The developers of the Blockchain Cuties game like to limit the drop rate of items by using a hard cap. While hard caps and drop rates can both increase rarity of items. While there is still a lot of information that is unavailable, the toolkits needed to recycle materials in the game are going to be limited through daily hard caps. Moreover, the entire toolkit mechanic is added nonsense that should be replaced with a more robust one.

Limited Gameplay

Right now, the primary game play is breed cuties and send them out to farm. It gets boring really fast. The Wars of Cutieland will definitely add more game play, or in a way a second game, there still needs to be more done to make game play on the current interface more interesting. Simply focusing on breeding the hell out of cuties is a problem.

Unfortunately, by adding this toolkit mechanic, it promotes the creation of even larger armies with more farmers. The cap makes things even worse, for other reasons, as I will explain later. Focusing on the game play issue, dust requirements already mean that people need larger armies in order to do more recycling, which is great. That's absolutely fine, and it helps give a boost to players who have put a lot of effort into playing the game.

Disappointment

However, with the toolkit, now players will have yet another reason why they will need larger armies, which means even more time spent breeding and farming, thus pushing even more people towards the "let's just get our cuties to screw" game mechanic. A healthy game has diversity in game play. I mentioned in Episode #51's Pawedcast in Print article how I was excited to see the recycling mechanic, in part because it would increase market value for items, but also because it promised to add a new way to play the game.

I don't think that everyone will use the system. Honestly, I don't think that most people will use the system on a regular basis. And that's fine. It is going to be a system that will allow for specialization within the game. There may very well be individuals whose primary focus is on refining items, doing only what is necessary to obtain the items to engage in item refinement. Specialization is common in the real world, and it may become common within BCU as well.

I was really hoping that the Blockchain Cuties universe would see diversification. But the way things stand, those players who can forge will be those people with the biggest armies, which means that rather than diversification, there will be monopolization. Again, I think those who have been playing for a longer amount of time should have an advantage. That's absolutely true. But that idea does not mean that game play should essentially only be diverse for those players.

An Alternative

Skip the toolkit and train cuties. In this proposed system, forging items can only be done if a cutie is proficient in forging, which is done through training. A cutie could spend 48 hours training. After a certain amount of training, they would gain basic proficiency in forging. If they train for even longer, they could gain a higher proficiency (equivalent to the silver toolkit), and after an even longer period of time, they could gain mastery in forging (gold toolkit). Essentially, rather than focusing on breeding and farming, some people could focus on training their cuties to become blacksmiths. Obviously those people with larger armies will have more cuties that they can train, but a person just starting out could go the route of training artisans rather than farmers. It would still take a lot of time, but the mechanic would add a new way of playing the game.

Toolkit Distribution

As I mentioned earlier, the way toolkits are going to be distributed is problematic for another reason. Caps are an issue because they influence the distribution of drops. While the average number of drops may stay the same, who gets those drops can change dramatically. Essentially, the distribution changes. Without a cap, the distribution would be normal, or log normal really. Those players with more cuties will have, on average, a greater ability to get a toolkit. But those players getting toolkits will not eliminate the chance of smaller players getting one. Indeed, whether a larger player gets a toolkit or not is irrelevant to whether a small player gets one. Without the cap, the probability of a player getting a toolkit is independent of whether anyone else has gotten a toolkit.

However, this condition does not hold with a cap. The cap makes the probability of one player getting a drop dependent on whether another player gets a drop. And since players with larger armies are almost certainly going to reach the cap, players with smaller armies, or even relatively modest armies, are almost certainly not going to get the drop. This dynamic is very different from the distribution where more seasoned players simply get an advantage. It creates a monopolistic pressure on the entire game mechanic.

Summary

Recycling in Blockchain Cuties is a mechanic with a lot of potential. I think this game has a ton of potential as a whole, and I hope to see new players joining the game. However, I am very concerned about the long term health of the game if the developers continue to ignore economics and mathematics when developing their mechanics. The recycling mechanic is great because it can increase the market value of items. But the toolkits are just an added layer that help further benefit the oldest active players, while giving nothing to increase game play for newer players, and indeed drives players towards the dusty old game play of breeding and farming cuties.