Ever wanted to own a Mythic card? Then the new prize draws are the place for you. Starting with Season 1: Champions Rise, we’re making important distinctions between prize draws and Play to Earn to get the best out of both going ahead.
UPDATED: Thursday September 3rd (PDT) to coincide with launch information.
Trial of the Gods, the new expansion, is on its way – and with it comes new treasures to be unlocked, earned and won. One of the key avenues for this going ahead will be prize draws, giving mortals a chance to win high-tier Core cards and the new Mythic!
The luck of the prize draw
Prize draws are a way to get a little bit extra from your Trial of the Gods Card Packs. There will be two draws happening around the trial of the Gods sales period:
Shadow Draw: The first of two draws and one that will occur during the Trial of the Gods sales period. This draw will give mortals the chance to win one of 300 Shadow Core cards, as well as Trial of the Gods trinkets that are exclusive to the prize draws.
Mythic Draw: The second of the two draws and the main event! This is where the Citadel of the Gods Mythic card will be up for grabs as well as the last chance to win the limited edition trinkets mentioned above.
All prizes will now have specific deliverable dates, meaning you won’t have to wait so long to receive the tradable version of your reward as was the case with Genesis rewards.
Obtaining draw tickets
Opening a Trial of the Gods Card Pack will yield Trial of the Gods Draw Tickets. These are items that will automatically enter ticket owners into both the Shadow & Mythic Draws. Win in the Shadow Draw? And the same ticket will still be valid for the Mythic Draw. Win in both draws with the same ticket? By Thaeriel! Game director Chris Clay will eat his hat.*
The amount of tickets gained will vary depending on the type of pack being opened, as seen in the graph below (all prices are USD):
Click to enlarge
One of the above percentages will be activated when opening a pack.
- Example 1: When opening a Rare pack you will have 85% chance to receive 50 tickets, 12.5% chance to receive 150 tickets and 2.5% chance to receive 500 tickets.
- Example 2: When opening an Epic pack you will have 85% chance to receive 150 tickets, 12.5% chance to receive 500 tickets and 2.5% chance to receive 1,000 tickets.
Trial of the Gods Card Packs can either be bought from the Trial of the Gods website once Season 1 goes live, or earned as a Weekend Ranked play reward.
All draw tickets will be minted on a weekly cadence and (after minting) will exist as ERC-20 tokens. This means you’ll be able to trade tickets on third party marketplaces that you’ve received from card packs you’ve either purchased or received by participating in Weekend Ranked. If the gas price is too high, minting may be delayed until the price drops.
To ensure all remaining tickets are minted before both the Shadow and Mythic Draws, a special minting process will take place one day before each drawing commences.
Draw tickets and the draws themselves will only be available to regions and jurisdictions that allow promotions based on chance, which means regions such as Australia will still be able to purchase and unlock packs, but won’t be able to use the tickets found inside.
*Clay is... uh.. known for his cake hats
Why the change from the Genesis Raffle?
The Genesis Raffle was our first iteration of play-to-earn. It ruled, but was inherently flawed.
The biggest success from this format was that it showed play-to-earn worked. Mortals were earning large chunks of Ether by simply playing the game. This was a huge victory for everyone, as creating a game that gives back to its players is the foundation upon which Gods Unchained is built.
The downside is it wasn’t sustainable. Providing tickets for every game played meant we were minting tokens (manually) at the rate the Animal Bond god power deals out creatures. We were also covering the gas costs, which only kept growing. To continue on this trajectory would mean the cost alone would have run us into the ground.
On top of this, the Genesis Raffle itself was fraught with… wait, one hot minute, what’s the word? Ah, yes… issues. The largest of these is that Tethys, the Mythic grand prize, has potentially been lost to the void as it went to a mortal who had played a little and then sauntered off into that sweet goodnight to do other things.
We deliberated on what to do in this situation, but came to a resolution that true ownership is true ownership, even if that means the owner doesn’t understand the power of what they currently have/that they even have it in the first place. Could Tethys triumphantly resurface in the future? We hope so! But it is looking increasingly unlikely.
Tethys, the lost Mythic
The Good, The Bad and the Pivot
While we understand the Genesis Raffle was a big money maker for some of the GU community, its sheer expense and the manual labor required came at the cost of maintaining a functional game (and keeping a roof above our heads).
That said, we still believe a raffle-style event is the fairest way to give out a Mythic, as simply hiding it in a card pack 1. means it could be lost in the void and 2. reduces community involvement in the reveal. We also learned that the previous method of raffle (ie: mortals earning tickets through play but not opting in for the raffle) meant the coveted prizes could go to mortals who aren't invested in, and would never benefit from, their reward.
With such important concepts on the line, we began looking towards different tactics to ensure Gods Unchained could have the best of both worlds. The raffle evolved into prize draws, and play-to-earn? That’s walking a new path.
Building for the future
As Athena was born from the head of Zeus, Flux and Fusing sprung to life as a brainchild of the raffle – being the new face of play-to-earn. It’s also a format that allows more regions and jurisdictions of the world to take part, which was not the case with the previous raffle iteration.
It’s only in its infancy in its current form, but once higher-tier fusing is unlocked and Immutable X takes away the restriction of gas prices (which cause fusing to be unavailable from time to time) then Flux and Fusing will greatly improve.
The next iteration of this is ‘Evolution’, where a series of selected cards (for example: 3 Switch Duelists and 2 Infernos) can be permanently destroyed to unlock powerful new cards, ones that are only obtainable by destroying this particular set of cards.
In addition, we intend to reintroduce a play-to-earn resource similar to Genesis Tokens. One key feature of those tokens was that they were earned by playing the game, which can still be achieved through Weekend Ranked rewards with the draw ticket system this season, but has taken a backseat when compared to the Genesis raffle system. We want to bring that back for Season 2, but we aren’t able to share much about that just quite yet.
As mentioned above, Genesis Tokens were fantastic but unsustainable. When Immutable X arrives, we’ll have much more flexibility about how we reward our players, and how those rewards might be put onto the blockchain and/or traded and sold between players. We currently award players Flux for fusing cards, but Flux cannot be put onto the blockchain. This new, other system is being designed from the ground-up with that sort of player action as its focus.
We will also improve our XP system. Presently, you gain XP for playing the game, and every time you level you get a Core pack. In the future, we look to include XP gains for doing all sorts of things, with a wider variety of rewards. Sometimes it’ll be a pack, sometimes it will be a card back or a trinket, sometimes you’ll earn our new resource. We intend to develop quests and group objectives, and possibly season passes to earn rewards. And most of this will interact with our future store update as part of Immutable X.
The next thing to be implemented though will be during the upcoming season, where we’re introducing a timed-challenge that will encourage newcomers to get in the game and dip their toes in the world of cryptocurrency, while also offering rewards to mortals who have already been doing so. Watch this space.
Trial of the Gods and beyond!
After the Genesis sales period concluded, we spent months working on our new cards, our updated game client and launcher, and the product overall. We knew that our next release would need to live up to the standards we set with Genesis, and we believe that Trial of the Gods does just that. We also know that doing things right takes time, and we are willing to take the time to get it right.
Season 1: Champions Rise begins very soon, and that would not have been possible without your help. We are excited about the new cards and our upcoming prize draws, and cannot wait to launch the next part of our play-to-earn economy in the future.
See more:
- Collection Titles Update
- Weekend Ranked Constructed: May 2020 Update
- Trial of the Gods Expansion Card List
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