Splinterlands has always touted itself as one of the pioneers of play-to-earn games in the crypto landscape, but with the introduction of the Wild Pass over the past period, is splinterlands now more catered towards the pay-to-play crowd?
What Is The Wild Pass?
If you wanna participate and play in the Wild league, you are now required to purchase a Wild Pass at the cost of 2000 DEC per season. Therefore, every month you are now required to pay 4000 DEC (2 seasons per month) to play in the Wild league. The intention behind this change is clear: discourage bot farms, which exploit the system, and ensure rewards flow to players who are invested in the long-term sustainability of the game.
Now this is difficult to quantify, but with fewer bot accounts, the SPS rewards pool in Wild will be distributed among a small player base due to many players not wanting to pay the 2000 DEC fee. The other benefit is that the DEC used to pay for the Wild pass is being burned, which is reducing the overall DEC token supply.
However, the question is begging to be answered is this a good thing for the splinterlands play-to-earn principle?
Does The Wild Pass Undermine Play-To-Earn?
With the introduction of the Wild pass in the Wild league, it does beg the question of whether this might feel like a gatekeeping mechanism.
Players who don't have a large collection of Modern edition cards are now required to play in Wild but now are required to pony up a fee to play. If a new player comes to splinterlands and decides to buy some cheaper Wild cards, they will be treated to a shock when they realise in order to compete, they will be required to pay a monthly fee to play the game.
I realise the splinterlands has recently improved the free-to-play experience for all players, but regardless for players like myself whose collection is mostly Beta edition, it's a bitter pill to swallow.
Is Splinterlands' Wild Permit Worth It?
Personally, I don't know but because of the sunk cost fallacy of having a collection worth a couple thousand USD, I pay the fee for my main account and alt account and bot it via Xbot. It would be great if someone from the splinterlands team could publish stats on the impact on the Bots. I haven't seen anything about whether the Wild Pass has stopped the Bot farms, as requiring to spend 2000 DEC for each account (and many of these bot farms were running into the 100s of accounts) every season will be too costly and I don't think the current rewards would justify that cost.
What Does This Mean for The Future?
Whether the Wild Pass is positive or negative is completely dependent on your perspective. If you have a Chaos Legion (soon to be Wild League only when the new edition drops), Riftwatchers or Rebellion then you are largely unaffected by the Wild League as you will most likely be playing in Modern League. However, for those with older editions, if you want to participate in daily and seasonal rewards then you will need to pay to play. Also, it means that if you have invested heavily into a Modern set of cards, at some point in the future that set will move into Wild. You then will have to decide, either to continue investing in newer editions or pay the money to pay.
Concluding Thoughts
What do you think? Is the Wild Pass a necessary step, or is it pushing splinterlands more and more towards becoming pay-to-play? Share your thoughts in the comments below!
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I think Wild Pass is good for Splinterlands as it helps reduce DEC supply and makes it worth it to play in the Wild League, otherwise bots would totally drain Wild Pool. This way only those with lots of SPS staked and maxed out cards participate in the Wild League with profitable results.
Thanks for sharing! - @zallin
Good Work, thanks for sharing!