Soulkeep has been running for quite a few months now and overall, I do feel like it's a pretty decent game. It's fast paced, offers a lot of different challenges, and even more different strategies of how to approach them. After a while, it does get a bit old, as you have figured out most of the maps from the (rather small) pool you get to play, and you also understand which towers to use in what situation, what spells to ignore, and so on. Still, that's to be expected during such an early stage of the game. So, all things considered, I think Double Coconout did a rather good job with the game overall.
The part I'm really not that happy with, though, are the tokenomics, and looking at their Discord channel, I'm certainly not alone with that. When Soulkeep was announced back in the day, it was meant to be an integrated part of the bigger Splinterlands ecosystem. It was to have SPS staking requirements and it was to have some form of card staking in order to enhance your towers. So far, none of this has manifested. While I do appreciate that plans do change and not everything makes sense in hindsight, I don't think that the current implementation can stand.
I do have to admit that they did some changes already, but they have been made reluctantly, and they only have been made after the community pushed for them. Tournament entry fees now burn 50% of the DEC spent, and the reward curve has ben flattened a bit. What hasn't changed, though, is that SPS is given out without players having to have any stake in the game to earn it. Now sure, it's only like 30k SPS a day, which is way less than all the other SPS faucets, but it's still 30k SPS or roughly $240 at current prizes that's paid out without any requirements to earn it. Let's have a look at some of the rewards that were paid out yesterday:
League 3:
League 2:
League 1:
That's a lot of SPS given out in these lower leagues to individual accounts. As you can see by their names and the random numbers added, a lot of these accounts are just multi accounts that are spread around the different leagues and just try to leech as much value as possible out of the system. And why wouldn't they, there are virtually no requirements to do so. The assets needed can be rented for cheap and/or delegated around. A lot of Splinterlands players probably earn less than these amounts playing ranked, all while having to have a much larger investment to get there.
The solution to all this is pretty simple really - implement SPS staking requirements to earn SPS and we'd be good. I'm not even saying have it for every league or require the same amount for every league. I do think that Soulkeep could actually help us to onboard new players to the game, especially when (and if) they do launch their mobile application and potentially a lot of web 2 players could get a glimpse of the game. We obviously don't want to confront them with all the web 3 stuff right away.
Looking at the distribution of rewards, I think we could keep league 1 as is, and simply flatten the reward curve even more. Of course you should earn more the higher you place, but we should avoid paying out too much free SPS to any individual account nevertheless. Starting with league 2, though, we really should have SPS staking requirements in place. It doesn't have to be as complicated as it is in Splinterlands with RShares and everything, just have a fixed amount of SPS that's needed to be staked in order to earn the full rewards.
So say in league 2, you need 10,000 SPS to earn your full rewards. If frieren had that much stakd, he'd earn the full 304.03 SPS. If he only has 5,000 SPS staked, he'll only earn 152.02 SPS. The important part is that this always need to be a percentage of the earnings, so the 5th place would earn 73.45 SPS instead of 146.9 SPS if he only had 5.000 SPS staked.
I also don't think that these staking rewards need to be super high, again, we are not talking about a huge amount of daily SPS, but it's quite a bit to a few individual accounts. So the numbers could look something like this:
League 2 - 10,000 SPS
League 3 - 15,000 SPS
League 4 - 25,000 SPS
League 5 - 40,000 SPS
League 6 - 60,000 SPS
League 7 - 85,000 SPS
League 8 - 105,000 SPS
League 9 - 140,000 SPS
League 10 - 180,000 SPS
That's a lot less than what you need for the higher leagues in Ranked, but it's still a relevant amount that would ensure that a basic level of investment is needed to earn any significant rewards. To be clear on that, I'd also would want this SPS to be exclusively staked towards Soulkeep. So you'd still earn Staking rewards from it and it would still be good for voting obviously, but it would no longer count for ranked rewards from Splinterlands directly.
Personally, I feel like this is something we should aim to do more anyway. Right now, depending on if you play Modern or Wild, the usefulness of having SPS staked maxes out between 500,000 and 1,000,000 SPS. So by providing multiple options to stake SPS towards, we would actually add additional incentives to have higher amounts of SPS staked and rent less of that out to other players.
But anyway, I feel like this change would help a lot to better integrate Soulkeep into the overall ecosystem and it would prevent (most of) the multi account abuse that is happening right now. If this isn't done within a reasonable time, I'm actually of the opinion, that the DAO should simply stop providing any rewards to Soulkeep until the issue has been remedied.
i'm not a player of Soulkeep or Splinterlands, but i do hold SPS, the value of which is presumably being diluted by what you describe.
Could your proposal be put forward to the DAO and voted upon by ?SPS? holders?
Hey, thanks for stopping by.
It indeed just got discussed (quite intensively) in the Discord, Clayboyn is going to put up a stake weighted poll to see where people are standing on the matter.
