More details on the Alpha Vials #1

While we're still preparing the opening of Alpha Vials, exact numbers for the odds and rarities, etc, I figured I'd go through some of the contents in a more detailed but unofficial post for those interested in finding out more.

We will post the official pull rates, odds, etc, before opening goes live on the main @holozing account, so take what is said here with a grain of salt as details may change after testing.

This post is also meant more as thoughts and decisions that went into the contents of the vials and potential speculation. Don't take it as investment advice or anything of that nature.

I've been buying up quite a lot of vials, I want many to hold for the future unopened but I also wanna increase my odds of getting some good starters for competitive PvP. I'm even considering starting my first powerdown on this account in years just to continuously purchase more vials all the while funding the project, but I'll see if I may do so since prices are kinda meh these days and I'd probably get a lot more vials per hive later once/hopefully the market turns greener. I know however that developing the game from different angles cost and at these prices that cost feels quite loaded so I'm willing to throw extra hive at it knowing it'll help the project out. Either way, I'm obviously biased so I don't recommend anyone to follow in my footsteps, but there's longterm value to be had here with the vials in my opinion hence my actions have been such and not altruistic alone.

Alright this'll be a long post so just a fair warning. :D

_{Using @sephiwolf's artwork as banner for this post, will send some beneficiary his way!}

The starters

As you probably know by now, the 4 starters will be limited to vials only. This means that the amount of vials sold before Beta begins/beta vials go out will be the limit of how many of these creatures will exist. Some may compare this to Splinterlands Alpha Packs and the rare creature and trainer cards that exist there from the alpha packs, however one thing to keep in mind is that in Holozing you won't have to "combine" cards to get the max stats out of them. People have also been saying that $20 seems a lot while ignoring the fact that with SPL you may need to combine a lot of cards to reach their full potential which may end up costing around the same amount. If you compare it to Gods Unchained, the big flaw they did there were that many of the rarer cards were quite limited and expensive to buy off of those that purchased/pulled them early when the userbase was still small. This lead to some of them being OP (overpowered) but only in the hands of a few so games kind of hit a wall for newcomers whenever they'd face someone with those alpha cards. How do we combat that system?

Well, for starters, our starters won't be overpowered in that sense to have unique abilities compared to what may exist in TCG's to make each card unique. It's not a great comparison in general to compare Holozing to TCG's, but since there's not much else to compare to at this time that's known to readers I figured I'd try.

Our balancing will be quite strict in attempting to make any and all creatures useable in competitive, but naturally based on rarity bracket and we will of course also welcome community feedback and allow testers to weigh in on balancing. What does this mean?

Let's take a couple creatures as examples, the electric-type starter, Zappit, in its evolved form is called Zappity and the electric-type evolved form of Woolio called Woolitz.

Before I go any further I need to remind people that finding the perfect balance in these games is not easy, some competitive games may struggle for years and there'll always be outliers, seasonal creatures that'll perform better based on recent changes in balance, or cause a certain healer items does something or cause another popular creature at the time gets a nerf, etc. While these are normal we will always attempt to balance things out in the long run and avoid purposely giving "creatures that we sell" an edge over "creatures anyone can capture".

So these two are both the 2nd evolved form of a former creature, what is going to set them apart?

For starters, Zappity's "focus" stats will be different, it'll have a base increased stats in agility and attack as it's a rabbit thus it is meant to be fast and it is meant to hit/kick somewhat hard with electric abilities making those attacks have a type attached to it as well to increase damage output towards types inferior to electricity while doing less on types that counter it.

While Zappity will almost always have higher agility and attack than Woolitz, Woolitz will still be able to stand its ground against it by having a higher Defense. As you can see balancing the game will come in different forms.

Here's a quick visual aid to maybe easier explain how these two creatures average stats may vary:

Rarity vs Rarity.
The min-max stats of creatures determine its rarity, a "green" rarity Zappity will have its stats at the lower spectrum of the possible stats. Let's assume at level 1, Zappit will have these base stats:

HP 80-120, this means that at the minimum any Zappit you encounter cannot have lower than 80 HP, if it has 80-86 HP its stat is classified as "green" rarity, aka quite common as the odds are weighted towards most creatures having lower stats while making those with higher stats rarer.

