The Channeling Problem and a New Gotchiverse Structure: The Alchemica Resonator

Ideas
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With the recent discussions about channeling and how it should fit in the Gotchiverse, I’ve taken some ideas from the community and intend to put together a proposal should there be sufficient interest. Any feedback is welcome.

I would like to describe a new Gotchiverse structure called the Resonator.

If there’s a Resonator on a parcel, a channelor will have two options: take the Alchemica as a token, or channel it into the Resonator. When setting permissions on their parcel, the parcel owner can toggle if they want their cut of the Alchemica to go into the Resonator.

Resonators will have a power level that gradually increases up to a maximum determined by a logarithmic relationship to the amount of Alchemica stored. Achieving the higher power levels proportionately requires much more Alchemica than the lower levels. Note that in addition to storing the Alchemica, it will take time for the Resonator to build up to its potential.

At any time, a Resonator’s stored alchemica can be converted into regular alchemica, but not vice versa. The only way to build up your Resonator is through channeling. You also cannot withdraw piecemeal from your Resonator, you have to take it out all at once, resetting the Resonator’s accumulated power level to zero.

However, it will be possible to “crystallize” the Resonator’s accumulated power into an NFT wrapper, and then trade that Crystal on the Bazaar.

Some benefits of this design:

  • Because Resonators can only be fueled by channeling, Altaars could sustain an overall cut to emissions but still have a unique competitive metric that sets them apart from Haarvesters.

  • There is also a benefit to higher tier Altaars in that they can build up their Resonator much faster than lower tiers.

  • Because an Altaar can only feed 1 Resonator, there will be parity between all 3 sizes of parcel.

  • Parcel Boosts will grant a bonus to their Resonators, either in growth speed or power potential.

What will the Resonator do?

Short term
Resonators will serve as the Gotchiverse’s “lootbox” implementation. At random intervals, a Resonator will produce an “emanation”, which will follow the usual tiers of Common, Uncommon, Rare, Legendary, Mythical, and Godlike. The more powerful the Resonator, the more likely it is that it will produce a higher tier emanation.

The exact contents and parameters of the emanations will need to be worked out as a community. But I like this “lootbox” implementation because it does not require the actual purchase of lootboxes, there is only the opportunity and time cost of choosing to power up a parcel’s Resonator and waiting for it to spit out something good.

Medium term
Because the Resonator’s Alchemica can be crystallized and sold, the Crystal NFT becomes a new composable addition to the Gotchiverse. A logical application would be as a new piece of Aavegotchi equipment that scales in power according to the Crystal’s power level. The Crystal, while a powerful tool in its own right, could also in effect be a “rewards pool” from which small amounts of Alchemica are taken when an Aavegotchi is defeated in a duel or by a Liquidator.

Long term
The Crystal could be used as a removable “power source” in other Gotchiverse installations, or as a crafting material itself, either for installations or in the Forge. It could also be used as an item in 3rd party games developed in the future.

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This is brilliant. Can you make it be off chain until they empty it?

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I like the idea if this allows us to lower the alchemica output from channeling, at least until we have more gameplay, while also adding a new sink for channeled alchemica.

A questions I have is what the use would be for the emanations? I think that is the most important part before we can decide if it is viable.
We can not really give them a use yet for the gameplay as there is no gameplay yet and it would just give us lots of items once the gameplay does launch. It will just move the problem of inflation of alchemica to inflation of PVE and PVP items.

Is it something that can be integrated into the forge?

Maybe we can introduce a set of decorations for which you need ‘blueprints’, which are part of these emanations. After gaining the blueprint you can sell it on the bazaar or craft the recipe of the blueprint, then it dissapears. It might create a whole new category on the bazaar tho, so I am not sure how much extra dev time is needed for that.

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That is the big question. The lootbox idea has been kicked around for awhile, but as you’ve said it’s tough to introduce yet more items into the game before it’s ready to handle them. Forge items, where appropriate for its design, could be good additions. I think that blueprint idea is great as well. Since the lootbox aspect would be the first “use case” for the Resonator, it would be good to know what the community’s thoughts are about lootboxes in general and what they think should be in them. I’ll think about this more as well.

The other part of the lootbox puzzle is scaling, since the number of active Resonators would presumably continue to rise as the Gotchiverse expands, which means the global rate of emanation will naturally increase unless we adjust it later on.

I think part of it could be off-chain, it depends on the implementation. I think no matter what, there would still need to be a channeling transaction, to update the state of the parcel and Gotchi. The stored alchemica balance could be kept on-chain in the Resonator contract. But the power calculation could perhaps happen off-chain, with the Gotchiverse looking at your Resonator balance and channeling timestamps to figure out what your power level should be.

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Another idea that we could change, altho I know this might get backlash, is to change the kinship mechanic for this. Since kinship is tied to channeling rewards, we could turn that into a loop. Instead of petting a gotchi, part of the emanations can be kinship potions.
We would get rid of the entire petting system and instead: kinship increases channel rewards → channel rewards go into resonator → resonator gives kinship potion → increase channel reward.
This will give people a tradeoff between putting channel rewards into the resonator for longer term gains or cash out the alchemica.
At the same time you can also gain some rare loot with a lootbox mechanic, but the basic reward would be kinship.

If we are scared that since we keep feeding resonators, it would get out of hand and we get too many rewards, lets introduce a halvening of the rewards once a certain threshold of alchemica has been fed to resonators. Everyone would get only half the rewards, making them more scarce and more valuable as more alchemica is put into the resonators.
This would also increase the value of kinship since potions drop less and less, so higher kinship gotchi become more rare as time goes on, rewarding long term holders who are actively feeding into the resonator.

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