Steem Monsters Sunday!: First Week of Battles!

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A full week of battling is now complete and I can say it has been an experience that has surpassed my expectations. I felt like more than half my time on STEEM this week was related to @steemmonsters. The interesting fact was that it was not only by playing the game but also how this led to engagement outside of the game. The blockchain was full of posts and engagement related to the excitement of the game’s launch. Many needed advice and other offered advice while a huge community was discussing how fun and engaging the game actually is. There are now DApps being developed to support the @steemmonsters ecosystem itself! This was exactly what we wanted to see from the STEEM community as engagement is the key to creating value in the ecosystem.

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While these statistics seem low, consider them in the grand scheme of total transactions and user activity as reported by @arcange and you will see how the game now accounts for approximately 10% of the activity on the blockchain. This was also from only the first 24 hours of the games release last week. This activity is actually an increase which proves that it is not taking away from the other types of engagement in the ecosystem and I could potential argue that it is increasing overall engagement. For example, I follow over 100 accounts here on #STEEM and because of this game, I have battled some of those that I have been following for some time now and often read. It has even led to engagement on unrelated posts just to say, “hey, we saw each other on the battlefield! Good game!” I think this is the backbone of what #STEEM wants to accomplish across its ecosystem and @steemmonsters is a great example of what could be achieved with the technology available.

Immediately after the Discord channel announced the game being live, I got and played a couple of games. I was happy to learn that I immediately selected a great team to start off with given the 20 Mana Cap, what I called the “Death Squad.” I was not expected much from my results given the abysmal record I had in the beta seasons I participated in. However, having leveled up these cards prior to the battles gave me an advantage early on as some of the matchmaking favored me. I stopped numerous time in between battles as I encountered great variations in teams that I thought would make sense to try out as well. To my surprise, by early evening I had reached rank 23 on the leaderboard! However, that quickly went away as matchmaking became more balanced and I started to encounter tough teams and higher level monsters as well. However, I finished the first night at a respectable spot on the leaderboard:

Screenshot from Steem Monsters Website

Although the @steemmonsters team have already acknowledged the development of a mobile interface, I have to admit that it is the thing I most want as I could only read about the battles during the days as I was working and unable to play until I got home at night. Once home, I would continue to play off and on as another great feature of the game is how quick they are the fact that there are easy to start, pause, replay and stop if things are needing attention aside from the battle. As the week progressed, they started changing rules a bit by changing the Mana Caps. The first change took it to 17 then back up to 23 before ending at 19 the last time I played. This was pretty good as it added more depth to the game and the need to consider changing teams. The players fastest to adapt to the changes in Mana Cap early on, were rewarded with good wins to move higher on the Leaderboard.

My goal this first week was to really get acquainted to the mechanics of the game and learn abilities. While I feel I have learned a lot from that, I have also begun to learn the importance of card placement of a team. I continue to experiment but still have trouble getting on winning streaks with one team. However, I think this is good for the balance of the game which the developer team is closely looking at and making adjustments with that goal in sight. For this first season, @steemmonsters will reward booster packs based on the rankings on the leaderboard. I am striving to staying above the Gold division (1,900 points) in order to get 5 free booster packs. However, I am enjoying the game and will continue work my way along the ranks and have fun with the engagement it brings with the community.

Screenshot from Steem Monsters Website

So far I think that @steemmonsters has been able to provide a little bit of everything for the community as it is competitive and fun while also being engaging and quite profitable if you ask some accounts. Those who bought packs and individual cards early are being met with an increased demand for cards which have raised prices considerably this week. I am looking closely to buy some cards in order to not only complete my collection but also speculate on some lower value common cards as they may eventually come into even more demand as they become scarce, particularly the Alpha versions.

Although this may be temporary given the fact that the game will ultimately provide alternative ways to level up cards, cards in high demand due to their strength in the game will surely continue to benefit for demand. Also, very much like the cryptocurrency economy, the amount of cards available are limited so their scarcity is determined by how many are combined or not when packs are sold out like Alpha packs. It has only been a week of gameplay but I am more excited for what the future brings for both STEEM and @steemmonsters than I was weeks ago when it was still in development.

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