Opinion: dCity, a good game with bad economics
Remember when dCity was the hippest Engine game around? Yeah, I remember. It looks like the game came to a halt after the lackluster release of third edition. Some may blame the lack of marketing. Some may blame high taxes. But, the core of the issue is the fundamental economics.
Before I offer my unsolicited opinion, let's take a look at the upcoming update.
As promised, Central Banks won't be available to craft in a few days. So, grab yours today! As to whether how valuable the banks would be in the long run, who knows? All I can say is that Laboratories seemed pointless until third edition went live. They are now a major component for combining buildings.
The upcoming replacement seems to be a parody of the real world. It even shows in the stats! Less jobs, more money, and not popular among people. However, for bigger cities combating unemployment, it's not a bad acquisition.
In fact, Central Bank and Farm Corporation might be the rarer buildings out there when it's all said and done.
Speaking of real life parallels, Church giving you tax refunds. Was this change the direct result of high taxes? Coincidence? Not that it matters. Like the labs, a simple change made this card more valuable to the players.
Of course, the upcoming governance update could give current SIM holders some amusement. As you can see, SIM holders will be able to affect income tax levels. To clarify, the price of SIM affects the income tax percentage. At the time of this post, The question is, will most SIM holders choose to offset the taxes?
The holding rewards will be twice as much, but is it worth it?
Looking at the memo, it's about as dismal as the staking rewards of holding HP, assuming the APY uses the 0.005 peg. If it is, then the actual return is much higher since SIM price is so low. It'd better than curation and be at least double with the new update. And guess what? Only 40% of the stake chose holding rewards currently. So, the upsides are greater depending on how the APY calculation works. If the calculation is not using 0.005, then double that holding reward won't do much. You are better off powering that HIVE up and start voting.
Would the higher APY attract people to buy SIM even if they don't want to play the game? It could. That is, if we let more people know about it.
The price of SIM has fallen a lot from the intended 0.005 HIVE peg. The fallen price is the reason for the insane high taxes players have been experiencing. Even a 2000 HIVE buy-in won't push the price too far. That's about $900, and I doubt anyone with that money right now is not buying into other crypto projects. This segways into the problems with dCity's economics.
The Issues
Ponzi-like setup
Let's be honest with ourselves, dCity's economics is set up nothing short of a Ponzi. Without new players buying in with HIVE, there is no reward pool. Sure, @gerber could finance it with other means, but the players fund majority of it.
Because of this set up, plenty of players who got in early are selling as fast as they can. This put up massive sell pressure on the token. Not to mention, since all the cards continue to generate SIM income, the pressure carries on. Then, taxes get high enough to stop the bleed for a moment, but doesn't do anything to the price.
Rising HIVE prices
When dCity started, it was in the depth of the bear market and hostile takeover. SIM pegged to a $0.10 HIVE is very different to a $0.40+ HIVE. Since the price of a single card is at 4 HIVE regardless where the token is at, it becomes pricey and a barrier to entry.
Imagine if HIVE pumped to $2+. Most people here would be making a mad dash out the door instead of spending $8 on a card that may not generate any ROI.
If the prices were more focused on the fiat value, then we would have more dynamic pricing in HIVE or SIM. As SIM continues to fall, it made sense to have cards cost more than 800 SIM each. But, at this point, it most likely wouldn't make a difference. Don't you wish HBD actually worked as intended so we didn't have to deal with high volatility?
The Hive demographic
When we tie to the general demographics of Hive, the number of people willing to spend is even smaller. When people are only staking 36% of HIVE's total supply, I don't see them keeping their tokens for dCity. Once again, everyone wants to sell SIM as fast as possible for those HIVE.
It's no secret that Hive usually doesn't attract people who has money to invest. This is not an attack on community members with less fortunate circumstances, but it is a fact. You can't market products to people who are depending on selling the few HIVE they have to eat. They don't have that disposable income.
What are your thoughts? How can players and enthusiasts help making a pastime more sustainable and more fun? It's always easy to say "more users", but how do we get there? If there are serious flaws in the economics, what could the dev team do to incentivize SIM purchases?
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BEER.I was thinking about trying dCity but apparently, a lot of people are not happy with the recent changes so I'm reconsidering that...
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It's not the recent changes that bother people.
People are complaining because the taxes are so high (due to low SIM prices) that they can't earn SIM.
I think the biggest issue is that people are used to the shilled high APR returns. Now the returns are also still fairly good depending on your setup if you aim for mining population, tech or art.
I don't know how to incentivize SIM purchases though. The taxes have really started to take their toll on the users but I guess the best thing to do is to revamp the reward pool so it is sustainable. With fixed rates of returns for holding and guaranteed it won't go lower, people might be more willing to hold onto it.
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Yeah, a lot of people suffering because they went for the population or pure SIM strategy. They didn’t build their cities for different scenarios.
I definitely think the reward structure needs to be revamped. There’s simply not enough coming in compared to SIM distributed.
The APR doesn't even have to be high. It just has to be steady or incoming. I have not earned on dcity for roughly five days in a week. That's crazy
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hmm. you don't have one of the most important building to reduce taxes...
Well I did mine a few citizens and train a few of my homeless/immigrants so I think I still came out with something. If your only looking at SIM, then maybe.
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Also, if you are building your city while disregarding different tax scenarios, that's also gonna bite you, like right now.
