Splinterlands Soulbound Reward Cards - An Unpopular Opinion (It's worth reading and considering)
Good morning Praetorians, Hivers and Splinterlandians!
It's your favorite... well... I hope I'm your favorite Hive Author... and if I'm NOT your favorite Splinterblogger... I will be soon 😎
I try to provide useful information in a "Not Boring" kind of way... Almost every post I pen has a nugget of knowledge... and it's written in a style that is easy to read and it will make you laugh... or at least - it'll make you chuckle... to yourself... in your own head... #nailedit
Today's topic is a bit of a controversial one... it's been one of the primary debates in Mav Chat and there's been multiple Proposals in the DAO channel and @clayboyn has been working his butt off to find a balance that the Community-At-Large can sorta kinda agree on... or at least not break down into mob violence over 😬
Back to what I was saying... I've played Splinterlands for a little over 2 years now... I'm not an OG and I don't log dozens of hours per day...
However... My lil namesake account @llama-kron played in Modern Bronze and Silver for quite some time before #Rebellion rotated the Untamed set out of Modern...
I mean... I spent A FORTUNE on Yodin and others... so I HAD to play them... and now they are worth... well... not a fortune... kek.
During Chaos Legion - they printed a BAJILLION (totally a real number) Rewards Cards...
What followed should be of little to no surprise... the economics of which are absurdly simple:
- Print a Metric Shit-Ton of BCX
- Enter Bear Market
- Introduce Chaos Legion with 15 Metric Shit-Tons of BCX...
The oversupply of BCX into the market could have been soaked up by New Players except...
Point 2 from above occurred and since Crypto is already considered a High Risk Investment here's what happens...
Bitcoin, which is the safest project, due to trust by being the original and longest running Crypto goes down after a parabolic run in the Bull Market...
This shatters confidence in Crypto, ESPECIALLY FRINGE PROJECTS - like Altcoins and yes: web3 gaming...
So people begin to cut losses pull money OUT of AltCoins and...
With the nose dive into oblivion, "faith" in these projects also dries up - except for the kick ass community we have here in Splinterlands!!!
With an ever plummeting Token ($SPS), crashing Card Prices and people becoming scared of losing all their money in a Rug Pull or collapse event... one should come to the conclusion... THERE WERE NO NEW PLAYERS... Well... Not many anyway...
Despite multiple marketing events and attempts - the Bear Market claimed many victims and most notable, I believe... was our New Player Base...
Without n00bs (thus demand)... the surplus BCX from Chaos Legion and Rewards absolutely CRUSHED the Prices and Rental Prices of these cards... which were struggling from the Bear Market pressure already...
If you've been a Mav or been in the Discord at all... the Morale followed the prices... The Mavs got Salty... REAAAAAAALY SALTY...
To sum it up: "Damnit @yabapmatt... Damnit @aggroed... why haven't you magically fixed this!! Somehow... THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT"... Which is obviously ridiculous and stupid... but that's about how it went because our investments were tanking.
It's probably not because we were in the depths of the Bear Market and much more likely to be Aggy and Matt's fault... right???
So... after whining a ton... what happened to remedy the situation:
The team started "burning" Chaos Legion Packs to reduce the BCX flood and mitigate the damage... and also... they changed one of the FUNDAMENTAL PRINCIPLES of Splinterlands when I first joined.
After the Chaos Legion Reward Card Cycle ended... the next iteration saw the introduction of SOULBOUND Reward Cards...
The plan, as I understand it, was to encourage more people to PLAY (good idea) so they would earn EXCLUSIVE Cards (good idea) as a reward for PLAYING... It wasn't a PAY to Win situation... they were trying to create a PLAY to Win situation (good idea!)...
Here's where it gets spicy folks... after much play and consideration...
Let me elaborate before you grab your torches!!!
First - before I elaborate, please do me a favor: if you find yourself DISAGREEING WITH ME without reading my reasoning... you have a TON of BIAS and will be more likely to REJECT a sound idea than if you approach it with an OPEN mind...
