I'm noticing common themes with Hive/Splinterlands that are causing issues...

1. Misguided generosity in situations that do not call for it.
2. Power being held by too few.
3. Marketing efforts being stifled by lack of confidence in product or inferior experience.
4. AI/Bots and how they relate to decentralization.
5. Decentralization and the lack of initiative/structural willingness to deliver upon this promise.
6. No clear communications and guidelines.
7. More dApps and use cases are needed.

It's odd to say but Splinterlands and Hive probably have more potential in ways that are not presented to us in their current form. The strength of Hive is the ability to build on it and the possibility of tribes with their own Level 2 tokens. The strength of Splinterlands is the willingness to let the NFTs be used for other projects, which is when true decentralization of the game is achieved. The blogs that get auto-voted and nobody cares to read are not what makes Hive special at all, it's a turn-off. The Splinterlands game is not mindblowing and can get very repetitive, it's not the secret sauce that takes the game to the next level.

Too much navel-gazing, too little building.