*Please note: I cover as much as I can of the summary as a record of the conversation. I do not provide my opinion but actual conversation that occurs during the AMA. This summary will have questions provided from the Discord and the answers given by the various Splinterlands' team will be typed by me. Please forgive any typos or errors.
Founders Begin the AMA
Today @aggroed and @yabapmatt will be covering the following areas with various Splinterlands' team members:
Server issues from the week are resolved. And fingers crossed we shouldn't have those issues again. We are working on the caching issues to make everything run faster and the new devs are on top of it.
We have the new voucher leaderboard from @cryptomancer and some updates to the Chaos Legion presale
Meeting planned today to finalize the details for the full release on the Chaos Legion so we should know everything by the end of the day.
SPS work, getting more reward pools online, governance going and we're working on the new minter contract for that.
Land: No ETA at this time but we're all excited about it, redeeming the claims for NFTs we're all excited about it.
Marketing Side
Numbers are probably already out of date @aggroed said but a few days ago we are up 1.5X in terms of the number of registrations to the game and 2.1X in terms of registration accounts. Now Matt will tell you a whole bunch of bots were made so we need to be realistic about that. We went from 300K to 600K spellbook owners in the past month.
So a lot of our code was not built for these numbers so the team isn't saying everything is broken and bad, they are saying we need lots of tweaks to be sure the game is doing okay.
We've had a fantastic week so far with Chaos Legion. It's going pretty well as we expected it would go.
The voucher system has done a good job of metering out the purchases of the Chaos Legion packs.
Some of the larger accounts are starting to accumulate vouchers so we should see some more pack purchases soon.
You'll notice the leaderboard (on the main presale page and there's a giant leaderboard there)
While the presale is going on we're starting to get ready for the launch of the Chaos Legion itself. So I'm sure everyone would like to open up packs right after the presale. We're looking at a bit of a gap between the presale and the official launch.
The dev team is focused on server issues so that has pushed things back a little bit, but the launch is still hopefully coming before the end of the year.
My area of focus will be the new wild and modern focus. We need to get that ready and the cards and we will see how it goes.
Hardpoint Update
Hardpoint's introduction: V.P. of Engineering (writing code, organizing, growing the team and helping to grow the product)
Last couple of weeks flew out to Philly and worked with Matt out there and it's been a non-stop pace since then.
We're seeing less and less of the maintenance issues so that's really good. You're going to see a lot more stability as we move forward.
Check out the official updates to read about Matt's update regarding API. We should have a lot more stability on the website. You'll be seeing more stability with your account.
We're adding more servers that store your data in a much faster way which allows you to get to it and allows the whole servers to work better. So putting caching in will make significant difference in how it performs.
One of the features we hope to get on are the leaderboards for the battles that you all have been missing.
Good news a lot of momentum on the team, and that's really exciting, but not going to lie there may be hiccups along the way. If I'm silent on things, it may be we haven't determined the best way to answer the questions that serves the entire platform and serves the community as a whole.
Rate limiting with API. We're not trying to limit your game play it has to do with how people use and code against the services we provide as a company. We are fine with automated systems but we can't have someone's script shutting the whole game down.
Please be respectful and understanding with that.
The team is going to become more organized and the tickets are not always getting solved because we have far less devs than a community so we work on a problem that solves everyone's frustration. We're not trying to ignore you. We are being very stingy when it comes to developer assets. For example, Cryptomancer can't handle support tickets all day and get out Chaos Legion. So you should be excited to know the dev team is getting very organized so you will see more improvement going forward.
Engineering Team: CallMeTim Update
CallMeTim is part of the engineering team that works on architecture primarily. Working on keeping those servers running smoothly and avoiding problems before they happen and that's translating into more stability and the system's ability to scale.
NightAV and YGG Update
YGG (Yield Guild Games) block-chain gaming, decentralized autonomous organization (or DAO), we're essentially a really big gaming guild with a lot of money to buy assets for gaming to play with our best friends.
NightAV is one of the community leads specifically on Splinterlands
People are the value and YGG is exceptionally good and forming people (said by aggroed). There's just so much potential here.
We purchased assets from Splinterlands earlier in the year, two regions and tracts but we didn't have the governance system set in place to really do anything other than getting those guilds going and playing
We're publishing the white paper for the DAO and we're going to effectively be tokenizing the land holdings. The idea is we bought all this land and we're going to want people to play on that. So ultimately, through ownership of the subDAO token, you have voting rights on the types of things that we do and will also entitle you to shares of the land. There are many details that will have to be settled by this group of players and how to run an organization like that as we wait for lands to come out.
