Haunts as a model for user acquisition and the case for unlimited edition gotchis

Ideas
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In this post, I talk about the weaknesses of haunts to acquire new users, and a potential solution that could bring value to the whole aavegotchi ecosystem. This post is not a proposal, the goal is simply to start a discussion about the future of the game and how to reconcile accessibility and collectability in the game. I’ll make another post about the Gotchi Maall and the shop model overall.

  1. Why we need more users ?

I believe most of us will agree that we need to allow new users to come in and play. We will have to scale the number of portals with number of players somehow, because players need gotchis to play the game. Here are some of the key points for a higher number of players:

  • Increase demand for names
  • Additional demand for GHST and NFTs = number go up, which is our best marketing in crypto whether you like it or not.
  • Ability to populate the REALM parcels and make the metaverse lively, which drives network effect for the game, which is key for a MMO
  • Increased overall human and financial resources to develop the game
  1. Why is the haunt model terrible for acquiring new users

The problem is, the current haunt does not allow user acquisition to scale with demand from new users, for several reasons:

a) Haunts are terrible for onboarding because they are periodical, we cannot have onboarding closed for most of the days.
b) The use of limited NFTs for mass adoption is paradoxical. Why would we limit the number of new users ?
c) The scarcity vs accessibility dilemma. We all want new gotchis for our frens to join the game, but we also want our gotchis to remain valuable. If we increase the number of gotchis with the number of players, the average gotchi value will remain stable, so there is no point in holding gotchis. This solution goes against the collectability aspect of the game, which I believe is critical for the short and long term success of the game.

With our current model, it is very complicated to scale onboarding and more so to do so without risking devaluating existing gochis. There is a solution to tackle both this problems at once. We could introduce “unlimited edition” gotchis in the game, that are accessible and cheap. There are many questions on how to do that, such as : can the compete in rarity farming ? What kind of traits can they get ? How much would they cost etc. But let’s just focus on the big picture.

  1. Potential solution : a two tier system, limited and unlimited edition gochis.

Unlimited gotchis could be sold in the store, so we could onboard 24/7 an unlimited number of users. Having accessible and cheap gotchis create a new narrative for aavegotchi: a gamified digital piggy bank. This use case needs cheap gotchis because there is no point in saving money in an expensive gotchi you need to destroy to get the money back.
This use case has the ability to bring mainstream adoption long term because it’s easy to understand and useful for anyone: “a crypto tamagochi that gives better yields than your bank”.

I believe it is naïve to think that all our future users will engage with the rarity/kinship/experience farming element of the game. We need a simpler narrative to bring on a wider audience, and right now we don’t have any such narrative. I pitched aavegotchi to many of my crypto-beginner and no-coiner friends. Even gamers among them struggled to understand what the game is about, collectability aspect, rarity farming etc. However, when I tell them they could earn 10% apy on their USD by using a crypto tamagochi, they were all interested.

On a more speculative note, I believe that Aave will have mainstream adoption in the coming years, and aavehotchi could be a perfect feature for their future mobile app. Mobile apps always look for ways 1) increase time spent in app and 2) number of time user opens the app. Aavegotchis could be the best feature to create stickiness in the Aave app, therefore Aave users could fuel our game if we have a product that fits the Aave user type, people who just want to save money and earn yields.

Thanks for reading frens. Looking forward to your feedback on this idea.

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I agree with most of what you wrote. There should definitely be an “unlimited edition” of Gotchis / Portals to increase the number of active players. It didn’t hurt trading cards, it won’t hurt Aavegotchis. First editions will always retain their value. UNLESS the project gets abandoned. Nobody wants to play a multiplayer game that has barely any active players. The more players we can acquire, the better it will be for everyone, players and collectors alike. This is a relatively new project. People shouldn’t need to spend 500 USD just to play.

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I did say we need a fork for poor people this is what I was talking about

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Considering we can already stake our tokens and coins on Aave I agree there is no point in staking your money in the equivalent of a piggy bank made out of gold.
Also despite the entirety of the aavegotchi supposedly being sought after; mythical traits, ARS, domain names, type of collateral, rarity type for eyes, kinship, xp. People atm only care about the highest BRS for rarity farming GHST and we were lucky to make them even consider double mythical eyes expensive which atm are still heavily undervalued as is every gotchi that’s going to be sacrificed for XP purposes. People don’t even want to hear about buying names, they view it as completely useless, they view anything which doesn’t have to do with winning the first tournament as useless. This is the kind of community we spawned.