A game should not give players headaches and I'm glad I steered clear of this one :)
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I think the other big problem is that more people viewed it as "investment" than a game.
So, when inconveniences happen, it's harder to face that reality.
Lucky you. Guess i enjoyed a part
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Shhhh, I used to love it. I am struggling to sell my cards and have to keep re-listing them lower. It used to be great once. It needs a kick up the arse.
Got any good ideas to make it great again?
I haven't opened my city in months. 3rd edition..., haven't looked so could not comment.
I guess most people are doing the same. I am selling and putting into Cub
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Spot on commentary. The game has sucked balls with unyielding changes to the peg. Lowering the Hive and SIM required to mint cards would have helped smaller cities to to get some opportunities to build their city. It was never really a game for majority of the users that bother with it.
When you aren't playing a game to have fun, all sorts of problems arise.
I mentioned this yesterday that people will dump dcity for reasons like inability to earn sim. I mean whats the point. How cam one go 7 days without earning shit.
80% of the update is intended towards giving you a lower sim income.
I have decided to sell my dcity to enter cub. I could chill and get that .
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I guess the question now becomes, what to do about it besides hoping a ton of people suddenly decide to buy in.
Embrace the capitulation. Hold, Sell or buy the dip, its up to each one.
Or people just need to start enjoying a game and stop making it life or death.
player mistake
somehow game give people 1M+ SIM daily which is like 500-600$
they have law firm and military stuff
ROI is still super high, it's just players expectation about gameplay, they prefer to not think and earn. If people complain they earn nothing and they don't have law firm. Similar with military stuff. It's not easy game, especially on tax edge, where players that were prepared earn more than players that just bought and left it.
So it is more rewarding for players who actually read rules and played.
Same below bhoa could earn much more in last few months with Law Firm.
Now imagine how many players are there that just bought items, did nothing, have no law firm, no military stuff cause sold it when it was expensive, and will blame game cause it's rewarding players who played better.
Game always distribute 300-2000$ daily depends from taxes, it's never 0.
Not sure why something inevitable, predictable, and discussed year+ ago is called bad economics :P
let's compare 2 economics models:
actual dcity model
one of the other possible versions considered at creation:
We print tokens from air to people and it's inevitable that people will sell tokens and price will go down.
First model creates much more gameplay around politics and multiple different ways to maximize roi. Also it auto-adjust level of printed tokens to actual game economy, automated sustainability and makes whole thing more dynamic. So it doesn't print 5000$ of tokens if players can sell only 600$(buy orders)
Second model with time makes 1 income share produce less and less SIM. Less decisions to make, less game to play.
Both eventually end same way, ROI goes down, hard to even imagine for me ROI going up long term, i guess roi going up would be best economics, but is it really possible.
If model we used is bad economics, is it possible to print few k $ from air to players = good economics? How?
There is an answer for that :) in hive rewards, could go splinterlands way and give 0% of spent hive back, and buy tokens to keep you happy. Maybe distribute SIM also as ranking rewards. But idea here was to make it clear from the beginning about funds and decrease dev share over time. Until we reach 5% for dev, 95% back to game, with community fund, and holders managing it.
I think second model above represents Splinterlands, could add for both what happens with $ spent on random items as another point, but focused more about just token.
now also splinterlands goes for governance with possibility for players to influence DEC inflation, i doubt they will give players chance to increase inflation, just redirect it between pools. Like if you hold DEC you would vote for more DEC as liquidity rewards less playing rewards, or making high price tournaments for gold cards. Making functional governance is super hard, even harder to make people use it properly, my guess is most of the players will sell governance token then will cry about how game is governed.
Splinterlands is one of the best case to compare.
in terms of ROI it's very similar,
in terms of time spent to play, dcity requires much less time
in terms of game rules, let's say it's similar even tho splinterlands is probably much more complicated
in terms of governance, it exist in dcity, will exist in splinterlands
in terms of governance, it requires a lot of time for players to learn it, here we are after year+ from making governance, players in dcity still learn about
in terms of cards liquidity, very similar, super hard to sell 10k$+ of cards in both ( anyone wants to buy 65k$ cards in splinterlands from me ? )
in terms of UI, we tried to avoid splinterlands mistakes, and make it easier to manage nfts (transfer or market operations at scale)
No need to preach to me. This is for those who constantly complain on Discord and other places.
I'm content where I'm at since I came at the angle of playing a game to begin with. I've spent far more on Magic and Hearthstone than dCity.
Just my few words, it's not like it was just created with first idea in mind. It's all complicated stuff that required hours of thinking and still require with anything new am going to add. Obviously ponzification is a big problem for everything in crypto especially early with hype, cause people don't read/understand rules of token economics. If/When we will go to another chain, history will just repeat itself...
I remember talking about the Ponzi type aspect of the games economics in the Dcity Discord and getting flamed and attacked over it.
Glad you brought it up.
I think people should be aware of this before deciding to jump into any blockchain game that uses the same type of economics.
Thank you for this.
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Rewards are still distributing. They are just not going to the people who went all in on the pure population or best income cards.
attacked :o I admitted million times on discord that ponzification is natural in crypto, especially in blockchain games. It's hard to print value from air...
Not you.
A bunch of the players.
you have always been honest about economics.
My point is there are a bunch of players/users/member of the blockchain that are confused about these things.