Metaboss is the world’s first team-based Idle MMO. This guide will help get you started during recruitment. I provide hints in bold if you just want to skip through.
Metaboss came out of a conversation between myself and Chris Chapman over a few drinks at a conference. Chris even wrote about it for posterity! I wanted a game which could only happen on blockchain and which was a true metaverse project. I blurted out that I wanted to have the biggest boss fight ever and in a way that benefited both gamers and developers! Chris, being the crazy fool that he is, duly obliged and went off and came up with a ridiculous concept, one so ridiculous that it might just work. Many months later, Blockade made it happen (thank you so much guys).
The history is super important because Metaboss comes from people who want to build community-lead and even community-owned games. For Metaboss to continue we need to find a way to make that happen. This is not Blockade’s game, it’s your game — but only if you want it to be. In the mean time we’re releasing an early version to gauge interest, test functionality, and inspire the NFT community.
We’re seeding the idea but we need YOU to make it the Biggest Boss Fight Ever!
Rant over with, let’s get to business. To play the game, sign up with your Ethereum account during the weekly Recruitment Phase, every Sunday to Wednesday. As long as you own one of our whitelisted NFTs, you can play the game for free!
Hint: Individual players are as important as whales. Get recruiting!
The supported NFTs in the guide will be updated shortly but include the following NFTs and more:
Hint: Only the first 75 of each NFT are counted.
Hint: NFT types are currently identical in Metaboss, i.e. one Axie is the same as another but Axies are different from Cryptokitties.
We look at what NFTs you own and give them skill ratings based on some not so secret sauce. We pick ratings mostly based on analysing their minting and account distribution and they will change over time. There are two teams in Metaboss, with one of them split into 3 factions. NFTs contribute differently to each team/faction.
Hint: You can view exact NFT ratings on each team’s recruit page.
How do you decide which team to join? Obviously join Skirge, being the big bad boss team and the one in which Baus plays. FLEC, the good guys, are split into Rogue Division, Sage Corps, and ARM&R factions. They have to co-operate as well as complete to win. Your main consideration is Rewards. The Recruitment Tracker, on the front page during recruitment, is key.
Hint: The more NFTs on a team, the lower the reward per NFT owned.
Skirge will typically have lower per NFT rewards but that’s because it’s much harder to be a winning team in FLEC. The good guys are both co-operating and competing with each other. There will be dissidents, spying and outright sabotage — we actively encourage all three! Each team/faction benefits most from different NFTs so that may affect your decision too, but all NFTs affect all teams/factions.
Hint: Skirge has much more chance to be the winning team but the rewards will be lower.
Hint: The more players on a team, the more powerful the team is but only if they are active during combat and co-ordinating with each other. Otherwise only their NFTs matter.
What are these Rewards? We have 3 types — FRAG, an in-game currency used to buy power-ups. You’ll start with up to 100 for free, one for each NFT you own, visible in your profile (click top right); CHERRY, an ERC20 token for which we’re arranging a range of exclusive NFTs on OpenSea and which may give you a future say in Metaboss, and Trophies (NFTs for the future).
Hint: Widely-distributed NFTs are more useful in Skirge. Specialised NFTs, with a smaller distribution tend to favour one of the FLEC factions (via m3mnoch).
How are Rewards handed out? The winning team gets 80–88% of the rewards and the next best team gets the remainder. We have a fixed amount of Cherry to give away, 10,000 for the first week, and unlimited FRAGs. Both are paid based on how many NFTs you contributed to your team.
Super Special Hint: FRAG rewards are based on the total (non handicapped) score the opposing team received in the episode. Put simply, you need to make the opposing team score as much as possible without them winning the episode overall! Do this by having secondary accounts on their team to promote/disrupt them and by playing Power Ups which benefit the opposition! We’ll try and make this more clear in the UX in future.
How does Combat work — how do I actually play? Check out my next post.
In the mean time, check out the official Metaboss guide and enter the ND Discord for the Metaboss channels.
What does the future hold? First and foremost, we’re focused on improving the UX. We have pages and pages of suggestions courtesy of our early testers and another of our collaborators, the Altitude team. We’ll be monitoring and adjusting balancing mechanisms, adding more NFTs, special episodes and rounds, perhaps Metaboss specific NFTs, support for leaders and followers, and there is even a draft design for DAOs as guilds. We also encourage third parties to build apps — I’m writing a War Room which shows all the results and stats — note it’s down right now as I’m busy writing these articles before updating it for the latest API!
Metaboss is an experiment in how to create a true Metaverse, one which is for everyone. I hope you join us for the adventure.
Read Part 2 — Metaboss Starter Guide: Combat
