This post is meant to describe our work for the past 5 months and the high level ideas that underpin Mothora. We’re detailing the issues around the Play-To-Earn concept and how this game fits in a new generation of players.

TL;DR

Mothora is a web3 game of incentivized large-scale 3-way Faction battles in Unreal Engine 5.

It is set to tackle the main problems the Play-to-Earn (P2E) space faces, namely: the non-sustainability and entry barriers; the fact that P2E games are visually underwhelming and the opposite of fun; and also that players became reward mercenaries instead of playing for the joy of the game.

Our strategy to solve these issues is by creating a space where players succeed by:

• Thinking ahead and coordinating

• Cooperating with battle companions and guild members

• Understanding well the intricacies of the combat mechanics

The game follows a model that incentivises honing skills in battle and the employment of different world-level strategies to maximize the chances of succeeding and the potential for rewards. This has the additional benefit of boosting the social component of the game, the degree of interdependence of players and the sense of belonging to a real evolving community.

Our vision is to create an online space where people can socialize, have fun and immerse themselves while enjoying the simplicity of being rewarded.

On Play-To-Earn and why are we creating this

Since 2021 we have had many conversations about the Play-to-Earn (P2E) ecosystem and the chance to actually research and play this new wave of games. By knowing our competition, we could understand well what was working and what were the non-sustainable points about the ecosystem.

The opportunity to start Mothora came up when it wasn’t interesting to play these P2E games anymore considering the investment made. The bear market of 2022 put everything under a different perspective: if it’s no longer economically viable, why would players keep “playing” non-entertaining games?

Ultimately, these games proved what many feared: they are unsustainable in their current model, as they rely on a continuous upkeep of new players to sustain the value of rewards provided in-game. Not only that, but it quickly became apparent that grinding and repeating the same similar actions in hopes of receiving dwindling rewards is extremely non-appealing and the total opposite of fun. “Players” in the P2E arena became reward mercenaries instead of playing for the joy of the game. And it can be quickly agreed that this first breed of P2E games are visually underwhelming and the social component between players is disregarded, leading to low levels of immersion.

Our understanding is also that current P2E game development is almost entirely focused on the “earning money” aspect, how not to over-inflate the economy of the game and keep making it worthwhile as an investment.  We do understand the argument that there is a new segment of “players” who view these games purely as financial products and income potential and that it is possible to cater to them with a fine tuned economic model. However, we believe it is not possible to overcome the economic sustainability problem without first making these games appeal to people that actually want to play them for entertainment purposes and not purely as a way to get money.

This is why Mothora was created: because of the shared belief that immersive and fun AAA quality games are absent in the web3 landscape and that most gamers are missing out on rewards due to non-sustainability and entry barriers.

Enter Mothora

Mothora is a web3 game of persistent large-scale incentivised 3-way Faction (iFvFvF) battles in Unreal Engine 5. In the traditional gaming sense it can be regarded as an Online Role-Playing Game (RPG) with strong Player vs Player (PvP) emphasis and a real player-owned economy. It is set in a dystopian sci-fi future, in the aftermath of civilisational decay, where three factions struggle for survival.

The game intends to push the boundaries of Play to Earn and shift the emphasis to the Play aspect, the so-called Play & Earn. The focus is on creating an actual game that players enjoy for the sake of it. In Mothora, three factions compete for map dominance, enabling a plethora of tactical grand strategy decisions and micro duelling scenarios. These factions are themselves subDAOs that can both enact governance proposals for the overall Mothora DAO, as well as proposals that can influence how the faction manages itself. With this system, intense and compelling experiences can be enabled, as players coordinate within and outside the game.

Game Format

This map represents a rough idea of the possible macro strategy side of the game which would show several zones controlled by different factions. These zones contain Mothora’s $ESSENCE beacons of different sizes and formats, imbued with the planet’s energy (the game’s ERC20 token). Holding $ESSENCE beacons and pipelines between them is key. Over time, this awards controlling factions with important points that will be needed to determine winners and rewards.

These areas can become contested when they are subject to attack by players of opposing factions. The contested zones will be marked on the map, and players will be able to employ different strategies to capture these areas. Zones can be contested by one or two opposing factions at the same time. Alliance and Guild leaders will also be able to have special roles during a season to support strategies, like speaking in a dedicated battle channel that anyone can read and drawing movements in the map that players from the same side can read.

The end goal of a game’s season is for a faction to make their $ESSENCE staking system (A) the most efficient.

