Has Illuvium done enough for mass adoption?
Palworld has undoubtedly taken the World by Storm, does Illuvium have what it takes to be considered competitive in the current gaming landscape?
There has been a lot of discussion about Palworld being what Illuvium should have been striving for. Even though they are successful, Illuvium is building something far more long term, but its hard to say if that is the smart path forwards.
Here is what I will be covering in this newsletter:
Are Illuvium Arena rewards worth it?
Does Illuvium need to change drastically to become more fun?
How did Heroes of Mavia manage one million downloads?
The Illuvium Arena has let us down, how can we fix it?
We will cover all of that here and more so please keep reading. I am excited to share this journey with you.
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Do the Illuvium Arena rewards actually help?
The Illuvium DAO is spending about 12k every single week to try and stimulate the auto-battler, is this wasted? Is it even worth your time to play?
Although I am not sure the Autobattler was truly ready for such a rewards scheme, it is clear that in Web 3 right now there is an insane airdrop Meta. As long as the rewards distributions are contained and minimal, its not a major issue to distribute these tokens to the top performers in the Illuvium Arena.
However, is this helping out the Illuvium DAO long term? There are 2 key things that are currently being achieved from the rewards. A strong matchmaking ecosystem, far better than before the rewards were introduced, which I have personally experienced. It has also added more players in the game, which helps with a broader data set in the case of testing the game for balance and bugs.
I can definitely see that these things have occurred ever since the introduction of Arena rewards but it doesn’t seem to be fixing the fundamental issues with the Illuvium Arena gameplay loop. This is hard to prejudge given Aaron seems to have taken all the feedback onboard and is working on developing new game modes for the community to actively test out, which could prove difficult. If new game modes are added but don’t have the same rewards incentive then they won’t get the testing they require, hopefully this is avoided, but somebody is going to lose out.
As for the players of the Illuvium Arena, it is currently quite easy to earn rewards in the Illuvium Arena given you need to be in the top 1000 players and so many smurfs are running around. This would net you 0.08 ILV ($6) every single week that you play 15 Ranked battles, if you enjoy the game then it’s a no brainer. This is also enough for a brand new Standard D1sk for when Illuvium Beyond Wave 3 is live!
If you want to learn more details about getting involved, the rules and some strategies to easily get into the top 500 or even top 100 then you should check out this video:
The Illuvium Overworld is boring, but is Palworld actually better?
Palworld is a vastly different game to Illuvium and their $7m budget isn’t quite as low as it seems, Palworld is not and may never be built for Web 3.
I’ve seen an incredible amount of speculation come out regarding Web 3 elements coming to Palworld given Pocket Pair’s founder has built crypto projects in the past. What many don’t seem to realise is that Palworld has built themselves both a good AND bad base to build from when it comes to future updates. When you think about it, any PvP elements can be very difficult to integrate, cheating in the game is insanely easy and if they added NFTs it probably wouldn’t generate any extra revenue. Because of the way the worlds are built and the character progression does not convert between adventures, this game has been built with the design philosophy of a single-player game and thus would integrate poorly with Web 3 and PvP elements.
In short, Palworld will always struggle to integrate new Web 3 or PvP elements into their existing product, many Web 3 games need to build with these things in mind from day 1. For example if you built a PvP Arena for Palworld, nothing is stopping players from starting a new world, hacking in every Pal they need and then competing, which then devalues the time of their opponents in the PvP scenario. At least Pokemon makes a conceded effort to eliminate cheating as they update their rules in every new generation, PvP is always considered during the building process.
Illuvium however is being built with every single consideration possible. Interacting with Illuvials and capturing them is an integral part of the entire ecosystem that affects other players. Cheating is more difficult since everything is added to the Blockchain and if they need to change the way the Overworld plays so it is more engaging then the core long-term systems can remain quite easily. It’s a much slower process and costs a lot more, but if it can be done then Illuvium will eventually be objectively better than Palworld without a shadow of a doubt.
Heroes of Mavia is a good game and this is why
Everyone knows I can’t stand direct rip-offs/copies of other games and innovation is how you market a new title, however Heroes of Mavia is a part of the exception and I am here for it!
Lets address the Elephant in the room, Heroes of Mavia looks eerily similar to Clash of Clans in many ways, most notably in color palette, art style and marketing. But would you believe that’s a good thing? To be successful in the broad gaming market you need to innovate and create fresh and interesting gameplay loops, that leverage the inspiration of genres that work. The only type of game that is except from this is anything slow to play and/or Gacha based. Heroes of Mavia strikes both of them and achieves the right kind of NEW to the city builder genre.
Let me propose 2 alternate games being developed in Web 3 and the consumer that is interested in buying them. And before you think to yourself that earning or ownership is impactful, you cannot give away free money forever and if their loyalty is to ‘earning’ then its extremely flimsy.
Blankos block party - This is a game that has very similar themes to Fall Guys being a fun Battle Royale Race style game. In comparison, Blankos is extremely slow, very clunky and the levels are quite dull. There is absolutely no reason for someone who loves Fall Guys to give Blankos a try, there is NO HOOK! Not to mention they have all their player progress and friends on Fall Guys, so Blankos would have to be pretty amazing to make them give it a try.
Heroes of Mavia - This is a game that is very similar to Clash of Clans with its core themes It is missing Clan wars and the same level of overall depth given the max Town Hall level is much lower. However if someone were brand new to city builders and had to choose between one that’s newly released and one that’s been out for a long time, they will choose the new one for a very simple reason. They don’t feel like they have been left behind, they are starting fresh with everyone else. This works extremely well for anything Gacha style or any game that takes years to complete, the fresh option has a serious competitive advantage.
The downside to this is Mobile Gamers jump from game to game like its nothing, there are so many that once they finish one its onto the next. If too many players reach the ‘end zone’ of Mavia before the team updates the game, then it will crash and burn just like all the rest. Thankfully with over 1 million downloads and some great content creators supporting the project, it has a solid chance of becoming a Web 3 mainstay.
If you want to learn more about Heroes of Mavia then please check out my video below:
Also if you have not yet, please enter my creator code in the settings of the game when you get the chance, it supports me and helps me do all of this.
Creator Code: scoriox
I am not convinced the Illuvium Arena is fixable
The Illuvium Arena’s vendetta against RNG is one of its greatest selling points, unfortunately it also eliminates a great deal of excitement from the game, here is what I propose.