Monsters in the wild (PvE)

Progressing in the game and being competitive in PvP requires you to capture and efficiently train wild monsters. By design, HoloZing offers a range of styles for PvE, all of which manifest based on how the Player wants to approach the game.

Casual Players will enjoy the variety of monsters, the regularity and rhythm of leveling, and the power to use in-game automation to ensure they are progressing even when offline. Battles in PvE are not that hard to win… but winning is just the beginning.

Competitive Players will realize that they need to be very picky about the PvE battles that they spend their time and energy on. Capturing rare and powerful monsters from PvE will require skill and deeper game knowledge. Ensuring that captured monsters get the most out of their level-ups also requires that they are properly matched in PvE encounters.

Top Players will need to employ a mix of complex and complementary strategies, including highly efficient PvE encounters, selective PvP matches, and a thorough understanding of the secondary markets for game assets.

Monster stats

Players will find familiar stats for creatures, such as attack, agility, defense, and HP. Where HoloZing gets interesting is in how it approaches creature rarity and stat leveling. Two creatures may look the exact same and have the same type—but their min and max stats per level can vary wildly.

A common rarity creature is one whose stats are on the lower end of the spectrum for its level. An epic rarity is one closer to the maximum. Therefore, your creatures’ rarities can improve or degrade over time—it all depends on how you train them!

Encountering monsters

The world of HoloZing is filled with a wondrous range of biomes and creatures. In the pre-beta version of the game, players will encounter and battle creatures (PvE) and be able to challenge other players (PvP).

The website will allow you to “concentrate” when your daily encounters appear, this is done to prevent you from receiving notifications of a nearby creature you may want to battle when you should be focusing on work, school, or other boring things such as sleep. The encounters will consist of random creatures with random stats (the stats won’t be fully random since higher stat creatures are more rare and thus don’t appear as often).

Battle outcomes (PvE)

Battles can end in a variety of ways:

• Monster defeated: you and your monsters have reduced the wild monster’s HP to zero. You and your monster will gain XP according to how hard the fight was.

• Monster wins: Your monsters’ HP was reduced to zero. You will suffer a penalty but gain a small about of XP. There will be a mana cost to revive your creature.

• Monster flees: The monster runs away from you before the battle ends. You will gain a small amount of XP based on type and damage caused to its HP.

• You flee: You run away from a fight. No penalty will apply but you also won’t get XP. Any resources spent in the fight will be lost.

• Monster captured: You were able to successfully capture the monster! This monster will now be available to fight for you and level up and you’ll be able to know its exact stats and abilities. If your roster is full the creature will be sent to your storage.

Battle anatomy

Battle will be familiar to those who enjoy and play turn based RPGs.

Whether engaged in PvE or PvP, battlers will have a set amount of time to choose from a variety of actions or skills. The action is then executed, and its effectiveness is determined by a mix of factors, including luck (random number generation), the opponent’s stats, and the opponent’s previous choices.

In PvE, there are multiple outcomes (see Battle outcomes (PvE)).

In PvP, the aim is to reduce all your opponent’s monster’s HP to zero.

The Healer role

The Healer system is a unique take on the classic battler. The mechanics should be immediately familiar to most gamers, but new and nuanced enough to add a nice twist of strategy.

Healers are humanoid monster trainers—the Player’s character is one of these Healers.

Each battle has at least one Healer (the Player), and at most two (during PvP).

Healers have their own stats and skills that can drastically change the tide of battle. As the name implies, most of this is through healing your own monsters. A basic heal action restores some amount of your monster’s HP. More advanced skills and abilities can grant buffs to the monster, or nerfs to the opponent, change battle rules, etc.

Using healing skills drains a Player’s mana, which does not fully recharge between battles. This lack of recharge means that the Player must be judicious in the use of their healing skills.

Strategic and efficient use of healing and mana will result in the fastest and most rewarding progression in the game.

Capturing monsters

Monsters that you encounter in PvE can be added to your roster of collected monsters. They can be trained and used in future PvE and PvP battles.

A monster must have low (but not 0) HP in order to be captured. The “sweet spot” is different for each monster. An opponent monster’s exact HP may not always be available for Player’s to see, so instinct, practice, and trial and error will be a big part of capturing monsters.

Capturing the “right” monsters also adds a layer of meta-strategy. Most PvE monsters will be serviceable, but a competitive Player will want to be discerning and aim to capture rare and powerful monsters. Which monsters are which are not always apparent on the surface, so Players will need to pay attention to clues during a fight to see which wild monsters may have special skills or unusual stats.

Capturing will require its own tool, a capturing device powered by laser ammo and empty cards that will potentially hold your future monster if caught successfully. The ammo and cards may vary in strength based on its rarities. It’ll be a futuristic polaroid camera that shoots a laser beam to attempt to capture a weakened monster then prints out a card containing it and revealing its exact stats.

Leveling and training monsters

Monsters gain experience every time they fight. Once they hit an XP threshold, they will level up and gain stats. This system will feel very familiar to anyone who has played an RPG game.

HoloZing’s leveling system does have one unique aspect: not all XP is treated equal!

For example, if your monster gets most of its XP by fighting monsters of a weaker type (i.e. you grind away with easy fights), the stat-gain upon leveling will be low or modest. Conversely, if you are always engaging in challenging fights, when your monster levels up it will enjoy a significantly higher roll on its stat increase and more XP.

This system allows casual collector types to enjoy progression without intense strategy, while also rewarding those who want to compete with a way to maximize their roster.