I fully agree, for to long rewards have been over printed and also very strong in battles.
Rewards are still being overprinted and are still very strong in battle.
This causes core sets to lose value and is the reason we have all these complicated band aids to fix past 'mistakes of over printing'
I agree with what several others have thoughtfully offered, that we seem to be repeating a pattern over and over again that goes like this:
As Pandasquad said,
I second this and I would add that the band-aid reactions often do more harm than good in that they burn up valuable resources and it leaches a bit more confidence from the community. Of course changes and adaptations are necessary, but this should be more of the exception and not the rule.
Could we have just stayed the course? The rapid pivoting in decision making from one thing to the next is taking a toll, it is off-putting to not only players, but to human beings. People must feel safe to remain attached, period. Reliability, consistency and predictability provide this. While frequent, erratic and sudden changes create a lack of safety over time, and erodes confidence simply because it is too unpredictable and unreliable to sustain trust. Again, changing things will happen, but frequently changing things, applying complex band-aids over other band-aids feels janky, unstable and it is disconcerting.
YabaMatt, what you have created in Splinterlands, at the core is good, it is really, really good. The authentic values and your "why", raison d'etre (hope that is spelled correctly) for creating this game and teaching others about decentralization is doing goooood. IT IS HELPING people learn blockchain speak, play in WEB3 values, practice and try-on the experience of decentralization. This DAO, these proposals, the discussions here and now, and disagreements are important exchanges and skills. As we come to know one another through our differences, true intimacy is not garnered in our likeness but through our differences. It's tough to stay in the conversation, and listen to a starkly different opinion with judging the person, "othering" them, but it is a vitally important skill and something that we really need on the planet right now. However, I think you get distracted with noise of the community, "problems" in the game or tokenomics and you forget your primary focus for the Splinterlands. This needs to be honed, remembered frequently and honored above all. Sweating the details, reactively making changes is compromising your message and people are missing your point because you are allowing yourself to get distracted. I say that with a kind respectful voice, not a mean nasty one :-)
Focus as Holozor stated. Focus. I believe Azrican said this on the Peoples Guild podcast as well. Stay the course, eyes on the target. People believe in you and your basic plan and the values upon which you founded this SplinterLands. It IS what makes Splinterlands so compelling and magnetic. Stay the course. Would that have been so bad, continuing to overprint something already overprinted? Or is it better where we stand now? I think there needs to be a longer breathing space between genuinely good ideas - thoughts - and - acting on those thoughts. It seems to me from the outside looking in, that this exact iteration of reactive decisions and sudden diversions from the intentional course is a repeating and perhaps a costly pattern that might be beneficial to examine.
The sudden change from overprinting Chaos Legion Reward cards to Soul Bound Reward Cards was actually a large project which took considerable time and resources to complete. And it bumped the team off other planned targets. How many hours do you think it took to come up with the cards, create designs, lore, UX, code/ Dev resources etc.? Likely it was not a couple of hours or even days. To now change the OverPrinted soul bound cards to un-soul bound cards is just a lot of running around and around. and it is unnecessarily distracting resources from your target... I know the unbounding is well-intended, and it simultaneously it is a another interaction of this side-show pattern.
Do you see what I mean. Where are we going...Where is the goal post? Is this the goal, the side-shows? I don't think it is but perhaps I am missing the point.
All my respect to you and A for what you have created in this game and what you stand for. It is great stuff.
This post is everything. I am sick and tired, as someone who has only been in the game for about 7 months, of seeing the community and the DAO forced to pick up the mess engendered by the team's irresponsible stewardship of the project. The ubiquity of unforced errors and undelivered promises that the team has sustained is what will lead this game to die. Aside from the idea of double taxation inherent to forcing us to "liberate" our "rewards," the use of vouchers in this proposal will do nothing but provide further sustenance to the marine mammals who so problematically provide cover for the never-ending missteps of the Splinterlands team. This game is beautiful but the recent direction in which the project has been run is an utter disgrace. Had I done my research on the team, rather than simply loving the game from the start, I would not be here. I am however here and wasting these keystrokes in a quixotic effort to defy said marine mammals as I do very much love this game. This proposal is replete with self-interest and moral hazard, and does nothing to benefit the median player. DEC sinks are coming - it's the team's responsibility to build them - not the DAO's. If new player experience and onboarding are priorities, we are not only shooting ourselves in the foot but setting the house ablaze by standing in a pile of petrol.
True!
There are ways to fix this.
Therefore reward cards are "meh", but they pair nicely with CORE cards.
They just work better with them because of their abilities.
The concept of unlocking Soul Bounds will be another area that is already starting to drive some people away. Should it cost $5, $10, or $25 to unlock a reward card?
I understand the balancing acts between Play2Earn, Free2Play, and Pay2Win. Free2Play should only be used to let people test out without ever earning. Pay2Win is fine in TCG. In essence, the max level card is pay2win so that is BY design (and a good design feature).