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You certainly point out an important observation. But isn’t the current undervaluation of these “markets” - ARS, names, … - a great opportunity for the point in time, when they will pop?
I’d consider “haunts for user acquisition” and “unlimited editions” as concepts very worth of thinking about and profitable in many ways … a la longue … the spawning is in fletchling-state, as the gotchi-verse expands, there will be plenty of space for many a species of concepts. Ceterum censeo: the Imperium will always strike back :slight_smile:

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I’m afraid I completely disagree! :sweat_smile: The only thing we all agree on is that more users are necessary, although we should consider that we don’t even have a game yet, this project it’s in a very early stage of development. Let’s not forget that. That said, I don’t think the haunt model is flawed at all.

a) Haunts might be periodical, but the baazaar is not! Anybody can go grab a gotchi anytime or a portal anytime, that’s what it is for. The problem is that now Haunt 1 owners know their gotchis are potentially very valuable, so they are not willing to sell at the price many new users are willing to buy. This is one of the reasons why a new haunt is necessary.

b) Also, any other “pet” game on the blockchain has a limited number of NFTs, there is nothing wrong with that. Supply eventually grows to meet demand.

c) This is definitely an issue, but I just see it differently. Most people think that if more gotchis are minted the value of their Haunt 1 gotchis will go down, so they are scared. And in the short term, the price of all gotchis will definitely be adjusted to something closer to the price of a portal at the time of a haunt, while still better gotchis will sell for more, cause some people might still prefer to play it safe. That would be very healthy for the ecosystem IMHO and boost user adoption. That said, Those who hold on to their Haunt 1 gotchis will probably sell it at 100x in the long term if, and only if, the game grows considerably. Again, for that, they need to understand that:

     1. A new haunt is necessary, 
     2. That would probably mean less sales 
     for them in the short term unless they 
     lower the price. 
     3. In the long term, their Haunt 1 gotchis 
     will gain value, even more so when more 
     Haunts happen.

I do agree that the whole rarity farming thing might be confusing for the average user, but I still don’t think we need a two tier system. Basically, once minigames and the realm are more developed, there would be plenty of options, like tournaments, trials, missions, crafting, etc. Things that the average gamer can understand and that can earn their Aavegotchis extra rewards. In any case, I think now everyone should just sit back and chill, cause again, the game is in very early stages. This is good for the sake of discussion, but if there are too many proposals and changes, development will slow down, and that won’t bring you any users even with the best model. Think that in the case of axie infinity, it has been years since they started developing the game, and it has been just recently that it has started booming. And just to be clear, although I think a new haunt is necessary, I’m not sure it should happen so soon, maybe I’d wait till minigames are out at least. My point: patience my frens! Just my 2 cents.

Best regards,

Nestor

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Wonderful topic.
Unlimited edition, and unlimited edition of portals too, could be with no public ID, gotchis with nonpublic IDs will be a “lite” version, can’t be sacrificed for exp, or\and will have other penalties too. This gotchis and portals are sold by the team only, thus gotchis and portals can be bought, but can’t be sold, only destroyed if gotchi, unopened portals have no point to be kept, because they are always would be in the maal selling by team as 100 ghst.
This piggybank gotchis is good idea (aka funny cute nice way to hold and earn the interest that’s better then your bank), and to get the money back (you can deposit, but not withdraw) need destroy only, just to withdraw. Wolud be a nice gotchi burning model.

This gotchis might be not able to contribute in rarity farmings.
But also, if we are trying to make a farmings as the first and only thing that drive the game, i think for the new players and the people who didn’t concentrate the value IN ONE BASKET(pump 1 gotchi as much as you can with anytign that is on the market to perform the best on the RF run), they will earn almost nothing, in the meanin that gotchi going to pay back for it self after a few years mb in the matter of ghst values…

I was thinking, what’s better? 1 op gotchi kekololotop dude, or a few gotchis with unique names(names… ooff…)
I was going insane, after understanding that You Actually Calling To the DEAD from the other side Through the Door\Portal…
Omg, justs think, you just catching the soul of someone you are willing to call… Omg it’s the most dope thing. And gotchis is ghosts, not snakes, ponys, cats and etc. It’s a ghosts.
Sadly i can’t slap one of my gotchis(yet), he deserve it.

