Blockstars 0.7.0 (Band Practicing)
Hot off the presses… Blockstar’s first band action is here! Your bands can now practice three of their core skills — Musical, Recording, and Gigging. When you practice these skills, you earn XP that allows you to increase your Blockstar and your band’s abilities.
For the past few months, Blockstars have been grinding away practicing and busking all over the Blockiverse to evolve their skills. Some Blockstars may even have mastered their primary musical skills (👀 looking at you #760, #3714, #7450). However, even the best Blockstars at the heights of their own performance may struggle when it comes to playing together in a band. Band practice allows Blockstars to come together as a group to rehearse, tweak their music, and feel the rhythm and sounds as one.
How does it work?
Since our first features were released many moons ago, let’s review some basics of gameplay. Some of these early game features are requirements before you can start practicing in a band. If you have been with us from the beginning, feel free to jump directly to Accessing the feature.
- Own a Blockstar. For now, you must own a Blockstar to play the game. We are in the process of developing ways to play without owning, but more to come on that topic in the future. If you do not own a Blockstar, you can still purchase one on Magic Eden.
- Protip: You can play this game with just (1) Blockstar. If you choose that path, I would recommend getting started with a vocalist for two reasons. First, vocalists are the most common type of Blockstars in the Foundation collection. As of writing this post, 18% of the Blockstars currently listed on Magic Eden are vocalists. So there is a very good chance that you will quickly and easily find a vocalist that you like. Second, you can form a one-Blockstar band with just a vocalist. With that one-Blockstar band, you can then write, record, release, and compete on the charts.
- Learn about Blockstar stats. Familiarize yourself with your Blockstars and their abilities and stats because how well you compete and how magnificent your music empire becomes all starts with these attributes.
- Start a Band. The last thing you will need before you can start Band Practicing is a band, of course! You can learn more about how to create a band in this Blog post, but a quick bit of guidance for our newcomers — there are 6 band subgenres with only 1 instrument requirement. These will be the easiest to build when you are just getting started.
Now on to the new stuff.
Accessing the feature. Navigate to the “My Bands” section to view and perform all band actions. The new “Band Practicing” action can be found when you click on the “Actions” button next to your band’s image.
Your Band and all your Blockstars in the band must be idle to start a Band Practicing session. This means that if any individual Blockstars in the band are practicing or busking by themselves, the band must wait until their individual sessions are complete before proceeding. As always, you can stop an individual session, but you will not be refunded any salaries and location fees you’ve already paid.
Decisions, Decisions, Decisions.
This is a management simulation game, and like all actions in this game, the results depend on the inputs from you. The four decisions you have control over for band practicing are: 1) selecting the band, 2) deciding on the skill your band should practice, 3) picking a location, and 4) setting the amount of time for their practice session.
1. Selecting the Band. The first step is selecting the Band. This is an important decision because if you send your band off to practice, it ties up all members of the band and prevents them from engaging in other actions until the session is complete. In other words, this one action could be equivalent to up to 8 individual Blockstar actions!
There are a few other things to keep in mind here. First, pay attention to the band salary because you will be responsible for paying your entire band to practice. You can learn more about all the costs in the cost section.
Next, review all the musical skill slots. When you practice your band’s musical skills, all these skills will improve. Lastly, we’ve mentioned before that each Blockstar you’ve selected to fulfill each band role is important. Here is the first time this comes into play. For band practicing, the role that is particularly important is the Blockstar you’ve put in the practicing slot.
It may be helpful to have your Band’s attribute page open while you are deciding which band to send off to practice. As a reminder, you can view your Band’s attribute page by using this URL https://app.blockstars.gg/bands/185 and replacing the ending number with your band’s ID.
2. Decide on a skill to practice. When your Band comes together to rehearse, they can practice skills that require the entire band’s participation. These skills include band musical skills, gigging, and recording. When you practice gigging or recording, all your blockstars’ gigging and recording skills will improve. This includes filler Blockstars in the band (i.e. Blockstars in the band that are not fulfilling any skill slots). Also, pay attention to the Blockstars in the gigging and recording slots — they may get a slight edge.
When you practice your musical skills, only the Blockstars fulfilling a musical slot will improve their musical skills. This also means that a Blockstar fulfilling multiple musical skills in the band will be able to improve more than one at the same time! This could save you time and money!
