Nestables — Breeding Mechanics
Breeding will be an important part of the Nestables gameplay. Once it is written onto the blockchain, there is no going back! Read on to find out how we plan for breeding to work in Nestables…
Getting the breeding mechanics right will be difficult. Numerous other blockchain games have had problems getting the balance right. Make it too easy to breed and the market is flooded with Cubes, depreciating their value and causing other issues. On the other hand, making it too hard to breed will put off casual gamers who feel like they can’t enjoy the gameplay. With blockchain, there is only one chance to get it right. To this extent, we have been working with the Nestables Advisory Board to assess, develop and gain feedback on how the breeding mechanics in Nestables should work. We are certainly open to more feedback and ideas, you can find out more about this at the bottom of this article.
Breeding
Breeding will be a less used but important part of the gameplay. Players will be able to breed two Cubes together to create a baby Cube that reflects visual characteristics and traits from their parents. The outcome will be determined by the dominant / recessive genes that the parents have. Gameplay will be geared towards making it hard for the player to be able to successfully breed Cubes — we believe it is more prudent to have less Cubes in circulation than too many. Each Cube can breed a maximum of three times each. They can breed with the same Cube for those three times.
Successful breeding will depend upon achieving several different factors:
- Happiness of the Cube — Happiness levels must be above 90 for 24 hours
- Size of the Nest — Minimum Nest size requirement to house more than one Cube based on the number of base blocks / sections researched and unlocked
- Two week cool down between breeding
- There may be other factors that are introduced after a beta
The player will be required to achieve all of these requirements to breed.
Baby Cubes
The baby Cube should be the result of combining the physical characteristics and traits of the parents. The game will need to randomly assign a dominant or recessive factor to each and every part of the Cube (skin texture, colour, eyes, traits etc) so that the outcome is always random. If the user has not reached all of the requirements for breeding there should be a 60% chance that the trait levels received by the Cube will be lower than that of their parents. There will also be a % chance that the Cube will have a different trait or visual characteristics that neither parents have. This will allow for the introduction of new traits and visual characteristics into the gene pool.
Other Ideas We Are Considering Implementing
We would love feedback on these ideas in our Telegram!
Off-Chain Cubes
This is something we intended to add, but is not something that we are looking at for a beta. Users who download Nestables but do not have the Enjin Wallet installed will have the opportunity to play Nestables off the blockchain. If a cube is created off-chain, it can never be written onto the blockchain — the same applies for any off-spring of that Cube.
The intention is that each user who connects their Enjin Wallet when starting Nestables for the first time will get a free Cube on the blockchain. New users will get the option of three different Cubes with traits hidden, meaning they will chose a starting Cube on visual appearance only.
Researching to Unlock Breeding
Each time the user wishes to breed two Cubes, the user would have to research this task, putting a substantial and increasing time barrier in place for each breed.
Melting Rewards
Incentive for people to melt their Cubes in exchange for a reward. This could encourage users to reduce the number of Cubes written to the blockchain.
Ideas not being Considered — but were suggested!
Think one of these ideas should be considered? Let us know in our Telegram!
Forging Bonds
A requirement that the two parent Cubes have forged an item together with a writing fee to the blockchain (think a wedding ring). This would limit the number of players that could breed, resulting in less Cubes on the blockchain.
We are not fans of putting up a paywall for major game features at this stage. This wouldn’t benefit the community as a whole and could be a major roadblock to progress for many players.
Item Requirement
Similar to the idea above, this would require players to obtain a certain item, wearable or crafted food for so that the Cubes could breed.
The gameplay for Nestables as it currently stands is not based around the idea of collecting super rare items. It would require a bit of a re-think of the overall game mechanics for how something like this could be implemented. Doing a recipe would be the easiest option, as it fits better with the current gameplay.
Marketplace Research ‘Tokens’
Users would be able to research a special token / item to allow for breeding, which would be written to the blockchain and therefore, could be sold on the marketplace.
Once again, we think this will substantially benefit the players with money — or who can spend money on the game.
Baby Yoda Blessing
To breed, Cubes would require the blessing of Baby Yoda!
Disney employs expensive lawyers…