So... if you are already thinking: nope, stupid... wrong... so WRONG!! Take a moment... Take three breaths and CLEAR your mind of this bias... After clearing the certainty from your head that I am wrong... approach the following content with this thought instead:
"I will read and consider this opinion. I believe my own opinion is the correct one however I will think about what is written and weigh it against my own opinion BEFORE I pass judgement on whether CaptainDingus is right or wrong..."
Ye olde Critical Thinking lol...
So why do I think Soulbound Reward Cards AS THEY ARE CURRENTLY CONFIGURED are a TERRIBLE IDEA and HURT Splinterlands rather than HELP it?
When I first joined Splinterlands back in 2021, one of the COOLEST features that attracted me was this:
"Play Splinterlands, an NFT based TCG like no other!! Battle your opponents and earn (#play2earn) rewards!! You can start with as little as $10 and EARN CARDS for your deck - which you can level up or TRADE/SELL to get OTHER CARDS"
My mind was BLOWN and I was in... Coming from Magic: the Gathering and other TCG's I was HOOKED by that possibility!! I dove in HEAD FIRST and went balls deep... which I later look back on and think...
Ahh well... shit happens... Bonus: that's how I met all of you!!
By changing up to the Soulbound cards, I believe the Team wanted to stifle the whining from the Mavs and other Community Members, protect tanking Card Prices by eliminating the BCX influx from Rewards (bot farms galore), while ALSO providing the same Reward Card "feel" that we got when we opened a Daily or Season Chest and BOOOOM out popped a GOLD FOIL LEGENDARY 😍...
However... there are two serious flaws that I see with the current configuration and they are these:
Flaw #1: I am at the Mercy of RNG... I can play my ass off in Bronze/Silver... Hell even Gold... but I might get 5,000 Coastal Sentries... and absolutely ZERO Venari Marksrat... or whatever - the point is...
With the OLD System... I could SELL or BURN my Coastal Sentry to get the Marksrat I NEEDED...
Now, I must RELY on RNG and if someone gets lucky and cracks a Clockwork Aide or Kulu Mastermind... I will get my ass kicked until I get one... IF... IFFFFFF I get one - and this sucks A LOT...
I've played fairly consistently over the last year in Modern Bronze and I earned ZERO Legendary Soulbound RC and only TWO Epics... After moving into Wild Silver recently... I got my first Legendary - but not a Kulu Mastermind (that card kicks ass).
Being at the mercy of the RNG Gods and NOT being able to Sell/Trade/Burn them kinda sucks...
With the previous version of Reward Cards - yeah the prices were low... BUT WHO CARES?! They were "FREE" Cards and IF you didn't want/need them you could TRADE/SELL them even if they were just a couple of $DEC and this helped flush out Bronze Decks (and even Silver)... Soulbound strips this... and in my opinion will make for a bad Onboarding and New Player Experience.
Flaw #2: This should be a fairly obvious and MAJOR flaw with the Soulbound RC's in their current structure...
Let's say I play in Bronze/Silver for another couple years and I become more active playing 100 games a day and using the DEC to buy energy...
Or... for the higher level Gold/Diamond/Champ players who get MULTIPLE RC's per Chest...
When I max out my RC what happens... That Reward Chest I just opened in Diamond or Champ that I BATTLED MY ASS OFF FOR... Instead of it REWARDING me... I open a giant steaming TURD of 47 BCX worth of Swamp Spitter...
Since my Swamp Spitter is a Max Copy of 400 BCX... I am stuck with an ever growing pile of BCX...
Which means my Reward Chest is effectively ZERO.
That's an extremely painful flaw but I have a solution for you to consider:
As it currently stands, we can only earn Souldbound RC's by playing and opening chests...
Once earned however, they can't be Sold... or Rented... Or Burned... OR USED ON LAND... OR USED IN SOULKE---- I won't even mention that for now...
The most USEFUL way to unfuck this situation is to IMMEDIATELY make them USABLE ON LAND... LIKE FUCKING DUH... Let us use them as slav... as valuable workers on our Land Plots.
