Battle for Giostone AMA #2 — Project Overview with Mile Gramatikov (Co-Founder)(Recap)
Battle for Giostone AMA #2 —Technical Deep Dive with Mile Gramatikov (Co-Founder)(Recap)
On 10/01/2022 at 2:00 p.m. (PST), an AMA session was held on Avalaunch Telegram with Battle for Giostone Co-Founder, Mile Gramatikov. The focus of this AMA will be the business development, vision, road map, and post-IDO plans.
Below we present to you an excerpt from AMA with questions and answers.
Dave | Avalaunch
Hello again and welcome everyone to, not the first, but the second AMA with the venerable Battle For Giostone. They are a game with big plans and have an assembled a team they feel is up to the challenge.
Today we have none other than @milegramatikov ready to take on all comers and answer all questions. @milegramatikov how are you doing?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Hey, I’m feeling awesome. Thanks for inviting me!
Dave | Avalaunch
Good to have you here today. Let’s get right into it…
Let’s start with a brief introduction about yourself: your background, career path, and how did you end up where you are today?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
First of all, I’d like to start with my background as a gamer. I played DotA when it came out, and I was instantly hooked. That was everything that I wanted to do in life. Then, Dota 2 came along, and it was even better. Because of my love for the game, I started connecting with other like-minded people, and that’s how I met most of my friends. We played the game in internet cafes, at home, and I even organized 20+ esports events related to Dota2. I was a massive enthusiast and competitive player.
When I finished high school, I completed a backend developer course and started working in a programming company. I worked as a backend developer for 2+ years and decided to switch to marketing. It’s a drastic jump from one niche to another, but something pushed me to try out marketing, and after 2 years of being a marketer, I started my own company. For the last 3 years, I’ve been the CEO of M-Tech Entertainment, and our company is responsible for handling the Discord security of the Axie Infinity server of Sky Mavis. That’s how I got into crypto, and an idea clicked into my head. That idea was Battle For Giostone.
Dave | Avalaunch
Well it’s safe to say you got off to an early start. Very impressive.
As the ultimate, first MOBA game, what’s the range of experience that the team holds collectively? How many in-house developers are working on the project? Are there future team expansion plans?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Most of the team has been with me in M-Tech ever since the company came to life. Their skills have been battle-tested on numerous freelance projects that we completed. Even though we are based in Macedonia, we’ve worked with a myriad of international clients to gain the necessary skills and experience to make the peak of MOBA gaming.
Currently, 40+ developers and designers are working on the project. We’ve been steadily increasing the number of people that work with us. Since we’re about the launch the Closed Alpha of the game, we’ll push even harder. Of course, that means that the team will expand, and we’re always looking for passionate people to start working with us.
Of course, there’s also Theeban, our Co-Founder, who works as the game’s main balancer. His experience and know-how are irreplaceable since he’s the only person in the world to have so much Web2 and Web3 experience.
Dave | Avalaunch
That long history and working chemistry is a great thing to have when venturing into crypto. It will test all your relationships ?
Battle of Giostone is a concept that was in development for over 1 year now. How many iterations did it take the team to prepare for the pre-alpha phase? Also are there any highlights about this major milestone you’d like to share with us?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Many people think that making a game is easy. You just create a plan, follow it, and you end up with a product a year later. That’s not true at all. There are plenty of roadblocks along the way, especially when you’re dealing with complex game mechanics. Ten people will be clicking at the same time, and the program needs to respond to every click, every press of the button, combine video effects, and voice effects, and change the parameters of each character. All of that takes an inside amount of coding experience to make it work well together.
This explanation is to make it clearer for the people who think games are simple. At the moment, the Pre-Alpha is the 17th version of the game. The 18th version is on the way with a spectator mode that will allow us to host tournaments and cast them online. The first tournaments we made didn’t have this feature, so players needed to stream on Discord, and we broadcasted their streams on Twitch. We’re incredibly serious about esports, which is why we’re focusing on making the game work first, and then streaming it to the public to show what we’re building and how we’re progressing.
Dave | Avalaunch
I have news for you — after all that’s happened in Web3 gaming, no one thinks it’s easy any more.
