In 2017, when my company Emoji Games decided to jump into blockchain gaming, I had to find a good answer to justify my decision to drive my whole team into this unexplored new path, leaving my 15-year legacy in the traditional gaming industry behind. At that time, I found the statement below as the answer to the question, “Why blockchain gaming?’

“Digital gaming assets ownership and its transparent trading among P2P”

As of April 2022, we witnessed that the NFT gaming or Gamfi or blockchain Play2Earn gaming market (whatever you name it) has grown so much since last year. It tells me that my decision in 2017 was the right one.

But one still wonders -What makes this blockchain gaming/Play2Earn sustainable?

Bottom-line Issues for today’s Esports P2E NFT mobile gaming platform

Regardless of blockchain gaming or non-blockchain gaming, building a sustainable esports platform requires fair gaming rules and their enforcement to get credits from the users and to be able to give out fair prizes to winners. That means centralized governance is necessary to implement and enforce fair gaming rules.

Commonly, any player can use their most mean tactics in order to win the game and some prizes. The worst scenario happens when the developer manipulates the scores, minimizing the winning chance of organic players to maximize their profit.

In the blockchain gaming world, the consequences can be dire. We need to be alert to scammers all the time, and the governing body should keep on monitoring and coming up with the most up-to-date prevention measures to maintain the Esports platform sound and fair for everyone. The reality of today’s blockchain gaming is that players use these games as sources of income, so the developer shouldn’t be surprised that there are always users who won’t stop cheating or manipulating whenever any loophole is detected.

Often, a bigger issue from the developers’ side is that these games can easily turn into Ponzi scheme-like projects, especially since most gamers are focused on investing in assets and exploiting the game for financial purposes rather than enjoying the fun parts. Common business model of NFT P2E games today is “Pay to Win” so you are required to buy and invest in their NFT assets before even starting the game, whereas Pocket Arena’s play model is Free-To-Play-To-Earn.

Connecting Metamask wallets often work under PC. There are many restrictions and hurdles on mobile to connect your wallet whilst you are playing games. Still, the majority of players are not familiar with Metamask wallets. The first-time setting can be a bit scary, and the hacking threat always looms no matter what. Yet our statistics say that more than 70% of users play our Castle Defense on mobile.

Today, my question has got to the next level — How can one build a healthy and sustainable Web3 Esports mobile platform, solving all the bottom-line issues?

Is the P2E game really sustainable in the long run?

How can one make this Web3 gaming platform profitable for all stakeholders (the developer/investor/players)?

Is it really necessary to play games on-chain all the time?

How to push up players’ mining token’s price, preventing inflation — single tokenomics or dual tokenomics?

POC utility and burning mechanism

Here are the answers from my experiences (after trials and errors) with Pocket Arena.

Today Pocket Arena runs on a database and Hyperledger, which is a private blockchain. If a user wins enough XP by playing Castle Defense, the XP can be converted to POC, and POC can be cashed out; POC is the ERC20/BEP20 utility token of Pocket Arena.

There are upcoming major utilities of POC to be burned within this game, such as upgrading Castle, trading Castles, and Strategy trading. Also, all the NFTs in Castle Town (NFT Emoji Avatar, NFT deco items, NFT buildings, etc.) will be using POC for their trading. This Pocket Metaverse is another social interaction Metaverse where more POC burning mechanisms will be in place and the unique social values are added.

However, one can still wonder if these mentioned utilities are enough to prevent the inflation? Considering most players are dumping the mining token for their daily living, and soon there will be more and more players who want to play and mine on this platform which will cause more inflation?

Another huge utility of POC — NFT gaming assets on Ethereum side-chain

Instead of dual tokenomics, I decided single tokenomics but add more utility to POC to find this balance between players and investors.

True ownership of the gaming assets will be realized when the gaming assets can be transferred on-chain and tradable freely among Peer2Peer by decentralization. That is the reason the Pocket Arena team has been researching and developing the Ethereum side-chain; this ETH layer 2 network is temporarily named Falk, whilst current NFTs are under the Hyperledger Fabric.

Thus, POC will have another big utility for its network gas fee, and the Falk will also be used for other NFT video game assets that need the ETH side-chain for their NFTs in order to expand the ecosystem. Our Castle Defense and other PA games will be the first show cased-dapps to demonstrate this Falk Side-chain.

That’s the way that POC prices can be continuously pushed up and balanced out, preventing inflation by adding bigger utility-burning mechanisms for its network gas fee.

Pocket Arena functioning with 4 layers of tech stack

The Pocket Arena as Web3 Esports mobile gaming platform would have these 4 different tech layers as the diagram above, which can be a cumbersome structure for developers, but it is the most secure, low gas fee, and user-friendly architect structure for users. Users do not need to know what technologies are used underneath.

From users’ point of view, multi-chain support ( ETH and BSC), low gas fee & fast speed without compromising security would be the most important factors which Pocket Arena 4-layered tech stack will be covering up.

Big lesson for the security of Web3 gaming assets

The recent $600M hacking incident of Ronin Network gave us a big alarm and lesson on how to architect and maintain the blockchain games’ digital assets.

This costly lesson is that we should never compromise the security level for validator nodes for transaction speed, especially when you are depositing millions of public funds. Normally this kind of crypto deposit triggers a license in most developed countries.

The validator’s server location also matters. Hackers can easily target cloud servers. Using institutional-grade servers in different locations in high-security countries could be a good approach with the integration of cold wallet storage.

Our Pocket Arena HQ team is located in Switzerland. The most peace-of-mind approach would be to locate cold storage of crypto assets in Switzerland with a multi-signature process. In addition, we are in the process of applying for a licence of the wallet depository from an European Economic Area country to be prepared for the tightening of travel rules worldwide by FATF and to protect users from these kinds of hacking incidents.

On top of having the security measures and license in place, the blockchain tech stack of Pocket Arena with Ethereum side-chain FALK would provide a great value for gamers who still enjoy an easy and fun gaming experience, ensuring minimum gas fee, safe on-chain asset transfer and true ownerships.

We aim to release the Beta version of Falk in the 2022 summertime.

CEO, Hyong Kim

Castle Power-up Features

Castle Shield and the Castle HP are highly beneficial features of the game. When you use the Castle Shield feature, your Castle is surrounded by an energy shield that renders any attack towards it useless for 10 seconds. As for the Castle HP feature, as the name suggests, it restores the Castle health to full.

By using these features, one can stall an opponent’s attacks, recover from the damage, and plan and strategize accordingly in order to win.

Note: Instead of spending 2XP per feature, players will have to spend 6XP now.

Efficiently Revive Your Troop Using the Pause Button

Always prefer reviving your defenders rather than replacing them with new ones as reviving costs less e-coins. When it comes to reviving though, make use of the pause button before to buy more time in order to recover from the damages.

Fill out the e-Coin Pools

As you might be aware by now, e-coins are crucial in deploying troops. The more you have it, the better your defense will be as you will be earning 0.5 e-coins every 3 seconds. So wherever you see the spot to install an e-coin pool, do it; install them as early as possible.

Early Attack Indicators

After each wave, you will see a few attack indicators scattered over your screen. By tapping on one of them, you basically allow the next wave to begin before time. By doing so, you earn extra e-coins in the process.

Note: Keep in mind that if your troops are all defeated and your Castle XP fully depleted at the end of a wave, it is wise to recover before you tap the attack indicators.

Customize XP Sharing

In Contract settings, you can customize the XP sharing system in favor of the potential renters in order to get more applications for your castle. You can then choose the most qualified player to rent the castle.

Introduction

Castle Arena is our PVP version of Castle Defense where users battle out on the virtual map of Luzerne to acquire precious lands and ultimately claim Kingship. Like in any battle (or game) it’s important to win in order to proceed further. And in order to win the battles, strategies are very important. 

