Macerus NFT White Paper v0.1

NOTE: We are in the midst of updating our offering across our NFT project and full RPG. New documentation will be released shortly! Please see this explanation article. Thanks!

This document will outline the proposal for the systems and interactions for an NFT project focused around itemization. This project will evolve over time as fundamentals are ironed out and systems are refined to maximize end-user enjoyment and create a sustainable ecosystem for items.

Background

Many people get enjoyment from a genre of games that provide a looting/itemization system, which are primarily Role-Playing Games (RPGs), more recently Looter-Shooters, and others. One of the fundamental aspects of games with loot is that you can create a system of progression with item mechanics that offer statistical bonuses. Additionally, itemization allows for rarity mechanics, cosmetics, and the excitement of uncertainty around what loot will come next.

A challenge with these genre’s today is that often acquiring the best loot can take a tremendous amount of time and “luck”. At some point the lifespan of the game wanes and publishers come out with sequels where your hard work and investment into the earlier games cannot be realized later on. Not only that, your items are a digital asset that is essentially trapped within a digital world that will eventually fade away as interest and support drifts to newer projects.

We wanted to create a project that would allow a loot system to transcend traditional boundaries of being confined to a single system. To do this, our intentions are to leverage non-fungible token (NFT) technology in order to create an itemization system on the blockchain.

Feature Highlights

The planned features for our itemization system include but are not limited to:

• Deep and rich lore for a fantasy world focused around the continent of Macerus and the forces of light, darkness, and elements in an endless struggle for balance.
• “Loot Packs” that can be purchased with an indication of the quantity and classification of loot that can be obtained from the pack. Users can open these loot packs to generate items in their wallet on the blockchain.
• Robust item generation mechanics including hundreds of different stats, different tiers of items, different quantities and combination of stat bonuses, and a variety of item graphics.
• Set items that will offer stat bonuses for completing an entire item set.
• A leveling-based mechanic that will allow accumulated experience for a given wallet address to open higher-tier loot packs for improved items.
• A system for socketing items (such as gems, jewels, and rune stones) into other items to create more powerful items. In some cases, this can transform the item completely.
• A “burning” mechanic that will allow NFT items to be “burned” (I.e. destroyed from circulation) for experience.
• A crafting mechanic that will allow particular NFT items to be combined (and therefore “burned”) into more powerful items. Crafted items will have royalties associated with them so if others acquire these items and later “burn” them, the crafter will receive bonus experience.
• A lost-item mechanic that can provide stat bonuses for conditions such as how long an item has been “lost” to the void or how many unique wallets have used the item.
• An explore-token mechanic that will allow choose-your-own-adventure style interactions in order to receive more loot drops.
• Community events with time limits that allow users to “burn” a sufficient number of items in total to receive air drops for their contributions.

Loot Generation Overview

The loot generation system is built upon a hand-rolled RPG engine that has had the loot generation aspect built and rebuilt over the past 15 years. The system combines aspects from popular action role playing games (such as the Diablo franchise, Path of Exile, Grim Dawn) as well as more open-world RPGs such as the Elder Scrolls series.

The item generation system is extensible and able to generate:

• Normal base items or base items with implicit bonuses
• Magic items with one or two affixes picked from a pool of hundreds of affixes
• Rare items with three to six affixes and a custom name generation mechanic
• Unique, Legendary, Relic, and Mythic tier items that are based on some fixed bonuses, unique graphics, and more lore-oriented back story
• Set items of the above tiers that allow you to unlock bonuses for completing the set
• Crafted items that are the result of a crafting recipe
• Socket patterns which are the result of correctly socketing an item to receive an upgraded item

Lore & Story Focus

We want to ensure that the story we’re presenting and the lore for the fantasy world we’re creating are engaging and part of your interactions with our NFT project. While the loot might be an exciting aspect, we want the world we’ve created to be the thing that keeps you interested in staying with us.

We will be providing on-item descriptions that help contribute to the lore. Additionally, our explore-token system (defined further on) will tie things back to the lore. There are envisioned community sessions where questions regarding lore & story can be asked and the development team can help fill the gaps and define otherwise undefined aspects of the world.

Experience Mechanic Overview

Unique wallet addresses will take on the form of a “character” in that they can earn experience and have an associated level based on this experience. This concept may evolve later (i.e. for multiple characters to exist per wallet, possibly by way of NFT) but for now a wallet address is effectively a unique character.

A wallet can receive experience by “burning” item NFTs. When collecting loot, it’s unfortunately more common than not that you will have items that are not of interest. These items can be effectively destroyed by various mechanics that will reward the wallet with experience. The higher value the item (I.e. measured by item level and rarity, for example) the more experience is rewarded to the wallet address. This will be capped to prevent abusive high-level item burning on low end wallets.

Experience is used to obtain a higher level. A Higher level allows a wallet address to purchase and open higher level loot packs. The higher level wallet address is also able to use higher level items when item usage mechanics are introduced.

Economy Strategy Overview

While we will price the initial lootpack purchasing price, we’d love to encourage a secondary market for both lootpacks and the items themselves. We encourage you to try and sell items that you don’t want to use or gain experience from and thus create this secondary market place for our NFTs.

We’d also like to balance collecting ingredients for future use in crafting recipes, which adds to the dynamic of benefit-now or delayed gratification. Additionally, saving an earlier generation lootpack may unlock mechanics in the future where the value of this lootpack can be greatly increased.

Crafting Overview

Crafting will allow users to “burn” multiple ingredient items in order to create an output item. Given that the code is open source, crafting recipes can always be “reverse engineered” so while we may not advertise them explicitly, individuals can always data mine them.

The crafting mechanic will allow users to combine these ingredient NFTs for an output NFT (or NFTs). The resulting crafted items will receive a royalty-mechanic that will allow one to gain bonus experience should they transfer the item to another wallet and that wallet burns the NFT.

Socketing Overview

Much like crafting, socketing will allow users to burn their NFTs in a way that results in a new NFT with references to the socketed items. This mechanic is popular in many role-playing games where you can provide boosts to items that have things placed into them, and even more interesting is when a pattern is matched the entire item can be transformed into something more powerful.

Community & Social

We want the community to be engaged in Macerus, including help contribute to the lore. We intend to open up contests that would allow users to contribute to both the lore and the artifacts that we have within Macerus. We’d also like to regularly host lore sessions in our Discord that would allow users to ask questions about the lore, the monsters, the characters, and the artifacts. We invite you into our world because the more you ask, the more we can build.

As the developers, we plan to regularly launch new content that users can participate in. This might include limited sets of lootboxes and explore tokens, for example. Additionally, we have plans for world-tier quests that would require users contribute items matching particular requirements in order to meet a threshold. Once the threshold is met, an air drop would be sent out to contributors!

We’ll continue to brainstorm and innovate on the community and social aspects. While we feel confident that we can deliver an awesome loot experience, we’re engineers that have worked for years listening to customer feedback to build software they love. We want this to be something you feel that you’re a part of.

Connect With Us

We’d love to hear your questions, thoughts, and feedback. So please reach out to us on social media or come join us on Discord.

• Twitter: MacerusRPG
• Discord: Macerus