Last week, the CryptoKitties team put our thinking hats on, sat in our thinking corner, and drank a cup of thinking milk. The subject of our deep thoughts? Trait releases.

The problem, you see, is the Kitty Clock. You’re probably familiar with it as the agent who sprinkles Gen 0s into the ecosystem every 15 minutes. It allows us to create new Kitties on a regular cadence, at a price prescribed by the smart contract. It’s completely hands off, and it serves its function well.

Or it did, until we tossed a bit of glue into the works. The glue of Family Jewels.

Family Jewels mean new traits have value

Before Family Jewels, the system was simple: new Level 1 traits were released in new Gen 0s. Outside of Founder Cats, all new Level 1 traits were released by the Kitty Clock and immediately put up for sale.

But now, being the first to have a new Cattribute is more than just exciting — it’s rewarded with Mewtation jewels. And because new Cattributes can first appear in Kitty Clock cats, it means that getting some jewels is just a race to buy up the first one from the Clock. There’s little chance for players to earn diamond and gilded Mewtation jewels by breeding new Cattribute bloodlines. In short — it’s not as fun as it could be!

Which is why we’re changing it. We’re going to test out a new system and see how you like it, so be sure to provide lots of feedback! If it isn’t a popular solution, we’ll fish those thinking caps out of our desk drawers and pour another cup of milk.

So what’s our solution? “Staged trait releases”. No new Level 1 traits will appear in the cats put forth by the Kitty Clock until there’s been time for them to be unlocked by a player breeding them. Simple, easy solution!

The complicated explanation of the oh-so-simple fix

For those who are interested in diving a little deeper into the technical explanation, sally forth and read on! Our apologies that this gets complicated, but if you’re a veteran CryptoKitties gene spelunker, you should enjoy the ride…

Level 1 genes are released into the game through Gen 0 Kitties. With a few specific exceptions (the afore-mentioned Founder Cats, for instance), these cats are sent to the Kitty Clock and released for sale. This can happen in three ways:

SCENARIO A

The new trait is first released as an active gene (what the community often calls “dominant genes”), resulting in the diamond Mewtation jewel for that trait appearing on a Clock Cat (e.g. cyan)

SCENARIO B

The new trait is released as a hidden gene (what the community has been calling “recessive genes”). This results in a race to breed a Kitty with the trait as an active gene (e.g. a Cattribute) before Kitty Clock can release one. (e.g. pixiebob)

SCENARIO C

Sometimes, Level 1 genes are slated to remain in the hidden slots at Gen 0, so the new Cattribute is always discovered by players breeding that hidden gene into an active position (e.g. chartreux).

Staged trait releases will work a little differently. It will allow Level 1 genes to appear in two ways:

SCENARIO A

A new Level 1 gene is released as a hidden gene for several hours. It begins as a very hidden “H3” gene (known by the community as an “R3” gene), then steps down to a moderately hidden “H2” gene. From there it progresses to the “H1” position, before finally being released via the Kitty Clock as an active gene. By this time, community members have had the opportunity to try to breed the hidden genes into active positions (often referred to as gene swapping), and earn the first Mewtation jewels for a new Cattribute.

SCENARIO B

A new Level 1 gene is released as a hidden gene in H3 at Gen 0, just like Scenario A. However, these genes are intended to stay in the hidden slots, and will never appear as an active gene at Gen 0 (this is the same as scenario C, above.) Sometimes, these genes will only be released as H3 genes, some will end up in H3 and H2, and others will use H3, H2, and H1.

Some important takeaways about staged traits

It’s important to remember that when a new Level 1 gene comes out in a hidden position, you won’t be able to tell if it’s part of Scenario A or Scenario B. So don’t assume the trait will remain hidden-only! What you can assume is that — even if the trait will eventually end up in the active slot in Gen 0 — there will be several hours to try to get that diamond jewel before that happens.

And, of course, don’t forget that we’re always experimenting, and decisions are rarely ever final. You can expect the first of these traits to be released around 3pm PDT (11pm GMT) this Thursday, April 12th. Depending on how it goes, we may choose to undo this change entirely, or we may tweak it going forward. Please reach out and let us know how it’s working for you, and if there’s anything you’d like to see in the future. Whenever possible, we’ll pre-announce any changes we intend to make to give the community a chance to weigh in.

Speaking of weighing in, we want to make sure we don’t miss any of your feedback! You can write a response to this post below, send an e-mail to meow@cryptokitties.co, post in the #feature-requests Discord channel, or message us on Twitter with your thoughts.