Rewards, Fees and Collection Power
Another season came to an end for the ranked battles in Splinterlands.
Like the season before, I let the bot play my account in Wild, which is the main format for my account. Unlike the previous season, this time fees were involved. 35% on the SPS rewards from playing (except in the Modern format) for my type of token pass.
If we look at the season's summary (see image), we see a 26.38% fee taken by the bot from the total rewards (potions included) worth almost 114 USD at the time of the screenshot. Or more accurately, around 525 SPS out of 1500 SPS (I included Modern, to ease calculations, but the rewards there were minuscule).
With a much higher initial investment, I could have lowered that fee down to 15%, from 35%. But is it worth it? Certainly not for me at the time. Plus, when the land expansion will come out there will most likely be a period when this or any other bot will be worthless until they are adapted.
I still think 35% is an exaggerated fee and the majority of users have this fee. Maybe things will be slightly different when the cards pick up value, but certainly not now.
Besides the bot, I also used the other passive alternative, now at the end of the season and extending a bit into the new season: renting out my playing deck.
The renting part makes me understand even more why the Splinterlands team believes the Collection Power is not a good-enough solution to limit access to higher leagues.
I came to this realization from two perspectives. I have an account that normally should play in Bronze. But because I delegated to it a 50k CP GFL (pretty much worthless for the gameplay), it reaches as high as Silver 1. While I am growing that account from its own rewards, it's still very much basic right now, with many level 1 cards and even starter cards used (I have no summoner yet on that account).
The other side where Collection Power is a non-optimal solution is on my main account. When I'm renting cards out for the EOS from my playing deck, I need to keep enough cards unrented to have the minimum CP at the end of the season for the league I reached. Those cards don't do anything. They don't help me, because my playing account is idle while I'm renting out, and they don't help any potential players who might've been interested to rent the (powerful) cards I have. Wasted 400k or 500k CP-worth of cards.
That's why I am glad the proposal to adjust rewards based on the level of cards played passed. It is the first step to replacing Collection Power with something else, hopefully better (but you never know).
I also played throughout the season, mainly in the Brawls for my Guild and in a couple of tournaments (mostly Diamond ones). Plus, I pushed my account into Gold 3 in Modern - as I got used to every season - to not drop below Silver 3 at the reset time.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Thanks for sharing your stats regarding using the bot... 35% fee is a pretty high cut and it's hard to grow your account when you have to pay that much... It looks like I will continue with cursing and swearing while I play the game by myself... lol...
Yeah, I don't miss the frustration part, but 35% is indeed a hefty fee. If they don't revise the fee structure, especially for the higher leagues, they'll lose some important customers (if they didn't already).
Hey @gadrian Thanks again for the follow up and thoughts :)
As a project, Archmage generally believes that Users who are Diamond and above should at least be using a Beta if not an Alpha.
We released these tokens at $10 a piece when initially released (the Betas and Alphas) the market has decided their value at this point:
Again... keep in mind that this pricing is based on market demand, not on a price we set. I think that speaks volumes.
Nearly all of that value goes back to our users rather into our pockets (and we're happy for it to do so).
In general, we aren't convinced that it's good for the game for us to attract every user. Last season Archmage dominated the Champ leaderboards, which, while great for our users, doesn't seem sustainable if nearly all Champ players are using Archmage.
At this point we think the pricing of the Alpha/Beta tokens is a useful gate to attract only those most motivated to use our service to really make people question if it's the right fit for them.
We WANT users playing manually and getting great results, we're not trying to be the solution for everyone - but we are trying to be a solution for anyone.
Stay tuned - we have some long term goals of hopefully being able to bring the magic of Archmage to the benefit of manual play as well (if we can make it happen).
In terms of users, we're seeing at least an 80% retention of usage from before fees launched and the standard token seems to continually recover back to retail prices now that we're passed the dumpening from fees launching.
Users who understand the power of the positive feedback loop where our team is directly incentivized the more we help you win seem to be enjoying the service. Users who want a service that can maximize wins and ensure assets are being put to use while still getting to participate in brawls/tournaments seem to enjoy our service. Users who are exclusively focused on extracting the highest yield or who have the time to play plenty themselves seem to find other options more beneficial for themselves.
That being said... we just launched V2.2 and many users are hitting leagues they've never hit before and thus seeing drastically higher rewards than they could either by themselves or with any other service... for those users they are likely seeing a higher net return.
Either way - as we've stated - fees will likely see an update after we've had at least 1 more season to see real world projections, so stay tuned :) