This week in Splinterlands for the Community Engagement Challenge it's all about the newly added Training Mode. So I played some games and here is my experience with it...
The problem With rentals in Splinterlands
Rentals used to be a good way in Splinterlands in the past to get some nice passive income. However, this was mainly when the supply of cards was a lot lower and the demand was a lot higher. Bots also mainly were renting cards to leech rewards as they needed the collection power and it was profitable. However, renting out card came along with a lot of work to optimize or you had to use a service giving away part of the earnings. As it took too many recourses with cards being listed and unlisted all the time by the bots there was a listing fee introduced. The demand also fully collapsed which basically made it no longer worth to rent out cards and get a returns. As the rewards dictate what the rental prices are with nearly all of them having become soulbound, it's almost impossible to get a good ROI for renters or rentals worth the money based on the cost.
Set rentals were introduced but few realistically have full sets of card willing to rent them out at a price that is lower than the rewards that can be earned for them. The custom set rentals now in a way are the same as they are just too complicated for both those renting out or in. All of this can be seen by the fact that in the last 24 hours there were only 448$ in rentals which is almost nothing.
How Rentals Should Be Done!
I've been saying this for a long time how Splinterlands needs a game mode where cards (at Max Level) are provided by players by locking them on land. The game mode has an entry fee of which part goes to the players who provide the cards and packs as rewards making it an indirect way to purchase them. This creates an environment where new players can easily come in without a major investment and experience the game on a level playing field at the most fun level and in a way that is not too complicated. It also gives an incentive for cards to be leveled up to max level while card investors just have a very simple 1-click set it and forget it way to earn some passive income.
Trying Out Custom Set rentals!
Calculation: looking to go for just a 5% ROI based on the current price of the cards in comes down to
35$ x 0.05 = 1.75$
1.75$/365 = 0.005$ a day
0.005$ / 0.001$ (DEC PEG Price)
= 4.8 DEC a Day
Creation of a Custom Set
The creation is actually pretty straightforward on the Splinterlands site and doesn't really need much explaination.
Problem with Custom sets with an eye on Survival Mode: Of Some cards, I have 100+ copies but it's only possible to include 1 in the set while especially for the upcoming survival mode allowing this will be a must.
I honestly doubt that anyone will actually pick up the rental of the cards on this account
Conclusion!
I'm not the biggest fan of how rentals are done right now in Splinterlands and the custom set option isn't really changing much about this. The value of the rewards is simply too low for it to be worth it or get a decent return. Something needs to be changed and cards need to get their value back in order to make rentals work. Bringing back collection power might be a nice first step.
