I recently came across a proposal suggesting that Splinterlands should limit each player to a maximum of two piloted scholar accounts.
The proposal is trying to address a real problem, but I don't think the proposed solution is the right one.
After reading through the discussion and the responses, I believe the problem is being identified correctly in some cases, but the focus on scholar accounts is too narrow.
The real issue isn't scholarships.
The real issue is multi-account concentration in competitive leaderboards.
And I think there is a much better way to address it without hurting one of the most interesting and unique parts of the Splinterlands ecosystem.
One of the strongest arguments made in the discussion is that Splinterlands doesn't always look like a competition between players.
Sometimes it looks like a competition between accounts. And those aren't necessarily the same thing, imagine a Champion leaderboard where the top 10 positions look something like this:
| Rank | Account | Controlled By |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Account A | Player X |
| 2 | Account B | Player X |
| 3 | Account C | Player X |
| 4 | Account D | Player Y |
| 5 | Account E | Player X |
| 6 | Account F | Player Z |
| 7 | Account G | Player X |
| 8 | Account H | Player Y |
| 9 | Account I | Player X |
| 10 | Account J | Player W |
And if you look at the Modern Champion Leaderboard for the last season you will see exactly what you see above:
Technically, this may be completely legitimate, but from a competitive perspective, something feels wrong. The leaderboard is supposed to tell me who the best players are, instead, it is telling me which accounts have the highest ratings. Those are two different things. And this distinction becomes particularly important when a small number of extremely skilled players operate many accounts as is the case in Splinterlands right now.
This is where I disagree with the original proposal, scholarships are actually one of the coolest concepts in Splinterlands. Someone can own valuable cards without having the time, experience, or desire to play them in that case another player can provide the skill and time needed to play those assets.
That's a legitimate economic relationship and it also provides an opportunity for people who otherwise couldn't afford to participate at higher levels. There are also legitimate reasons for someone to manage multiple accounts:
Guilds need players.
Brawls need players.
People have multiple collections.
Some players enjoy experimenting with different accounts.
Some people build accounts for different formats.
And some players simply enjoy playing more than one account.
I don't think Splinterlands should unnecessarily restrict any of this. That's why I think the debate shouldn't be:
"How many scholar accounts should one person be allowed to play?"
The better question is:
"How should Splinterlands measure competitive achievement when one person controls multiple accounts?"
That leads to a much cleaner solution.
My proposal is simple:
Update leaderboards so that they count each player only once.
Call it the:
The Unique Player Leaderboard would answer a different question:
Who are the best individual players in Splinterlands?
For this leaderboard, each player would only be represented once, if I have five accounts in Champion and all five finish in the top 20, that's perfectly fine. But on the Unique Player Leaderboard, I would only occupy one position.
My highest-ranked qualifying account would represent me and this immediately changes the competitive picture. Right now we have Account Leaderboard:
| Rank | Account | Player |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alpha | Player A |
| 2 | Beta | Player A |
| 3 | Gamma | Player B |
| 4 | Delta | Player A |
| 5 | Epsilon | Player C |
| 6 | Zeta | Player A |
| 7 | Eta | Player D |
| 8 | Theta | Player B |
| 9 | Iota | Player A |
| 10 | Kappa | Player E |
After this proposal we have:
| Rank | Player | Best Account |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Player A | Alpha |
| 2 | Player B | Gamma |
| 3 | Player C | Epsilon |
| 4 | Player D | Eta |
| 5 | Player E | Kappa |
One of the biggest concerns raised in the discussion isn't necessarily the actual economic impact of scholars, it is the perception of competition.
If a new player looks at the Champion leaderboard and sees the same handful of people occupying a large percentage of the top positions, that can be discouraging. And it becomes even more problematic if you're trying to present Splinterlands as a competitive game or potentially attract esports players.
Imagine introducing Splinterlands to an experienced competitive gamer, they look at the leaderboard and discover that a relatively small number of players control a large percentage of the top accounts.
The immediate reaction might be:
"So I'm not really competing against 100 players. I'm competing against a much smaller group of players with multiple accounts."
Whether that perception is completely fair or not doesn't really matter.
Perception matters.
Competitive games live and die by the perception that the competition is meaningful.
A Unique Player Leaderboard solves much of this without telling anyone that they aren't allowed to play their other accounts.
This is probably the most important feature of the changes I am proposing. The proposed two-scholar-account limit creates a very specific problem. Someone who legitimately manages 5 scholarship accounts could suddenly find themselves in violation of the rules. Guilds could potentially be affected it makes some big Splinterlands asset owners loose their scholars, players in developing regions who rely on scholarship income could be affected.
And the community could interpret the change as being fundamentally anti-scholar. I don't think that's necessary, under my proposal, a player could still manage 2, 10, or even more accounts, subject to whatever existing account rules Splinterlands already has. They could continue playing them, they could continue earning rewards according to the rules of the game.
They could continue participating in guild activities where permitted they simply wouldn't get to occupy ten separate positions on a leaderboard that is specifically designed to measure unique players. And the only loss to the big asset holders is loss of some leaderboard Glint, which they already have plenty so no big deal.
That's a much smaller intervention.
There is another weakness in the original proposal, it makes a distinction between accounts that you own and accounts that you don't own. But competitive advantage doesn't really care who owns the account.
If Player A owns 10 accounts, those accounts can potentially have the same effect on a leaderboard as 10 scholarship accounts played by Player A.
So why should the rules be different? If the problem is multiple accounts controlled by one player, then the solution should address multiple accounts controlled by one player.
Not simply:
"multiple accounts owned by somebody else."
A Unique Player Leaderboard naturally solves this.
Ownership becomes largely irrelevant the system only needs to determine which accounts belong to the same competitive player group.
This is another reason I prefer this solution. I don't think we need to start banning things simply because something can create an undesirable competitive outcome instead, we can change the measurement.
When we're asking:
"Who are the best players?"
we should count that person once.
I would also recommend starting small. The complaints that prompted this discussion seem to be heavily focused on competitive Modern ranked play.
So let's start there.
Don't immediately apply a new restriction to:
Wild
Frontier
Survival
Brawls
Guild activities
Other cooperative activities
These modes have different purposes.
Brawls in particular can depend heavily on people being willing to play multiple accounts for their guild. I don't see a compelling reason to damage that ecosystem in order to solve a Modern leaderboard problem.
Start with the competitive environment where the problem actually exists.
If it works, expand it later.
Here is the proposal I would put forward.
Splinterlands currently ranks accounts rather than individual players. While multiple-account participation is an important and legitimate part of the ecosystem, it can result in a small number of highly skilled players occupying a disproportionate number of positions on competitive leaderboards.
This creates a perception that players are competing against a small group of individuals controlling many accounts rather than against a large and diverse player base.
The problem is not specifically related to scholarships, the same issue can occur with personally owned accounts. Therefore, restricting scholar accounts does not address the underlying competitive problem.
Introduce a Unique Player Leaderboard for competitive ranked play. Splinterlands should provide a leaderboard that counts each individual player only once.
When multiple accounts are determined to be controlled by the same player, only the player's highest-ranked qualifying account would appear on the Unique Player Leaderboard.
If one player finishes:
#1
#4
#8
#15
#23
On the Unique Player Leaderboard, that player would appear only once, at #1.
The next highest-ranked account belonging to a different player would become #2, and so on.
The system should initially be introduced for Modern Ranked competitive play.
It should not automatically restrict:
Wild
Frontier
Survival
Brawls
Guild activities
Scholarship programs
Normal multi-account gameplay
These environments can be evaluated separately.
The Unique Player Leaderboard should initially be introduced as a non-restrictive informational leaderboard.
No accounts should be banned or prevented from playing as a result of the new leaderboard.
Run the system for several seasons and publish the results.
This would allow the community and Splinterlands team to evaluate:
Account concentration
Number of unique players in top rankings
Changes in leaderboard diversity
Player sentiment
Competitive participation
Impact on matchmaking
Impact on rewards
After sufficient data has been collected, Splinterlands could consider whether certain competitive rewards should be based on the Unique Player Leaderboard rather than the account leaderboard.
Any such change should be proposed separately.
The goal is not to prevent players from owning or managing multiple accounts.
The goal is to ensure that when Splinterlands says:
"These are the best players in the game,"
the leaderboard actually represents individual players.
This solution addresses the underlying concern while preserving the flexibility of the Splinterlands ecosystem.
It is:
Not anti-scholar
Not anti-multi-account
Not a ban
Not dependent on account ownership
Less disruptive to the existing ecosystem
More focused on competitive integrity
Potentially much easier to communicate to new players
Most importantly, it gives Splinterlands something it currently does not fully have:
a leaderboard that actually answers the question, "Who are the best players?"
One of the reasons I love Splinterlands is that it is not a traditional game. The blockchain ownership model creates things that simply do not exist in most competitive games:
Game assets have real value.
Accounts have value.
Players can delegate assets.
Scholarships exist.
People can build businesses around the ecosystem.
I don't want to solve a competitive problem by stripping away those characteristics. Instead, I think Splinterlands should embrace them while making a distinction between account ownership and competitive identity.
Let people own multiple accounts.
Let people play multiple accounts.
Let people operate scholarship programs.
Let guilds use scholars.
But when we want to determine who the best players are, let's count the players. That's the fundamental idea behind the Unique Player Leaderboard.
Don't restrict the ecosystem to fix the leaderboard, fix the leaderboard.
I believe that is a much cleaner, fairer, and more sustainable solution to the problem we're actually trying to solve.