Or that edition must to be stricted to some stable ghst price, but for market making nfts, oh… It’s much more difficult than dex trading, no visualization of trades, gotchis are not equal to each other, there is not only supply and demand drive the market, but also market it self, with the true price exloring, for the unique gotchis(tbh i think all of h1 gotchis worth a lot, not much attention here yet. Not much people understand what kind of things are hidden in the game, but everything has it time…)

p.s. Welcome to my AaveGotchi trello desk with the ideas that I came up with, or i got some from the other people ideas and rework it or represent my vision of it (if any ideas will be repeated on the desk)
Just because I’m learning about the game, reading the other people posts, looking for the troubles i face or the other people, and writing it down there :slight_smile:
You can find my topic in Ideas thread :see_no_evil:

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Totally agree with you my friend. But there is a solutions to fix it. Not in the first season but in the next.
Cuz “The first time, is the first time” or “Never try, never know”. So how can we know what’s good or what’s wrong without exp?
Yeah, it’s sucks to gain exp through your own difficult path, but it just a battle, not a war, and i think AaveGotchi is a gamechanger dApp in NFT+yeild+rpg+names, and I see the endless path for AaveGotchi as a Universe to go on hype around the world. Not this year, then in the future, but we must to find a scaling solution somehow + keep the value of h1 gotchis at least the same as now.
Need to prevent h2+> gotchis to affect h1 gotchis prices.
Community build the community, and it’s health depends on us, players, contributors, our voices and actions.
And we always can change the flow of the community emotions, thorough cooperation with them, listening to them, what they need, what they want.
Devs cane up with AaveGotchi not because they want to see the game THAT WAY and THAT’S IT, no.
I think devs did they best, but the way forward are considerable by the community, our voices, our votes, asks, wishes and etc.
It doesn’t mean that all of the stuff will get in for sure. I don’t know much about the game balances, but now there is only one balance that I see by now (cuz there is no actual game) the game ruled by the money (monopoly) as you are saing, gold rush for RF. BRS ARS from wearables, sucking all of the potions that were brought to the maal from baazaar with x10 price from the maal, lol.
Kinda DONATERS, multi-acc heaven for breeding xD Just for the rarity farming run.

I din’t know what to consider a right strategy when got in the game, but i knew, that top is unreachable, cuz i wasn’t here since summer. No bounties, no presales, no portals for 100, no drinks.
I’m just a newbie, that can see the gap straight away.
Yeah, there is no justcie in the world, and it’s my bad that i didn’t know about the game before, but is it right order of the things? Dunno.
I know that lot’s of people stop playing some games because of the lots of “Donated”(money for buying in game items) dudes are just 1shoting the others, just because they have that money.
Other way, we can make a plateau, for minings, each Plateau contain some number of mining shatfs, with the requirements and condition, the amount of ghst in the shaft are different, same as condition to enter the shaft. Varieties of conditions is endless, and it can scale the wearables sales, cuz shafts can require special items to get in there.

Plateaus are made for different gotchis tiers, like top 100 is tier 1, top 101-200 tier 2, 201-500 tier 3, 501-1500 tier 4, 1500> tier 5
Each Plateau have it’s bonding curve rewards, cuz on every tier we will have a healthy competiotion. Tier 1 will fight for the fist places, tier 2 will with for the chanse to get to tier 1, tier 3 will competity with eachother and try to move to the next tier, and etc.
This is a possible, probably fair option of rewards distribution + also implementing more engagement with the game
Each plateau have a conditions too, like a brs, or ars, or lvl, or kinship, to get in there, or plateau will check, what kind of tier you are, to let you have a look what’s on that plateau to mine, what kind of shafts, what kind of conditions, what kind of monsters in it(oh… battle system…?) to know, do i need to brigh the party to gain like 3500 RS in total to be able to clear the shaft and mine some ghsts there.

