Hello, the beautiful people of Splinterverse. Hope you all are doing great and enjoying the game every day. Last month I have written a blog on Converting bots into players is the only way! in which I discussed my thoughts on a price appreciation process can be an amazing way to solve several issues. As a true supporter of the Splinterlands community, I feel the necessity of several changes according to my opinion and I love to share those in my blogs over time. Today, I am also going to talk about one issue that can be very severe for the total game economy and I want to suggest possible ways to address those. I could make a solid proposal with that but as a negligible and smaller player, I don't have such resources to spend around 90 bucks to be famous as I can add some good cards with that amount which is much helpful to grow my decks.
Before diving into the topic I want to share my thoughts on the recent Splinterlands booming card market which is impacting my card values with an increasing trend every day which is a great thing at the dawn of the coming crypto bull market. And in the current situation, the new soulbound cards are airing up to the fire as now these cards are not transferable and cannot be sold or rented. And also these cards have some amazing abilities with the capability of changing the meta and the existing gameplay strategies. But with all these fascinating factors they can trigger some unwanted explosion of mega bot farming which is already a huge concern for the existing real players and a big portion of the rewards are just being stolen by these bots. And now a big portion of soulbound cards are being hijacked by these bot farmers effectively. And the situation can be even worse in many cases when a batch of bots will have enough soulbound cards to do better in the league battles and only with soulbound cards they will take away more rewards as there are no rewarding differences between the soulbound cards and the other cards.
The main problems that should be addressed as follows-
Protecting rewards for the genuine players
Making SOULBOUND cards more helpful for the players not for the bots, at least demotivating bot farming and attracting the real players
Forcing the bot farmers to have the edition cards not only the SOULBOUND cards to generate rewards
Restricting the only SOULBOUND cards account from grabbing rewards
Adding values to the existing cards from different addition, if possible for the neglected cards which are of no use cases
Ensuring a sustainable game economy for the long run evolution of the game.
So, what could be the scenario is the big question in my opinion like most of the community members also who really want Splinterlands to be a great blockchain game. In this post, I am going to present my thoughts on this issue and my thoughts on fixing the issues by such a process to make the game more player-friendly but crucial for the bots.
I have read some clues from several sources and wrote about them in my previous post so I am not going to reiterate the same thing here. A process like KYC, banning those bots, or minimum investing criteria are not so useful in my opinion though I am not a professional analyst as I am not paid for such thoughts and I am only sharing my thoughts for educational purposes as I love the game and I want further development of the game. I talked about the way to create value for the holding period of a specific card that will force the players and the bots to buy and store for a long period of time!
In my concern, this is the most underrated issue with the Splinterlands, and not only in this game but in the case of most blockchain games in this category where some free NFTs are found or gifted to the players. And the flood of such assets loses their value and we have seen the collapse of all the games and there is no attraction increment from the new players to enter the game. Without a proper and solid price appreciation model the crypto turbulence can be very devastating for the sustainable growth of the game. I am looking for a solution for the following issues in this regard-
There should be some model that will make the asset value higher instead of decreasing the value over time. For example, you are getting such an asset but that asset is decreasing in value abruptly which makes no sense to make the game user-friendly. But if any model can make the opposite or at least make it sustainable that can be a great thing for the game and also from the investment perspective with the new players.
The biggest abnormality that I explore is that the players with a lot of collections and the only SOULBOUND collector are getting the same rewards and same opportunities which seems a "BIG PROBLEM" to me. It triggers the massive bot farming in reality.
What do these mean? For example, I opened a new account transferred all cards or delegate to it or rent some amazing cards play massively some season and collect the silver league level SOULBOUND cards, and opened another account and one another in the same cycle. That is the process of bot farming evolution is on the processing with the current mechanism.
Inspiring the players to hold the assets and buy new cards and not to trade frequently for easy exit and entry through the trading value of assets is important if fewer assets can generate a bigger trading volume that can be an awesome thing! The higher demand is necessary for more liquidity but the constant pressure for selling assets is not a good game economy at all.
This is high time to protect the game economy from such massive loss of the real players. Otherwise, bot farming will be more severe with the passage of time. As I can say from the gold league I have gathered all the summoners at level two and 2 summoners with level three and GF summoner at level 3 also and tons of supporting cards for effectively playing the Silver league without buying any summoners or renting any cards with 4 seasons. And I can transfer all of my cards to do the same thing for another account and which is happening among players also to grab rewards from the chests, brawls, and in every possible way! Then just think about the Champion or the Diamond League.
I believe that the total reward by holding assets is completely depending on the market situation in the existing model where the market trend is heavily attacked with the floods of rewards cards and the SOULBOUND idea is not enough to change the situation. The real card owner often lose their value by holding the asset and the newer accounts with bot farming can raise up with such free cards which is my concern, so there should be some ways to reward those players who are playing on a regular basis and who are the backbone of the gaming community. But unfortunately, Splinterlands is unable to meet up the criteria with the traditional model and also there is no effective way to solve such bot farming problems. Converting these bots into asset holders like the real players was one of the steps to address such problems that can be solved in an effective way to a great portion by cutting the bot's rewards and rewarding more to the regular asset owners and holders.
Let's move to another step that I want to share with the community. For being a non-technical person, I am sharing this only for the crypto enthusiasm which can be considered by the developer if they think and modify it according to the developing purposes and the future direction of the game! To make my thoughts clear cut I am sharing them with some points instead of the long theoretical paragraph as follows.
As every NFT minted has a number and the complete transaction history, and the owner can be known or tracked anytime, there must be some advanced system that will allow the real players to unlock the SOULBOUND CARDS with some conditions which will make a barrier to use these cards in the battle by the bots. Though I am not a blockchain or NFT expert I can express my concept as a potential solution and the decision always depends on the founder of the game developer team. I think it is very difficult to fix everything at once but there is will there is a way and there is much more to think about those conditions. I would like to share some of my thoughts on that also in the later part of the post.
If unlocking is mechanism is not possible then there must be some restrictions for grabbing rewards by using the SOULBOUND cards in the battle to address the massive reward farming bots and also the players do intentionally such reward suction without any contribution to the game economy.
Let's talk about the conditions now which are just my thoughts and I think some of these can be pondered over to move the game economy in the right direction-
All the SOULBOUND cards should be locked initially after claiming from the loot chests.
Before using the card, the players must unlock it by keeping or locking the same rarity card in the account which means the maximum reward card you will be able to use up to your own core collection of cards.
The rented or the delegated cards can be used as the locked card is not a good idea in my thoughts but they can be used in the same existing mechanism, just I want to make the concern about the flood of SOULBOUND cards, especially the non-GLADIATORS. Maybe gladiators can be included in the GUILD bot farming issue.
For the GF version there can be the elimination of the same GF rarity but must be the normal foil requirement as usual.
For the level setting that can be kept the same or with some rough calculation same as the league level rewarding mechanism based on the card level.
And for the other mechanism of the requirements is something that I want to express that the players must hold the same amount of CP with normal cards to use the SOULBOUND cards in the game. But it is gonna be a relaxing option and the rented and delegated cards will make the situation a little bit worse!
These will significantly affect the bot's farming and the price of the cards will increase a lot if the incentives are enough for holding the core edition cards, especially the weak cards will get some use cases and the tendency to sell such cards will be minimized to an extent. And for the bots farming will be affected to meet up the cost which will also lead to making the market upward otherwise their rewards and opportunities will be narrowed when real players will hold their assets and play more times with their SOULBOUND cards. In a long story short, any version of such implementation will-
Create value for the SOULBOUND cards
Adding value to the existing and future core-edition cards
Limit the opportunity by the bots and the only SOULBOUND players
Make the game economy more sustainable
I hope you find some of these thoughts useful to consider in the Splinterlands regarding the flood of the SOULBOUND cards. And if you have any kinds of queries or suggestions, you can let us know in the comments. I will try to answer at my level best. Thanks a lot for your time and attention, I will catch you at the next one.
Have a great day!
NB: Please don't take the discussion so seriously, it is a complete thought of my concern regarding the Splinterlands game which I play every day. All the decision is made by the game developer and the bigger stake holder but I am a tiny player in that sense.
The banner has been prepared by myself with Canva
And, If you want to be a proud member of the Splinterlands community and enjoy the magical world of hundreds of monsters and strategies for your battle where you will have the opportunities of amazing battles with some extraordinary monsters with amazing abilities which will uplift your online gaming experience to a new level. You can enter into the Splinterverse through this link sign up to join splinterlands
Thank you so much for your time and attention.
I will catch you at the next.
