There was an announcement and Funding Proposal in Splinterlands for the Next Major Card Set to be Developed which is named Conclave Arcana. These are my thoughts and how I see it playing out...
The Ongoing Rebellion Sale
The fact that the printed number is a lot lower compared to Chaos Legion of which 12M+ packs got in circulation (638$ for a set) will for sure help not to make the value drop to DEC Burn levels. At the same time, it will make no sense to own a set that costs 6000$+ to pick up pennies in wild.
New Set Predictions...
So there won't be a mini-set which kind of got replaced by all the new Promo Cards Sales as they want the new set to be released as quickly as possible. April 2025 is the targeted date which leaves 5-6 more months. The reason this comes so soon despite lacking sales on the existing set is the hope that players will need to buy them to stay in Modern after Chaos Legion gets dumped in Wild. I think the reasoning is that with a lot fewer players in Modern, the earnings will be higher while rebellion until that point likely will hold up in price pretty well as few are going to be willing to sell given that it gives a big advantage in Modern to own them and a mechanic was put in place that they also still count for 50% in the conflicts.
However, this is the bear scenario I see happening:
No New Players Will Come in and Marketing will be Wasted Money: I wrote previously that "Green Candles are What Matters Most" and the only reason there was a major adoption in 2021 was because of prices and earnings that were high and new players expecting that they could make money on packs bought and by playing the game. These times simply are no longer as there are too many bag holder who want out while 'earnings' aside from some SPS have been made soulbound. Splinterlands simply isn't an attractive investment anymore to new players and I have a hard time seeing a considerable inflow of new players.
Conclave Arcana Sales will be Lower than Rebellion: The 4$ Price for 1 pack in this game is simply a peak hype bull market price for a game where players expect to get quick returns and see their assets go up in value. In reality Splinterlands from the outside looks like a simple flash game. There is a group of whales who buy everything that is put out and I expect some to throw the towel while few to none new buyers will come in.
Chaos Legion Modern Players will Try To Move To Wild: I would say most decks in Modern right now mostly exist of the cheaper Chaos Legion Cards. I expect the majority of players who mainly have those cars to try to make the move to Wild instead of making a crazy investment to stay in Modern. This will increase the pool of players in Wild and decrease the earnings even more to the point where many are just cut out since the 2000 DEC entry price along with the cost that comes with running a bot service will be more or close to equal of the earnings.
SPS Will Drop in Price: Most of the Whales who still buy cards to play in Modern already have enough SPS Staked and the flywheel is still quite far away. With fewer players in modern as Chaos Legion will be cut out, it is expected that there will be higher SPS earnings. What tends to happen is that SPS simply will get repriced to the downside. Players that want to move to Wild will see a x2 in Staked SPS requirements and I think instead of buying more, many will actually capitulate and try to sell their stake & cards or burn the cards for DEC increasing that supply and push the DEC Peg and flywheel further down the road.
The Printers Goes Brrrrrrr...
This current model of new Promo cards, Core Sets, Mini Sets, and Reward Sets which are printed each year, while no new players are coming in and cards that are 2 years old that get dumped in Wild where they lose all use case and value simply won't work long term unless something fundamentally changes.
The main reason why we all love crypto and Bitcoin is because we are getting screwed on our money as the fed has a license to print and with Humans on the button this gets abused. I don't see how Splinterlands is not way worse at the crazy pace new assets are printed. Every single problem encountered so far was 'solved' by printing more assets which pretty much has killed the game. It can be done to a certain degree especially if enough new players come in and to cover the cost of development and to run the game. However, the current 3 Million costs a year right now for what Splinterlands currently has is crazy and delusional. It means 1000 players need to purchase 3000$ worth from the shop each.
Right now literally everything depends on another crazy altcoin bull run where plebs blindly buy and pump every single coin which is simply unlikely to happen especially with the Dinosaur projects like Splinterlands.
Solution
There is a "fail-safe mechanism" in Splinterlands which is the DEC burn mechanic in case card prices go so low that the only way to get some money from them is to burn them for DEC and sell that on the market. This combined with the fact that if SPS goes lower, more of it needs to be burned to mint new DEC. So pretty much Splinterlands needs to get close to death before it possibly could be reborn with the oversupply in cards burned along with SPS so low that it only can go up.
I believe that the focus should be on closing the Card Price Gap between old and new cards aiming to create some nice green candles instead of printing more cards and making the situation even worse. The order is in reverse that you need price to go up to get adoption and not to get adoption for the price to go up. I only see a new fun game mode that is easily accessible to new and existing players as something that could revive the game.
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