Blockstars 0.6.0 (Bands)
It is time. Gather your friends. Gather your Blockstars. Bands is here! And it is available for everyone to play today. This feature is the first step towards building out our core competition game loop — release songs and top charts.
How does it work?
1. Access. The new “My Bands” section in the top navigation allows for quick and easy access to all your Bands, all in one place! Get familiar with this section because it will be one of the main starting points for most Band actions like starting and configuring new or existing bands and recording, promoting and releasing songs.
2. Start a Band. From the “My Bands” section, you will be able to start a band by selecting the genre and subgenre you want for your band. There are 96 different subgenres (all with different requirements), so there are endless ways to strategize and play. Also, note that we’ve been making tweaks to the band requirements per your feedback and we finally feel pretty confident about where things have settled. Take a look, and of course, feedback is always still welcomed.
3. Band Editor and Fulfilling Band Requirements. Once you have settled on a subgenre for your band and hit “Next”, you will reach the Band Editer page that will allow you to finetune your Band. You will be able to select the Blockstars you want to fulfill each skill slot, including those non-musical skill slots.Play around with different Blockstars fulfilling different requirements to see how it impacts your band’s star potential and salaries.
You may notice different sections and colors when you select the dropdowns for each skill. Here is a breakdown of how to interpret each element.
- Sections. We have broken the dropdown into multiple sections to help you more easily navigate through long lists. They are grouped and prioritized by Blockstars who best meet the slot’s requirements and then by the skill’s ability level.
- Colors. In the music skills section, you will notice some skill bars in blue and others in orange. The blue bars represent Blockstars who will contribute the full potential of their abilities to the Band. This generally happens when the musical skill of the Blockstar is an exact or very close match to the band’s requirement. The orange bar indicates when the Blockstar’s skills are not an exact match to the band’s requirement, but still fall within the same musical family. The closer the Blockstar’s skill is to the band requirements, the more effective the instruments will be.
- Filler Blockstars. You can add a Blockstar to a band without having them fulfill a skill slot. You can do this by going down to the list of all the Blockstars you own in the Band Editor and tapping the purple [+] button. We call these filler Blockstars and they may (or may not) come in handy in the future depending on your strategy. Remember that you will have to pay them a salary, so your total Band salary will increase if you add them to the headcount.
The last thing to mention in this section is that you can customize and name your band. The same rules apply as with naming your Blockstar.
4. Band Page: Now that you have your band created, you and your friends (yes, they can view without being connected to a wallet) can view band details on theirdetails their page. When your band is created, they will show up in the “My Bands” section and there will also be a link on each Band member’s page. They will be assigned a unique ID and you will be able to go directly to your band’s page with app.blockstars.gg/bands/{ID_here}.
This page will eventually house a lot of key information like band recordings and how well songs perform on charts. For now, here are some key elements and how to interpret them.
- View Star Rating at a glance. If you’ve been with the Blockstar’s game from the start, you should be familiar with the concept of Star Ratings. They are a quick & easy way to evaluate your Band’s overall abilities. The “golden” star(s) indicate your current overall strength, while the dark gray star(s) show how much potential your Band has. The calculations for this vary slightly between Bands and Blockstars, so don’t be alarmed if you create a one-man band and see different Band Star Ratings from the Blockstar’s Star Ratings.
- See all Band Members. This section is a quick overview of all the members in your band, along with their ID and custom names (if applicable). You can also quickly navigate to each individual Blockstar’s page by clicking on the image.
- See Current and Potential Abilities. When you created your Band, you assigned you’ve assigned different Blockstars to each skill slot. Each Blockstar will have their own unique ability that contributes to the Band’s success. As a reminder, abilities show how strong each skill is and they can be improved, up to the Max Ability, through direct and indirect gameplay. For each Skill, the Current Ability is shown immediately, while the Max Ability is hidden somewhere in between the potential range. As each Skill gets closer to the Max Ability, the potential range will get narrower.
- Disband to Start Fresh. At the bottom of the page, you will find a link to disband your band. When you do this, all your Blockstars will return as individuals under your management and you may use them to form other bands. This is a very permanent action, so be cautious when you do this.
Some additional notes:
- You can only make one band per subgenre. But never fear, you can always edit to make changes to your band or disband to start again from scratch. Note that if you do disband your band, you will not be able to resurrect the band again.
- We charge 1 ROL to make any changes to your Band, including editing band names. We are doing this because we want to validate that the wallet requesting these changes are the true owners of the Band and Blockstars.
What is the significance of Bands?
Bands is the beginning of our first competition game loop. With your Bands formed, you can record songs, release and promote them to see how well they perform on charts. Do well on charts and you will earn rewards and be on your way to building your music empire.
We will be releasing Band Practice next, so that your Band(s) can start practicing together and building those relationships. Immediately following band practice, we will continue to build out each piece of the Charting loop including writing, recording, and promoting songs.
Join Us!
This is just a teaser of what we are up to! If you are intrigued by Blockstars, be sure to read much, much more about the game design, tokenomics, and development roadmap in our whitepaper, come and chat with other community members in our Discord and follow us on Twitter. If you want to join the team, check out our job openings here. We will also be posting news about upcoming features, roadmap progress & important events regularly right here, on our blog.
Sherrie Chen | @sher_nft| Chief Product Officer | Blockstars
