Our new steemit post regarding future blockchain development has been posted!

https://steemit.com/jewelscoin/@pro4never/jewelscoin-and-the-future-of-blockchain-gaming


We will be posting a heroes/jewels related progress report tonight as well but this should provide for an interesting read in the meantime.

That looks really good (although definitely invokes the thought of it being a cross). Sent it to other devs to take a peek and get their opinion.

Strange.. We already have ssl set up on the site and tested. I'll look into why it's not being used later this afternoon. Good catch!

Heroes is online for testing. We will be moving the database over to the new host later this afternoon. Now that we have the jewels shop finished it's just a matter of finishing up the website, doing final testing and then we're ready for the full launch. I'd say by this weekend we'll be ready to post a fixed date/time for the official launch.


Pretty boring from a player perspective but we're loading up on player security features before launch. The most recent addition is what we call a HWID whitelist system. If you've ever used Steam you're probably familiar with how it works.

Players can turn on HWID Whitelist through the website control panel. Turning it off requires email confirmation (if not you could turn it off just using id/pw which would be pointless). Turning it on will warn you that if you do not have access to your email inbox you may be locked out of your account.

During player login it will check if your account has HWID whitelist enabled, if so it will then check if your computer is already validated. If it is then you log in with no changes. If not then it will disconnect you with a message saying "Computer is not authorized to use this account. Please check your email account to validate". Note: It will only send an email once per 10 minutes per computer - this is to avoid email spam from players who don't read the initial login error message. When generating a new authorization it of course generates a new email key to avoid the old messages being used to authorize the account.

Your email will contain a validation link with a single use token. Clicking the link will allow you to add a name for your computer to track it in the future. You may now log into the game using this computer without any further warnings.


By logging into your account manager you will see a history of login attempts for your account (IP address, Computer Nickname, Timestamp) as well as being able to revoke a computer from using your account.






Short version is that when logging in on a new computer with the option enabled, you must validate you are the account's owner by checking your registered email account. This is to help avoid issues with players who fail to keep their account details secret as well as to offer enhanced security options.

We do not sell anything that boosts a player's strength. The only things we sell are visual changes (custom looks for your weapon or armor) or convenience features (VIP status which lets you access warhouses from anywhere, notifies when a rare item drops, lets you teleport to cities instantly, etc)

Allowing players to pay for in-game strength would be very unwise as it would chase away large amounts of players who might otherwise join.

The obvious workaround though is that you could offer other players jewels for their items that they have created (by hunting monsters, completing quests, trading, mining, etc). This bypasses the issue of selling strength because we do not generate or directly sell the items. As per our initial timeline, once the jewels gambling games are online it will be a high priority for us to launch our own jewels auction house to simplify the process of selling items between players.

Considering the ICO is over and we're still actively developing, posting updates and releasing content as per our original timeline I'd say that you're incorrect.

If there's something leading you to believe it's a scam or that we're not developing we'd be interested to hear your logic, there's always the possibility our updates aren't being seen by people or the project is being misrepresented which would be something we definitely want to address.

Sorry for not quoting directly as a bunch of people are discussing similar information. Hopefully this post will clear up some confusion.


Q: You already have a premium currency in apex, how does jewels fit in and what about past donators?
A: Apex has, for lack of a better term, a mess of a donation system. When you donate you receive a list of premium benefits based on the amount donated. This includes things such as CPs, VIP tokens, random VIP garment boxes and weapon skin points. Jewels simplifies that because it lets us simply create a jewels shop where you spend your jewels (from exchange or through paypal directly) on exactly what you want. Do you only care about getting VIP status? Great, buy just that and save the rest of your jewels for later. Want a new shiny garment? Use your jewels to get what you want rather than having to constantly min/max the system to try to get what you actually care about. This is especially relevant to those who want cosmetics but don't need further in-game equipment. Their characters may be 'finished' but they still want cosmetics. They have no use for the CPs they get from donating and so the new system lets them focus on what they actually care about - garments or weapon skins.