We will need to decide what happens with the Untamed packs and Chaos Legion packs and it's really exciting getting the governance out is the first step.
The fractional ownership sounds great for the land (said Aggroed) The limitations on land numbers makes this great. I'm lovin' it! (aggroed)
The tokens will just be for current players but there will be further rounds for YGG badge holders and then for the public even if you're not part of the guild itself but you can also just join! We are looking for new guild leaders and if you've got a guild and want to bring it to YGG we'd love to talk to you.
If you're interested in playing with a group of players come see us in discord and we'd love to play with you! If you have assets, that's great as well, but not necessary.
15,000 have minted the guild badge which is spread out over the community. Within Splinterlands there are 100s.
Matt Update with Reward Changes
We are reducing the rewards further for players in Bronze III and below and adjusting.
This should have nothing to do with new players versus old players. It hurts those who don't want to put money into the game. There are many games that are free that are great, but in order to play the game and continue to be up to the next level, you need to pay.
It's our job really as designers and developers to insure that the game economy functions properly and incentives people to want to buy them not just from us but on the market. Every aspect of the game should be focused to build up their assets. If left unchecked, that will destroy the game economy. We have to 100% deal with those situations whenever they come up. I wish we could say we can foresee everything and plan everything upfront but it's a learning process for us and we constantly monitor statistics and analytics.
For the sustainability of the game economy we have to do this. For those who have been around a long time, they have seen this before and said it would hurt new players and clearly it didn't stop the growth of the game and in Matt's opinion it has helped the growth of the game. If we hadn't addressed the problems, the economy would have fallen apart by now and we wouldn't be where we are at in this point in time.
It's not going to be sustainable to come in, buy assets overnight and make money. People who have stuck around have been heavily rewarded based upon 3rd party markets and other assets. We are working so that people who are getting in NOW will enjoy similar things like those people who have stuck around for years.
Again this is not a free to play game. If you're going for that, that's not what we're going for.
Aggroed completely agreed with Matt on this. We need to be really harsh on protecting the asset and the better that is for the ecosystem. We're not trying to be cold-hearted and sure we feel bad but we aren't just going to give out assets.
Matt reaffirmed that we're selling a lot of spellbooks but we are wanting you to buy assets in the game. We've been around for a long time, and we want this game to be awesome and if we didn't care we would just let people stay at that level of just buying spellbooks. We are purposely hurting short-term revenue, for the longer term to build the assets and owning assets that appreciate in value. We're taking the long-term view.
The community gets 80% of the rewards for Chaos Legion right now if you look at the numbers (Aggroed pointed out) and that's based upon building this long-term game.
We want the storyline to be the players in our economy are doing amazing. That's the measurement of success that we have. If we have that, we've nailed it. I hope you guys are having fun. We are airdropping something like $600K per day to the players
Someone commented "what if all the bots just rent enough cards to get into silver league" and that would be awesome for anyone that has cards, they are putting money into the ecosystem and that would be yay! That's the goal. And that's why we don't care about bots.
Development Questions
Will there be any chance for DEC and SPS to be listed on preferably Binance or anything similar? I just think it would be really convenient for some if not most of the playerbase.
It's not like we can just go and list these on exchanges. Getting a listing on the top exchange like Binance is very difficult. I can't tell you if any of those exchanges are going to list Splinterlands assets but if the community can help by promoting Splinterlands to these exchanges.
What will be the future utility of DEC except for payouts for battles? Just trying to figure out whether there will be any other utility for this token to consider after the sps airdrops are over
Payouts for battles is not a payout for the token but a distribution mechanism. It's the native currency in the market; it's used for guilds and updating guild buildings. It will be used with land and mini sets of cards (like the Riftwatchers set). There are lots of things specifically for the DEC.
Is there an official Splinterlands Wiki page? I have one that is on Fandom, but I'm just looking and I don't think that is the "Official" Splinterlands Wiki.
It's not official but it's created by active players but maybe we can dub it official at some point but what i've seen that's a good place.
Are there plans to reintroduce incentives to further grow the Splinterlands Wiki or is it solely voluntary contributions from here on out?
Matt would be open to incentivize players to grow that out fully
Will DEC be algorithmically pegged to $0.001 in the future or will you let the market decide prices?
The market always decides prices. The algorithm in the game is designed only to increase the supply of DEC via rewards as the price goes above that amount. The rewards in the reward pool are much higher as the market price goes higher. We can't directly affect the market price. The market will do what the market wants to do.
