Gran Saga: Unlimited — Sailing Towards the Second Test
Daniel, Head of Gran Saga: Unlimited Studio, shares his reflections on the 1st test and what to expect from the 2nd test!
Nice to meet you! I’m Daniel, Head of the Gran Saga: Unlimited studio at METAPIXEL. I’m glad to have this chance to share the thoughts and plans of the GSU team with the community through this article.
ICYMI: Tester Recruitment for the GSU 2nd Test is Open Now!
We Finally Meet Our Community Members
First of all, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to all the testers who spent their valuable time participating in the 1st Community Test, which took place from 3/24 to 3/27, for 72 action-packed hours.
I had an unforgettable experience spending 72 hours with around 500 testers, and a whole host of streamers. During the testing period, I constantly communicated with our fans and testers through Discord and Twitter and really felt the enthusiasm of the community.
After unveiling METAPIXEL and announcing Gran Saga: Unlimited at the end of last year, we received a lot of concerns and negative feedback, especially from the traditional gaming market.
We faced numerous challenges, such as the idea that GSU would just be the original Gran Saga plus token mining & swaps, without any new gaming features. But we never gave in: such challenges spurred our team to accelerate our development and prove them wrong.
Ultimately, I was deeply moved when I could finally show the world what our team has created through the 1st Community Test.
However, we feel a great deal of regret that we were unable to showcase more. From the beginning stages of development, we had the ambition to provide players with the most amazing experience possible. However, it resulted in many ideas being implemented and dropped during the development of GSU.
As a result, we ended up with experiences that were, in various ways, below the expected standard for many testers. We read through all the detailed and insightful feedback that you submitted and truly felt how much love and interest you have for GSU. Now, we have many thoughts on how we can return the favor to our community.
We will put aside the regrets of the first test and do our best to repay all your support by making an even better game. We cannot thank you enough, dear testers!
Direction of the 2nd Community Test
In the 2nd Community Test of Gran Saga: Unlimited, we would like to finally demonstrate our vision for what web3 gaming is.
Players will be able to preview and experience some of the features that will be implemented later in Gran Saga: Unlimited, detailed below.
Proof of Play
Testers will be able to experience a test version of Proof of Play during gameplay using Hash Dice, which has been developed by the Metapixel Tech team. Through the Explorer (similar to Etherscan or Aptos Explorer), testers can check the drop information of Epic/Unique grade items obtained in the game.
This is the direction we want to take: changing the existing method of processing important user data from a black box to a white box. Revealing how many valuable items exist within the game server and how many new ones are being obtained is an important part of creating an economy ruled by sound money, which we are aiming to build.
Not all in-game items will be dropped or obtained using the concept of PoP, but we’ll keep working on the game so that more items can be delivered to players using this concept.
SBT and the Expansion of Community
The Metapixel Tech team is currently developing SBT (Soul Bound Token), which will operate on Aptos.
Players who hold specific SBTs can acquire special titles in the game. Also, they can unlock special in-game features related to community play for a more enjoyable gaming experience.
We’ll keep implementing various functions and content that utilize SBT even after the 2nd Community Test and share SBT updates with our players.
More Testers
The stability of a macroeconomy in a game can only be achieved when there’s a sufficiently large number of participants.
The in-game trading market that testers were able to experience in the 1st Community Test will become more active and robust as more players participate and eventually stabilize the price of numerous game items. More supply and demand leads to a rapid circulation of economic factors and will form a constantly active economic system.
Therefore, in the next test, our team will take a keen interest in what the player-driven economy system will look like.
Clan System
Starting with the second test, players will be able to create clans in-game. Clan members will be able to display their clan tag on their characters and work together with other members in large-scale field battles.
Although many of you have asked in AMAs, the actual size limit of a clan is still undetermined until we go through enough tests, but we’re looking for a size that allows clan members to do more than just raid and PvP.
As we continue to test and refine the clan system, we plan to develop it in a way that creates a stronger community and gives players a sense of power, pride and belonging in the game.
And More…
Play Guides
We’ll improve the interface and develop features that more intuitively provide players with the information they need, including maps, minimaps, quest markers, location sharing, and more.
Dungeons
We’re adding dungeons with more challenging and rare rewards. We’ve seen how many players enjoy tackling dungeons in our first test, and we’re adding more challenging dungeons that will require more collaboration.
In-game balance
Class power balance, item balance, and drop balance, which have a large impact on the player-driven economy, will be more finely tuned than in our first test.
Emotes
We’re making Emote features more convenient and intuitive to use, so you can express yourself more freely and quickly bond with other players.
Miscellaneous improvements!
Based on your bug reports during the test, as well as the feedback we received in the survey, we’ll be making various improvements that are too numerous to list here, so the 2nd Test will be an even more enjoyable experience.
See you again soon in Ragnadea!
We’d like to thank all of our community members for their interest and love for METAPIXEL and GSU, and we look forward to seeing you all again in the second test!
Thank you!
APPLY NOW FOR THE 2ND TEST: https://metapixel.io/
Official Links
METAPIXEL Website: METAPIXEL: the Complete Gaming Metaverse
METAPIXEL Discord: discord.gg/metapixel
METAPIXEL Twitter: METAPIXEL (@Metapixel) / Twitter
METAPIXEL YouTube: METAPIXEL — YouTube
NPIXEL Website: 엔픽셀 — NPIXEL