As with most games built on the Web3, NFTs are intrinsic to this game dynamic. Can you give us a top-level overview of these NFTs?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
The main NFTs in Battle For Giostone will be the heroes. There are 6 hero combinations: Gogmangog, Auri, Akuma, Lucius, Ranvir, and Gurluk. Every NFT will have one of these heroes as the base, with equipment on their bodies. The equipment is responsible for the skills that each hero will be able to use inside the game, and you will not be able to change it. There will be skins that work like cosmetics upgrades, and they will only change how the hero or the equipment looks like, but they won’t be able to change the main design.
All of that was from the design aspect. When it comes to functionality, each NFT hero will have 4 ability slots. You can pick 4 out of the 72 abilities in total and forge a hero based on your play style. That could be a Melee Warrior, Ranged Warrior, Melee Assassin, Ranged Assassin, Melee Wizard, and Ranged Wizard. By matching the hero class and the ability class, you could create a tank, assassin, jungler, mage, support, fighter, or marksman. The style of play depends on you alone, as well as your team. More than 6 million hero combinations are possible, making the game incredibly competitive, and you’ll always be looking for the ideal champion.
Apart from the heroes, there will be skin NFTs that work like cosmetics for the heroes and abilities and revenue-sharing NFTs that allow you to lock BFG tokens.
Dave | Avalaunch
The heroes do look cool. Ranvir reminds me of a guy I know. Appreciate the comprehensive answers.
According to the roadmap, the plan is to hold an NFT pre-sale shortly after the token launch. Are you able to elaborate on this plan, how many NFTs will be available, the price range, and where the pre-sale will take place?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
We haven’t decided about the final number of the Heroes that will be minted or their price yet. But what I can say is that every one of those NFT’s that will be on pre-sale will be called Genesis and will be very rare. They will be only obtainable through the pre-sale. Let’s say Auri with Golden Wings. Everyone else will have the normal wings but your hero will be with Golden wings because it’s Genesis. Later, people can sell those heroes for profit if they decide, because everyone wants to have different and cooler stuff than the others.
Dave | Avalaunch
Nicely answered. Among the range of cool features that come with the game is an NFT marketplace. Can you talk about its use and how its integration relates to the vision of the project?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
I remember when I was little, my friends that played Metin2 or World of Warcraft were making money by selling accounts on shady websites. The game companies that made these games didn’t allow trading, and people became creative and created platforms specifically designed for exchanging characters.
We believe that the essence of gaming is to give power back to gamers. That’s why we’re choosing the blockchain and making the marketplace on our own website. Everyone will be able to come and buy or sell heroes, skins, modifiers, and even revenue-sharing NFTs on our site. Instead of us selling pre-made heroes through a game shop, gamers will have the power to create new characters themselves and trade on an open market. We won’t set the prices, which will make the gamers in charge. That way, the game is truly made for the players.
Dave | Avalaunch
With each Hero it seems that the user is able to combine their preferred abilities to create a Hero in their vision. For the audience that’s not aware, can you please briefly tell us how this process works?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Sure. In MOBA games, the playable character usually has 4 abilities that can be either passive or active. Passive abilities give a general boost in stats or work under specific conditions. Active abilities, on the other hand, need to be clicked to work. They deal damage, heal the character or the allies, provide shields, or crowd control the enemy such as stunning, silencing, or disarming.
Based on your gameplay style, you can create a hero NFT that has the abilities you want to play. You can forge a warrior that does magical damage with their abilities. You can forge an assassin that has healing abilities. However, picking abilities from the same class makes the hero stronger since it boosts the base stats such as strength, agility, or intelligence.
Because the game will be free to play, gamers will be able to try out several versions of heroes that we will provide an update on a weekly basis. That way, they can learn how the abilities work, and what they want to see in their own hero, and then choose to forge something of their own or buy a hero that someone else already made on the Marketplace.
Dave | Avalaunch
One of the main features that I think will be extremely popular among the players of Battle For Giostone is the Esports tournaments which according to the roadmap is around the corner. Can you give us a comprehensive outline of how this will kick-start; what the players are to expect when this feature becomes available in Q4 of 2022, what the prize pools will be etc?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Security is a massive concern. Axie Infinity is the biggest game in the space, and yet they suffered a 600 million dollar breach.No one wants that to happen, but there are cybercriminals whose goal is to ruin the experience of other people. We’ve included several security mechanisms to ensure the same thing doesn’t happen to us.