Q: How does apex translate into heroes?
A: They are seperate projects. We will not be offering any character, item or currency transfer between them. Heroes is a VERY different game in terms of economy, rates and features. We're aware many apex players will fancy the change of pace and will join it but offering direct translation would heavily hurt the project both from a financial standpoint but more importantly from a gameplay standpoint. People want a fresh start, they dont want to compete with year+ old characters who transferred on day 1 to dominate anyone. It would be very un-wise for us to do anything like that.

Q: How will people react to jewels being added ontop of other premium currencies?
A: In the official game, CPs are a 'premium' currency and are virtually only available by spending money. That is not the case in our games. While our donation packages with apex DO include some CPs, it's a small amount of the actual rewards you get (if you wanted CP, you'd get more selling the VIP tokens you get to other players than you would from donating directly). Jewels simply revamps how the donation packages work and make it more user friendly to players. There may be a small amount of initial confusion but that's one of the reason we're tailoring the jewels shop directly to heroes so that it can be there from day 1 for players joining that project. In regards to apex it will have a more limited scope (because there are less things we can/will sell there) and will simply allow people to spend jewels on the same donation options we already offer there, just in a more user friendly way.


Q: I can't wait for the auction house!!!
A: The auction house is something we're looking forward to creating. It will NOT be part of apex and is intended for launch in heroes within the coming months. It will not be in the near future though. A good estimate would be about 3 months for the auction house. Our priority first and foremost has to be initial use cases which means the jewels web portal, jewels game shop and the jewels gambling games. Once those are launched (or nearing completion) the auction house will move up in the priority list and will begin testing. This doesn't mean you'll have to wait for then for peer2peer jewel trades though. You can of course trade jewels in-game using traditional methods but the auction house will definitely be a huge improvement in scope and user experience in regards to player merchants.





Just a sneak peek for everyone.
This is a new garment effect I'm currently working on. Going for a nice dark flame look although it will be a series used and will have multiple versions. Some tweaks to do still but coming along nicely!

We're super excited to start posting more details about the gambling games! I'd say by next week's update we should have a lot more concrete to share regarding them.

Right now it's all background work and not really flashy or interesting from an end user perspective.

I'm un-aware if you also PM'd the jewels project account at an earlier date but your PM to me was from a few hours ago.

We're in the process of applying to a number of exchanges and have been since well before the ICO ended. I will mention c-cex to the rest of the team but in regards to our other exchange applications we've done everything requested as part of the application process and are waiting for a final response. Keep in mind that it's currently a long weekend and it's unlikely we will get any reply from them until after that. If we fail to receive a reply after that time we will of course be sending follow-up messages to see where we are at with the application process.

Very strange, I just registered an account with no issues. it should always specify a reason for failure (name in use, invalid characters in user/password field, etc)




Keep in mind user+pass must be alpha numeric (az09 only)

We have submitted our application well before the ICO ended bittrex and other exchanges. Due to their policies they requested we send them further details after the ICO ended and coin distribution had begun. In accordance with those requests we've sent them all the necessary information and are waiting on their reply to determine our next steps.

As mentioned by the official jewels account, we are limited by the exchange's response time. Having members of the growing jewels community voice their desire directly to bittrex and other exchanges that they want jewels listed can only help speed up the process and we highly encourage it.

A HUGE thank you to everyone who has supported the project both with their investments and their advertisements. The ICO has officially closed with 337 BTC raised.

The Jewels account will provide a full post detailing the coming steps but just wanted to poke my nose in here at the end and show my appreciation for all that you've done.

Ooh for sure, riot had a similar beginning many years ago and was developed by the original creators of the warcraft mod. I think my distinction though became trying to use the mass market appeal league has as a target for development. It's moved so far from it's origins that it just seems like a bad example to me.

The comparison isn't really fair though. Riot has thousands of employees and billions of dollars in investor money (and profits). Their esports cost them money but they treat it as a way to advertise the game and build longevity to the brand.


That being said their world championships are always impressive. I know in 2014 they sold out a 45,000 seat auditorium for the finals in Korea and in 2015 there was a viewership of 35 million people.


