Hi,
I like the idea behind this game, just a few things I would personally change:
1. Don`t make it a pay-to-win game by offering unlimited exchange of BTC to in-game resources. This breaks all fairness and balance.
2. If you have to have Bitcoin-based bonuses, make them in a way that doesn't break balancing right away. For example, you might offer temporary boosts like double mining time without captcha, some option like a queue for upgrades, but don't make it straight pay-to-win.
3. I would personally make this game about mining cryptocurrencies, so for example, instead of starting with a goldmine and 1 worker, how about starting with 1 CPU-Miner (or a certain amount of hashpower), which you can upgrade in hashpower until you reach GPU-mining, and after upgrading that for a while you reach ASIC gen 1, and so on. In order to avoid confusion, you could create a made-up cryptocurrency like "BitMineCoin". Here is an example:
-)Player starts with 1 CPU-Miner and 10KH/s hashpower giving him 10 BitMineCoin per Captcha (or every 5 minutes). The basic price structure can remain the same, only now instead of upgrading the pickaxe, he is overclocking the cpu. And instead of buying further workers or gold ores, you can buy further PCs (later GPUs and ASICs) and f.e. solar panels. One can easily think of a replacement for the other resources as well, making coins like "BitMineScrypt" and "BitMineX13" instead of Coal and Iron.
I generally like the idea, but I think if you make it about cryptomining, more people would get an idea about the topic in general and it would just fit the theme perfectly.
If you like, you can contact me and we can discuss this further, happy to help.
Greets
Strainer
Hi Strainer and thank you very much for the attention towards this game. I have read through your suggestions.
First I'd like to say. It was actually a close call between making the game about cryptocurrency mining and resource mining. I ended up with resource mining mainly for 2 reasons. The first reason is based on what you also mention - I don't want people to mistakenly think that they are actually mining with real hardware. The second reason is that there are a ton of new cloud mining services launching every day and I do not want my game to disappear amongs these. Besides, it is slowly getting a bad reputation with the ponzies disguised as cloud mining services without any hardware, and I did not this negative reputation reflect on the game.
Regarding paid to win. The game was not intended in such a way. The game is intended to be a faucet and investing BTC should simply allow you to get upgrades faster and earn more bitcoins that way. However, during the alpha stage there is no faucet functionality other than the prizes for top 10 players. I am however close to disabling this option to deposit in the beta stage - or at least find an alternative series of reasons for people to deposit. We will see how it goes when we get there. It is however too late now based on the fact that 3 people already made deposits to enhance their odds of winning the prizes.
Your 2nd suggestion is very interesting. Giving some sort of boosts will be an excellent reason for making deposits and I will consider this as an option and try to expand on this. The game was never meant to be pay to win - I will balance out the prices for the next testing phase but leave it as it is during the alpha stage. That is why I run these tests. To see if what I have so far makes sense and to get as much feedback as possible.
I would love to hear more ideas coming from you. You already caught my attention!
