Splinterlands | Tournament Pay2Win Changes ?

Recently, there seems to have been made a change in Splinterlands when it comes down to the tournaments as they became a lot more top-heavy. These are the changes...

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Poseidar Wild Silver Invitational

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So the only tournament I systematically played was the Wild Silver one as I have enough cards to be competitive to at least take something under the old model. There used to be a 10 SPS entry fee while the entry was restricted to players who played Gold League or lower and in total there were 128 spots that paid out some SPS. In total, not including the arbitrary 10 SPS Fee, 11770 SPS was paid out in each tournament. With an average around 180-200 Entries, it was nearly a sure 9 SPS at minimum with a chance up to ~260 SPS in the very rare case where I overperformed.

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The new model of Tournaments allows anyone with the SPS and collection power to enter while the Entry is Free. The payouts are much more top heavy with just the top 64 getting something and in total the reward pool for the Tournament is just ~7700 SPS. while the entries more than doubled to 400+

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New Gold Tournament

It does look like more tournaments were added now also including a Gold League one which is I guess why the SPS Reward on the other ones were lowered. However, with the switch where players who have max level collection allowed to enter every tournament now and the payout places having become much more top-heavy, I can't help but feel that Tournaments now also have been fully 'pay2winned' only making it realistically possible for the top players to get rewards from them. I also assume many are using still a battle helper one way or another which makes the competition really hard.

I did manage to reach a paying spot earning 36 SPS in the previous Silver Tournament so it certainly is still possible. Most of the time though, these tournaments will feel like a waste of time and I'm not even sure I will continue to enter them.

Solutions ?

The problem with this new system is that the combination of the top heavy rewards while allowing every player to enter all of the tournaments makes it so that only really a handful of players are capable of earnings SPS from them with not so much incentive for players that can't compete to buy more cards.

I think a solution could be to make rewards way less top heavy so at least 40%-50% of those entering get something. It makes no sense to give the same high price to the top 4 but instead each place higher should give a bigger reward. As for allowing players to enter all tournaments it feels worse compared to the model it was before and maybe allow everyone (if they qualify) to choose 2 or 3 tournaments to enter for free weekly.

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Conclusion

Splinterlands with the recent Tournament changes became even more Pay2win after already being the most pay2win game out there which is a shame as it takes away the fun for many of the regular players who are unable or unwilling to play this game. Most likely these changes will drive me away from putting time in tournaments and bring me closer to quitting on Splinterlands all together. The nerfs in rewards combined with card values that keep going down all with an eye to make SPS more valuable feels contradictory to me.

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