Roles could be implement too. Tank, DD, Support and Mage. Each of them can have a different task to do while having mining evens ongoing. Like we need to put the guard outside, to protect the mine against the trolls, that can attack the mine while gotchis are there, and in this case, gotchis might be locked there with a condition of having a penalties for the rewards, cuz your gotchis cant farm it chilly and calm while a bunch of trolls are crushing everything around, most of the gotchis are facing an attack and fighting, while a little of them keep digging.
That penalties goes straight to the dao treasury(cuz you didnt win the gamemasters quest to get rid of the trolls, so money goes to gm\community next wave of farming), cuz who’s fault that you didn’t get a tank to your party to get in this "mining shaft with a strange green mucosae on the ground(trolls goo)
And to bring the rewards back to normal, you need to seek asap for the defenders from outside, that need to bring the party to clean up the cave.
Here we are having a new doors opened - Mercenaries as a job(you will be paid in ghsts for cleaning up the cave\mine with a locked gotchis in there. Mercenary got paid, your rewards came back to normal, everyone happy.

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Hey! It‘s awesomelly cool, if we disagree! Different vantage points might help us manifest more easily the phenomena we all want to evoke.

I‘ll adress randomely some of the points plm made in the first post.

„necessity of more users“ - I consider it a „desireability“ not a necessity.

There are already some indications that these numbers are picking up.

Currently #9 in „Games“ on dappradar.com with 1.45k users – my estimate is, that by Season1-start we will have at least 3k. In the course of Season2 I can imagine Aavegotchi in the Top3.

OK, one could argue that adoption-numbers are not picking up fast enough.

In my view, the „fundamentals“ of aavegotchi are awesome.

The bottleneck is bridging to Matic(Polygon).

„haunts are terrible“ - I do not subscribe to that. May be they are sub-optimal and thus optimizable. But how exactly?

The core concept of opening a portal is like loosing ones virginity on Christmas Eve (what would I rather do first: tear open my presents or rather…).

„haunts are periodical“ - well, every market is.

As Nestor pointed out, Bazaar is open 24/7. As I see it, the market makers are doing a great job considering how thin and fresh the market is.

I use this site daily (Aave-some-work)
“juanscilingo.github.io/aavegotchi/”

confluence

confluence of prices, very interesting dynamic – I don‘t know why this reminds me of narrowing Bollinger Bands….

Although I do not deny the necessity of segregation and hierarchies in principle, I would vote against a definite „two-tier-system“.

Personally I do not get the notion, that „it is naïve to think that all our future users will engage with the rarity/kinship/experience farming element of the game“ - thats the core concept of the game.

If I would think this is naive…. Well…. Than I am voting for being naive! Because I am not able, to come up with a better game-design.

I would vote for some kind of a „temporary two-tier-system“ like FlameViper proposed – but depending on estimates of the technical feasibility/difficulty.

If it is the case that „Even gamers [among them] struggled to understand what the game is about „ - I certainly belong to that group, and I am loving it! - this is a good thing:
finally a game, where I have to put my shit together and cannot rely solely on my – albeit perfectly trained – trigger-finger.

Regarding the case for/against „unlimited edition gotchis“:

Tentatively - I consider Gotchis to be the ETH-layer of the Gotchi-Verse: this layer will be the seeding-ground for all kind of „unlimited stuff“.

Gotchis ARE diamonds, the sun is coming up, the facets are about to sparkle yet… it was the diamond-architecture that sold Aavegotchi for me.

P.S.: If I ever should propose… I will give her an Aavegotchi as proposal-present:
by her reaction I will know, if she is the right one for life
(and if I can trust her with my gotchis, I can trust her with my kids) :slight_smile:

Happy resurrection-days, frens!!

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I also like haunts, but not from an acquisition/ user onboarding point of view in the current state, because haunts are periodical and portals limited. Especially given my vision for the game, which is to go mainstream. Which good game can’t you start playing when you want ? Which game limits the number of players ? Try raising funds for a company that can only onboard a limited number of users only 1% of the time, you’ll have a hard time.

Also, modifying haunts to solve the problems above is difficult without threatening the collectability aspect of the game.

