after you consider that most games require an NFT to play and then add on transaction costs. There is no reason a blockchain game should cost multitudes more than a AAA game developed by a professional studio. If you can get that for less than sixty dollars, you should be able to access blockchain games for less than sixty dollars.
Interacting with blockchains, in general, already has a lot of issues with user experience. Blockchain games, however, do nothing to improve this; you’d be hard-pressed to tell the difference between interacting with a simple dapp vs. most blockchain games. Having to interact with blockchains to play games almost entirely dependent on them is essentially guaranteed. However, current games have done little to help decrease the burden on the user when it comes to what requires them to interact. Ideally, you would rarely, if at all, ever know a game is using blockchain.
Arguably one of the largest issues plaguing blockchain games, the issue that gets most written off as scams and ponzi schemes, the thing that is often referred to as “gamified yield.” A more appropriate term would be “glorified staking.” The issue with most games is they are not technically games. They are economies. Yield through staking is nothing new in defi; it has been around for several years, almost as long as Ethereum. The difference between it in the realm of defi vs. the realm of games, however, is that in defi, the yield is generally used as a form of a dividend. The underlying protocol actually has value. However, there is no value to the underlying asset when it comes to staking yield in games. It is simply a currency you can spend on the game. Nothing more. That does not mean it cannot be valuable. However, expecting it to be worth much at all simply because it has “deflationary mechanics” or something similar is delusional.
Now that we have got that housekeeping out of the way and understand the current issues plaguing blockchain games as they currently exist – allow us to present our solution to you. We will split the explanation into two parts, 🔁 The Idle Loop and 🌎 The World . In 🔁 The Idle Loop, we will go over the idle aspects of gameplay and the many aspects of progression within the game. In 🌎 The World., we talk about the social aspects offered by our game world. This is where we go over how players can either come together to help each other or attempt to destroy their enemies.
To play Sovereignty, you will need a base. Bases will not be NFTs, although they will be ownable and have the ability to transfer ownership, much like NFTs. Bases will also not be sold by us, they will be given out freely over time based on demand. This is done to essentially remove the barrier of entry. Your base is what houses everything you need to progress in the game through idle means. You will see later in 🌎 The World that the contrast between progression in your base versus outside of your base is essentially a risk/reward tradeoff, but for now let’s talk about how progression works in the game. So, what is in your base?
Resources are used for almost everything in Sovereignty; whether it be expanding your army by summoning more troops or upgrading your buildings, you will need resources to progress. There are five resource types that you will need: Gold, Food, Stone, Wood, and Elixir. You can get these in multiple ways. For now, we will only go over the idle aspects, and the other conventional methods will be mentioned in 🌎 The World.
The way resource generation works for idle gameplay is all bases have “resource producers” for each type of resource. For example, there is a Treasury that produces Gold, a Farm that produces Food, a Quarry that produces Stone, a Lumber Mill that produces Wood, and an Elixir Drill that produces Elixir. Producers will accumulate a number of their respective resources every hour. That amount is based on their level, and the said resources can be claimed at any time. However, the maximum amount of resources accumulated is two days or forty-eight hours before accumulated resources need to be claimed to reset and continue generating resources.
Resource icons
Buildings are multi-functional in Sovereignty. They can provide benefits in multiple ways by upgrading them and are one of the core aspects of the progression system in Sovereignty. The resource producers we mentioned previously are buildings, but there are three other main types of buildings that we will go over now: the Town Hall, the Altar, and the Library.
The Town Hall is what it sounds like – it is the central building of your base, and you will often have to level it to achieve higher levels of other buildings. Leveling it will also grant boosts to the number of troops you can have in a single deployment and give you extra deployment slots.