A few Qs...
- Why would it cost $200K to do this?
- Why don't you just sell the $100K of prizes to fund it
- Why don't you just sell the cards like your alternative, and then burn the proceeds, which seems to amount to the same thing. You can even take "$200k" first then burn the surplus
- Why not just give the cards away for free to long term players who have played X amount of games? getting free stuff is actually good marketing to get new players. The constant drain and never-ending selling this game presents is a huge turn off.
RE: 4 - it's not what I am looking for, it's what most of the crypto community you want to capture wants. Tokens get airdropped, then they get dumped. Boohoo. It still works though. If you can't sell them, no-one will care. You tried it with soulbound cards? Oh good - and how did that work out? Seen a big uptick in players?
Well, we also have all of the airdrop cards that are given out for free to players who hold Rebellion cards and packs through the conflicts, so we do that too. Just airdropping stuff won't bring in new people though, we need good marketing and promotion for that, which is our focus for later this year after we improve the product and onboarding experience to be able to capitalize on that marketing and promotion.
That's getting a little off topic for this event though. This is just meant to be a cool little thing to do around the halving and to help generate some much needed funds for the company so that we can continue to improve the product and then begin doing marketing and promotion to get new players in the future.
"given out for free." How can you be so comfortable saying this under your own name lol? Did it not occur to you to use a sock puppet account to say stuff like this? Do tell me what is "free" about having to buy battle mage wagons to earn the airdrops (which if CL is anything to go buy won't hold much value long term anyway)?
easy there buddy. you don't have to get nasty man.
Actually sometimes you do, because when you're "nice" all the time and there are no results a fire needs to be lit, the stick needs to come out. And after 3-years of constantly poor decisions and being "nice" something needs to change. Would it be "nicer" to "if you have nothing nice to say don't say anything at all"? And just leave? Or would a good leader not care how something is said and just be happy it was? Put your ego and hurt feelings aside and take the feedback.
People are getting fed up and that's when they revolt against the government that did not/could not listen. Yet my earnest hope is that Splinterlands can listen. Stop with all the gimmicks. The multiple rulesets. The useless new cards (at least for now) the market is fully saturated and all SL is doing is alienating their existing base.
@radcakes91 you’re absolutely correct. And the sad thing here is Matt and aggro really don’t care. Their mindset is “take it or leave it”. And it’s not even a sound or logical decisions. Never once did they said that this proposal was good for the game. Only that they intend to raise money. Which is why they don’t care if it is approved or not. I want all of you to let that logic sink in and ask yourself “why make a proposal, that you don’t care if it passes or not?” When you come to the scary conclusion you’ll realize it is time to abandon this game or make a proposal to remove Matt and aggro. They’re not trying to improve the game they’re just trying to make more money instead of “investing” to make the game better.
That's demonstrably untrue. The only reason we do any of this and deal with all of the stress day in and day out for little pay is because we care about the people involved.
The proposal allows the token holders to choose between two different options - each with pros and cons. Neither option is bad, in my opinion, so I'm happy to go with whichever one the token holders want. Do you suggest that we not provide options via the proposal system in the future?
Aggroed is running Invennium now so he's not directly involved with Splinterlands, however if you would prefer to have someone else run Splinterlands then absolutely you should submit a proposal. If the majority of token holders want someone else to run the company then I would happily step down.
I'm curious, how do you propose that we "invest" in making the game better without making any money?
You don’t make money, at first. That’s the same “investment” you’ve been asking of your users. Please name one asset released that’s actually retained or increased in value? Every asset has been depreciating and is constantly diluted. DEC? That’s all I can think of. Sps down, card value down, vouchers down, land down, licenses down, that silly game “soulkeep” like a government that is run inefficiently and keeps asking for more taxes each year.
What was it? Like 8 million chaos legion packs were sold. Let’s assume $2 per pack after discounts and promos. $16m that’s a lot of money to burn through in two years?
I think if you really cared you would care about the route taken as it should be in the best interest of those people you claim to care about. If there isn’t a best way then you’re right, why are we even bothering to do it? Voting can be great but I don’t want to go to a doctor and the doctor asks all the patients to vote on what type of surgery I should have. You’re the expert, make the recommendation and believe in it.
For the record, I don't agree with that guy's comments at all.
However I do think you need some advisors, because marketing isn't just paying for google ads, it is things like this proposal. It might be 100% great idea. But it LOOKS terrible which is partly the way these ideas are marketed.
I do also think you need to listen to the people "giving you shit" a bit more, even though 90% might be talking out their butts, the 10% is where you will find the answers to turn the ship around. The echo chamber of supporters are good for morale, but they cheered you all the way down here into the depths of nearly going bankrupt.
