Decentraland early experience: good how far is it between the ideal and the rough reality?

Related reading:"I collected in Decentraland wool, the dancer, appreciate art..."

At the beginning of the original title: "Decentraland experience: virtual world based on Ethernet fang"
Blue fox notes

Foreword: Decentraland last week released its virtual world, blue fox notes also preliminary experience the product, there are already some virtual construction, some design is dazzling, but from the whole, is still in the very early product grinding stage. Sales, according to the opensea NFT Decentraland ranked first, with 1273.8 ETH in sales over the past seven days, about $340000. From its scrip economy mechanism, Decentraland MANA tokens can be used to purchase virtual world of land, its virtual world for 90000 pieces of land supply, in addition, ms can be used to buy virtual items in the world, even the name ms need to be paid. Then there are the payment platform fees, donations, and governance votes on core decisions. For the use of MANA tokens, it is deeply embedded in its virtual world. That is to say, the value of ms is determined by the development of the Decentraland, now products have been released, so it will be developed? Everything is still in the very early stages, and you can experience and observe for yourself. The writer is Michael McSweeney (theblock), translated by Auker of the blue fox notes community.



Abstract

Based on Ethernet fang Decentraland virtual world has been released last week.

I spent hours exploring the world, taking part in activities, visiting sites and exploring as much as I could.

To make a long story short: Decentraland is ambitious in the virtual world, but it is very rough.

Decentraland released last week, I began to hang on it, you didn't find too much lead. The player's instinct, if you will, is to find something, or to take them to the next step in the next event.

But I was working on a laptop, so I decided to plan a proper exploration later that evening. I ended up playing for two and a half hours, taking notes and screenshots to sort out my experience in the new virtual world.

Need to be specified that this comment is not to Decentraland economic support, tokens, models, and how to use the etheric fang block chain. The following quote Steven Zheng, to facilitate the core concepts of new readers understand Decentraland:

"Decentraland on real estate is not homogeneous tokens (NFT) LAND. Users can use the native Decentraland tokens MANA to buy LAND. Similar to the real world, the ownership of LAND will be a record, on Decentraland, the ownership of the LAND is recorded on the etheric fang block chain. Unlike" second life ", the owner of the LAND have full control of its virtual LAND. As Decentraland mentioned in terms of service: In a virtual world, the purchaser owns the land they buy, and they can control their land." (blue fox notes: Second Life, or Second Life, is one of the most famous virtual worlds of the Internet age, where users once ran virtual properties that made millions of dollars. Second life was launched in 2003 and is still operating today.)

Decentraland, in short, is a virtual world, the players can actually own construction and by what we get, and the ownership of the player through the etheric fang recorded transactions.

On the contrary, my comments to record my personal experience as a player, as I walk on the street, into Decentraland experience. I don't own LAND, MANA or ETH. The absence of tokens does affect my personal experience. Besides, I want to experience how the world makes me feel. If Decentraland tell me what to do, I will do. The only exception is when I get tips from other users via twitter.

Result: I did find something to do. However, I spent a lot of time wandering around the virtual world, meeting architecture, art constructs, and occasional players. I also ran into some bugs and performance issues, as might be expected for a fully experimental virtual world release.

Did I enjoy the experience? I think so. I am a social gaming fool and tend to play multiplayer games. But, I'll be back again to play Decentraland? This is a harder question to answer. I think what determines the fate of this project is that as a platform, people should be able to come together and play together.

But let's dig a little deeper.

Begin our story.

Registered Decentraland is very simple. Although compared to my initial experience, this time I had to connect to the MetaMask wallet to verify my account. No problem, I already have a MetaMask wallet, so I connect it and get in. My avatar is a Mohawk, dressed in a suit and sunglasses, obviously inspired by Geordi LaForge.

Cool, huh? I agree with you. I made a good choice.

Once I finished the tutorial in front of me -- picking up the key to unlock it, moving the joystick, pressing the button -- I was inside the portal. After a load screen, I reappear... It was a woman with brown hair. This was the first bug I encountered, but, without hesitation, I decided to stick with my new avatar. Besides, her turquoise is very fashionable.

Right in front of the first appearance, there is a temple with some statues. Once I got past the gates -- literally through them -- by typing the command, I was prompted to "discover amazing destinations." Well, if Decentraland say so, I must do it!

