Are We Winning the Debate or Losing Players
Trying To Stay Positive While Talking About Proposals
Hello Splinterlands fam,
I honestly did not really know how to start this post. Normally when I write here it is because I am excited about something I want to share. Most of the time I try to keep things positive because blogging and gaming are part of my hobby time.
During my day job it is actually the opposite. As a software tester I often have to be the pessimist in the room. My job is literally to find risks and point out what could go wrong. I end up being the bearer of bad news quite often. The funny thing is that I actually do not mind that role because even critical feedback can be shared in a constructive and neutral way.
Lately (sometimes) though I have been feeling something in the community that I do not really like.
With many of the recent proposals it feels like we are slowly creating (increasing) camps inside the community. Small players versus whales. Highly active players versus casual players. That is just my personal feeling of course but I do not enjoy seeing those lines appear.
And at the same time it is fascinating to see how differently people play the game. Some see it purely as a game, others as a collecting hobby, and some approach it more like asset management. Splinterlands supports many different playstyles, which also means many different opinions.
Here in the Netherlands there is currently a government commercial going around with a message that really stuck with me.
“Are you winning the discussion or losing a friend?”
That sentence kind of summarizes the feeling I sometimes get when reading proposal discussions.
So I wanted to share my thoughts on the current proposal and on the proposal system in general. This is just my opinion. There are many voices in the community and they all deserve to be heard.
This is the proposal we are talking about:
https://peakd.com/@sps.dao/sps-governance-proposal-bring-brackets-to-modern
Experimentation Is Good
One thing I think many people agree on is that some form of bracket system could benefit the game and the community.
At the same time the implementation is not simple at all.
Because of that I am actually in favor of experimenting. Even if something is not perfect at first it can still teach us something. Survival mode is a good example. It was just introduced and we can already see some interesting effects like players spreading too thin or clustering in one place.
Then again survival is a completely different game mode so the same rules will not necessarily apply to ranked play.
And to be completely honest my bot plays survival and I barely look at it. It is not really the mode I personally care about.
Ranked Mode Is What I Care About
Ranked mode is where I would actually like to play manually again.
Right now that is simply not happening. My bot performs about ten times better than I do when it comes to earnings, win rate, and climbing leagues. That is just the cold hard truth.
If the game developers manage to lure me back into playing modern ranked manually then that would be a big win in my eyes.
One thing I do like in the proposed system is the return of level caps. In bronze it should not be possible to run into someone with a full champion level deck. That kind of protection for new players makes sense.
At the same time if a champion player is just returning to the game and climbing the ladder again that is also fine. They will move up quickly anyway.
Choosing Your Bracket
One part of the proposal I am not fully convinced about is the idea that players have to choose their bracket.
For experienced players that might be fine, but for new players it can easily become confusing. They are still building their deck and learning the game. Another important question is how this system prevents too much multi accounting instead of encouraging players to combine their cards into one stronger deck.
Personally I would prefer something like a “suggest my bracket” system. Let the game analyze your collection and performance and give you a recommended league.
I also believe that players should earn their position in a league by playing. Some players are incredibly good even with lower level cards.
For me that is definitely not the case. I often just need higher level cards to keep up.
We will figure this out eventually. Maybe through this proposal or maybe through the next one. In the end I believe this is something the team should guide strongly rather than leaving to the DAO.
The Eternal Topic Of Rewards
Of course we cannot talk about proposals without talking about rewards.
One thing I immediately noticed is that I did not see the double GLINT option anymore. I am not sure how that would work with a payment structure like survival mode. So big question mark as i enjoy the double glint, for the a long while again i have the sense that i can earn the soulbound rewards again (hope i have enough time for it).
Another topic that always returns is whales protecting their earnings.
Personally I think players who invest heavily in the ecosystem should receive benefits. They are taking larger financial risks and supporting the game.
At the same time it is also important that smaller players feel they can progress and grow.
Balancing that is incredibly difficult.
The DAO is clearly trying to balance the payout structure but shifting rewards toward smaller players is not easy when large stakeholders hold most of the voting power (and should it shift).
One idea I personally like is keeping SPS rewards similar but increasing GLINT bonuses in the lower leagues. That way newer or smaller players can progress their collection faster and feel like they are getting closer to the bigger players.
Maybe there are downsides to that idea that I am not seeing yet. That is exactly why these discussions exist.
The Current Reality For Me
For now my personal reality is simple.
