Are you familiar with the term "jumping the shark"? It's typically used to reference a point in TV series or movies when a completely fine show goes from good to bad. For example, have you ever had a TV show that you absolutely love? The first two season are fantastic, then in the third season they decide to introduce a new character or diverge from canon? People then might say "that show jumped the shark after season 2".
Make sense?
Now, I am not going to go so far as to say Splinterlands has jumped the shark, but I have a feeling there are a fair number of people who do feel that way. I've written in the past about how I was an early adopter of the game. It was just last week I was talking about how I signed up for my kickstarter account so I could donate some money to the Steemmonsters (that's what it was called back then) cause.
Through the years I continued to pump revenue into the game and I built a pretty good stack of cards for myself. In the early years it was easy, they were giving away regular cards as rewards like candy. It was pretty easy to build a really good deck for yourself just by playing the battles and completing the daily quests.
I had a good number of Alpha cards that I eventually converted to Beta cards (stupid move). I also had a good number of Beta cards in my deck.
Then all the packs started to come out, and then the reward cards, major changes to the game, and ultimately lands. There was a point where I felt like I was a relatively big player in the Splinterlands world. It turns out I was maybe tier 3 at best. I was never great at the strategy piece of the game, and for all the magic Internet money I had pumped into the game, as I started talking to some other folks (who shall remain nameless), it became apparent that I wasn't nearly as big of a holder as I thought.
Rebellion was the first pack sale that I knew I wasn't going to be able to "ape into". Then the latest one came along and I just couldn't muster the funds to buy any packs. Bear market aside, I've heard quite a few people wishing they had sold when the prices were high last bull market. I also know a decent number of people who will likely be liquidating everything if even a hint of a pump happens in Splinterland assets.
I'm guessing that's par for the course with a game like this, but I still think it's kind of telling that people have that attitude.
For me, I think one of the biggest turning points in the game was land. It was released and then we waited, and waited, and waited. Then the team asked for more money, and finally land was released, and then we waited, and waited, and waited. Then they made huge changes to land, that were probably clearly laid out in the whitepaper, but it effectively made land worthless for a whole lot of people.
I was lucky I was able to pick up 7 plots of land back when the prices were so high. Even so, those 7 pieces of land are basically worthless today. I'm not talking about just the price either. Due to luck of the draw and the fact that all my lands are common with zero keeps or those other things, all I can produce is wood and grain. That basically leaves any of the features that land brings inaccessible to me.
Sure, I can trade wood for other stuff, but as we have seen the price is basically raw sewage right now. It would take me years to get enough resources to even build an Arcanum hut or whatever they are calling it. Let alone earn the 10,000 research it takes to make a potion.
Oddly enough, the people who seem to think there is nothing wrong with Splinterlands right now tend to be the folks with big money. Sure the future looks great to them because they control a vast amount of the resources. I guess it isn't much different from the real world is it?
I just think it is sad that smaller holders basically have to resign themselves to just playing the game. For me, that's not too big of a deal, brawls is my favorite part of the game and has been for a while now. It's sad though that I have been practically priced out of a game I love because I can't keep pumping money into it.
I thought about selling some of the 300 or so Riftwatcher and Chaos Legion packs that I have been sitting on for a while now, but the price is so crap that I just can't bring myself to take the loss. My hope was to move some of that income into cheap lands, but then I need DEC to make what? Wood, that is barely worth anything...
I'm not saying I am giving up on Splinterlands, but the shine has definitely faded for me. If the price does happen to pump at some point, it is going to be hard not to justify taking some profits. I think the best way to put it is they let me down.
Which honestly is more of a me problem than a them problem I guess. I can't imagine how much goes into running a business/game like Splinterlands. It's definitely above my pay grade, but I think somewhere along the line they lost the plot, and I hope maybe one day they can get it back. For the good of the game and the good of the community.
All pictures/screenshots taken by myself or 