I'm well aware that people always have the mentality of the "next world of warcraft" or the "next league of legends" but such comparisons are neither realistic nor are they particularity helpful. A better example or goal would be Path of Exile. They are a team of developers who got impatient waiting for a 'real' diablo game (they hated diablo 3 and felt it was too focused on casual gamers) so they started their own company and built the game from the ground up. Their game is very much targeted at niche groups (it's VERY unforgiving to new players and requires a lot of math and theory crafting to be successful) but because they have stuck so closely to their initial goals and done such a great job at building their community, their game is worth many millions of dollars now.

The core idea is very much the same idea as project rebirth. We are developers who truly and un-ironically enjoyed conquer online but feel that the company that owns the IP has managed it in a horrible way and that the core game mechanics can be pushed so much further. We've done a lot with apex and will do even more with heroes to push the game mechanics in new and exciting directions but rebirth is very much the same driving concept as Path of Exile had in regards to Diablo. Take what you like about the genre and do it really, really well. Don't try to make a billion dollar game, try to make something that tens or hundreds of thousands of players will desperately want.


Here is a great couple articles about their approach.
http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/28/5451410/how-is-ethical-free-to-play-path-of-exile-faring
http://venturebeat.com/2013/02/10/path-of-exile-crowdfunding/

The heroes full launch wont be on the 1st but we are still close to our original timeline. Unfortunately our other developer has had some serious health issues and has temporarily dropped out of the project. That has set our timetable back by a significant amount. We are still aiming to launch within the first week of September but are giving ourselves a bit of wiggle room with the stance of launching "within the first half of the month".




Here's a quick update on what I've been working on this past week.


Apex

-Windows 10 Aniv Edition support added. The new update changes a number of core system DLLs that we use in our client protection so we had to make changes to accommodate that.
-HWID banning to deal with those who use proxies/VPNs to access the game. This allows for proper permanent ban of abusive members.
-New premium weapon skin added
-Monthly ranked duel leaderboard added with rewards for top 10 ranks.
-Added spring cleaning function for guild leaders. This allows to remove all members who have not been active for 6 months. Sorting through 150+ members manually was a hassle so we wanted a quick tool for them.


Heroes

-Wrote a new autopatch server to handle distributing updates for multiple games off of the same host.
-Started populating a Conquer Heroes wiki to document server systems.
-Added a in-game patchnotes system to inform players of major changes (more info later in post)
-Added referral system so players can invite their friends (more info later in post)
-Re-built the client installer to include a large number of tweaks and assets for future content (avoids distributing large client patches later on)
-Added ~50 new weapon accessories
-Cleaned up tournament logic, added a number of new tournaments and wars (more info later in post)
-Cleaned up quest logic and guides to avoid player confusion (more info later in post)




Some of this has been mentioned previously in the thread but we've added a series of different PK tournaments that run either weekly or monthly to add variety and a unique activity for players to look forward to on nearly every day of the week. Unlike Wars which are skill based (gear and level does not matter), tournaments rely heavily on your characters equipment. These tournaments primarily are for bragging rights although they also provide some significant rewards for winning.

-Class PK Tournament

Players are broken into level groups and fight only members of their own profession. Winners get titles, halos, experience and some other rewards

-Weekly and Monthly PK Tournament

Players are broken into level groups and fight until only one player remains. Winner gets titles, halos, experience, VIP time and some other rewards.

-Clan War

Runs daily and allows clans to fight for control of each major city (except for the starting city). By holding the city's pole at the end of the event, you claim ownership until the next war. During that time your clan (up to 12 members) will gain bonus droprates on that map when hunting monsters. You will also receive some small rewards for the victory itself but if you manage to hold the same city for 7 days in a row you will receive a much larger prize.




In-Game Patchnotes

So we all know that not everyone will read patchnotes but we want to make sure players have every opportunity to know about changes to the game without bombarding them with system messages or alerts. By taking advantage of our HWID system (each physical device has its own key generated) we check on player login to check if their computer has been informed about the latest website article. If not then it displays it using an in-game browser and then will not show that same note to any accounts logged in from that same computer.

This is nothing that complicated but it will definitely help players become more familiar with the game's updates without forcing them to sit through pop-up after pop-up every time they want to log into the game, even if they are using a different character.




Referral System

We're starting pretty basic with the referral system although we have a number of planned improvements for it. Right now we're focusing on making sure the base system functions as it should and that the rewards are distributed in a fair manner.