Where will i be able to fnd the poll?
i don't use Dicscord
There you go:
https://peakd.com/hive-104500/@clayboyn/whats-the-best-option-for-soul-keep-sps-rewards
Thank you
Looks like a landslide victory (so far) for option 3. A good step i think.
Agreed, it's the right thing to do.
Let's hope it works out in the end.
I'll send you the link here once it got posted.
100% agree
Soulkeep is a decent game and I enjoy playing the daily tournament but the tokenomics and reward structure are totally useless as it doesn't really bring anything to Splinterlands while it's extremely top heavy likely with a very small pool of players earning nearly everything.
Also without the Hero, I feel at best it's possible to get just inside the bottom ranges of the prizes which destroys any will for me to really push to get better let alone move up in league as it gets exponentially more expensive. With only 50% getting a payout it also gets harder and harder each league.
At the moment it feels like they are just handing out SPS with nothing really in return for Splinterlands and the moment the SPS that was granted runs out the game will totally collapse as there is no mechanism in place to replace it.
Right, the hero is another topic that's handled really badly.
On a lot of maps, she can hold the first wave completely on her own, allowing for some very different builds that you'd never be able to pull of otherwise. It sure is cool to have unique rewards for early/heavy backers, but they shouldn't be game changing in a way that having them is mandatory if you want to compete anywhere near the top...
Yeah, they always make the same mistakes making economic choices (print overpowered item to boost sales) at the cost of Fun and Gameplay as everyone who doesn't own it is screwed. The one thing these games should learn is that there needs to always be at least a game mode where everyone depending on the league, is on a level playing field. Even though I realize that it is easier said than done as Pay2win does drive sales.
I have a hero and she is a glass cannon. She hits hard at range but can only hold off more than 1 mob for a short time. Her melee damage is 1/3 her ranged damage so once 1 mob gets on her her dps drops hugely. She can die to a swarm of small mobs before she beats through them if out of range of towers. Some mobs can also solo her 1v1.
She is roughly equivalent to a Slime Trooper. The trooper has more hit points and no ranged attack but hits in melee for the same amount the hero does at range.
I think we need more other types of heroes so there isn't just the 1 and so different heroes are better on different maps.
I think the idea of having SPS staking requirements to earn SPS makes total sense. I don't like the idea that it should be separate from the Splinterlands stake of SPS. If it was, though, I'd personally take whatever I needed from my Splinterlands stake and put it toward Soulkeep. I'm not buying an additional 100k SPS for Soulkeep when I already need like 400k SPS for Splinterlands.
It's clear that something more needs to be done to prevent people from getting so much SPS out of the game, though. I think they should make the second attempt free or something, too. Part of the incentive to run alts in the same league is to do more attempts without buying tickets. But it usually does take 2 attempts to get it right if you only have one account, so maybe just make the second one free by making the first ticket purchase be good for 2 attempts.
Not sure what the best play is here, but I totally would agree that more "free" play is needed. It's somewhat crazy to have a game that you can only play like 10 minutes a day without spending any money.
I don't think they should turn off the rewards - they just need to implement the staking requirements or link them to Splinterlands.
What I mean by that is I don't want to have to choose between staking on Splinterlands or Soulkeep...
I have a good chunk of staked SPS and I don't want to have to then start staking more SPS on a different game.
I agree though - staking requirements should be a thing and it could be tiered:
League 1 = 1X Staking Req (SR)
League 2 = 2X SR
League 3 = 3X SR
Etc, etc, etc
Oh yeah, I didn't think about that. The staking needs to be connected between the games. If I have to stake an additional 100k SPS to Soulkeep specifically, I'm going to be pretty annoyed, but I'll do it... and I'll take it from what I have staked in Splinterlands.
!PIZZA
Exactly my thoughts!
Aye, I really don't want to turn off the rewards either.
Just have staking requirements and everything would be fine.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@sharkmonsters(1/5) tipped @captaindingus
I've also gotten like 3-4 potions from Soulkeep, too. That's potion inflation. We should definitely put a stop to that.
I don't agree with staking requirements for Soulkeep, actually or for Splinterlands. If I spend thousands of dollars on card packs I've got a "stake" in the game. Requiring players to buy/rent cards to play as well as requiring them to buy/rent & stake a token to earn rewards is just convoluted and overly complicated. Imo the swap from earning DEC to staked SPS in Splinterlands was one of the factors contributing to its current state and I honestly believe is a limiting factor on its growth potential.
It may not be popular but I think maybe a KYC system might be considered. Perhaps with players allowed a few linked multi-accounts(whatever is deemed fair by the community).
Other than multi-accounts the biggest issue atm is an image thing. Plain and simple the rewards "look" to much atm because they are meant to be shared out across thousands of players. Less than 250 accounts played one night this weekend...total across all leagues! 132 of those got a payout. The rewards are going to be outsized regardless of staking until more people regularly play and the rewards get diluted amongst them.