I was taken to a street with a few buildings, and placed directly in front of the crypto valley convention center. (blue fox notes: Crypto Valley Conference Center, "encryption Valley Conference Center" is an entity to buy land in Decentraland set up after the)

Naturally, I began to walk in. As I entered the entrance, I was prompted to participate in the treasure hunt and I could acquire some collectibles. But if I do, I'll have to pay some ethereum gas. (blue fox note: that's a natural thing to do, you need to trade through ethereum to get the collection under your own name.) so, naturally, I accepted again. And, again, the load screen is thrown out.

Then I will appear in front of a group of buildings, including the Sugar Club, I guess this is a franchise based on Decentraland dance Club. Once you're inside, it prompts you to donate to music, and in the next room, there's an ever-changing board of images, including one of Goku. It looks really cool.



Nearby, I found the promised treasure, in which I found 10 MANA tokens and my avatar's commemorative T-shirt. However, since I do not have any ETH, I cannot pay the transaction costs. So, the only reward I seek is the thrill of discovery. (blue fox note: because the author does not have ETH, he cannot keep these NFTS for himself through trading, and therefore cannot experience the pleasure of collecting these NFT collections.)

There is also a building nearby that predicts the price data for cryptocurrencies (BTC, ETH, EOS) and the interpretation of voice records for each network. Curious, I pressed three buttons in quick succession, and they immediately started playing, even though I was far from the building.

Around this time, I started seeing more and more brand ads for HTC Exodus "blockchain phones."



Initially, I think, if HTC with Decentraland reached a formal partnership. As it turns out, it is.

The assets I encountered can be found in the "builder" module, which allows the LAND owner to place structures and objects on the site according to the layout of his choice. I ran into the HTC brand all over the virtual world, and to be honest, after a while, I kind of didn't like it.

Once I spotted a building full of lizards that seemed to be watching some kind of show together. And that got me interested, and I went in and I saw, what are they looking at? HTC Exodus phone!



From a business point of view, I think this embedding makes sense. But as a player, it feels like there are billboards everywhere. Maybe there's a better way to handle this, maybe not. Anyway, for me, as an explorer, it's a little uncomfortable.

Virtual business

In essence, I found that most of the content, are carried out within the framework of Decentraland creative experiment. To be honest, I think it's pretty cool. I found some very elaborate structures, including a t-rex skeleton, a volcano with an amphitheater on top of the mountain (with working lights), and a ghostly forest emitting eerie sounds and music.

I am Minecraft fans - it has a lot in the process of creation of degrees of freedom of expression -- Decentraland shock me a lot, because it is a open canvas, the owner of the LAND is free to create content.

Or, conversely, they can play Harambe, a gorilla-themed slot machine, at Chateau Satoshi's virtual Casino. Harambe, a gorilla at the Cincinnati zoo, was shot in mid-2016 after a young boy fell into a gorilla exhibit and tried to save him. The incident has sparked anger online and sustained media attention.

No, seriously, it exists (as they say) :



Joke, Casino is one of the areas where I met on Decentraland, some might say it is a "case". About "second life" is one of a thing, it allows you to create fully virtual business, the Decentral Games made of Chateau Satoshi seemingly belongs to the field. Currently, Casino allows users to spend money on Ropsten's test network using fake "PLAY" tokens.

My big question -- what else emerges as I wander around the virtual world -- is how much of a business model casino will have. Do they pump water for each game?

Decentral Games in its February 19 blog revealed their plans in detail, including the real gold and silver, lamborghini style of NFT, etc. Asked for comment, project consultant Peter Dhaliwal told me, "currently, we program bookmakers into the game's smart contract. We will release the smart contract code after the second audit so that all players can see that our game is fair and verifiable." Casino's future plans include poker and blackjack.

He referred to in the email: "in essence, we are focusing on the casino virtual land developers. We think our casino and gaming is the best in the Decentraland, we to become bigger and better developer excited."



I met other emerging in Decentraland business model, one of the most famous is the commercial/activity space. There is a place called "Decentraland conference center" allows the event planner can customize the number of space rental, but I can't understand it, in fact, how to do this kind of loan. The building itself is quite empty (although event organizers can customize their space for the actual event). Maybe someone could have a virtual expo?



I met a similar design, its internal has its own Sugar Club position, if there are other similar design, so, this shows that people will think Decentraland may be virtual residents gathered in the online meeting place. I'm not sure how much communication you can have on a front end like this. Perhaps third-party apps like Discord can come in handy, but with all the recent discussions about virtual meetings during a viral epidemic, who's to say people won't try?