At this point, you may be asking what the benefits of individual Blockstars practicing are…? Well, the answer is simple, there are certain skills that your Blockstars must practice by themselves including writing, social media, and any other musical skills that are not required for their bands. The only overlapping practicable skill(s) are musical skills. Isn’t it exciting to know that with this release, you have the ability to improve 75%+ of your Blockstars skills?
3. Pick a location The existing locations your band can practice at include: Garage, School, Living Room, Skate Park, Cafe Street Corner, Local Park, Blockstars Dive Bar, and the Feel More Music Venue. With this release, we are also revealing one more location specifically for band practicing — the Enchanted Forest. This is a special new location where the musical spirits dwell and your bands will be inspired to play even more harmoniously. This location does cost some money to get to and that island dock amongst the lilies will require a fee to reserve, but it will be worth the journey! A general rule of thumb is that the more premium a location is, the more likely your bands will earn more XP.
4. Select the practice duration. This is probably the most straightforward decision to make. Similar to Blockstars practicing and busking, your bands can practice anywhere between 1 hour to 7 days. You can select the duration that best suits your schedule, but remember that your Blockstars will not be able to do anything else while they are practicing in a band.
Now what really matters… Earnings XP.
The amount of XP you earn depends on all the factors you’ve chosen above. Experiment with practicing different combinations of skills and locations because you may find that some combinations will produce better outcomes. When it comes to bands, it is all about the synergy. Each Blockstar brings their musical talents and other skills to the group and together, they create something better than each individual could produce alone. This also means that when they practice together, the amount of XP they earn is more significant than they would earn by themselves.
Take a look at the Pinoy Pop band example below. The band is made up of 2 vocalists (#1 and #5737). I’ve set up the band to practice their vocal skills for 7 days in their grandma’s dusty garage. When practicing together as a band, they each earn 10,483 XP for the 7 day duration (image on the right). However, when they practice singing by themselves in the same garage and for the same amount of time, they only earn 6k-7k XP each. This is because singing together allows them to play off of each other’s energy and practice things that only duos can do (e.g. harmonizing or duets).
As with all features in this game, you will need to try things out to find the optimal skills, locations, and durations for your band. Each combination is unique and will produce different results. You will see a summary of the total XP you will earn before you start any practicing session. You can even hover over the (i) tooltip to see a breakdown of XP per Blockstar. Not to spill all the secret sauce, but variables that may impact how much you earn includes all the decision points you’ve made thus far, along with the musical families involved and your band’s practicing, gigging, and recording abilities. Phew, that’s a lot of different things to experiment with!
This is all great, but what about the cost?
To send your band off to a practice session, you must pay your band their salaries and all fees associated with the location you’ve selected. Band salaries are simply the sum of all Blockstars’ (in the band) salaries. For band practicing, you will not need to worry about your band’s %cut, so we will revisit this topic when we release the next feature where your band earns $ROL. For now, remember that you only pay your Bands for the time you book them to practice. This means that if you book them to practice for 1 hour, you only need to pay them for 1 hour of their total daily salaries.
Now about the location fees. In the above section, you’ve carefully made your decision on the location you want your band to practice at and it is likely based on the amount of XP your band will earn. The location cost is broken into two categories — flat fee and rental. Some locations will require a flat fee to practice (e.g. transportation to a location or entrance ticket to a venue), some will require a prorated rental fee (e.g. leasing a recital hall or fancy stadium), and some may even require both. You can always see a detailed breakdown of costs by hovering over the (i) icon next to the Spend section on the Practice dialog.
The future includes chemistry.
Not that you don’t have enough to think about and play with already, but the future of band practicing efficacy (and most other band actions, for that matter) will include band chemistry. Jamming together will also build upon the chemistry. Sometimes chemistry will be strong at formation and other times your bands will need to develop it over time.
What are the next actions?
Like we mentioned in our Bands release (v.0.6.0), Bands is the beginning of our first competition game loop. Next up, we will be releasing a new Blockstar action — writing compositions. With compositions in hand, your band will be able to record and turn them into songs that can be released to the world! This is our last feature of 2022 and we wanted to leave you with a way to start preparing for all the good stuff to come in 2023!
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