ATTACK 90-130, same here, based on where you land it determines its rarity, let's go with 115 for this example which would classify it as "purple/epic" rarity.

AGILITY 100-140, as you notice, its minimum AGI is a lot higher than its minimum HP and ATTACK, that's what sets Zappit apart from other creatures both of other types and electric ones. Let's say this ones agility is 139 which would be enough to classify it as "holo" rarity which is the highest in our game.

DEFENSE 60-80, as a rabbit and having high AGI and ATT it is only normal that its defense isn't going to be high, there needs to be a balance between the four stats to ensure one creature can't be too overpowered compared to others. But let's say this Zappit is rare and its DEF is 75 which would classify it as Orange/Legendary rarity.

To get the average rarity score for this Zappit, you'd have to count the average of the 4 stats' rarities it has, so you'd take green + purple + holo + orange and you'd probably get a solid purple on the verge of becoming legendary.

To get back to my point, as you can see "average rarity" wouldn't say much in fights, if this Zappit were to fight a Woolitz who is also purple/orange on average rarity, you still wouldn't know from where those rarities have come exactly. Is that Woolitz high on mainly defense? Or is it low Defense and also high for its kind on ATTACK which may not be good news for our Zappity who has low HP and DEF.

Without getting too much into the fights, such as attack ranges, moves that modify status and enemy creature stats, etc.

The important thing to note here is that from the vials and upon capture of creatures, the "rarity score" is different compared to its stats.

What this means is that if you capture a creature and it tells you its rarity is this and the exact rarity for each of the 4 stats, that will not change for you upon balancing.

We may for instance from the example above, change Zappit's lvl 1 minimum and maximum HP from 80-120 to 76-116 if we deem it to work out better in terms of balance, but your rarity color will remain the same as to not "punish" collectors and players from the outcome of balancing the game.

Now this circle would represent the general rarity weight on the creature's stats:

so as a rule of thumb, 50% odds of a stat being green, example HP. But as mentioned above, a green rarity HP on Zappity may be 80-86, but then on Woolitz green may represent 110-118 for instance as the stats are distributed differently but averaged out.

Okay I should get back to discussing vials and the creatures within before this post becomes too long.

As I may have mentioned, the alpha starters from the alpha vial will have slightly better odds for stats compared to alpha starters in future vials. While we won't make alpha starters fully limited, they'll have a much lower pull rate in beta and future vials as those will mostly have beta starters, however the odds for higher stats will be slightly higher coming from the alpha vials.

This means that in a way there's long term value to alpha vials for future re-sales, collectors coming into the game at later dates after beta vials are being sold or sold out will find themselves having very low odds of getting an alpha starter creature and instead of buying say 10 beta vials off the market to get that one missing Infurno which would be 2.5% odds if alpha starters have a 10% drop chance in beta vials compared to 25% odds from alpha vials along with slightly higher stats.

Now while this chart may seem "insane" in terms of rarities, keep in mind that we have a system in place where healers can train their creatures to raise their stats every level and potentially grow a rank in rarity if played correctly. We'll talk more about this in a future post, but I just want to make it clear that while getting an alpha starter with all 4 stats being legendary or holo rarity will seem at "astronomical" odds, it's that way by design. The truth is that even if you happen to get so lucky to pull a creature with epic average rarity, you stand a good chance of training it into legendary territory. Thus the "super rare" legendary/holo level 1 creatures will be something extremely rare mostly for vanity and collectors. So don't get too discouraged if you only pull creatures with a couple blue/epic stats as that'll already be quite good if you level it up the hard way.

Alright, a bit tired from writing and thinking for now so will leave the rest of items from the alpha vial for another day. Thanks for reading, keep in mind a lot of what's said here is not yet fully set in stone and may change if we deem it necessary.

PS! I should've re-read the post before posting, but the first part was written a few days ago before this "pump" in hive price today. 🤣