As single cards sell/resell for a lot more than higher level combined cards, are there any plans to further incentivise the combining of cards to offset the massive drop in value one should expect when doing this? I would love to max my cards in the spirit of playing the game to higher leagues, but as I am a smart investor it's too obvious that there is too huge a cost to do this, so i rent cards instead. Maybe that is by design but if so, why discourage owning the best cards in the game?
I agree that's not ideal. I haven't heard great ideas what to do about it. If you want to rent them you can rent them, if you want to own you, you can own them. When the land expansion is fully released you will want higher level cards. Hopefully that will give additional incentive to combine cards. The battling AND the economy are a big part of the game.
is there any possibility in future Splinterlands goes RPG mode game?...or at least some kind of RPG??
Yes, yes there is. As we grow the team, we're hoping to have additional features for new game modes and things like that.
Did Splinterlands request to be on the Kucoin Exchange? They do not ask ridiculous prices to be on their platform, yet their are the fastest growing and most used exchange and is in the top 10 exchanges. This would give splinterlands maximum publicity and minimum effort / costs.
It's getting more complicated. "Build on our block chain and maybe we'll consider listing it" is the attitude. We're not in a rush. We can kind of bend over backwards and try to get listed or we can make our game awesome so they are bending over backwards to get us.
Are there any safeguards in place to prevent insider trading from the design-a-summoner reward? E.g. if someone submits a +ranged attack water summoner and buys up a bunch of ranged water creatures to resell once the summoner is revealed. Would this behavior be considered part of the reward of designing the summoner, or unethical and avoided if possible?
So to be clear, the design of the summoner is the visual art design and the name but ultimately we make the call for what the stats are and the designer won't know that until it's released to everybody.
Any chance of some public official API documentation? Would be good to know what the right way to do certain things is and it's a great way to outline how you expect us to use it.
Yeah so that's one of our projects we're trying to do. Not only API but Splinterlands SPK. Now they look at how the website or mobile app works in the meantime, but we're hoping to have documentation soon.
Chaos Legion Questions
Will there be a 1% Drop Chance of a CL-Pack as a Reward? If so does this commence with Presale or only with full release?
Yes for loot chest
If we buy packs in the CL presale, for every 50 packs we get, are the 13 airdropped cards guaranteed or is it "just a chance"? How were things in azmare and untamed?
So there's always a minimum amount. So if you bought X number of packs you get an airdrop. The 50 packs is only for the presale promocard and as each additional airdrop chance.
can we use the staked sps to buy packs?
No
In regards to the 50 presale-pack purchase giving the guarenteed promocard - would you need to open the 50 packs to get this, or do you just need to be the purchaser of the pack. Meaning if i sell the 50 packs, would i still get the card?
It's just the purchaser
Will the 1% CL pack drop be for bronze league n higher or silver league n higher?
Not sure yet.
Is there any preview of the Chaos Legion summoners cards?
No
Does the new Chaos Legion series include Summoners? Or just monsters?
Of course includes summoners and monsters.
will Affiliate links still pay out the 5% on Chaos Legion packs, and if so, will it pay out for purchases with SPS or only on purchases with credits?
Yes
will the guaranteed promo card per 50 packs stack with the 2% chance per pack? i.e. if someone buys exactly 50 packs, do they get 1 promo (and only 1) or do they get 1 promo + 50 additional 2% chances at more promos?
Yes. Every pack has a chance to get the promo card. Same with gold.
Matt's End comments
Matt ended chat on Splinterlands is "for the long term here" so we are going to work to make sure that things continue to improve and grow over years and those who hang with us should be heavily rewarded and everyone takes part in this. Keep that in mind.
We can't guarantee everything that will happen, but we are doing our best.
Back to Chaos Legion Questions
How many chaos legion packs do you need to buy to guarantee a legendary summoner airdrop? in the future airdrops, is it 450 like untamed?
I think it's 1000 packs.
When will the main sale plan be disclosed, assuming you all know what the plan is. Seems odd that we have people spending tens of thousands of dollars and nobody knows what will be available in a month, two months, three months. The newer players sure could use a little heads-up so we can plan accordingly to make the most of our time and funds here.
Matt and I are meeting about this today.
At what date - if ever - will there be opportunity to buy Chaos packs without using coupons?
That's something Matt and I will discuss today. I'm meeting with a major sports organization and then meeting with Matt.
Is it guaranteed that, after pre-sale period, packs purchases at $4 will be allowed for everyone without needing VOUCHERS for it?
There will be a time you won't need them but don't know when that is.
there were some talks about affiliate rewards for sps packs purchase a couple of ama back. Didn't see anything there yet. Anything in the plans or will it be kept to credits? Would incentive people to use sps even after presale
I think that's available. Using SPS counts and you should get credits for that. I believe that's how it works
Voucher Questions
it was stated that there are 33,333.333 vouchers being airdropped daily. And on the previous AMA it was said that voucher will maybe still be necessary after the presale. But there are only 1 million vouchers in total proportionate to the 1 million packs. Will there be a new airdrop vouchers after the presale? I know that its impossible to sell 1 m packs on the presale because you need A WHOLE voucher to buy a pack and majority of players only have fraction of vouchers. And some does not know how to transfer their vouchers. So 999,999 packs being sold is possible 1 million is not.
Yes that is currently the plan. Yeah so it will end at the end. The max amount that we will sell is 1 million there's up to 20% bonus. It's basically time limited and pack limited and we'll probably hit the time limit before the pack limit.
Will there be any bonuses on packs bought using vouchers AFTER the CL presale ends?
There's the airdrops that will be part of it but you will lose out on the bonus and Dr. Blight.
G'day Aggy (from Platypus-Dundee), I believe it has been said that the current vouchers are capped at 1 million inline with the 1 million packs on offer for the pre-sale event but that vouchers will be required for some period after the event for general sale.
We will be talking about it today.
How long will the vouchers be able to be used to buy from that pool, is it indefinite or will they expire for that pool after the pre-sale event is over? And if so, will they still be valid to use on packs in the general sale and will it still be a 1:1 deal or will the vouchers in the general sale be able to buy more than one pack, for example 0.5 of a voucher can buy one pack?
N/A yet
what the odds are of getting airdrop cards when I buy vouchers for pre-sale card packs for CL. If I get pre-sale card packs from other players, will I get airdrops as well?
It changes with each card and how far it is into the presale. No you will not get the airdrops.
Would it be worth it to buy vouchers instead of pre-sale card packs?
I can't tell you.
Why is chaos pack cost less than voucher? Will i not get the drop if i buy chaos pack instead of voucher?
That's because you don't get the other rewards.
Will Splinterlands ever sell or re-sell any coupons, beyond the one million pre-sale coupons? Thanks for an incredible game!
Yes I believe so.
How long will vouchers be needed to buy CL packs?
We haven't determined that.
SPS / Airdrop questions
Once you start unstaking process, how is your sps considered in ragards to voucher/sps airdrops? You lose 25% of the amount each week? You lose 100% of the ammount from the moment you start the unstaking process? You only lose the sps, that is actually transfered to your wallet, once the week timeframe passes?
Maybe Cryptomancer can answer that. I think that once you start unstaking that 25% is not counted.
Would you know if the CL packs will also be accounted in the SPS airdrop computation or is it just the previous packs?
No if you own Chao Legion packs, they should show up in your airdrop.
if I buy chaos pack after presale will I get any airdrop cards?
Yeah. You get airdrops, you're not gonna get Dr. Blight who's gonna be this awesome plague card.
BNB has been pumping and hodlers want to hold long term because of their marketing play(burning bnb), Is this possible with SPS?
Yes at some point will have SPS burns.
How will the SPS token be integrated into the game in the further to ensure utility/increase in demand? Will it be required to stake SPS or somewhat for the public sale of CL? And how will SPS work with LAND?
My guess is that all the buildings and things you want to put together will require resources from the game and staking SPS and DEC. Anything land based is TBD so remember that.
Chaos Pre sale was for raising funds to pay all the on boarding of new employees. Since most of the payments are in SPS , is it safe to assume that SL as a company has/will sell off SPS. In conjunction with that question. Has any founders sold off SPS since pre sale started , I ask because founders have/are recommending people to stake and Hold SPS , would be unethical for founders to sell off while encouraging others to do the opposite in an effort to pump up the price.
Chaos Legion is for raising funds for new employees. Most of the payments are in SPS and I don't think that's actually true. Most of that is being paid in crypto and only a portion is SPS. I'm not in any rush to take the SPS. I don't want to speak for Matt, but he said he hasn't. Aggroed has sold some SPS and staked a ton more than he's sold so that he could build liquidity pools. I try very hard never to sell SPS into those pools. I will pick a price higher so that market moves to that price.
Which DEC liquidity pools count for airdrop points? In particular, does DEC-BUSD on Pancakeswap V2 now count?
Better question for the devs that do that.
Can you tell us when the next use case for SPS comes out?When is the voting or are other use cases in the planning? The momentum is slowing down a bit and I was hoping to get some insight in the future developments concerning SPS in the next month or so. Cheers.
For sure we have slowed down a bit just in the last month the number of spellbook owners has doubled from 300K to 600K and that previously took 3 1/2 years. I don't think you're understanding the amount of growth we are doing. We are growing at ridiculous speed and probably faster than any other block chain out there right now.
why do you add an auto compounding on SPS staking?