Another way to remedy the ever growing pile of COMPLETELY USELESS RC BCX is to let us BURN THEM... Maybe just ONE SINGLE DEC per BCX... Unlike the FIVE you would get from a Venari Heatsmith...
Finally... although many people DISAGREE with me (and that's ok)... I believe Soulbound Cards should, at the VERY LEAST... Be RENTABLE.
To make this even juicier - if one would have to INVEST a set amount of DEC to "UNLOCK" the Rental Potential or perhaps even the LAND USE POTENTIAL... This would be a BRILLIANT $DEC Sink...
After this... I fully believe we need to return to the old Reward Card System with a lower BCX Supply and if they are still SUPER CHEAP... WHO CARES - THEY'RE FREE!!
But New Players (and old) won't rely on RNG to flesh out their decks and I won't keep getting my ass kicked by people who yanked a Kulu Mastermind or Clockwork Aide 😡😡😡
Anyways, that's my two cents, for what it's worth...
I hope you enjoyed the read and please give it some consideration!!
Leave your feedback, comments and thoughts below (even if you call me an idiot) I'd still want to hear your opinion.
Join me in game at this linkg and you too can feel the hate grow as you lose to Kulu Mastermind havin' ass motherfuckers:
https://splinterlands.com?ref=captaindingus
Cheers 🍻,
- CaptainDingus
Nice!
Yea! A fun read and it made me laugh, thanks for that 😁
I agree, I'm a bronze / silver player myself (2 accounts, main high silver) and I waited a looong time for the mastermind too!
Also agree on the soulbounds being able to used on lands, next set of reward cards in the old way seems better BUT the bot farms will fuck it all up again so there has to be a solution to that too..
I figured you were a higher league player by the way, most really active players are diamond or champ which is a totally different world then my sandbox I'm playing in lol
I am Le Poor 😅 Well... not poor but I choose to spend my $$$ on other things like Land and Rental stuff... I am almost ready to get back to playing High Level Modern aiming for Diamond or Champ if I can get back in the groove lol
The other thing is - with a more conservative approach to Reward Card BCX... The Bot Farms can crush those prices because they were "Free" but how much does a $.001 Venari Heatsmith actually affect the rest of the cards?
Not much... But it would allow New Players to Earn Reward Cards they can sell/trade in the event RNG doesn't help them out... Also I think if their Burn Value was also set lower - maybe 1 DEC... It would prevent DEC Inflation via Bot Farm from happening too...
In the end, I think the best short term course of action is to give us utility to the Soulbound Cards because opening a Champ Reward Chest which someone has to bust their ass to get... only to find it filled with 39 BCX of a RC that you have 6,239 of... Has to be a crappy feeling...
I so agree! I have stuff like this going on!
Meanwhile, I think I only have one of the summoners maxed out. Those are usually the cards I max out first. Waiting for those with this SoulBound system is painful sometimes. I wish I could just buy them!
I think that whenever we hit the next crazy bull market, they should just magically turn all of the SoulBound cards into real cards. We'll be able to take it at that point. haha.
Agreed! Let's get back to our web3 roots and what made us better than every other web2 TCG I've heard of. The ability to trade our cards!
I loved that about MTGO and then they started nerfing it and it went downhill...
I am thankful they tried the SB cards and think they can be tweaked...
But I fully believe that they aren't good in their current configuration
Probably not an unpopular opinion...but why all the pussyfooting? Why do we continue to band-aid solutions of second or third order problems. You said it yourself several times in the post. It's the bots. You know why your Untamed are worth less? It's the bots. How many wild ideas and proposals do we have now that stem from "well, because the bots are doing x, y, or z, we need to do this thing here..."?
Why not just address the root problem? The scaled bots. And that only really started to be a problem once the rental market became a thing.
Way I see it we need to ban bots (KYC or something), sack the rental market, or make long term ownership (and not pass cards around delegation merry-go-round) a meaningful part of the game [again].