Play and Earn

$ESSENCE flows are a complex system regarded as a secondary aspect of playing the game. When designing and implementing it, two assumptions are made:

• That a player has a certain budget for gaming, which he uses to spend as he pleases where he is best entertained (like purchasing a new game in a store). In the case of Mothora, this budget could be used to purchase $ESSENCE;

• That the aforementioned system is implemented in such away that its complexity is abstracted away from the player

In an effort to provide high level clarity on the token flows, the following diagram can be analyzed:

Players are expected to perform a variety of activities in the game. These bring value back to the participant over time. Examples of these activities can be:

• Fighting in FvFvF battles

• Earning / finding materials

• Use materials and $ESSENCE to craft Artifact NFTs

• Use these Artifacts and $ESSENCE to craft:

  • Cosmetic NFT character skins and vehicles that can be taken to battle

  • Consumables that can augment the efficiency of the faction staking systems, for a limited amount of time

• Trade NFTs using $ESSENCE

• Spending $ESSENCE in in-game services, such as special roles or defect to opposing factions (with limited usage)

From the activities that constitute token sinks, $ESSENCE fees are obtained. In each of these expenditures, x% could be burned forever to support deflationary economics, with the remainder distributed to each factions’ staking system (A), available for those who are staked, and Mothora’s DAO, in the form of revenue.

Knowing the potential for any GameFi system to be gamed by bots and other software that can replicate actions, we made a careful assessment over the driving factors that determine players’ rewards. In a very simplified way, these rewards will be earned by those that socially contribute to the game and stake $ESSENCE in their respective faction over the course of a season. This is optional, as players are not required to stake to be able to enjoy the game and the entire battle system, which is purely skill based and not dependent on the token expenditure. But in every interaction with other players and in grand battles, players are measured for their degree of cooperation and social aspect. In abstract terms, these measures observe how important are players’ interactions in terms of supporting their teams, guild and faction objectives.

The overall idea is that the high degrees of social coordination and interdependence, that are needed in battle, will drive higher Player Performance. In the function represented in the diagram above, this is the factor with the highest weight to assess one’s rewards. At Mothora we theorize that selective incentivization of rewards reinforces players’ behaviour to spend more $ESSENCE and their own time having fun with friends.

And by calibrating rewards to the actual demand derived from all expenditures of $ESSENCE, rewards likely cannot be as high as to make one quit their job and play Mothora full time. But we believe they can be made appealing enough for players, while at the same time achieve sustainability of the system (more on this in a future article).

What gives us the edge?

At Mothora we want to conquer both web3 and traditional gamers right from the outset, with immersive visuals and graphics using Unreal Engine 5 and a compelling game mode, while having a game that’s economically incentivised and sustainable.

Just by looking at web3 games currently in development we haven’t yet seen any true innovation in the game modes being presented. Either they are less-than-innovative MMORPGs with an economic system on top, or they are multi-year sandbox universe simulators that will take a long time to complete.

Our edge against this is that we went through a long research phase in the project to understand the best possible game mode that works in conjunction with sustainable economic mechanics and is achievable within a reasonable timeframe. This research indicates that to best create a viable web3 game it is important to tie higher potential for rewards with the highest levels of player coordination. This means the focus needs to be on the social component of the game, the degree of interdependence of players and on providing them the sense of belonging to a real evolving community.

And this is exactly what we want to recreate in Mothora, with players having higher chances of success and reward by cooperating with their battle companions and faction members, by coordinating across time-zones and by understanding that organised they are much more powerful than alone. In the traditional gaming sense, the closest mode called to this is the so-called Realm vs Realm (RvR) game mode, popularised by games like Dark Age of Camelot, Planetside 2 and Guild Wars 2. What we want to do is to transform it into an incentivised large-scale Faction vs Faction vs Faction (iFvFvF) game mode, where battles with many players on the screen are possible in an ultra-modern game engine.

Compared to traditional gaming studios, Mothora’s team has a large accumulated knowledge in web3 and understands that a new generation of gamers is being created. In the future, gamers will no longer play games where they’re not monetarily incentivised or where they don’t have decision making power. Only an organisation with the right decentralised mindset will be able to uphold these characteristics and enable pipelines between players and developers to actively listen and implement people’s proposals. This is what the revolution of Game DAOs is about and Mothora is keen on being one.

And while we do believe that traditional gamers need more time to understand this new business model, we think that, as the complexity of DeFi systems get abstracted away, these groups of people eventually will be converted and will not look back from playing traditional games anymore. We intend to focus in the beginning in the web3 gamer target persona and slowly expand gamers as a whole, with proper onboarding.

