Another awesome giveaway, don't forget to keep some of those NFT's for yourself. I don't play any other paly2earn game aside from Splinterlands so I can't comment on any comparison. I believe Splinterlands will be ok in the long run. There's too many emotionally and financially attached to the game now for it to completely fail.

I and others spoke up against bots being allowed in the game. There use to be a decent amount of us fighting that good fight. In the end the founders allowed bots and to an extent encouraged bot use so most us gave up that fight as energy is better spent elsewhere. I do think bots will end up being the reason Splinterlands doesn't reach its full potential. As the saying goes, it is what it is. The price of creating/upgrading guilds need to be dropped to a more reasonable level.

I am curious to see were spliterland end especially once sos is not artificially inflated by voucher drops. However I do fundamentally believe that spliterlands as a game has more potential for fun the axies do, it's just the implementation that's killing it right now and at this stage they are going to have to releases a next wave of packs much much sooner.

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I agree with you, I asked my guild friends whats the problem just to make captcha or checking ip just to ban if someone use 100 accounts in same time and I think that they just dont give a shit about new players. Maybe some day they will see that there is still chance to make good moves and repair all system. Also I think there is more ppl thinking like that just look at sps price 🤣

In the NFT Gaming Market, I honestly think that Splinterlands is the only one that's actually fun and engaging to play, like a game should be.

Axie Infinity (and all others) just feels like a chore or a job: you "play" them just because you want to farm coins/tokens/whatever to make money. If they didn't had a NFT economy, no one would be playing them as they're shitty games.

In the other hand, Splinterlands is a good game in itself. It's a casual, fast-paced card game that's very deep in terms of strategy and gameplay mechanics. A cheap deck can beat a very expensive one with smart plays (recently I won a game using only 100% free cards against a deck that was worth, at least, 10 thousand USD).

That's why I believe in the future of Splinterlands: there's a good game behind the NFTs.

Don't know whether my opinion is worth anything but here's how I see it.

Splinterlands the card game is an awesome proof of concept game. It's integration with Splintertalk and Hive give it a social aspect that is far more valuable than I think is realized right now. Splinterlands curation and power requirements give it awesome spam protection which is awesome. Their integration with the Hive-engine allows for integration with other custom coins which could give it huge flexibility in the future. Its anti scalper protection from the voucher system is innovative and could be far more valuable than people realize. It's ability to blend a game with real life is game changing and the fact that the NFT's aren't locked into one specific game are what will let it either live or die depending on how things develop.

However, I believe as you do (from you selling your SPS) that Splinterlands the card game is doomed if it doesn't branch out and utilize its strengths which right now are mostly hidden or wasted.

Novice and Bronze players have no incentive to play. Without new blood the game will die. Period. Guilds are exceedingly expensive to build and grow. Without comraderie between players the game will die.

I personally believe the game will have to branch out in four different ways to become a behemoth that would rival Microsoft or Amazon.

1. It will need to setup a rich and vibrant world. Magic the Gathering did this with its book series when it was a new game. Adding custom card with each book sale certainly didn't hurt either. Something similar for Splinterlands with a customer NFT for each book sale could go a long way to build a vibrant world.
2. It needs a starter game to get people interested in the world, its monsters, and its monetary system. A pokemon like game to get newbie's into collecting Splintermon while collecting tiny bits of DEC or SPT would allow Splinterlands to recruit new players and discourage bots. Brings in new players without changing the current card game.
3. It needs an ESports title using the NFT's. Personally I see a DOTA or League of Legends type of title. People spend big money playing and watching ESports. Imagine if Guilds and Guild members were Esport teams. Donations from fans could easily upgrade buildings. Current guilds get full value for their upgrades and new guilds get upgrades from gaining followers and watchers.
4. It needs a MMORPG type game. Imagine an MMORPG where you could get paid to make artwork or music and display it in the game. The Splintertalk network allows for social interaction for pay. An MMORPG where artists could display their talent and get paid, awesome. A place where you could take your monsters and explore the world, awesome.

But there is more in an MMORPG world. Imagine if Marriott opened a hotel in the world where nightly rooms could be rented for DEC--and Marriott could give you real world hotel points in return--Just make a MARRIOTT coin and do in game transfer. Or a virtual casino where you could win (or lose) DEC. Or you could walk into an Amazon shop and order a virtual item paying DEC or a real item using the same DEC. Or walk into a tavern and order virtual food for your character, or real food delivered to your door using DoorDash and DEC.

