The perpetual quandary of weight vs. quality

Before we begin, “weight” could effectively be replaced by the term “file size”. When we refer to “weight”, we are stating, “the total file size of the textures, assets, models, number of triangles, poly-count etc.”
Early on in development, we encountered a quandary. It was a fairly straight forward one. Our Estates look awesome, really awesome. The gardens pop, the buildings themselves look realistic, the detail is insane. So what’s the issue here? Weight. They were heavy. Like, 100s of MBs heavy. That’s not an issue right? Well, no, not for anyone with a computer that wasn’t dug out of the ground in Ireland. But it’s not the computers that are the issue, it’s the metaverses.
Look, we’re not saying that our favourite metaverses, like Decentraland and The Sandbox, are ‘low quality’, but offering max file sizes of 100MB and 60MB respectively is a clear statement they aren’t looking to blow out your Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 any time soon. It is a fair statement to say that these are low-poly environments.
This is a very small file size to work with, given the complexity of this project. Therefore, considerations were made. These considerations were:
1.Metaverses need to get their act together: How can they look at themselves in the mirror and call them themselves the future of NFTs, gaming and how humanity interacts with the internet, when they can’t support files bigger than a few .pdfs?
2.We aren’t going to wait, we’re going to adapt: We will use every trick in the book to keep our weight down. We put our Estates on Weight Watchers (no affiliation, any similarities here are coincidental by nature, please don’t sue us). Does that pillar need to be round? No? Square it is! Can we afford a fully detailed tree at this time? Wayyyy too heavy? Ok, how can we simplify it without losing the feel and quality of the final product? These decisions were hard, yet fair, and the final result is awesome.
3.We aren’t going to compromise either: We do not accept that the quality of our final product is a stagnant result of today’s metaverse limitations. We are thinking full Ready Player One here. Expect that in the future, as the size limitations of metaverses increase, higher weight variants of your Estate NFT will become available for $EQUITY, so that and Estate NFT is always at the forefront of this space.
So what does this mean for you, the holder? Future-readiness and options. The Estates NFT hopes to be ahead of any changes that allow for additional features, heavier assets and other, as-yet-unknown possibilities (#cough# VR #cough#). While this will not be always possible as these kinds of moves are often stealth-dropped, this project WANTS to be as awesome as possible, so for this reason large sums of mint are already set aside for these eventualities.
It needs to be said now though, it is likely that quality upgrades will always come at the cost of a reasonable sum of $EQUITY, most likely without free backdating for previous purchases. This is a necessity for the safety and longevity of the project. If, every 2 years, 5 metaverses that The Estates integrate with release updates allowing for changes X, Y and Z, and there is a blanket expectation that The Estates will freely upgrade every single Estate, Renovation and Upgrade, then without a shadow of a doubt the backlog of required updates will drain the resources, both fiscally and time-wise, of the project into the ground. Alternatively, if each new generation of updates available comes at a reasonable $EQUITY cost, this keeps the economy alive, the project pumping, allows those who value these upgrades to invest, raising the value of their Estate, and doesn’t waste resources for those that simply want to act as a Landlord.
Last modified 9mo ago