Because it's in the whitepaper that if you stake SPS there's rewards going to you so we're just following the whitepaper on that.
QUESTION: Can you please tell us the 3x best reasons to own and stake SPS today the 3x most exciting things on the horizon for SPS holders
I can't tell you the three best reasons. The answer will be different for everyone. I can tell you my own personal journey. I love this game. I love owning my own assets. I like how there's rewards designed for the governance token holders. This whole voucher system puts this into the hands of the players. Currently if vouchers are 20 bucks right now we're putting over $660K into the hands of players for the next 30 days. That's 20 million dollars we are giving back to SPS holders in 30 days. That's amazing! I've held bitcoin and it never gave that to me. The basic thing in this game will be: anything that is cool in this game will include SPS. Read the whitepaper. We are 2 months behind on the whitepaper so it's just getting to that.
Land Questions
Based on what you have in the works, are lands worth the investment? Lands were sold for 20 dollars initially. Are your plans for land based on providing value compared to the initial price of 20 dollars, or on the price they are at now? For example, when you initially sold the land, maybe you saw it as a small addition to the game. But now you see how the price has ballooned, do you still see it as a small addition to the game or have your plans for land also grown along with the value players have set on it?
The thing about the land is you get items and spells and that's the only way you can get them. Practically speaking, 100% of the items and spells will only be produced with land. So you will get millions of dollars instead of us because the land is in your hands and can produce so much. The value comes from that.
Other Game Questions
Will the new dual ranked battle rankings mean twice the amount of ranked battle pools, and if so, twice the amount of printed daily DEC?
That is my current understanding yes.
In your opinion, will the mav status further the divide between majority players and the rich few? What are the implications on game growth with SPS proposals for when the wealthy commingle with each other n decide on proposals? Will it lead to the majority voices being shut out from proposals or will it instead lead to stronger vocal support for the many?
That's a pretty loaded question. I think having Mavs, if you've put significant stake into the game, the advantage is you will have direct access to the devs who read Mav chat. If you want access to the devs, you want in the Mavs. I don't see that as dealing with SPS proposals. There are so many different desires and designs. That's the beauty of crypto. There are so many different plans.
Is the dec reward pool divided per league?
No divided off rank points.
Recently a prominent Maverick was banned for violating TOS by buying a cheap card on one of his account(80 cents ) for 58$ in order to xfer Dec to his other account. A clear violation. He popped into Maverick chat and asked to be unbanned. He was given expedited resolution from a Support Team member (BYZ) and unbanned within hours. Do all users of the game given second chances and if so .. is it retroactive. Recently people have been posting in channels they too did the same thing and were told it was a one strike rule … no exceptions.
If you've been a player a couple of years and you make your one mistake then I don't think you should be banned you've done before. The expedited help should be given to those players who have put a substantial amount into the game. If someone breaks the rules right away, we will take are of it immediately and you'll be banned.
The 1,000 packs purchase needed to get the MAV role, must be purchased in a single transaction? Do any pre-sale packs purchase amount count towards getting the role?
The only ones that count are what you bought from Splinterlands.
Suggestions / Requests
Question / Suggestion: Why not include the Backfire Ability in the Amplify Ability?
N/A Matt Questions
There are several complaints about the voucher system
Can we please get a "Voucher" text channel?
Maybe.
What are your thoughts on spellbooks cost $11/12 with the addition of 1000/2000 credits into the accounts to allow people to buy/rent cards right off of the get go? I know that the wizards aren't exactly for f2p, but being f2p is kind of a fun challenge, so I'm hoping this is implemented. While this would be better suited to a sps proposal, i think that this change should be implemented soon with the new changes to battle dec rewards. Thank you for your time and keep up the great work!
I don't think we should force credits. I don't know. I was on textbook bundling. Why are we forcing people to buy these bundles we will never use? So I would say keep them separate. If you want a spellbook, buy spellbook but if you want credits, buy credits.
Can we get a private room in the discord for those who have purchased the spellbook? Like a step in between general chat and mav chat, just so we can have a place to talk without people who dont even play interjecting. Thanks.
No unless tons of people ask.
STATEMENT: Thanks for all the hard work you and the team put in.
Rapid Fire Questions
Please Note: I was unable to attend the live. I highly recommend you visit Splinterlands' YouTube channel if you want to hear the whole AMA with the questions. I was able to cover all updates and previously-provided questions.
Thank you so much for reading! Sorry for the delay, but I appreciate you stopping by and checking out the AMA!
@cryptomancer and some updates to the Chaos Legion presale