Users will be able to distribute referral links to the game referencing their character name.

EG: ConquerHeroes.com/register?r=pro4never

When a user registers using one of these links and creates a character, the server will check if their HWID has been used for a referral in the past and if all validity checks pass then the two accounts are 'linked'. For now this means that when the referred player reaches level 100, both them and the player that referred them will receive a random, non-tradable 7 day garment. This is so that even if someone does bypass the HWID system to generate fake computer IDs, the rewards cannot be traded/sold to others and are purely cosmetic in nature.

We will also be adding an account control panel option for players to customize their referral link. These options will make it so that when someone makes a character using your referral link, they will immediately become in-game friends with you! This is of course optional and turned off by default to avoid abuse but is a great way for groups of friends to connect and play the game together.

To clarify: The referral options would be validated server side. We're well aware that there's plenty of trolls out there that would try to abuse a system like that to spam you with friend requests. Referral links including auto-friend or auto-guild invites will be single use and must be generated by the referrer.

That really doesn't have anything to do with being a mod there or not though.. Hacks will always be developed and keeping an eye on the communities that develop them gives a good insight into how to best secure your project.

Being involved in their community means that most of the knowledgeable members have enough respect for my projects that they dont wish to interfere with them. The fact is that our existing client protection already has proven incredibly effective at blocking common methods of cheating/hacking/botting. If a new cheat was released that worked on our server we would simply update our protection to react.

It's worth also keeping in mind that if it was posted on epvp I'd be aware of the cheat much earlier than I would otherwise and could develop protection necessary. Private non-distributed bots are where things would be harder to protect against and being a mod wont interfere with that.

I can't say for sure as I've not tested but the game doesn't use anything very modern (it's a ~8 year old client). I would make the assumption it should work fine using any windows emulator.

Definitely let us know your experience though!



The amount raised determines our updated timetable. Investors will then be able to vote to continue or not (if not then everyone gets refunded). While obviously 200 BTC would be ideal so that we can meet the timetable we've proposed in the OP, it does not mean the project cant be done with less it would simply take longer. It's up to investors at that point if they wish to continue or not.

Because we do not sell items for real life cash. The items we sell are things like VIP tokens, exclusive garments, RNG packs, etc. Players will always try to circumvent any system we have to sell their gears for cash. By using jewels we have the ability to introduce new systems such as a jewels auction house or at the very least the ability to enforce these trades. Less scams. more transparent for players not to mention those who will play simply because they view it as a way to earn money. We already have plenty of people who play for the purpose of paying bills in their country. We've banned large numbers of them but by securing and legitimizing these trades you actually grow your player base and reduce their complaints.


I can't go into the full details of our protection systems but here's a quick rundown of the measures we have in place.

-Anti injection/spoofing measures to check for memory based bots and packet based bots
-Process list tracking to scan for un-authorized programs running while the game is open
-Custom authorization and game encryption keys
-Server side sanity checks so if our client protection is removed/altered it will be detected
-Client file verification to check key files for edits
-Player report system so if they see suspicious behavior they can let us know. An invisible mod/gm will then investigate, scan their running processes and take the neccesary actions.


No anti bot system can claim to be un-crackable or anything like that but ours has proven very successful in the last year and a half. Any players we've found who've 'cheated' in our game have relied on simple click based macros or other such tools which are easily detected through player reports and their effects limited by safe system design (making systems less abusable by repetitive actions)


There are many, many different ways people define what pay2win means to them. Having grown up playing games like conquer, I define pay 2 win as the gap between paying players and non paying players as being insurmountable. You spending 100 dollars being equal to 1,000 hours of gameplay for me would of course be pay2win. I'm aware that's a quite loose definition but I'm using the benchmark of the official versions of conquer online and other predatory MMOs with similar tactics.

If you came into heroes on day 1 and spent a large amount of money, it wouldn't mean you could all of a sudden be 'finished' the game. Sure you would have a very large amount of jewels on your account but that does not equate to instant items. You would have to find a player who wants your jewels (or an item you purchased with jewels) and trade it with them for an item they've actually obtained. This peer2peer system of trading and marketing strongly encourages players to interact with each other in a sort of symbiotic relationship between those who spend money and those who don't. Those who spend money purchase items others want (such as VIP tokens or shiny looking cosmetics others want) and then other spend their time completing quests, farming monsters, competing in events, etc to earn items to trade to that paying player.




