Merit Circle and Ascenders Partnership
Merit Circle Partnership with role-playing game (RPG) Ascenders. This upcoming blockchain game features a massive open world that players can experience through its stories, challenges, world events and immersive gameplay. As part of their partnership with Ascenders, Merit Circle has invested $600,000.
The team behind Ascenders combines seasoned, director-level triple-A game developers with adept crypto-professionals to build a world-class ARPG. The Netherlands-based organization has a long history of releasing triple-A games (including work on the likes of GTA) adding to its extensive experience. Some of the team members include CEO jackson Poon, serial entrepreneur and crypto-investor; Will Davis, with director positions at both Ubisoft and EA; and Chris Rothwell, one of the leading game designers for GTA 3 and GTA: San Andreas.
What sets Ascenders apart from other games is its player-driven mechanics that highlight the benefits of decentralized design: in-game items (NFTs) are minted by players while in-game structures are built by players — all on player-owned land. Ascenders’ triple-A open world is filled with story and crafting, leaving the meta to the players’ hands. Growing its metaverse from “a blank slate to a teeming empire” is solely up to players and their choices.
Improving the gaming experience
In order to truly embrace player-ownership and decentralization, multiple NFTs are scattered across the world of Ascenders; each NFT differentiates in function and purpose to improve the player’s gaming experience. In the first realm, oVerworld, demarcated areas (Land) are ownable NFTs. Players can use this land for either exploring or building: exploring uncovers resources that can be used to mint NFT items, while building is a feature that lets landowners create designs for other players to use or see.
All functional NFT items, such as equipment and armor, are minted by the players themselves. These NFTs are upgradable and retain their current level, even when traded or sold to another, meaning that when a landowner trades their constructed and improved land, the new owner receives that version.
Paving your own lane
The Ascenders economy is designed around Player Lanes, a specialized strategy developed by the team. Player Lanes relate to the different types of players and the approach that best suits their gameplay, resources and rewards, and strategy. There are three lanes to choose from:
1. Explorer Lane: casual players who love farming, collecting and steady progress; rewarded in the overworld
2. Fighter Lane: competitive players who grind leaderboard, cred and social status; rewarded through dungeons
3. Builder Lane: metagame players who explore and play the economy; in charge of building and minting
Ascenders is built on Avalanche subnetwork (Avax), a highly scalable system which creates new, separate but connected chain instances enabling similar functionality to an L2 blockchain. It is powered by a dual-token economy with tokens $AGC and $GG.
Governance token $AGC is the engine behind Ascenders’ economy while utility token $GG is its fuel. $AGC holders can participate in governance decisions via the game’s DAO, control the Ascenders treasury, vote on new feature proposals and more. It is also used to reward supporters of the game and its ecosystem, so even stakers of the token may receive in-game rewards. Meanwhile, $GG acts as both the incentive and currency in-game — both economic actions (building, crafting, upgrading) and player engagement (stories, quests, tournaments) are rewarded with said token.
Merit Circle x Ascenders
The open world genre, especially when set in an interactive universe, is favored by all sorts of players. With its seasoned development team, explorative gameplay and strategic economy, Ascenders is poised to deliver quality game experiences in the future. At Merit Circle, discover ways to expand the GameFi indUstry one player at a time.
“We are proud to be partnering with Merit Circle. Their mission to revolutionize gaming by empowering gamers is closely aligned with what Legendary Foundry Games aims to achieve in Ascenders. We look forward to building the metaverse together.” — Jackson Poon, CEO of Legendary Foundry Games
About Ascenders
Ascenders is an action-packed RPG set in the third person that urges its players to “explore, fight and build” through its sci-fantasy metaverse. Once strapped into the Game, the story takes players across a series of dungeons in a large connecting overworld. To take part in Ascenders, players must traverse both overworld and dungeon realms to search For resources or challenges that unlock more of its lore. More adventuring leads to the discovery of different terrains, each with unique sets of quests, enemies and loot.
