Over the past few weeks we have been watching the gameplay and collecting feedback from Arena players. Testing myriad of strategies and settings for the new, fairer and more balanced Arena types.

Finally, we have a new generation (v2) of Hands and Arenas that we want to release this week. It is important to note that the second generation Arenas will only work with second generation Hands. If you have an existing Hand, all you need to do is to fold and re-create it. All new Hands created after the launch will be v2.

So what exactly has changed?

v2 Hands

The importance of serial numbers has been slightly decreased in favour of TOYS levels. For instance the oldest TOYS of level 1 is about as strong as the newest TOY of level 2. This applies to all other levels as well. The new weights calculation should make it easier for the new players to play on the same level as older players, while promoting melting on AlchemyToys.

Serial numbers still play an important role and their weight will be dynamically calculated when creating new Hands. For instance, if you have a freshly minted level-1 TOY, it’s strength is about 100 points. But as more and more TOYS of the same type are minted, it’s strength grows over time to 133, 200, etc. This is an attractive change for collectors, who will see their TOYS gain in strength (hence, be more valuable) simply by holding them.

v2 Arenas

There are several aims that we are trying to tackle with the new generation of the Arenas:

1. Prevent spam-attacks: This is the situation where a very strong hand after being defeated is quickly re-created to continue its attack on weaker stackers, effectively circumventing the cool-down period. To prevent this from happening, there will be an Arena Queue: basically, each new Hand staked will have to wait a certain amount of time before being allowed to actively attack. The more powerful the Hand, the longer it has to wait.
2. Fairer strength distribution: There will be a limit to the amount of level-8 (special) TOYS that a Hand can have in order to participate in the Arena. The players will have to think twice, which special abilities they want their Hand to have. This measure will also limit the base strength of Hands, promoting XP usage and giving the new players a fair chance to win. The first Arena will be launched with one level-8 TOYS limit.
3. Weakest TOY loss: To take away the fears of losing your valued TOYs, in the new Arena you will deterministically lose only your weakest card.
4. Deterministic winner calculation: To make the player’s play more predictable, the new Arena will re-introduce deterministic winner calculation (if your Hand is stronger, you win). The random player selection together with the new weight calculation and special TOYS limit already make the game more balanced and fairer, so we do not need the random probability calculation of the winner.
5. Higher power and rewards for attackers: In order to promote active gameplay, the attacker will get a 10% boost to the power of its Hand (so a 1000-Hand will win against a 1000- or even 1099-Hand). Additionally, the attacker will get much more experience (XP) from the challenge that the defender, which, in a sense, feels more natural and logical.

These changes should make the game fairer, predictable and promote active gameplay. The new Arena version will stay for some weeks without further adjustments to monitor the dynamics.  The new generation will also be used as the basis for promotional Arenas for our partners and future games.

Please read more here about our other thoughts on Arenas and P2E games.