As expected, advertisers also opened a shop on Decentraland.



In this case, I see the OpenSea and CoinGecko advertising, it is beyond my understanding Decentraland newsstands across the network. Again, I wasn't sure who would benefit from such a layout, but my immediate reaction was that I came across a monetized art space.

Live for art

From the moment at least, in the form of Decentraland, art feeling letting a person is centre. In addition to the creative work and arrangements visible throughout the virtual world, I came across several places dedicated to displaying digital art.



As in its mission statement, the museum area exists to "become the encryption on the Decentraland art hot, also is the art of most visited places in the world." Walking around the museum, I thought it was a noble goal.



As I released the day of a push, mentioned in the article the museum area may be the most current Decentraland I encountered a high-profile cases. The idea of user-centered ownership is most obvious here.

In theory, it is possible to create an art space in which artists participate. While I couldn't name any other business model for the museum district during my visit, the ownership issue seemed to make the most sense.



This experience also reinforced for me a completely different point of view, and I should mention that I am very lonely time Decentraland.

Yes, it's release day. Yes, by design, users are divided into different domains to expand the reach of more users. But, with the exception of a few users I met, at best we simply said "hello" and moved on, leaving me to wander alone.

In a digital museum, I think it's great to share experiences with other people, to talk about which works resonate the most, or to just stand there and see the creative work while others are there. Yeah, it's like a real museum.

Maybe one day it will be possible. For the sake of the artists who exhibit here, I certainly hope so.

Performance issues

During the period of using Decentraland, I did encounter some technical problems and bugs. In addition to the embodiment of the above mentioned aspects of bug, my browser in displaying Decentraland problems many times. This seems to happen most often in busy or animated areas I've visited, and can eventually be resolved when the page refreshes.

In some cases, the camera starts to wobble, especially when I'm standing on top of a building. I almost entirely in the third person play Decentraland mode, and in this mode the problem appear constantly.

I noticed that some of them were purely visual. For example, sometimes my avatar's feet are covered by the floor (as shown below), while other times my avatar seems to float above the ground. From the user's point of view, this isn't a big deal; great graphics don't necessarily make for a great experience, but since we're talking about performance here, it seems worth mentioning.



I'm really in the special Decentraland startup screen in a random error, at the same time wandering in a forest area looks cool. The screen suggested that I reload, which I did and returned to normal. I see similar feedback on twitter, so what happens to me seems to happen to others.

In terms of performance, even on a games-only laptop with a GTX 1060 graphics card, the minimum graphics Settings are best for me. When I switched to the highest possible setting, the frame rate dropped, and finally, I kept it at a "medium" level with little jitter.

Overall, these experiences make the product feel unfinished. No company is completely free of bugs or bugs, but for all the fun things I've encountered, I still think of some Alpha games I've tested in the past.

conclusion

About the user experience in Decentraland, I can also add 1000 words. It's fair to say that when you go into the actual user experience, there are some ideas, but it still feels unfinished. A bug I stumbled across reinforced that impression, and excessive advertising like HTC's was a bit of a nuisance. Usually, it's just empty land, unused land separated from developed areas, which put some pressure on me at the end of the journey.

However, from a purely empirical perspective, I do think Decentraland will have development in the future.

Whether it will succeed is a completely open question. To be honest, history has not been good for them. Even the once-mighty world of warcraft has entered a long twilight, losing users even as it pushes for more and more game-changing updates. I'm also leaning toward "Elite Dangerous," a massive space simulation that can accommodate up to a few thousand players a day.

People seem to be betting Decentraland will succeed. As Carla, russo in "The Defiant" communication pointed out, by 121, over The past week NonFungible sold for $160000 on LAND. In the past month, 467 transactions have resulted in sales of more than $500,000. Obviously, also provides a virtual in Decentraland mortgage, this shows that people see an opportunity. Of course, there are Decentraland in 2017 the raise, raise more than 86000 ETH.

But will it work? Like many encryption program, the success of Decentraland seems to have been and depends on people's actual use. It may seem far-fetched whether it is more of a virtual curiosity, or whether it will turn into an actual, vibrant world, but then again, wasn't bitcoin's early days the same in the eyes of many?

I don't think I will play Decentraland again soon. But I'll wait and see if people get in their virtual vehicles and start rushing forward.

Source:weixin.qq.com

Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:

Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats

Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App

Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia