First off, it's easy for me to sit behind my computer and rant about how everything has gone to shit. I'm still very much invested in Splinterlands wanting it to succeed so all I say is just constructive criticism with arguments in the hope this can improve things. Nothing I say is meant to be personal.
The Card-Price-Gap Problem is the Only Thing That Matters!
What I see as the card-price-gap-problem is the fact that cards bought in packs are near 100% sure to lose all their value over time when they get dumped into Wild. This dynamic now makes it so that:
- Very few existing players are actually willing to buy new cards which can be seen in the Rebellion Sales.
- Existing players are unhappy because they only lost money with their main investment trending to zero.
- No incentives whatsoever for new players to come in as they are sure to get themselves crushed quickly.
- Lack of revenue for the devs which makes them print more cards making the problem worse.
The more that I think about this, the more I believe that dynamics to make cards values somewhat hold up is the main thing that should be focused on instead of trying to get DEC to Peg, The Flywheel, or the onboarding of new players (which in my view won't work in the current state the game is in). This problem is actually very simple to visualize
This in a nutshell is everything it all comes down to and for every change made in the game, the first question that should be asked is 'will this close the card price gap or make it worse'. However, this is clearly not what they are doing or the direction things are heading as recently a reply from @yabapmatt really had me baffled and worried to the point where I believe he just totally lost the plot.
I mean seriously, how can you even write something like this when clearly the biggest problem in the economy for a long time now is the massive oversupply in cards and the devaluation on old cards which made everyone lose trust. If the entire economy is based on DEC how is turning on the printer and flooding the card market even more is going to drive this. I'm sure some whales don't care and just buy everything that is put out there. 99% of the player base has totally gotten crushed by this solution for each problem to print, make things more expensive, lower rewards. The entire reason everyone is in Crypto and Bitcoin is because it solves the problem of a centralized entity being able to steal and dilute wealth.
Bitcoin is to the Dollar what the Dollar is to Splinterlands AssetsBitcoin > Dollar > Splinterlands Assets
Printer Goes Brrrrrrr
The history of printing more assets by the devs has been quite insane if you line it all up and there seems to be not much left of this money that was earned from all of it.
- The SPELLBOOK is an item everyone needs to get started
- DEC was Printed out of thin air which actually helped the Game but later became a major problem
- POTIONS were created lowering the value of packs for everyone who opened them without
- SPT is still printed out of thin air to reward blogging which has become worthless
- SPS was created as a token out of thin air the moment DEC wasn't really holding up which did cause the crazy adoption wave as it temporary created a bubble and upwards spiral for all other Splinterlands assets.
- LAND was created out of thin air which went on a crazy speculative bubble after which they raised the requirements with DEC staking taking again value from that
- POWER CORES were created as an extra cost to start land
- TIME CRYSTALS were created as an extra Pay2Win cost for Land
- TOTEMS were created as an extra incentive to buy land and provide liquidity
- RUNIS were created as a way to get extra revenue from the NFT Hype
- CHAOS LEGION packs and reward cards were overprinted like crazy
- GRAIN is currently being overprinted like crazy
- TOTEM FRAGMENTS are also being printed now with promised future use case
- VOUCHERS were created as a way to push the SPS price which quickly became a problem
- VALIDATOR LICENCES were sold which now need the DAO to actually fund the development of this years later
- GLX was created trying to replicate the model of Splinterlands and taking away focus of the development from the main game
- GENESIS LEAGUE GOAL PACKS were pre-sold with lots of promise but no product to really show for
- NIGHTMARE PACKS were pre-sold which actually delivered quite a fun game even though asset prices also are not worth much now
- COLONY tokens were created as yet another branch away from Splinterlands
- MOON KART PACKS also were pre-sold which indirectly also affects Splinterlands buys
- ...
I'm sure there are many more assets that were created that I forgot about not to talk about the more recent soulbound assets in Reward Cards, Glints, Energy, Gladius Cards, ...
While not all assets are bad, the sheer amount is just insane and they more or less all directly just took away value from the thing all players see as their main investment which are cards. If anything, there should a close to total printer stop for a while with an eye to close the card-price-gap.
Why Rebellion & Unlocked Soulbound Cards Won't Hold Value
The general belief is that because fewer rebellion cards have been printed and because the unlocking cost was made expensive, the prices will hold up better over time which I believe is a flawed reasoning. Once in Wild, nearly all players just turn on a bot to play for them and there is very little use case left for the cards. There is just no reason for anyone to own or hold the more expensive cards in the current setup as a similar goal can be achieved with the cheaper ones. Even worse, the best strategy is probably to just use soulbound cards as they included summoners and try to rent out owned cards.
The 100M+ DEC burn for the Soulbound Cards unlocking also hasn't moved the needle even a tiny bit in getting the price of DEC back to PEG as it's still trading below 0.0007$
The Broken Development Cycle
One of the main problems of Splinterlands is that the main incentive of the devs (and I'm not talking about Yabappmatt) is to keep their paycheck coming instead of actually trying to make the game as good and enjoyable as possible. This brought a situation where it was all mainly about getting funds which made the game worse and worse over the years. For 5+ years now, the only thing (aside from maybe brawls) that has been done is trying to fix the economy and with each change a bigger problem was created while the gameplay & fun was sacrificed often making the game just more pay2win and more complicated.
This now has gotten to a point where some of the most well-known players an influencers kind of zoned out from owning assets aside from SPS.
@bulldog1205 Sold most his cards and is now renting because the risk is just too high even at current bottom prices to have funds tied up.
@aftersound is clear that he's not buying Rebellion cards as he anticipates prices are going down, he also just dumps vouchers along with grain and is running a bot in Wild mainly using Soulbound cards while trying to rent out owned cards. The fact that this is actually the right thing to do in Splinterlands is quite sad
@nfoguides also had enough and sold all his assets a while back leaving the game as it's not worth it while he still follows the community and the development Youtube Link
...
Conclusion!
Seeing words written by the leader of Splinterlands that there isn't much available for people to buy in Splinterlands to burn DEC on so a Mini Set should be created on top of the 5x2 promo cards really makes me totally want to give up on what potentially could have been a great game with a good economy. The history of overprinting all kinds of assets by the team is just crazy while the only thing in my view that counts and should be focused on is the gap between new card Mint price and old card sell prices. I believe a fundamental switch needs to be made in the overall approach to make Splinterlands work as I can't see a scenario where the game succeeds if the gap in prices between old and new cards remains this big. Next week I will try write some concrete ideas I already talked about in the past to possibly solve this issue.
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Great overview and I couldn't agree with the graphic more. I am surprised they don't lower rebellion pack prices to the new reality and give extra incentives for bought cards over soulbound to at least kick start the economy a bit. I was shocked to read about Bulldog, but there is no incentive to hold Splinterlands assets right now.
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They aim to make Rebellion a set where prices actually hold up which is the reason there are no reward packs and no discounts (and also why they made unlocks so expensive). Once they get dumped into wild however, it feels inevitable for their prices to totally crash as there is just no incentive for anyone to own them as there are way cheaper options available to get the same result. That's why now it's best to just dump all your cards and keep milking SPS with just soulbound cards.
I guess the moment where their paycheck really gets in danger is the time they might see all these major mistakes but by then it likely will be too late as it's much harder to reverse the damage done.
I wouldn't say I KNOW that card values are going down, it's a calculated guess and I may end up being wrong.
Splinterlands needs to give cards bought with money or rented cards an advantage over cards earned with gameplay time (free cards). Even a small win bonus would help the secondary card market. Currently max reward cards + soulbound + gladiator cards is an extremely effective way to drain SPS from the reward pool without financial risk in buying card packs and watching card prices fall over time.
Couldn't agree more. I made a video awhile back advocating for items and spells to be the new reward cards (not really, just bouncing ideas around) for this reason. If people can just earn cards that earn rewards they will never buy. Rewards need to be something that supplements gameplay.
I changed it to anticipates :-)
Nice to see you keeping up the solid content on Youtube by the way, I still enjoy watching!
I appreciate it! Solid breakdown here!
Seems like the solution is always to print more cards. Sigh.
Yeah
I'm not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but I don't think it is done with malicious intent and I think they actually believe they are saving the game with all this printing which in a way is extra frustrating.
With this new announcement today also, I just notice that it pushed me again further and further away from the game just like many others I assume.
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