Though they still aren’t open to the general public, Hunters On-Chain has decided to move into Season 0, offering a selection of rewards to a very limited number of players.
Hunters On-Chain launches Season 0 of their top-down, action, PvE game. The season lasts for one month, and features a leaderboard with rewards for the top players. Unfortunately, these are the ONLY season perks, and they are only given to the top 10 players.
Supposedly, the team was going to look into expanding the rewards, but we haven’t heard any news on that front. And just the fact that they thought rewarding only the top 10 players for a season was acceptable in the first place makes me wonder about how in touch the team is with the actual gaming community.
And unfortunately (again), this season is a pay to win event. Pretty much all of the ways to earn points for the leaderboards can be boosted by spending more money. You can earn leaderboard points by earning BGEM through playing games, opening up Chests (purchased with BGEM tokens), and upgrading your Hunters. This is all cumulative, so if you have a larger collection of Hunters, you can earn more points. And rarer Hunters as well as those leveled up, earn more BGEM, making this a snowball effect of the rich getting richer. On top of all that, the rewards for Season 0 are BOOM tokens. So the players who already have the highest level Hunters, can level them up some more!
We called out Hunters on-Chain as a game to watch in August. But now we seem to be watching it for all the wrong reasons.
Not a BOOM to be found
Hunters On-Chain also seems to be dropping the ball in regards to their BOOM token. In order to upgrade Hunters in the game, you need the appropriate Hunter shards (found in chests), and BOOM token, which can only be purchased from the in-game store. However, the in-game store has a very limited supply of BOOM tokens and is resupplied randomly and sporadically by the team. And whenever the BOOM supply is refilled, it is bought up within minutes. If you aren’t online at the exact, right time, you can forget about ever getting any BOOM tokens. In fact, this morning’s drop of over 33K BOOM tokens sold out in one minute flat!
Now I realize that trying to balance a PvE economy is difficult. But this random trickle of tokens just doesn’t feel right. Especially when a whale can swoop in and buy up all of the BOOM tokens, level up all of their hunters, and receive even more of an advantage in the game. And, rumors have it that they will stop adding BOOM to the store all together in the near future. At which point I have no idea how players will level-up their hunters.
The team did airdrop some BOOM tokens onto holders of Genesis Hunters. However, as owner of three Uncommon Hunters and one Rare Hunter, the amount of BOOM I received was not even enough to level up one Uncommon Hunter to level 2.
Boomland is going to need to figure this out sooner rather than later. At this point, it’s starting to feel like they ported their web2 game over to web3, without any real strong idea of what they were getting into.
What is Hunters On-Chain
Hunters is a fantasy, top-down, PVE action game with a couple of different game modes.
For PvE, each match features four players fighting monsters and leveling up. In Hunt mode, matches last for two minutes, with the top spot going to whoever has earned the most experience in that time, or whoever is the last survivor — whichever comes first. Each player starts the match at level 1 with full hit points. As they kill monsters and grab the stars that drop, players gain experience. Gain enough experience, and you level up, earning the right to choose between two, semi-random promotions. These promotions include standard power-ups such as increased damage, greater attack range, and more hit points, as well as special abilities like Damage Reflect and Demon Pact (sacrifice HP for more damage).
As the match goes on, the monsters spawned get tougher. So just trying to hide and survive the match isn’t really a viable tactic. Players need to actively get out on the battlefield and increase their levels. Monsters generally spawn in the corners of the map, though they will chase players all around. At the center lies a healing square that can be visited at any time.
Other modes include Boss Hunt, which requires players to try and defeat a Boss dragon after leveling up, and Bounty Hunter, which is a 10 character, FFA fight with no level-ups during the match.
Players can earn BGEM tokens from playing matches. They can then use BGEM to purchase chests containing random artifacts and hunter shards. Players also need BOOM tokens to level up their Hunters.
To learn more about Boomland and Hunters on-Chain, visit the Boomland website, follow them on Twitter, and join their Discord.
