This week a new Reward System was introduced in Splinterlands making yet more rewards Soulbound and no longer giving the ability for players to get a big lucky high-value jackpot. These are my first thoughts
Season Reward Chest Rugpull!
First off, I was really disappointed to see that they rug pulled the previous Season chests from SPS earnings. The really pissed many off and rightfully so as these chest were earned in a time when the SPS was still part of them and they had no right to do so as the SPS was not earned in the direct battle earnings that season. The worst thing of all was that this wasn't even announced.
Shit like this pushes players further away and trust is already on a low level.
Increased SPS Ranked Battle Rewards
So from here on out, the SPS that was given out in chests will now evenly be spread in ranked battles meaning those earnings will increase. This should result in expected overall earnings that are more or less the same with the main difference being that there is less excitement and dopamine. Everything is distributed evenly and nobody really can get lucky getting a huge SPS Chest.
A win in Wild rank 3400-3500 now earns around 2.9 SPS for me at a x10.9 Multiplier. Based on my current calculations on what I earned so far this week compared to previous weeks:
SPS Earnings from playing should stay more or less the same or even be a bit higher if players are leaving.
However, If SPS continues to trend down in price the absolute earnings in dollars will go lower also but the burn if SPS if players need DEC might increase reducing the Fully Diluted Supply. This dynamic should make SPS do well in the long run as long as things keep running.
Gwen's Glints Shop & Soulbound Cards
Reward Cards by now have been Soulbound for some time as it simply was unsustainable to keep printing freely tradable ones out of thin air with the army of bots in the game dumping them in mass and no real buyers coming in. Right now, the shop is quite boring since I have most of the cards already. So I will just be saving up all my Glints for when the next Reward Card set is released. I will also burn the Excess Soulbound reward cards I have at some point in time. Honestly, I'm pretty fine with this change.
Removal Gladius DEC Burn Values
I already reported on this a couple weeks back and burned part of my Soulbound Gladius Cards for DEC. This now no longer is possible and it gives Glints instead. The problem with this change is that everyone burned DEC in the Guild buildings with the idea that they would be able to earn it back over time. Especially the occasional Golden Legendary from the Gladius Packs were a really nice and excitement hit as they represented 50k DEC. Over time, I managed to get 2 of those. At the same time, I also understand that just printing this much DEC out of nowhere is not a long-term sustainable option.
The good thing is that we at least got warned on this change so everyone that wanted could have converted properly. I burned all my Regular cards on my alt accounts and some Golden Foils still leaving these there as I enter ond of the golden foild brawls for my guild
Next Problem ahead & Solution
Splinterlands for years and years now pretty much has been in a development cycle where everything has been about rewards and the economy introducing nerf after nerf completely neglecting the actual gameplay let alone introduce more game modes. The next issue in line is also really predictable and it once again has to do with bots. These one mass have managed to farm the reward cards and they are able to let their farms run using just those extracting value from the ecosystem without any intention to put anything in.
What should be done is to bring back collection power at least in Wild and have the Soulbound Reward cards count for zero. Real players who own or rent a collection won't be hurt and even receive more rewards while all those who just want to extract value will have an issue needing to either rent or buy cards. The replacement of collection power for Staked SPS in my view was a big mistake and the beginning of the end for card values and the rental market. I honestly don't mind Modern to be free of this to make that friendly for newer players. But anyone who wants to continue earning from the game with older cards should at least hold a decent collection of it. Ratings inflation also is again a big issue in Wild and I'm now reaching Champions League with a gold deck and Diamond with a Silver Deck.
Conclusion!
I fully understand that it's just not possible to give out high rewards in a sustainable way and don't think the changes are that bad aside from the SPS which was rug pulled from the last season chests. However, it doesn't make things earlier for Splinterlands as it's clear that rewards are the main reason many including myself still stick around. I hope focus will be shifted after years of fixing the economy now to actually fixing the gameplay making that more interesting and fun along with making cards scarce again which is another huge problem that the game is facing. Right now, it simply doesn't make any sense to buy cards or packs especially from the new set are it's a sure thing that their values will fall of a cliff once they get dumped into Wild.
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