The economy is there. The base users are there. The lines between game and real world can be blurred as Splinterlands the card game shows. Now if they can just leverage those NFT's into more immersive games and the economy for social interaction and gaming into real world transactions...That's something I'd seriously love to see.

Ok. Enough crazy talk from a Splinterlands enthusiast :)

You gave up too soon. Guild brawls and sps battle rewards are not even implemented yet. The team is still being structured. it's like looking at a skyscraper being built and saying oh they are barely on the 4th floor they will never finish I'm pulling all my money out of this place and then it ends up being this crazy success.

Personally, I think we're still in the infancy stages of what this game can actually be. Yes, there are problems that need to be addressed, but the game just went from a cute little card game to the number one blockchain game by transactions in existence, in a little over three months! Of course there are going to be problems. The ramp-up of talent and personnel behind the scenes is something that will obviously take some time, but they're getting there.

In the meantime, the game is FUN! That's something that very few of the other blockchain games can lay claim to. Most of them are a grind at best. This is a game where you really don't have to invest a lot of money to enjoy playing. You can go at your own pace, learn as you go, and become as immersed or casual as you want to be.

Right now they're building out the lore and the art behind the game. As more and more of that continues to funnel into the ecosystem, people will continue to get more and more immersed in the game. It's one thing to talk about how the little players can't compete, but they actually can and do. It's certainly not easy, but it's being done every day by many hundreds if not thousands of users. Just look at some of the posts from people competing in gold and diamond leagues without hardly owning any cards. There are very few places in the world newbies can butt heads against veterans and win. It certainly doesn't happen in any real world sports. And it doesn't happen in any of the big video games. But it happens here.

In a few days there will be an entirely new playing field where newer players can start building alongside seasoned veterans. Will they be able to grow as quickly? Probably not, unless they have deep pockets. But a few weeks in the game and they'll certainly be able to move up to leagues that will give them the rewards you're talking about. It incentivizes people to get better. Isn't that what you want in a game?

Add in the land in the next few months and the baseline is set for this to explode in many different directions, most of which we can't even imagine right now. There is definitely still risk that it won't live up to its potential, but again, I go back to the one single fact that really can't be disputed: the game is fun to play. That is going to carry it forward a very long way in my opinion, and allow for some leeway in figuring things out as they go.

PS> I notice you aren't cashing out 100%. lol

I never played Axie, but I always hear people saying: "even my 6-year old niece won't play that as a game". In any case, their governance token has been in a solid uptrend so they might be doing a bunch of things right.

I'm a bit worried about player retention in Splinterlands, but I am still bullish on the game and SPS. I just hope that they do something about the bots, without damaging the new players that much. My hope is that new supply of cards from Chaos Legion will flood the cards and rental market, making it cheaper again to play and earn rewards at higher leagues. Personally, I'm not a fan of incentivizing players who have little to none contribution to the game economy, but I'd love to see players who starting out with a few dollars be given the opportunity to play and work their up to eventually build their own decks.

Your point of view is the same as mine. As a new player every time they implemented an update against the bot users, i felt like they harm the new players more than the botters... They can call it "antibot" update but they could call it entry level increase too... The prices skyrocketed during the last few months, and the whole system right now looks like a money transfer from the new participants to the old ones. Within the last few days of the seasons the rent prices are so high, those day's its just hard to be net positive by the end of the day. The peakmonsters autorent tool also make it harder to get some good deals, and overall that tool just made it easier for botters to automate their renting, eventually the rent prices increased too.

Until they solve the bot problem, in the long term SL is just doomed imho...

I'm glad you made this post, and highlighted the problems the SL team should face. They should decide what they want, gain a bit more in the short term, or gain consistently in the long. Greed make it short most of the time, and by the end it worth less than it could.

Interesting POV. I wonder if you are right. I am new to the game I came in february and took a leap of faith and invested. So far I have made more with SL as with my daytime job. I am all positive about the game and I am not afraid of Axie since that is a totally different game.
I wonder what Hardpoints answer isgoing to be when he reacts to this.
@solymi pass by and leave some thoughts on this

I would add something important and overlooked: FEES
Axie is operating on ETH blockchain and the fees are an absolute killer, unlike splinterlands where you can move assets with relatively zero fees.
However, your POV about Axie outlasting SPL is a major setback for SPS price to reach a higher level.
Players sitting on Diamond/challenger won't focus on accumulating SPS as they are getting way more from DEC rewards, rents, tourneys, cards trading etc..
While new players are the ones who'll inject money from outside to splinterlands, New buyers will make the SPS price to grow, the new blood is always needed to push any project forward.