The gambling/jewels projects will be contained separately from the server projects. This is both for legal reasons regarding gambling and also to keep the jewels project insulated if there were ever any issues with the private servers coming under fire. The company that created conquer online has not done anything to private servers in a decade but it's better to be safe than sorry.


We have actually brought up a few proposed ideas regarding this and mentioned them to bitcrytals. The idea we had was to do a sort of partnership where cards could be transferred into Heroes to receive in-game items that looked like the card (a weapon, an armor, etc) and could be traded back out. To implement tokenized items wouldn't make sense for most standard in-game items (they are combined and deleted and shifted so often it would be a mess!) but for things like importing cards from spells of genesis and any other similar cosmetic items, I do like that idea and it's something we've discussed some.

Personally my focus has been on the gambling side of things but I am not opposed to doing on-chain assets in the future, it just requires the right circumstances or partnership for it to make sense.

That center bar is stamina. It is used by all classes for certain skills. Ninjas use stamina for all of their skills.


We plan to focus on additional content through re-designing under utilized content rather than adding fresh classes. A good example would be weapon variety. There is a dozen or so different types of weapons (swords, blades, axes, hammers, hooks, clubs, etcetc) and only a handful of them are actually used. Our first major expansion pack will take some of these weapons and give them new skills and mechanics to make them more interesting. That also serves as a way for us to expand on classes that feel a bit underwhelming for players based on the previous few months of gameplay.

For example if 4-6 months from now archers feel a bit stale (they have always been more of a player vs monster class) then giving them some new skills based around an existing under-utilized weapon would be a great way to make the class more exciting and at the same time leverage existing client assets to save on development time.



Based on how the class worked in the original conquer online and based on our testing, they are a very powerful class. They can be thought of as a counter to ranged classes like archers and taoists due to their very quick damage. Where they run into issues is when they can't quickly kill a target in a hit or two (such as when vs a warrior). At that point they need to wait for a weakness by working with allies or by repeatedly applying poisons until the target is weak enough to take down.



Lets break things down as it seems you may not have read the full OP (it's long I'll grant you that).


Apex has been online and been my full time job for 18+ months - Conquer Online (the game it's emulating) has existed for well over a decade. There is no development funds needed for that project and it is an existing and established game where jewels will be used as an immediate first use case (built in demand for the currency).


Heroes is a much more modern version of the same game (conquer online) and will be launching within a week of the ICO ending. There is no development funds needed for that project and it has been in development/testing for around 8 months.

Jewels Gambling is what the funds raised will be used for. These will be a series of provably fair crypto gambling games which will be available separately from our private server projects as well as being embedded in the existing client. These gambling games will therefor have an immediate audience of thousands of users as well as the very large potential for future growth by partnering with other servers, other games, other gambling websites in order to have our games added to their offerings.

The remaining dev funds will be put towards phase 1 of developing our own MMO. We have many years of experience developing stable and popular server projects as well as developing unique content for players. We want to push those skills to the next level by developing our own game from the ground up. Yes, it will be inspired by many of the concepts from Conquer Online that we like best but it will NOT be a clone, it will be our own game developed from scratch with modern gaming in mind.



The amount of funds we raise determines how many gambling games we can create, how quickly they will be ready for users and how complex they can be. Simple things like dice games and slot machines require relatively little in regards to development (a couple artists and a developer or two) but if we're going to expand to much more complex projects like multi player blackjack, roulette and more then that requires a LOT more in terms of programming, art (3d models, textures, effects) and sounds.

The gambling projects are our priority when it comes to this ICO as it's where funds can be best utilized to grow the coin past simply being a premium crypto used in a number of existing games. Having them immediately in use is a huge benefit, don't get me wrong but it's not something that can scale exponentially. Heroes/Apex has no use for external funding and that's nothing to do with what this ICO is about, it's simply the first and most accessible use case for the coin and a demonstration of my past experience as a developer.