As long as my bot earns significantly more in wild ranked than I can earn manually in modern silver or gold, the bot will keep playing. To clearify for me this means glint earnings 😁.
Meanwhile I spend most of my manual playtime in Frontier.
Even there I am starting to feel the grind a bit. Sometimes I make more mistakes because it becomes repetitive. Or maybe other players are just getting better at rock paper scissors strategy.
Probably a bit of both.
But I still need those extra foundation cards so the grind continues. Right now I only have a handful and that is not nearly enough to complete even one account let alone three.
Final Thoughts
So there you have it. A bit of a rant but hopefully also a constructive one.
This is just my opinion and one perspective among many. The community is large and full of different types of players with different experiences and expectations.
My biggest hope is that while we debate proposals we remember that we are all here because we enjoy the same game.
Winning an argument is nice. Keeping the community strong is better.
Thanks for reading and as always happy battling.
Beaker signing off 👋
Do you also want to be part of this amazing play to earn game consider using my refferal link.
Its definitely a polarising discussion when it comes to proposals, unfortunately the answers are not black and white.
for this proposal i'm opposed to the brackets, even though i think they are a step in the right direction (i.e level caps), i dont see how they help promote upgrading cards, i can sit in silver for ever, yes i wont earn massive rewards but, i would have a full deck and no incentive to move to gold.
fragmenting the small player base into 5/6 brackets is not the greatest plan in my opinion.
I'm for bringing back league caps and forced progression through the leagues so if you go from silver to gold you have a reason to improve your deck and also the top players would not be able to just camp out in a league and win the leader board every season. I know this has its issues, someone buying a max deck would not be able to realise the potential of his deck until they got to the top league and may get stuck in a lower league due to skill issues for example.
Yeah camping could definitely become a thing if there is not enough incentive to move up and improve your deck.
Still I see it as a step in the right direction. Bringing back level caps already solves part of the problem.
I also think it is very hard to design the perfect system when things are constant chancing not only in the game but also gamers. Sometimes we just need to try something, see how players behave, and improve it afterwards.
Hopefully we can iterate quickly on this and survival to find a winning solution
Maybe it's because I had a different upbringing or because of the times I grew up through, but to me complexity and competition are a good thing and part of the excitement of a new game. I also believe we need to find a balance between those two things. So just because someone may buy a max deck they still need to get good with it. We definitely don't want to be a pay to win game and there certainly needs to be challenges along they way for anyone that comes to the game. Whether it be a small player or a whale, but again all of this is just my opinion.
I love that we're testing things out and hopefully people can keep their cool along the way as we do so. This was a great read, thanks Beaker.
Agreed, that's why forced progression is good, skill will get you a long way, as players like ehmaywuntee show, but also encourages spending to improve the deck when you reach a point, being able to walk into champion purely because you invested more doesn't make it interesting to the masses of tcg players out there
But we will keep iterating!
I am fine with this bracket if its already perfect in survival.
Team should retest and find a way to make survival booming first before bracket implemented in ranked. Otherwise it will change all player gameplay
Gameplay in this state i mean all (investing way, playing, buying, renting, and many things) since with even little change it can change the gameplay especially the player who think that this is assets (including me).
I do not like when team change suddenly and with super high pace.
I feel like what i do is not get anything and yet the system already changes.
Not only for the investing, for the gameplay also. For example, not all new ability from escalation got understand very well and yet soon rebellion switch to wild and need to learn for new set card again.
Even though i am scholaring high end account but still i am human that need time to learn
not robot that can learn fast in just a day to used all the new things.
But, cannot do anything since all decision based on the wealth and i am poor so like it or not need to follow it in the end or just leave
I understand what you mean. It can definitely be hard to keep up with how fast things sometimes change in the game. New sets, new abilities, new systems. It takes time for players to learn and adapt, especially if you are actively playing and managing accounts.
At the same time those changes also make things harder for bots as well. They usually adapt quickly, but every change does reset things a bit and forces everyone to learn again.
I also understand the feeling of not having much influence when you are a smaller player. That can be frustrating. But I still think it is important to stay part of the conversation and share your perspective. Sometimes when enough players explain their concerns the bigger stakeholders do listen.
From what I understand this proposal already reduces earnings for some of the bigger players as well, so in a way they are making sacrifices too. Many of them seem to support (or absence of vote) it because they believe it could be better for the long term health of the game.
In the end we all want the same thing, a healthy game that people keep playing and enjoying.
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