Developer's Log

Concept of game flow and method of organic connection, and How to determine value in a Web3 game.

Hello Stella Fantasy Adventurers. This is Shinhee Lee, Chief Producer of Stella Fantasy.

In the previous Developer’s Log, I commented on ‘multiplayer content’ in Web3 games and how we plan to implement it in Stella Fantasy. Multiplayer is a vast and complicated concept, so in this Log I plan to talk about a more specific theme.

The topic of the second Developer’s Log is the basics of game flow and how we establish an organic connection between each game flow component. After that, I will touch on how we calculate the value of the outcome from the gameplay, and how that value transfers to Web3.

Basic Game Flow of Stella Fantasy

The basic game flow of Stella Fantasy is as follows:
(This is an excerpt from our Whitepaper)

Every content in Stella Fantasy is designed to have organic connections which complement each other.

1. Town Management

Players will earn various resources by tending their private lands called ‘Frontier Town’, which are essential for crafting NFTs, progressing through the main storyline, and preparing for combat in Abyss Rifts.

2. Combat Gameplay

Well-developed characters will perform better in Abyss Rifts and return valuable assets such as character NFTs, crafting materials and even SFTYs, Stella Fantasy’s governance tokens, as rewards. The combat gameplay in Abyss Rifts is the core element of Stella Fantasy’s circular ecosystem flow and its reward structure.

3. NFT Crafting

Resources yielded from private lands and rewards earned by clearing Abyss Rifts are consumed when crafting valuable NFTs. These NFTs can be traded through the Marketplace or allocated into the player’s team for character growth. Allocating NFTs into character growth will potentially unlock the player’s ability to challenge for more difficult game contents for even better rewards.

(I am pasting a simple explanation as well, for Adventurers who aren’t familiar with this diagram.)

To put it simply,

1. Gather resources through TOWN MANAGEMENT for other production activities.
2. Consume gathered resources to play various game content and strengthen the team with rewards earned from these content.
3. Utilize your strengthened team to proceed to various EARN activities such as tokens / NFT.
4. Repeat steps 1 to 2 to achieve more of step 3 than you would be able to normally.

The game flow is designed so that steps 1 to 4 are organically connected, in order for users to continuously enjoy the game.

How to organically connect the 3 components of game flow

As stated in the early part of the Whitepaper, the three components of game flow (which are Town Management, Combat Gameplay and ITEM Crafting) are designed to connect with each other organically.

So what does “organic connection” mean here? As the term suggests, it means that these elements are closely connected to each other and cannot be separated.

Then what should we do to achieve this type of module? Each component must greatly affect one another.
If the effects a component gives are one-sided and not reciprocated, then only one component will grow, causing the importance of other elements to shrink, which is unhealthy for the overall project.

In Stella Fantasy, these gameplay elements are intuitively connected.

1. Produce materials at regular intervals in TOWN MANAGEMENT
2. Proceed with Combat Gameplay through produced materials
3. Use rewards from Combat Gameplay to upgrade production facilities in TOWN MANAGEMENT and CRAFT ITEMS (requires certain amount of time)
4. Use ITEMS acquired from ITEM CRAFTING to strengthen team
5. Enjoy a higher level of Combat Gameplay with strengthened team
6. Repeat steps 1 to 5 to acquire better rewards

To summarize what goes on in game based on the simplified explanation above, it would be a cycle of steps 1 to 6. We designed the game flow so that all these steps occur naturally while playing the game. Adventurers can enjoy these three elements(Town Management, Combat Gameplay and ITEM Crafting) without too many complications.

Once you get to a certain point in Combat Gameplay, ITEM CRAFTING will be unlocked.

You can consume items acquired through Combat Gameplay to produce more materials via TOWN MANAGEMENT

Criteria for Value Calculation in WEB3 Games — The value of time —

We explained the three game flow components and how they are organically connected.

As mentioned briefly above, all these three components require consumption of time in the real world.

1. Time to produce materials and upgrade Town Management
2. Time for Combat Gameplay
3. Time for ITEM CRAFTING

This means that any Adventurer in Stella Fantasy who wishes to get results must put in their time.
The reason for this design is simple. There are Adventurers all over the world of various age groups, genders and ethnicities, but the one thing that everyone has in common is ‘time’.

The effort one puts into a game is different for every Adventurer. Some may calculate the exact time of production in TOWN MANAGEMENT to play according to the production cycle, and some may simply log in once a day.
The materials a user obtains will be different, and depending on the luck the outcome will be different as well. In a situation like this, if there is no standard to measure value, then there is no standard to rationally measure the value of what a user has earned.

This is why we made the 3 game flow elements to operate on the basis of time. Time is of equal value, of which anyone can consume fairly.

In the game, whichever resource you come by is transparently shown (for both TOWN MANAGEMENT and ITEM CRAFTING) so Adventurers may check the time that was consumed to gain a certain result. This structure will naturally cause the output to be valued on the basis of time.

Crafting this item requires materials and 10 minutes of time. This is how Stella Fantasy measures value. On a further note, I believe that this naturally links to ‘how one can convince others of the value of certain earn results’, which is a question all Web3 games must be able to answer.

Today, I have explained the purpose of our game flow as well as how we are measuring value as a Web3 game.

In the next Developer’s Log, we will examine the goal that we designed for the Adventurers to have when playing the game.