I think we agree on this, we don’t necessarily need more users. Again, I think it depends on what vision we have for the game. That could work if we stay a niche game with a small userbase, but even if this context it has flaws because rarity farming rewards come from the players spending. Do you think we can maintain the same level of spending for season 2, all other things being equal ? If we don’t, then the whole aavegotchi ecosystem could enter a devaluating loop and decrease interest for the game. Less rarity rewards → less demand for items → less spending → less rarity rewards.

News users will help with increasing the amount of GHST in rarity farming rewards and/or the value of the GHST token, in order to keep the rarity farming interesting in the long run.

I do believe that increasing the number of player is a necessity, given my vision of the game. Even in the context of a niche game, having few new users could be unhealthy.

That is true. Anyone can play, if they are willing to spend at least 300$. I simply don’t believe this makes sense given my points above. But then of course, I could be very wrong :).

I believe the rarity farming element of the game is great, I personnally like to gather and analyze data and forecast different scenario etc. However, I don’t think rarity farming is compelling enough to attract and retain many users.

I view the rarity farming as an end-game content, or at the end of the conversion funnel. "easy to learn and difficult to master” should be applied to aavegotchi as well. Right now, I feel we are missing the easy to learn part. A great end-game content is necessary for a good game, but it is not sufficient.

Typical players want to have fun, play with their friends, meet new people, and have a sense of progression. If they can earn money while doing so it is even better, but typical gamers don’t play to earn money.

Let me do a parallel with WoW. When you explain the game, you tell your friends it is an online game where you can play a mage or a warrior, explore a vast open world and improve your characters by doing epic quests and dungeons with your friends and players you meet along the journey.

You don’t say: “you can solo farm elites in dungeons with a mage frost and earn a lot of gold by selling rare loot and charge a fee per run to other players in exchange for the XP. Also, you can run multiple bots at once to farm valuable resources in the open world and make a lot of money on the auction house by manipulating scarcity of resources on the server."
Although this is super fun and what advanced players are doing, this is simply not why players started to play the game and doesn’t make sense for most players.

I believe the value of the game will come from it’s player base, like any good MMO. It’s the users that creates the content in an MMO, the game is merely a platform. I don’t believe that the rarity farming is enough on it’s own to create demand for items and interest for the game.
Having a very large user base will drive value of the rarity farming and make it sustainable in the long run, for that we need to bring cool gameplay/experience for a wide type of players.

That is very true, but I think this is temporary. Retail apps such as Aave could allow user to buy tokens on MATIC directly with their credit card. Also, Binance and other exchanges are already doing a good job educating people to use metamask, bridges etc. Plus they might also integrate with MATIC and allows their users to withdraw directly on MATIC.
It is not because there are difficulties now that we should not plan ahead. There was a time, not so long ago, where it was also very difficult to buy BTC, and here we are.

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The thing is, that we cannot bring more players by lowering the entries n prices for portal and gotchis, it will drop the whole economy on the lvl lower, and people who got godlike and stuff will suffer in short term.
I think by the long run.
We need more use cases, more stuff to do, more interactions, more way to enjoy and more ways to earn.
I’m thinking lately about the out-land activities design, prob crafting systems and battles, where i guess RS could be used as hp. The way of earning can be unharmful easy and fun, like you will earn something, like a buff, loot, or mb even ghsts, depends on quest, monster or place\task.
We need more game in the game, but to talk about the game right now is kinda difficult, cuz we dont know what devs have for us, and thinking this short term is not fully right thing.
Yeah, burning flame inside of proudness and other great feeling about the project is cool, but by this way you can possibly just fire your self accidently, cuz not everything, better to say not much, of the things is under the customer control, but since we have DAO, we can work as one, and go to the right flow.
I can bet, that we can find lot’s of opinions skills and ideas, if we will engage more, and also, some people are coming just because of our DAO and our community policy and atmosphere.
It’s difficult for the projects to gain active auditory, and keep em on heat, cuz there will be always some one who complain, and it need be tread right way to not make others think some wrong things.
So, we, as community, can continue to grow as an organism, keep brining more people to DAO, cuz by now, the game is 2 a day petting things, lol, but after 2 weeks will be fun, and also team have 2 announcements to come until the season so… :slight_smile:

