AMA Recap: Avalanche Vietnam x Pulsar
On Thursday, July 27, 2023, at 7:00 PM (UTC+7), we had an AMA session with Alvaro Martin — CEO and Fernando Claros — Game Director of Pulsar.
Here’s a recap of the AMA:
1. Firstly, to ensure that everyone, including new users and those who may have missed the previous AMA, gets up to speed, could you please provide a brief introduction to your team and Pulsar?
PULSAR is an MMO Real Time Strategy Game that combines a persistent RTS (think: Starcraft) with randomly generated dungeon instances (think: Diablo). It is a 4X game, which simply means that players are able to Explore, Expand, Exploit and Exterminate, and they have the options to decide how they want to invest their time in the game.
PULSAR team is made up of experienced game developers who have worked on titles such as Call of Duty Modern Warfare, Rainbow Six, Halo, Horizon and Cyberpunk. At the same time, they got the people on the scalability and the business side of the games as they directed titles such as Candy Crush Franchise.
PULSAR là một Game Chiến lược Thời gian Thực đa người chơi trực tuyến kết hợp giữa một RTS liên tục (tương tự như Starcraft) với các thử thách ngẫu nhiên được tạo ra (tương tự như Diablo). Đây là một trò chơi thuộc thể loại 4X, có nghĩa là người chơi có thể Khám phá, Mở rộng Lãnh thổ, Khai thác tài nguyên và Tiêu diệt đối thủ, và họ có các tùy chọn để quyết định cách đầu tư thời gian của mình trong trò chơi.
2. Next, could you please update some latest news or big events of Pulsar in the coming time?
Pulsar Season 2 has officially begun! Season 2 marks the beginning of a whole new chapter for our team and players. On the 1st of August we open our $PLSR token sale with Tokensoft and players that are whitelisted for #Pulsar Season 2 will enjoy exclusive access to the Tranche 1 sale for the first 24 hours. After that, the sale will be open to everyone who register at https://pulsar.tokensoft.io/ In addition to that, we’re having some new features live like endless co-op dungeons or leaderboards on our website and we’re planning some tournaments with web3 game launchers to happen soon.
3. Can you please provide a detailed explanation of the gameplay and elements in the game? For example, the characters, buildings, and lands?
We have three soft Player Roles — Miners, Builders and Warlords. Each role produces different Tokens and NFTs through gameplay, and trades with the other roles through our Player Marketplace, in a Player-Driven Economy.
Miners extract Resources from the land and refine them.
All Unrefined and Refined Resources are Tokens. Pulsar, our Game Token is one of these resources.
Their gameplay is about optimizing the bottlenecks on their Supply Chain: Choosing the right location for their Refineries and Warehouses, choosing the right deposits to mine, leveling up their units and buildings to increase speed and capacity, etc.
Think about “Idle Miner Tycoon” with a light “Factorio” layer on top.
Builders use Refined Resources to create Alloys, which they use to build Units and Buildings.
All Units and Buildings are NFTs.
Their gameplay is about experimenting with Refined Resources to discover NFT Blueprints, choosing which NFT Factories to build, so they have synergies between them, crafting the right Alloys and using them to build the desired NFTs.
Think about “Sim City: Build It”.
Warlords fight aliens and collect Alien Parts, which they use to craft Power-Ups.
All Power-Ups are Consumable NFTs.
Their gameplay is about fighting aliens, Upgrading their Unit Factories to speed up Unit repairs, Upgrading their Farcasters (the means they use to teleport around the world) to reach further and reducing downtime, choosing which Consumable NFT Factories to build so they have sinergies between them, and crafting Consumable Power-Ups.
Think about “Starcraft” without the Mining layer, with less focus on building and more focus on fighting.
These gameplay layers are NOT three games. Everyone is using the same Lands, controls, UI, 3D models, etc. If you are a Miner you will tend to use the space in your land to build more Resource Refineries, and will spend your CPU (which determines how many units you can control) in controlling more Miners, whereas if you are a Fighter you will tend to have more Unit Factories, to rebuild and repair your damaged or destroyed Units faster and more efficiently, and will spend your CPU in War Machines, like Spiders, Scorpions or Tanks. And of course nothing is preventing you from being a mix of these soft roles. It’s your choice, and will be determined by your personal strategy.
The more players specialize, the more reasons they will discover to team up with others to exploit the synergies between them.
4. About inflation issues, we’re curious if @PulsarGame has a solution to address this concern? How does the project maintain balance and stability within its in-game economy to avoid any negative impacts on the overall gameplay experience?
We have several deflationary mechanisms embedded in our Game Economy.
$PLSR has very high utility.
- Pulsar is a 1 token economy, so we care about it!
- All company FIAT profits / purchases go to acquire $PLSR, removing liquidity from the market.
Some of the most important Pulsar sinks:
- We sell our NFTs for other tokens or stable-coins, so we don’t need to dump $PLSR.
- $PLSR is our in-game hard currency, so the best in the game will consume $PLSR (shields, speed ups, crafting, and a lot).
- This creates a constant upwards pressure on the token price.
$PLSR Circulating Supply is gated by user growth and engagement.
To obtain $PLSR, players have to use special NFTs (Pulsar Miners and Refineries that are limited) in special NFT Lands (Pulsar Lands).
The circulating supply of these Pulsar NFTs is limited, meaning that the Emission Rate of $PLSR is kept within certain limits.
We only sell these Pulsar NFTs as the user base grows.
Additionally, extracting Pulsar requires players to invest time and to upgrade their game NFTs, meaning inflation also puts positive pressure on other parts of the Game Economy.
5. Collaborations and partnerships are some of the most important cornerstones to help improve adoption. Could you please tell us about your current partners, plans for partnerships and what everybody stands to gain from these partnerships?
We have done 11 partnerships with web3 launchers, without counting our strategy for Web2, Steam and Epic Games Store:
[REDACTED]: 15M users
Wombat: 3.5M users
Owned.gg — twitter: 70k discord: 200k
Bit Metis — 200k users
Gamefi — 230k kyc users
Gameswift 143k Twitter
Elixir — 45k Active Users
Playdex: 30K players on Playdex
Sakaba (Japan) 12k Twitter
Hyperplay — Twitter 5k follow
Tribally Games — 2k twitter
1kin.io — 1k twitter
We’re going to start the release and integration with all of them pretty soon, but we want to do it by understanding their communities and preparing a very juicy competition with huge rewards! So stay tuned. It’s gonna be epic.
An additional comment here, remember how big was Axie Infinity with 200k users and with an on purpose ponzinomiks (check the CEO podcast, it was designed like that). Having a high quality game and solid tokenomics we think is going to be the trend for the next bullrun, so step-by-step.
6. How can we join @PulsarGame Season 2, and will the 15m $PLSR reward be evenly distributed among all participating players? Also, do we need to hold NFTs or a specific amount of tokens to fully enjoy and play $Pulsar?
It’s free-to-play, just go, enjoy, give feedback and help us to build an awesome web3 community. The 15M $PLSR is not going to be distributed evenly and will depend on player engagement, time investment and ability of course. If you wish to push higher in the competition you have the shop to buy more NFTs and support our project.
7. Besides playing and having fun, do users have other ways to earn income from the game? For example collect nft? Earn tokens? Or something else?
There are mainly 2 ways:
1. Extract $PLSR, our hard currency that will be acquired with FIAT from web2 users.
2. Growing the level of all your NFTs, investing time. We only sell level 1 NFTs so you have the mission to fulfill the future in-game shop. (you are free to sell those NFTs)
3. Create powerful consumables (not yet released)
For instance, a $PLSR genesis miner (limited in amount forever) costs 200$ at level 1, you can imagine what happens if you sell a level 100 where the extraction rate is huge compared with the level 1.
Other mechanics are going to be introduced when we have a bigger population, and “other interesting features” like hire a guild or individual to protect you.
We aim for the dream of be a gamer is have a job, but you need to give us a bit of time to build it in a solid way.
8. What are the idea and inspired for creating Pulsar and why players should join games in early stages?
First off as this is web3, guys… play the game before you invest. No playable, no money! We need to stop and mature to be OG web3 gamers and set a bar (seriously).You should play early because you’re going to get tons of advantage before the game became popular, prices are lower, level up is faster, you get rewards, you can help to build an awesome and healthy community. It’s always easier for us now to answer Discord and even play the game with the people than when the game is going to be much bigger. In our case it is very advantageous being in Discord, we leak content, we have fun, we answer your questions and doubts, and more importantly if you read your feedback to modify things in the game!
9. Im already installed your game. I have some question for you
1) I see graphics is good, but mechanic are not so different with game like age of empire? In the future do you will improve mission ingame, or mechanic game
2) When we win game online, we will get token? Or NFT? Or some value things ingame this season
What if I want to play 3 role in game? Or I just could choose 1 role to play?
3) If I don’t want to play anymore, I can sell my account on marketplace, do you have online marketplace for this
4) Graphics is good, but too high for me, In the future graphics will be improve or not?
5) How I can buy a PLSR genesis miner. Could get it in event in game?
1) @fernandoclaros_PULSAR
2) @fernandoclaros_PULSAR
3) are your assets, do whatever you wish! and include the price of your time investment, we only sell NFTs level 1, is up to you to grow them and make them more valuable
4) We are CPU bottleneck, we added new GPU settings and we’re going to do another performance pass during summer, it’s essential for us grow those FPS :)
5) Not for sale… YET! :)
10. Many GameFi requires to deposit for buying NFTs or equipments to start their games, it is quite prohibitively expensive, so how is Pulsar different to them?
we are free to play, we give you a pack to start. ADDITIONALLY all our NFTs are pegged to the dolar, so the entry barrier is the same and constant forever
11. $PLSR serves as a resource in Pulsar game, does it play any other role? Does the team plan to do an Airdrop for the community to develop games and other PSLR ecosystems?
Every purchasable thing in the game can be purchased with $PLSR:
Buy NFTs from the Shop.
Lands, Units and Buildings.
Consumables, like Power Ups and Peace Shields.
Vanity Items
Buy Soft Currencies like Resources.
Buy and Trade with other players.
Beyond purchasing, $PLSR can also be used to:
Upgrade NFTs.
Be staked inside NFTs to empower them.
Skip cooldowns and waiting periods.
Bet $PLSR in PvP matches.
$PLSR is easily understood by Web2 users as the Hard Currency from F2P games they are familiar with.
12. In Pulsar, the leaderboard plays a significant role in rewarding players based on their rankings in cooperative dungeons. How do you prevent the leaderboard from being dominated by a select few top players, and how do you encourage fair competition among a diverse player base?
for instance, lower levels will upgrade faster… you score for that, for kill your units and for many things only lower level players can score often. to balance even more the experience we’re going to make leagues, so we do a natural split for new comers
13. On August 1st $PLSR launches with @TokensoftInc
Couldn’t find information about Pulsar’s tokenomics so how would the team share about Pulsar’s tokenomics? % maketing …
we are making videos!!! our tokenomics are super incredibly nice, but! require of a complex explanation. is not TAP-TO-EARN and that’s it. Stay tuned! coz is going to be a serie of videos
14. Is Pulsar easy to play for non-crypto players, does it require experienced players?
is much closer to a web2 experience, a pro player of LoL played on the last GDC, and Pulsar it’s difficult, however we are going to easy the experience with a narrative campaign that can explain step-by-step how to became pro!
15. Do I need to pre-purchase NFT land to play the PulsarGame ? If so, where can I buy it?
no, you don’t, go to https://pulsar.game/register and you’re gonna get a free pack of NFTs, if you like the game and you wish to push higher in leaderboard go to https://pulsar.game/shop
16. NFTs play a central role in Pulsar’s gameplay and economy. What steps have you taken to ensure the security and authenticity of these NFTs, and how can players confidently trade and utilize them?
OpenSea needs to update our contracts (is taken forever), however in our shop you have this links with all supported chains
17. In a game that combines various genres like Pulsar, player feedback is crucial. How do you actively gather feedback from the player community, and how do you incorporate it into future updates and improvements?
oh man! join our Discord, we love to ear from our players :) we talk with them and we do AMAs sharing video and gaming features, we talk a lot!
18. The gap between traditional gamers & blockchain gamers is still so big. Many traditional players can find it difficult to play NFT games and other card games, How can Pulsar bridge this to attract more traditional player to your games? Do you have plan to educate about the benefit of NFT games?
One of our main differentiators, aside from engaging and retaining players through Fun, not merely through economic incentives, and having a Peer-Reviewed Sustainable Economy, is having a Frictionless Onboarding.
Already one year ago, we implemented a system that makes the Web3 components transparent, meaning that Web2 players won’t even notice that the Blockchain is there, while Web3 players can engage with it.
While in Testnet, we are requiring players to have a wallet because we need to grow our userbase progressively, but when we move to mainnet everyone will be able to play without a wallet at all.
To reach Web2 users we are partnering with launchers and other organizations, as Álvaro mentioned above.
19. The gaming industry is constantly evolving, and new trends emerge regularly. How do you stay ahead of the curve and ensure that Pulsar remains innovative and competitive in the face of changing player preferences and market dynamics?
well, everything you see we did it in less than 1 year, so we are relatively fast or ultra hyper fast compare with other web3 projects. I think the best way for us to improve every year is have contact with the community and be sure we have a kind of model: Play-For-Fun and Pay-For-Fun (or like me, that I don’t have enough time so it’s ok to be paying for things instead of play 8h a day)
With that premise… I think we’re going to be always in a good track, we really hate Pay-To-Win or Loot Boxes… so we’re crafting a new model based much more on fun and community
20. Pulsar has a focus on crafting NFTs and utilizing them in various gameplay elements. How do you plan to balance the accessibility of crafting and obtaining NFTs for all types of players, including those who may not be familiar with blockchain technology?
One of our main differentiators is having a Frictionless Onboarding. We have a working system in place that makes the Web3 components transparent, meaning that Web2 players won’t even notice that the Blockchain is there, while Web3 players can engage with it.
I explain more about it in a comment above.
Regarding the accessibility of the gameplay, Pulsar has three main gameplay layers, aimed to three soft roles, meaning that players can focus on any mix of them, or play all of them at the same time. The Crafting Layer’s inspiration is “Sim City: Build It”, which is a top grossing game within its category, so its core loop and user friendly mechanics are already well proven for Web2 players.