I think Splinterlands definitely has the bones of what could be a lasting and fun game. Much like Magic the Gathering.

However Splinterlands is going through a phase like most of the Play2Earn type games at the moment where it has issues with Bots, Inflation and the feel that it has become more Pay2Win rather than Play2Earn.

The team at Splinterlands are clearly aware of some of the issues and trying to help amend them by doing things like reducing rewards in Novice/Bronze to attack bots. The problem though is it has made much more difficult for new players to get in and there is certainly a risk of slowing player base growth too much and over time shifting too much "value" into the hands of whales/long term players till other players just leave and find other projects where they have more of a chance to become substantial players/earners.

One issue that concerns me a lot (and matches your point) is the constant inflation meaning cards/lands/packs all have much greater prices then was probably intended putting them out of reach for anyone that hasnt been playing a long time/or is a whale. I have a feeling that the balance will be unfortunately tilted in a way that makes that Pay2Win feeling intolerable to many players. A bit is ok, a lot is disouraging!

Anyway, those are my thoughts for now! Thanks for doing things like this giveaway!

My thoughts on this are fairly simple:

1. Is Splinterlands a great game? Yes
2. Is it being actively developed? Yes
3. Does it have a network effect? Yes
4. Is the SPS token listed on major exchanges? No - so great potential
5. How how are gas fees? 0 - which is great

Is it perfect? No, but this is a long term play for me, at least until the end of the airdrops, potentially 3-5 years. Just look at the SPS white paper, they have a great plan for long term asset appreciation and SPS will be the centerpiece of making life changing money in Splinterlands. However, I believe holding every single asset in the game will pay off long term including SPT tokens :)

Well I imagine you're expecting a dump of SPS very shortly, but don't expect it to go too low, there's a lot of people looking at that 30-40 cent range as a buy-back area.

Great post dude, I absolutely love this kind of discussions and opinions, and we should have more os those meaningful arguments in order to improve the game and understand it better.

I'll disagree with a lot of what you said, but let me start saying that there's a lot of childish complaints now a days about the cut in the little guys rewards. I'm a little guy, started with only the $10 investment, and bought $30 worth of cards a month after just as an "investment", not really to use them for playing. Today I play on Diamond League only with rentals, in a profitable manner, and this is how ANYBODY can do the same.

1 - Play Novice/Bronze/Silver until you figure things out, get used to the game, learn rule sets, and try to get as high as you can so you can stack some DEC.

2 - Use your daily gains to rent. NEVER rent more than you earn daily. Learn how to deal with your limits.

3 - Play, Have fun, use your profits to reach the next league, which will provide you a better reward, letting you rent a little bit more. Repeat that and you'll slowly grind.

Yes, it is hard. Yes, sometimes you can fail. You can rent the wrong cards, lose a lot, and there's a lot of things that can go wrong. But always learn something, and try again the next time, but better.

You can even stack 2 daily quests, and play till your ECR reaches 50% using one day rental for two quests. Let both quests stack again in the next 48 hours while your ECR recharges. You can earn money for sure, and you can have fun.

Axie was recently doing the same thing as splinterlands in terms of limiting rewards for lower players if I'm not wrong, but I'm not 100% sure as I don't play Axie at all (high entry point, outside my reach). I'm not really bullish on Axie because of ETH, and Splinterlands has the whole Hive blog + community thing, which I find very helpful and can still play a major role in the future. As for caring about growth, we have to be realistic. Devs have SO MUCH right now to do. There's security issues, Guilds, Chaos Legion, Riftwatchers, Packs, Vouchers, Land, Lore, man I'm sure you guys can think of 10 more things to put on the list. My stance is that we must keep demanding the changes which we find fair, and eventually they will gain force within the community and reach the devs. I completely agree with you regarding the GUILDS. It is ridiculous the way things stand right now, and prices should be adjusted as soon as possible.

But I find just as ridiculous the way the EOS is right now, but I know that eventually will be fixed, or at least I believe devs are competent enough to notice that eventually.

Hopefully you'll stay for the ride bro.