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I like this part:
“When you explain the game, you tell your friends it is an online game where you can play a mage or a warrior, explore a vast open world and improve your characters by doing epic quests and dungeons with your friends and players you meet along the journey.”
That’s what i want from Aavegotchi, but not only naked money runs for money, nah, that race could be done in any other pools, with more profits.
We need a gameplay.
We need a platform for user, for players, for those, who going to grow apples in the garden, for those who will brew potions or any other role play actions.
I think we need a PlayerVsGM system, where players compete with the game, but not with each other, players that need to try to unite to gain more to win the game, will have more engagement with the game it self + more friendly atmosphere, but i think p2p is possible to make too.
It’s os early to think about aavegotchi future, it’s only 6 months old, and it’s NFT market, which is a baby yet too.
I’m more worried about the GHST price and it’s circulations, cuz if AaveGotchi will gain it’s traction, and we will have a nice user flow in haaunt 2, how will baazaar react on it, cuz ghst price will go up, and expansive Aavegotchis and portal will get even, more expensive, lol…

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So what happened to this and the Lil Aavegotchis idea? The Lil Aavegotchis one sounded interesting if you could pair up your gotchi as a sidekick to the main one to help the P2P player compete as opposed to keeping F2P and P2P separate.
We still need to combine one of these F2P ideas with a mass marketing through another more popular game or a popular app or physical products.
It was shown on the Kovan testnet that it didn’t matter that the gotchis were free, you still needed the popularity for people to care to give it a try.

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I agree with the notion of having an “entry level Gotchi” that can act as a demo-version with some limitations and it would motivate you to go full in ( = take part in a haaunt / get a gotchi from the baazaar).

I wouldn’t bash the Haaunts though. They are an epic event in the history of the realm and not the only way to get a Gotchi …
(BTW, I also got mine from an opened portal on the Baazaar, since I joined about a month after the actual launch naively thinking I could still get a portal for 100GHST :smiley: )

That being said, mass adoption could benefit from an entry level Gotchi - may it be completely F2P or at least available to buy for a symbolic price. There could be some “missions” for the Lil Gotchi that would explain the Aavegotchi gameplay basics / rules and monetary benefits.
E.g. you’d get a demo-gotchi for 10GHST, you could walk down a path of enlightenment, which would tell you your possible next steps at the end:

  • wait for the next Haaunt
  • take a look at the Baazaar
  • … whatever incentive to come back regularly and “earn a discount for a baazaar gotchi” or whatever … (what do you think @dark_pet ? )
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You sound really pompus saying it that way . I dont think its a fork for poor people as much as an affordable way for the mainstream to gain intrest in the Aavegotchi metaverse. I am not rich and I am not poor. However most people that have resposibility in life cant afford a 2000 USD digital ghost when they have children and rent too take care of. To say we want this game to go mainstream then make the benifit only for those that can afford too buy a Gotchi that has high brs or feed there Gotchi consumables that cost thousands of dollars is redundant at the least. I like this idea and I feel that it might be the only way to go mainstream if thats what we really want its time to start making some changes in that direction. I dont say alot on these forums because i get shotdown . I am a capitalist and feel that we get what we put into things and this game is no diffrent.

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Too say a fork for poor people its obviouse you were poor and crypto put a little money in your pocket and now you feel like your better than someone . I was born into money and i dont talk like that. you must dislike what you use to be.

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could allow for kyced users to go through a aagent mission list to learn about defi products,
in order to unlock a single gotchi.

  • fill out kyc
  • swap for ghst on quick
  • pool on quick
  • deposit in aave
  • borrow in aave
  • post in dao
  • buy a wearable from market bazzaar / nft from opensea
    this gets them a bit invested into ecosystem first and onto matic.

hate to see frens arguing over accessibility when the game has little gameplay and is still arguably in beta. lets get this ready for the world first before we worry about all the people that want a gotchi but cant afford one before we wreck everyone that has one.

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maybe it could be a ghst gotchi and you can only ever get one

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@CryptoGotchi

“It didn’t hurt trading cards, it won’t hurt Aavegotchis.”
I’ve quoted you IRL ser!

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@plm I am imagining different gotchi’s similar to banking account levels, i.e.
Free - for anyone to use and explore the Realm
Basic - interest earned when minimum amount of AAVE interest coins staked to the Gotch
Premium - from Haunts and BaZaars includes DAO participation, rarity farming, XP, Kinship

Wearables are available to all of them!

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