So as a successful businessman myself I would recommend partnerships & advisors to give you more help (free help) it's OK to be out of your depth but not if you don't see it. Don't take that the wrong way as you mostly doing a good job but you are not meant to be doing everything yourself like coding, running a company, and answering comments on here. Genuine advice, you need to hire better, and partner better, and do less.
Good luck!
Thank you for your thoughtful reply.
Yes, my entire goal has been to get better people than me to do most of these things. I've succeeded so far with coding and running the servers (which I don't do at all anymore) but there are still a lot of areas in which we need help. Free or very cheap help that is high quality is hard to find and we certainly don't have the resources to hire good people for things like running the company and marketing/communication, so I'm trying to do the best I can with what I have.
I also agree about listening to players. I try to engage with players on a regular basis, and most of the time it's because they disagree with something we're doing. I am very aware of the fact that I don't have all the answers (or even most of the answers) and am very open to everyone's ideas.
I know it's hard to hear hate for projects you do but telling players "taking shit from ppl like you" is not professional sounding (although some of them deserves it.)
I also agree with this proposal since it's a fun little thing. Also, them saying "And the sad thing here is Matt and aggro really don’t care." after seeing your responses, I actually think as well. But from my perspective, it's not that you don't care about the game. It's more like, "I don't care if you like this proposal to pass or fail" since like you said, there are backup ways to enjoy the halving event such as selling packs or probably airdropping it.
I'm excited to see this past but if it doesn't, the game won't change as well and we'll just keep playing the same game and same cards. So, I also don't care if they pass it or not. Hoping the majority do but not a big deal if it didn't.
It's so funny seeing people who never ran their own company complaining over not enough free stuff given to them... The only way to run a company is to be ready for all outcomes. If you don't want to participate in the game anymore, feel free to leave. They don't owe you anything. And they gave you a way to exit. That's 100x better than scams from ATVI or EA :(
lol against your stupidity shows. As never once was anything free being asked for. Instead it was criticism on how poorly things are run. A good leader can listen to the criticism. Idiots like you, well you’re not worth the time 🤡
We spent thousands of dollars on cards to earn tradable rewards and then you decided to move the goalposts and make our rewards worthless. Would we have spent that money had we known such changes were ahead? Oh and then you made it so we either have to buy and hold at least about $1000 - $2000 worth of SPS - which like everything outside the top 10 in crypto is an insanely risky volatile asset which could easily go to zero eventually - or spend a dollar or two renting it from others to get said rewards, and then you also sell us energy to be allowed to "earn" more of these worthless cards? Do you have any idea how much of a scam this game sounds like to anyone not already immersed in the ecosystem who loves the game?
"Hey Barry, come try this game, spend a few thousand dollars on cards and hope you can sell them before they get rotated out of modern when their value will drop like 80%, oh sorry did I not say, yeah you also have to spend another thousand or two on this sh__coin to actually earn any rewards with them... oh yeah sorry you have to buy energy to play more than 50 games too... oh sorry Barry did I not say, yeah your rewards are absolutely worthless too apart from a couple of sh__coin pennies you might earn after winning about 10 battles, but it's ok, the team will give you a chance to earn some card prizes if you literally burn some of your own money."
And all this because you refused to get rid of the anon bots. If you fixed that one simple thing you wouldn't have had to make all these game wrecking changes that have driven a hug percentage of your players away and deter any new players from joining the game. But hey, you'll make another windfall of cash from the next line of crypto casino suckers that pile in so who can blame you. Honestly though, the game is so good, if you'd built a fair and honest economy you could have made more than what you've made in the long run anyway because probably 100x as many people would want to play it.
/1/ Because they want to sell the promo cards for the same price they charged for Zyriel, but hardly anyone bought that cos it was a ripoff. So they've done some hocus pocus to make it seem like they're selling the cards for $31 while ensuring they get as much profit as if they sold them for double that price, but getting the funds from the DAO instead lol.
/4/ Yes. The game is a massive ripoff owing to the team's frankly idiotic position on multi accounting bots, meaning the value of ordinary players assets suffers a near constant drain, and it deserves to fail thanks to the way it keeps gut-punching existing human players, making changes to ensure the value of old cards gets destroyed because they want existing players to keep being suckers buying new sets. Bought loads of Alpha, Beta or Untamed cards to play wild in the past? F U! You're getting nothing but merits potions and soulbound cards! Naturally the same will happen to CL and Rebellion too in a year or two too!