!PGMBOOST5

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After presale 1 , there is presale 2 and then Private sale. Public sale is far away.
SL is going for far away from range of a new and "poor" player.
Either they need to hang on and grind to see if they can have right opportunity or they can keep revolving and earning in Hive ecosystem to accumulate money for SL.

I am new to Splinterlands since end of August but I have been a stock investor for over a decade and am very astute at financial analysis. In my opinion, SPS will be worth at least $10 in 6 years, i quote 6 years because in 5 years SPS will stop minting from staking rewards and in game rewards and all other sources. Once people no longer have SPS as a free daily income a major source of continual selling will be eliminated and SPS will see real spikes if the voucher concept is added to in the future. I got lucky and bought approx 6000 SPS at a cost of approx $1800. Since then from investment in airdrop points im up to 8900 SPS worth $4311 today! Cant wait to see where I stand when airdrop ends.

I agree. I've been in Axie for a long while and just started playing Splinterlands for 2 months. It's undoubtably discouraging to see how different both games approach newcomers.

Eventhough I don't agree with many of the decisions made by the Axie team such as the most recent unjustified balance changes, they have done a great job building a community where old players are incentivised to help new players in the form of scholarship programs.

On the other hand, we have this amazing game which is so much more fun to play. Sometimes, it's not that I don't want to invest more. But how much will I need to invest in to not be affected by future nerfs to new player rewards?

On top of that, the higher ranks or old investors are constantly pitching us the idea of 'just rent more to earn more'. Why wouldn't they, when it means more profits for them? How enjoyable it is to be queueing against Gold level decks in Silver 3, just because I don't have the power and will have to spend and rent more in order for the playing field to be somewhat level. It's like we are punished for having a higher rating at a lower power bracket. At what point do we ask ourselves if that's sustainable?

Just it seems not, but splinterlands is saving lives.
bringing people from the other country together, showing how this community is too strong.

I really believe in the game and what it still has to offer.
it changed my way of thinking, providing opportunities, both for fun and for liquidity.

Here in Brazil, this amazing game changed the lives of many Brazilians.

I love this game.

I've felt similar about how the gameplay is good but the implementation to retain players has been poor at best. If you are curious as to knowing exactly how many bots and alts there are and how inflated the market is check out this write up I did here and tell me what you think. I agree and think Similarly on many of these talking points. The private sale also is definitely a move that is anti-little guy, as because of it those 4 dollar packs that have been promised since CL was a whisper may not be available except on the p2p market. I would like to hope the game would take another direction but it's been going down this path since there was money to be had, and I'm a bit cynical and doubt it will change. Cheers !PIZZA

Personally, I don't enjoy playing Axie but Splinterlands has potential and isn't going to crash full send by any means. I do feel like lately Aggroed and Matt have really been shooting their project in the foot lately though.

With the way they are going they won't be able to pull in new players due to sheer player optics. Word of mouth and community seems to be one of the biggest factors for an NFT games success and that means negative press can be a significant thorn. There are a few key areas I think they need to get on asap.

1. Hire a PR rep. Aggroed might be smart but he is a terrible people person. He does not have charisma and he absolutely comes off as arrogant. That isn't how you win over new customers.
2. Be transparent and clear about how things are going to run. The way the CL sale has been handled has been subpar at best. As a consumer it feels like they have no idea what they are doing and are changing things on the fly. No serious investor wants to get into a project where the captain is out of his league. Planning needs to be more up front.
3. Return rewards to the low tiers. Yes, I understand this was done to hurt the bots but honestly it also completely killed the 'taste' brand new players got when getting into the game. These accounts were pulling hardly anything 4-5 DEC per day and that let them get into the rental business. If no investment bots are killing the economy than get rid of the bots, not nerf the entire tier. At that point you might as well just increase the cost of entry and follow Axie's lead.
4. Really give SPS some utility. I was fine with the voucher system if that is how the SPS utility is going to work but if thats the case then those vouchers need more use than just buying packs. I'm aware they have things planned for SPS but it seems like they can't actually execute. An endless roadmap is more or less worthless if you never get to the end.
5. This is the big one. I like many others ultimately feel that them allowing bots is going to be what really holds them back. No respectable competitive game allows bots to thrive. At that point there is no real reason to play if its just against an AI, especially when games like this are technically "solvable" in that any given ruleset has a statistical 'best' comp. A bot is going to be able to compute that instantly, players absolutely will not.

I think Splinterlands can and likely will end up going up to around $1.50 but not likely much higher than that unless they fix their issues.