Since the beginning of the Beta release it's been our plan to allow players to combine Alpha and Beta cards of the same type. We went through a number of potential solutions at the time but couldn't find one that made sense and wasn't overly complicated to use and to implement.
As a result, we currently have players that are feeling some frustration about having partially-leveled Alpha edition cards and then having to start over with leveling up their Betas.
We've let the idea sit for a while and collected lots of great feedback from the community and have come up with a plan that we feel will address the majority of the concerns and frustrations without complicating things.
Converting Alpha Cards to Beta
In the near future we plan to allow players to convert their Alpha edition cards into Beta edition ones. We hope this will solve three problems which have been expressed by a number of players in the community:
- It can be frustrating for players with partially-leveled Alpha cards. The new cards they receive from packs cannot be used to level up their existing cards.
- Many times players accidentally purchase Alpha cards on the market instead of Beta and then are unable to combine them with their existing cards, which also leads to frustration.
- It's very cool that we're down to 40% of the alpha cards left uncombined, but the scarcity is leading to severe challenges leveling cards up completely. The scarcity helps the price, but it's also limiting utility.
Once Alpha cards can be converted to Beta cards, players experiencing issues #1 and #2 above can simply convert their cards and then combine them with their other Beta cards and continue to level them up like normal.
For the third issue, once conversion is available the Alpha edition cards should be worth at least 25% - 33% more than the equivalent Beta edition card simply because they provide that much more XP per card towards leveling.
Additionally, any cards that are converted will reduce the total pool of Alpha edition cards that exist, increasing the rarity and collectors value of the cards as well.
Conversion Mechanics
Each individual, uncombined card is worth a certain amount of XP when combined with other cards. Alpha cards are worth more XP than the equivalent Beta cards, so to ensure that the Alpha cards retain the same XP value after they are converted to Beta, they will be given the difference in XP between the two editions during the conversion process. Since you probably didn't follow that, here's an example:
An Alpha edition common card is worth 20 XP and a Beta edition common card is worth 15 XP. Therefore each Alpha edition common card will receive 5 XP when converted to a Beta edition card. This way whenever that card is combined with other Beta edition cards in the future, it will be worth the 15 XP that each Beta edition common card is worth, plus the 5 XP it received during conversion.
The end result is that the XP value of the Alpha edition cards is preserved when converting them to Beta edition, thereby providing increased value to the Alpha edition cards for leveling up.
Lastly, we will be recording and exposing via our APIs the amount of "Alpha XP" that has gone into any Beta edition cards. This will allow anyone to see if a particular Beta edition card is made up of one or more converted Alpha edition cards. That will make it possible for things like Alpha-only tournaments to also allow Beta edition cards that are made up of at least a certain percentage of converted Alpha edition cards. We're not saying that we will necessarily do that, just that it will be possible and that that information will be made readily available.
Looking Forward to the Future!
We hope you're enjoying the new game mechanics released earlier today. We're having a blast inching closer and closer to acheiving the vision of game and executing on the mission: bring more people into the Steem ecosystem and create more utility for the STEEM token!
Thanks for your support, your time, your patronage, and we can't wait to crushya out there... and now with the new changes we'll know it's you ahead of time!
Thank you for your continued support!
Steem Monsters Contact Info:
