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Greetings, Mortals!
We are thrilled to introduce a partnership that is set to bring about a new state of balance for Gods Unchained. Today, we unveil the collaboration between Gods Unchained and Superpower, a balance testing consultancy that is dedicated to bringing fresh perspectives and a data-driven approach to ensure a balanced and captivating gaming experience.
Who is behind Superpower?
Superpower consists of a group of experienced players and content creators from Infinite Mana (8M), as well as people outside of 8M, and they are in the process of hiring even more. This group continually demonstrates their prowess and deep understanding of Gods Unchained and web3 gaming.
The balancing team will be a rotating roster of players including, among others: Clutch, FakeMews and VilliBesti.
You may know them as fellow veterans; consistently and tirelessly supporting Gods Unchained with their skills and content. The team is ready to take on the challenge of maintaining the game's balance, with all its complexities, with their ultimate aim being to improve Gods Unchained.
Why is GU partnering with Superpower?
Having experienced players deeply familiar with the game and involving non-GU players will allow holistic feedback that we can make adjustments to the game and fine-tune the balance. To enhance their balance testing efforts, Superpower has assembled a talented data and engineering team. Leveraging the power of comprehensive gameplay data analysis, they adopt a data-driven approach to share informed decisions.
This ensures they base their efforts on hard evidence and make a significant contribution to the overall improvement of Gods Unchained. Their function is to ensure the competitive integrity of the game, while GU will use other solutions for low-skill metagame analysis. They will give advice and feedback based on potential scenarios provided, but they won't have access to any final decisions from the team until the public does.
What will Superpower be doing?
The following is the scope of work as agreed between Gods Unchained and Superpower:
- Accessing GU’s testing realms and beta test oncoming content, including Sealed and our next expansion, codenamed ‘A1’ at this juncture
- They will have to perform specific tests on this content (e.g. playing this domain against another domain's top deck and recording the win percentage).
- Provide general opinions and feedback for this content
The cadence of balance playtesting will be as follows:
- They have an initial two-month period for onboarding and support, with a possible contract extension if they show results.
- 10 hours of balance playtesting per week, a weekly meeting, and a regular feedback cadence
- 4-6 protesters, 1-2 leads who will aggregate the bulk of the feedback
- Adding quantitative, technical insights to feedback
- 2-week sprints with a weekly meeting
The challenges of finding the right balance
Balancing is a complex task, involving finding the right balance between the power level of different card types, abilities and interactions:
- Balancing is an ongoing and continuous process that requires constantly reacting to changes in the game an the player base
- The difficulty of the design process increases when designing new mechanics and types of cards, without the context for them, making new cards more difficult to judge, especially when we’re constantly innovating
- A card’s power level goes through changes in a chaotic environment, with every little change having a ripple effect that shifts the balance of different cards up and down
- Once a card gets into the hands of players, it may turn out to be a lot stronger or conversely, weaker than originally intended, especially so for open-ended cards that create a lot of possibilities
- Every card’s power level varies depending on context, such as the format- a card could be very weak in a draft but strong when you can build your deck around them
Superpower will be subject to disclosure
Superpower will be subject to a similar ruleset that we have internally at Immutable, which is disclosure. We will perform regular audits to ensure compliance.
Superpower employees must not take any action using non-public information to trade, or cause or assist another person to trade Gods Unchained assets. Our internal disclosure requirements trigger at the following:
- Buying or selling any NFT on Immutable X for more than $1,000 USD;
- Trading volume (buy plus sell) or trading rewards earned in a specific ERC20 token developed by Immutable or one of its partners exceeds a multiple of $10,000 USD (i.e. $10k, $20k, $30k); or
- Trading volume (buy plus sell) of a collection on Immutable X exceeds a multiple of $10,000 USD
Noting these triggers, Superpower has added that they will disclose their trades even if they don’t exceed these disclosure requirements.
Finally, there will be a 2-week tournament embargo for Superpower at Immutable-sponsored tournaments after the release of a new set.
How can you contribute to balancing the game?
We value the opinions and experiences of all of our players, and Superpower invites you to lend them your voice, knowledge and experiences. Please visit this page if you want to join or contribute to Superpower and to balancing Gods Unchained!
In conclusion
The collaboration between Superpower and Gods Unchained is driven by a mutual dedication to balance and ensuring ongoing fun for the community. The team at Superpower will leave no stone unturned to provide the best feedback from the community's point of view.. They will only provide advice and feedback based on given potential scenarios, and the decisions still lie with GU.
