By Shiela Bertillo

“2021 was a seminal year for Axie Infinity. Over the last year, we truly came together as a community and a movement, which has provided us all incredible opportunities to realize our vision of an expansive gaming digital nation.”

Axie Infinity, a popular play-to-earn non fungible token (NFT) game, unveiled last Sunday, January 16, its first development update for the year. The update discloses improvements regarding the progress of the upcoming gameplays of Land and Battles V2 as well as the growth of the community in general.

Land

Sky Mavis, the developers of the game, shared that their team is currently focused on building out the Project K (Lunacia) trading feature that will enable players to trade various resources with one another. 

“Just to give an idea of how much effort goes into a major feature, the trading system will likely take more than a month to build. Concepts and modeling are also in progress for various assets such as buildings and items,” the developers stated and shared some recently created 3D models for items, such as Statue of Muramasa and Caladbolg.

And these totems called Jolly Crazy and Stella.

Before 2021 ended, Sky Mavis priorly unveiled another teaser and the latest updates about the upcoming Land gameplay which includes “a number of foundational elements for the game.” (Read more: Axie Infinity Teases Land Gameplay for 2022)

Axie Infinity: Origin (Battles V2)

According to the developers, the development for Battles V2 has been “pushing full steam ahead.” They also disclosed that it is targeting a test launch in the upcoming months. 

Sky Mavis also shared some in-progress regarding the power-up art below.

“…new attack VFX! (Visual Effects) Notice that the facial expressions that many of you said you missed in the last update for the current battles, are going to be returning with even more emotion!” they teased.

Moreover, Sky Mavis noted that players must “be ready to learn more about the world of Axie” as they introduced a new lore,Buba, who will be part of the Adventure mode.

“Buba was born in a quaint village near the Lunacia forest. As a young lad, Buba marveled at the metaled Frontier battalions as they marched through his hometown. This sparked his dream of becoming the greatest soldier in Lunacia. Though Buba is a valiant fighter, his short-temper and overly meticulous nature can create obstacles. When Buba rages, his eyes flash fiercely with the intensity of an electrical current. Beware, the quickest way to anger Buba is to mess with his brush-like tail!” the developers wrote.

Growth

“Our growth team is hard at work preparing for the launch of Axie Infinity: Origin. Origin will have much easier on-boarding than the current experience as players will be able to receive free starter Axies to start learning and falling in love with Axie before making any economic decisions. This means that new growth strategies will open up as the game becomes easier for our community to show their friends and families,” the wrote.

Moreover, the developers stated that Origin will introduce new economic balancing features such as vertical progression of Axies. This feature will introduce “much needed sinks for the economy.”

“We are working on both a technical builders program and a creator program to make sure we can keep building together alongside our amazing community. For example, we are currently exploring how to create a referral code that will allow content creators and evangelists to be rewarded for the new citizens they onboard. We are also exploring how to structure a grants system for Axie community developers!” they added.

Last week, the game published its Code of Conduct which aims to promote further peace and order within the Axie Infinity Community. (Read more: Axie Infinity Code of Conduct is now Live, Patch Update Features Visual Changes)

Earlier this month, Axie Infinity also released a development journal addressing the concerns about in-game economic balance and it’s token Smooth Love Potion (SLP), one of the game’s coins that can be converted to real life money. In the blog they elaborated ways to balance the supply and demand of SLP. (Read more: Axie Infinity Discusses Ways to Balance SLP Economy)

Season 20

According to Sky Mavis, once Season 20 is launched, the card stats/mechanics will be static for the season. But for now, they released balancing patches prior to the release of the season to ensure sufficient time for play-testing. 

“This should allow us all to catch any unintended mechanics and consequences of the patch. This means that until Season 20 is formally launched, we may launch hot-fixes,” they stated.

However, they noted that there may be “extraordinary cases” where a mechanic slips through but in those cases the developers will signal through their communication channels in advance and ask for community input. 

“That said, we expect this new process to significantly decrease the probability of such a situation arising (this happened in Season 19 and we heard your feedback loud and clear),” the developers added.

Sky Mavis

Accordingly, along with the overall preparations and progress, Sky Mavis announced that their team recently welcomed their 100th team member. And all of the 100 are “focusing on different projects such as Project K, Origin, Katana, and Ronin.”

This article is published on BitPinas: Axie Infinity Releases Development Update for January 2022

Source: https://bitpinas.com/play-to-earn/axie-infinity-dev-update-jan-2022/