Remember: our goal is to give players the tools to shape the game of their dreams and enable a plethora of unique experiences in their virtual social engagements. At the same time, make the economic interactions within the game as seamless as possible, while seeking to educate the players about the usefulness of DeFi aspects.

Who are we?

Our team has long-term experience in web3, while being well versed in 3D asset creation, Unreal Engine development and community management.

At Mothora, we all share a passion for gaming and realised that with our knowledge we can put the development priorities in the right way and achieve a true balance between an entertaining game and also one that offers the right incentives for those who pursue them.

We envision this game to be meaningful just by the features it provides, where players have the tools to shape their dreams and enable a set of unique experiences in their social engagements within the game. And especially one where people can immerse themselves just like the old MMORPG days, while making web3 economic interactions within the game as seamless as possible.

What has been accomplished so far

Although we are big proponents of Layer 2 scaling technology in Ethereum, particularly zk-rollups, we haven’t yet opted to a network of choice, preferring to make a careful decision later according to the needs of the game. Despite this, we already have a working demo with DeFi interactions right within Unreal Engine 5 deployed on Mumbai (Polygon testnet). This is the result of our work for the Polygon Buildit Hackathon 2022.

The video below contains a visual presentation of the demo, which does not reflect the current state of the prototype game:

What is part of this demo?

1 - Smart contracts

• MothoraGame.sol: Acts as the main contract with account definition and a registry of all the other contracts. Allows players to enter a faction and defect to other factions

• Arena.sol: Manages the start of a battle between players and its termination, rewarding users with a random number of Artifact NFTs that can be used to increase the efficiency of the Faction $ESSENCE Absorber

• Artifacts.sol: Manages the mint of new Artifacts as they are given out in rewards or potentially through crafting (not yet implemented).

• Cosmetics.sol: Manages the mint of new cosmetic skins, such as character skins.

• Essence.sol: The main currency in the game.

• EssenceAbsorber.sol: Users can stake both $ESSENCE and Artifacts in their absorbing system. Ultimately this is what the competition is about, to increase the Absorber efficiency for their own faction. Users can also unstake, calculate and claim rewards.

2 - Chainlink Implementation The game requires access to true randomness to be fair when distributing the Artifacts NFTs. The contracts in Polygon Mumbai are requesting random numbers from Chainlink.

3 - Unreal Engine environment - Built the 3D world where the player makes its in-game actions

4 - Unreal Engine multiplayer - Allows for multiple characters on the same server in real-time

5 - Unreal Engine <-> Web 3 Integration - Customized the connection between the Smart contracts and the Unreal Engine Environment that allows the player to trigger blockchain transactions from within the game window and sign them using WalletConnect.

What’s next

Right now we are taking our time to build a tight knit community around Mothora. We want everyone to understand the values of the game and the choices they can make to further its development. For this purpose, we are soon releasing challenges related to our world to facilitate the creation of a relationship between players and the game. These challenges include the completion of enigmas, following our socials and helping the project by sharing the word.

Great honours can come for those who dare… ⚔️

In parallel to this, we will continue working on our internal MVP, with strong emphasis on 3D Asset Creation and enhancing the set of smart contracts used in the PoC to display more features, interactions and the initial battle mechanic.

Internally, it is also our intention to keep researching on:

• Mothora’s crypto economics and what will give the game the sustainable edge

• Zero-Knowledge proofs for location within the game. In a iFvFvF grand-strategy game like Mothora it might be important to conceal certain players’ location due to the fog of war

• Understand the engineering efforts needed for enabling grand scale battles in an engine like Unreal Engine 5 (think beyond +100 players at the same time, visually). A rewrite of the source code of the engine is most likely a given at this point. We do enjoy Improbable’s technology though 👀

• The means to heavily limit the incentive to bot or cheat in the game

• What systems make sense to integrate in the game to connect to the “real” world and augment the experience even more

Keep Watching Us!

In the next few weeks and months, more details about our game mechanic, economics and larger roadmap will be available to everyone. We might be sharing more sneak peaks of the MVP in our socials, so pay attention 👀

Until then, we invite you to hone your skills in battle and employ different strategies to maximize rewards! If you’d like to get involved and join our community you are welcomed! Follow us on Twitter, join our Discord and visit our website and start to get onboarded.

For inquiries, please email at timepunk@mothora.xyz