Chaos Cometh and Chaos Taketh Away

As the dust settles on the Chaos Legion reveal and subsequent AMA. I believe it is a good time to understand the effects that the upcoming pre-sale and release will have on new, play to earn (P2E) and players who don't have financial capacity to invest thousands of dollars into Splinterlands.

Firstly, I would like this blog to become an open dialogue where there is genuine, objective arguements made for either side. I encourage fact-checking and source analysis.

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Chaos Legion - The Facts

Max Supply: 15 Million Packs
Cost Per Pack: $4 USD
Payment Options: Credits, DEC, & SPS
Collection Power:

Rarity	Regular	Gold Foil
Common	5	125
Rare	20	500
Epic	100	2500
Legendary	500	12500

SPS Airdrop points Per Pack: 300 Points

Chaos Legion Pre-Sale - The Facts

Pre-Sale Max Supply: 1 Million (Out Of The 15 Million Supply)
Pre-Sale Cost Per Pack: $4 USD + 1 Voucher
Payment Options: Credits, DEC & SPS (10% discount for any presale pack purchases made using the Splintershards (SPS) token)
Max Voucher Supply: 1 Million
Daily Voucher Supply: 33,333.333 Daily
Voucher Acqusition: Your SPS Staked vs. Total Staked Across All Players OR bought through Hive engine from other players.
Pre-Sale Start Date: Monday, October 18th, 2021
Pre-Sale End Date: Wendesday, November 24th, 2021
Voucher End Date: Wednesday, November 17th, 2021 (30 Days Total)

Addtionally, packs cannot be opened until the Chaos Legion release.

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Key Discussion Points

1. New players and P2E players are edged out the Pre-Sale by investors and/or investor-players.

At the time of writing this, SPS is valued at $0.34 and there is currently 94.9 Million SPS staked. For a player to receive 1 voucher a day, they would require roughly 2,850 SPS staked to a value of $969 USD. *values subject to fluctuate

That leaves a new player or a P2E player with a few options:

• They can spend anywhere up to $969 USD to try and to get between 0 and 30 vouchers over the pre-sale period total.
• They can try to purchase vouchers through third-party sales. It is important to consider that in this instance, the minimum investment of $969 USD for a voucher a day makes it highly likely that the third party voucher prices will be heavily overpriced.
• They join a pool of players that put all their SPS together and vouchers are allocated at random to players in the pool based off their percentage holdings.
• They accept that they can't buy into the pre-sale.

2. SPS and reduced collection power of Chaos Legion cards continue to gatekeep players out of Tournaments and Higher Leagues respectively.

I want to look at this point in two different ways and their combined effect: SPS in relation to tournaments and the reduced collection power of Chaos Legion creating a hard wall for new players and P2E players to break into Bronze and Silver league. This combined creates an increased gatekeeping effect for those players.

Firstly, SPS required to be staked to participate in tournaments. (Specifically referring to Splinterlands hosted Tournaments). This is the current entry requirements for those tournaments and their subsequent cost based off aforementioned values.

Tournament	League	SPS Stake	USD Value
Untamed Kobold Mining Expedition	Novice	1492	$507
Untamed Bronze Blunderbluss	Bronze	1750	$595
Silvershield Knights Are Recruiting	Silver	6460	$2196
Untamed All the Pointy Things	Gold	4800	$1632
Diamonds to the Victor	Diamond	25500	$8670

*SPS stake due to increase over time

I do not believe that the SPS required to be staked at each league appropriately matches the average SPS held in each league. I believe the current staking requirements are too high. I will caveat this by saying that I don't know the spread of SPS over each league but I do not expect a reasonable portion of novice and bronze players to have that much SPS staked.

Secondly, the collection power reduction for the Chaos Legion set will make it very difficult for new players and P2E players to break into Bronze and Silver Leagues. I understand the requirement for previous sets (Beta, Untamed etc) to hold value. However, the modern ranked battle format is set to include Untamed, Azmare Dice and Chaos Legion.

If collection power requirements for league advancement stay as they are then it will become a very long, drawn out experience for those players to advance.

3. The increase in price from $2 USD a pack to $4 USD a pack coupled with the continued requirement of vouchers isn't commensurate to a healthy, new player experience.

By increasing the price of the packs you increase the price point at which players can enter the game and how much they can advance. This needs to be considered in relation to the previous two points. A new player may feel overwhelmed and trapped behind an SPS/pack paywall to advance beyond an excruciating slow rate. I think this needs to be carefully considered in what you want the new player experience to feel like.

I will note that a pack cost of $4 USD will increase the average value of a Chaos Legion Pack to $4 USD whilst supply remains and likely increase once supply is gone. Therefore, players who purchase card packs can reasonably expect the cards to be worth more than previous packs at time of opening. Eg: Untamed Packs at $2 USD when supply existed so average pack value was $2 USD.

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Closing Statements and Acknowledgments

The purpose of this blog isn't to whine about the decisions made in relation to Chaos Legion. It provides a player perspective and hopefully some talking points for when SPS voting is implemented. I know that the points that I have mentioned are topics that new players and existing P2E players are concerned about and I look forward to reading any responses on the matter.

-Thanks to the guild members of Clan 640 for raising some of their concerns to me.
-Thanks to the @Brybro27 for his AMA summary and link to the AMA recording.

Original image by Splinterlands.com