Accessibility is now one of the most significant concerns with axie infinity nft, as well as many other NFT games. Unlike a typical mobile game that can be downloaded and played immediately, Axie Infinity features a lot of stumbling barriers.
To begin with, neither Google Play nor Apple’s App Store have the app. While Android users may sideload the game, iOS users must get it via the Testflight open beta program. The beta, however, is presently filled at the time of writing.
Sky Mavis’s Mavis Hub, however, has builds accessible for Mac OS and Windows.
The second stumbling hurdle is that in order to play axie infinity nft, players must have a starting team of at least three Axies, which must be kept in the player’s Ronin Wallet (the wallet app created by Sky Mavis). As a result, the user must first install Ronin and create an account before linking it to the game.
After you’ve set up your wallet, you have two choices for getting this initial team: buy them or apply for a scholarship. Let’s start with the simplest method of buying.
The axie infinity nft marketplace is where you may buy axies. However, without playing the game, it’s difficult to tell which axes are excellent or valuable, since each has its own set of numbers and powers. This is exacerbated by the fact that axies are excessively costly, beginning at about 0.05 ETH (around $170 USD) for zero breed instances at the time of writing. To play, players will need at least three axes.
The second stumbling hurdle is that axie infinity nft needs wETH, or ‘wrapped Ethereum,’ an ERC20 compliant token that, unlike conventional ETH, may be swapped for dapp (decentralized) tokens.
Because Sky Mavis’s Ronin Wallet utilizes an external exchange source, acquiring wETH is quite simple.
However, in many countries, personal verification is required as part of the know your customer law, which adds an extra step. Adding to the difficulty, despite being licensed by the Financial Services Authority, Department of Play’s UK bank has secretly stopped any card transactions to Ronin’s exchange Ramp.
To summarize, playing Axie Infinity necessitates that a completely fresh player:
1. Download and install the axie infinity nft client (or side load it).
2. Open a web browser and download and install Ronin Wallet.
3. Create a Ronin Wallet account.
4. Create an account on Axie Marketplace.
5. Connect your Ronin Wallet to your marketplace account and vice versa.
6. Add wETH to the Ronin Wallet (this may require ID verification and even swapping payment methods).
7. Use the axie infinity nft marketplace to find and purchase three beginning axies, then sync the wallet with the game.
In comparison to even the most hardcore of games, this is a significant price and time investment up front. Unsurprisingly, a huge number of participants are abandoning the process: Axie Infinity’s official account said on August 6, 2021 that it had hit 1 million DAU, but subsequently clarified that axie ownership is still below 1 million, with many individuals installing the app without possessing axies.
The magnitude of the reduction is unclear, but we wouldn’t be shocked if the conversion rate from landing page to playing with owned axies is in the single digits.
Better crypto integration, free proxies, and officialized scholarships are the solutions.
While there are certain immovables in the nature of crypto technology, there are several huge enhancements that might be done to the game’s onboarding funnel. To begin, users should be able to download and play with some sandboxed, off-chain, and entirely free axies (similar to Sky Mavis’ planned soulbound axies). These free axies, rewardless PvP, and some connected free PvE campaigns would enable players to gain a feel for the game and choose which axes are worth investing in, allowing them to avoid the large initial outlay.
Following that, integrating the Ronin Wallet and the axie infinity nft marketplace directly into the game, even if only as webviews, would eliminate the need for players to switch between browser tabs and streamline and tutorialize the entire process of setting up a wallet, marketplace account, and purchasing wETH. Making an in-game flow that isn’t reliant on external tutorials or websites. With NBA Top Shot, Dapper excels at providing a simple onboarding experience.
It’s worth emphasizing that there’s a one-of-a-kind way to avoid a lot of the onboarding costs and headaches: scholarships.
Scholarships are an emergent behavior in the game in which a manager, generally an older player, lends axies to players in exchange for a share of the acquired SLP (e.g. 50/50). The scholarship may sometimes extend beyond simple loaning to a mentorship relationship between the scholar and the management, in which the players are taught how to effectively farm SLP via optimum performance.
Scholarships, on the other hand, are not an official part of the game, but rather an ad hoc arrangement, thus discovering and obtaining one needs some legwork. Introducing and formalizing this twinking behavior into a game, maybe as part of a clan-like feature, would greatly simplify the process of establishing and maintaining scholarship connections for both sides.
These solutions would allow for a much better onboarding process in the end. Players may join without a wallet by using free soulbound Axies, then join a clan scholarship in-game, which prompts them to create a wallet and start earning SLP. Clans would also offer up new possibilities for forming in-game esport-like teams, which could be enhanced with different layered features.
Matchmaking
Axie Infinity aspires to be an e-sport, hence PvP combat is a big part of the game. These one-on-one games are set up according to a tight Elo rating system. The complexity of the opponent served, as well as the quantity of SLP a player may earn, is determined by his or her rank.
Elo rating methods, on the other hand, are problematic, as we outlined in our matching guide. Elo systems, which were originally developed for chess, alter each player’s rating after each match depending on the match’s result, with points moving between participants.
The reason this is an issue is because Elo is a zero sum game, which means no points are ever generated or destroyed, simply moved. As a result, each player that enters the system is given a score that may be termed “average.” A fresh player joining an Elo system, on the other hand, is quite likely to be much below average. This is especially true in games like axie infinity nft, where a player’s ability to succeed is determined on the resources they provide.
A novice player to axie infinity nft is likely to have low-quality axes in addition to a lack of strategic talent, although they are matched against people with a “average” rating. The rookies suffer a hard losing streak as they acclimate to their correct rating, while the ordinary players have an easy time against them. This is exacerbated by the fact that when the player’s rating drops, they get less SLP on each victory since incentives are tiered by rating.
While PvE does exist, the main rules and opponent species are so unlike that it does not fully train players for PvP. In the end, Axie Infinity’s PvP is unforgivingly harsh and demotivating to new players who have just invested a few hundred bucks in the game. And it’s probably a big reason for turnover and liquidated axies.
Inflationary Rating and Practice Mode are the solutions.
Players must feel not only that they are adequately matched, but also that they are prepared and improving on a regular basis in order to be retained.
As a result, there are two potential improvements to the axie infinity nft experience: inflationary ratings and a PvP practice mode.
Inflationary ratings are a term used to describe the many methods for rating and matching players that do not use zero sum points. Instead, new players enter the system with no points and the assumption that they are the pool’s poorest players. As the game progresses, the players graduate from inflationary points (given more for winning than for losing) to zero sum systems.
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