One thing that we’re still working on is to have a manual review of bigger transactions to ensure they’re legitimate and not a hack. Additionally, every internet project is only as secure as the people working on it, which is why everyone on the team is using an antivirus program, a VPN, and we don’t click on any links or download files that are unsafe. Socially engineered attacks are on the rise, which is why we’re incredibly careful and constantly upskilling ourselves in terms of cybersecurity and the latest scam or phishing attacks.
Dave | Avalaunch
As a first of its kind Esports MOBA on Avalanche, what were some of the challenges encountered while building the game, and how did you circumvent these challenges?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
The biggest challenge is making a game that’s actually fun to play. When you’re playing a game, it’s always the little things that make you angry at the developer, such as pressing a button and the ability casting half a second later than when you clicked. The user end needs to be seamless, and for that to be possible, many components need to work together without breaking. We circumvented these challenges by working relentlessly and using bots to play the game to see where it breaks to fix it before we actually launch it to the public.
Dave | Avalaunch
What were the reasons behind choosing to build on the Avalanche blockchain over the other options?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Avalanche is one of the fastest networks in the entire blockchain space. The people that work on this project are some of the greatest we’ve seen, and they’re true to their mission and vision. We’re a part of the Avalance Builders program, and they saw the potential in us, which is why they invested in Battle For Giostone. They’re one of the top growing platforms, have a big name without any incidents, and their working environment is incredible. Last but not least, we’re going to have a subchain, which makes this partnership even better!
Dave | Avalaunch
Before we move on one final question Sir
Are there any lasting thoughts you’d like to share with our community before concluding this AMA?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Battle For Giostone is a game that aims to reward players for their time, effort, and skills. Our goal is for every person in the ecosystem to find their place. People from different backgrounds will join our universe, and we want to have something for everyone. If you’re a good player, you’ll climb the leaderboards and earn rewards. If you’ve got a few friends, you can try to be the best in the group. If you’ve been a massive player of MOBAs and want to come back to the space, there will be new friends waiting for you. If you’re lucky, you’ll get modifiers to sell to investors.
If you’re somebody who doesn’t know how to play the game, but you want to be a part of it, you will be able to lock your tokens in a revenue-sharing program. If you’re a creator, you will be able to create content, build a community of your own, and get rewarded for being a part of our ecosystem. The opportunities are endless, but for all of this to work, the game needs to be fun to play. With the people we have at the moment, we’re sure that we can deliver. Stay tuned and see how we reinvent gaming!
Dave | Avalaunch
Congratulations Mile. You have fared in your journey through Avalaunch-land. Now you must stare down the twitterati, the forces that conspire to ask difficult questions. Are you ready for Part II?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Yess!
Twitter Questions
@Xenada01 — How fast and secure is BFGiostone platform? If the number of users spikes, will transactions on your token get congested?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
We decided to work with Avalanche because their network is really fast and secure and offers great scalability solution with their Subnets. The ability to create your own rules on a subnet and use your token for gas fees is a great utility and it also provides instant finality. It’s an amazing opportunity.
@KleinVars — Many games today set high costs to start the game & therefore start with a small player base. Does Battle For Giostone only an entrance fee or starting conditions & if so,what are they?Do I need to hold an NFT or hold a certain amount of tokens in order to enjoy & play the game?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Everyone will be able to play the game for free with one of our weekly free heroes. However, the free users will not be able to earn GIOS after each match but they can still reach leaderboards and earn BFG after each season.
We want to keep hero prices reasonable so the game is accessible for everyone.
@leonardo_mark11 — Which is the most proudest milestone BFGiostone has achieved so far?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Having a balanced, cool and playable game!
Dave | Avalaunch
Great answer. Short, sweet and tells us everything. Well done.
@sentluciya — To what extent does your focus on the entertaining aspects of the game?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
The fun is based on complex gameplay, outplaying your opponents and collecting heroes & skins. Playing competitive for tournaments will be also fun and entertaining.
@Rozina_Kazin — There is a large audience that does not understand the English language at all but is interested in crypto. Have you created or planned to create local communities to include this audience in your project?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
We are working on creating local based communities, but everything should come at the right time and that is why we are not rushing with that. However, we have local communities in our discord and have separate chats for many different languages.
Dave | Avalaunch
Congratulations @milegramatikov you’ve navigated the treacherous waters of our questions and the inimitable peeps over on twitter.
Now comes the final leg of this great journey you’ve embarked on and that is the community. Normally we unmute the chat and allow it to populate with question but today we have a new twist. We have had our community weigh in…
Telegram Questions
@mrallaw — There are a lot of characters in the gameplay — what are they inspired from?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Every character in the game is based on the lore which was created by our Art Director. Each character has their own backstory based on the lore. For everyone out there that wanna read the lore, you can do it at https://battleforgiostone.com/lore
@Ray699 — What are your plans for building a Subnet and how important do you think that is?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Avalanche’s tech is generally superior to any other chain but subnets make it an easy decision. A sub-network with a strong set of validators is decentralized but it’s like having your own blockchain where you can make your own rules and function independently. Having your own token act as gas on the network is also a strong utility and encourages people to participate.
@birdie_johansen — Projects often overlook the utility of the tokens — can your tokens deliver value from the game?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
BFG is designed to do exactly that. Deliver value. It is the driver of all things in the ecosystem from gaming to passive holding. Transactions in the game translate to BFG. Rewards are in BFG. It is truly an apex token that all activity runs through. It is what makes the Web3 great.
The dynamic interface of a token with players is exciting, it’s just gotten so screwed up in the wave of games. A token that can earn rewards, be used as a currency, act as gas of a network, be bought and sold, used to purchase anything from skins to modifiers is so much more interesting than the web2 to me. It’s time to take advantage of that.
@naKohl1996 — What is the plan to ensure sufficient liquidity on exchanges to fill market orders, especially as adoption increases and clients begin multiplying year-over-year for your project?
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
Listing liquidity is very important. Projects don’t consider this. When you have a token that has an FDV of say 40M and they put 200k in liquidity, it is basically .25% of the supply. That’s nothing and is not going to allow people to buy or sell without a lot of volatility. In a bull market no one notices. It all goes crazy.
We want people to discover us and be able to trade the token so our diluted cap is low so our liquidity could actually absorb what’s circulating. I wish we could buy the whole supply at IDO prices. Over time, the fundamental progress is what matters and then we will look to create more exposure for the token across exchanges.
Dave | Avalaunch
A tough but fair question. Mile was toiling. Fire answer though Sir.
and the final one is perhaps the toughest of all. Hope you’re ready for this —
@gksml1104 — As we saw with Axie’s downfall, the problem with current P2E is that it’s not sustainable. I believe that for a sustainable ecosystem, the focus should be on Play, not Earn. In this respect, I think BFG’s focus on esports is a good direction.
But can you really onboard a large number of players and host esports on a large scale? It seems that BFG’s backers are only Ava labs and Avalaunch, and there doesn’t seem to be any partnerships with YGG or other big gaming guilds.
If BFG has the capacity to host large-scale esports, why don’t VCs and gaming guilds approach BFG? Please tell me BFG’s vision for esports.
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
This is a great question. To begin, I believe we can host on a large scale or I wouldn’t be here. Our background is in Web2 gaming on a professional level so we have strong ties to a number of large players in the space. We kept our cap table small for strategic reasons and you can’t get stronger investment partners than Avalabs and Avalaunch.
It’s like partnering with the whole ecosystem and we did not want to get into the VC game with 20 VCs on our cap table because this is a community project. We’re starting out with a very low market cap so people who learn about us can go for the ride. We weren’t going to sell it all to VCs and let them own it and play that game. As part of our rollout, we have been in touch with numerous guilds, both very large and more boutique.
Our vision for Esports and overall vision for the game has been spelled out in detail over the last few weeks. There are tons of videos and articles we put out with Avalaunch that are really worth having a look at. When people really see how devoted we are and the progress we’ve already made, they’re going to wish they paid more attention.
Dave | Avalaunch
Excellent work. That was a tough question. The last two especially.
Appreciate your time here today and your occasional presence in our chat. I appreciate you moving forward in these uncertain times and having the confidence in the game to drive things forward.
Mile Gramatikov | Giostone
It was great to be here, thanks for inviting me over. I hope that the community learned a lot from this AMA and if someone got more questions feel free to ask anything here
Dave | Avalaunch
Thanks again. Pleasure having you. Have a good weekend.
About Avalaunch
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Battle for Giostone AMA #2 — Project Overview with Mile Gramatikov (Co-Founder)(Recap) was originally published in Avalaunch on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.