In Castle Arena, battles are won by attacking and defending. When it comes to attacking other land owners, we have created a section where users can fine-tune their attacks and direct troops to achieve the goal.

Why is an attack strategy important?

As highlighted earlier, strategies are important to win battles. A good, well-crafted strategy separates the player from the pack. In order to move across levels in Castle Arena, it’s important that the player plans their strategies well. This involves assembling troops and formulating attacks on various paths. We will talk about this later in the article. 

Picking your attack strategy

In order to get ready to attack, it’s required that the player has XP in the Arena Pool. Once you are on the land map of Castle Arena, you are free to choose your battles.

Clicking on any knight on the map will show a pop up where the player will be presented with 2 options, one to Scout and the other to plan the Attack.

In Castle Arena before planning an attack the player is given an option to Scout. Scouting allows the attacker to check the castle’s armoury and upgrades. Accordingly, the attacker can decide whether or not to go ahead with the attack. The figure below shows the scout feature.

Clicking on Attack will lead the player to the screen to Create An Attack. Here the player can check the entry fee required for the attack, the stage selection and strategy selection as shown in the figure below.

Stage Selection

A section where the player can select any stage options from Stage 1 to Stage 10. Each stage has 2 elements, the number of waves and the number of attack paths. As shown in the figure below, Stage 1 consists of 7 waves and 3 attack paths.

Once the player has selected the stage, they can proceed with selecting their attack strategy.

Quick Attack Strategy

The quick attack strategy helps the player to automatically go ahead with the default troops arrangements for the attack. After selecting Quick Attack Strategy, the player will be taken to the next screen where the default monsters for the mission will be displayed.

Clicking on Load will lead the player to the next screen where they can review the waves in the strategy. Clicking on Deploy activates the attack, where the opponent will have 12 hours to accept the player’s attack or lose the land.

New Strategy

A custom strategy can be created by selecting on New Strategy. In this type of strategy the player can deploy troops manually after selecting the stage of their choice. 

When you select New Strategy, you will be presented with the screen that shows different paths at the bottom and the wave number at the top. The number of paths and waves are different for each stage as mentioned earlier.

Let’s say you click on path 1, this is what will be displayed:

You can select your monsters for each wave.

What’s interesting is each attack wave has a minimum and maximum limit (top left) pertaining to the number of monsters one can deploy in that particular wave. 

Moreover, the next wave will always enable the player to deploy more monsters than the previous one. See pic below:

Now, compare the two pics. If you look closely, wave 4/7 has a minimum limit of 29 and a maximum limit of 58, compared to 8 and 16 in wave 1/7.

So accordingly, one can choose the horde of monsters for each path and wave, and build a decisive strategy.

Earning XP in Castle Arena

Castle Arena is set up in a free to play ecosystem. Being a classic tower defense game, it’s important to formulate effective battle strategies. Good strategies will help players to win and in return gain valuable XP. 

There are different types of XP generated in Castle Arena. We have introduced a new XP system and the detailed explanation can be found in our whitepaper here. 

Earning XP in Castle Arena follows a series of steps. It first starts with renting an NFT Castle to play Castle Defense. XP earned from each stage at Castle Arena is divided among the Castle and the Arena Pool as per the new XP Sharing system. Then with the help with the XP in the Arena Pool, the player can wage battles with other players and gain precious land as well as personal XP, which can be converted to bPOC. 

We will cover this topic of XP earning extensively in our next article and will update there. Stay tuned to our official TG and social channel to know more. 

Future developments for Attack Strategies

1. As we move forwards with Castle Arena, players will be able to save their attack strategies and reuse them for future attacks. 

2. Players will be able to save upto 200 attack strategies. But doing so various attack strategies, with a varied combination of troops, can be used for battles.  We will also be releasing new monster characters to join the troops.

3. Along with saving different strategies, players will also be able to sell their attack strategies in the near future. This means the attack strategy template will be traded in the Castle Market for POC.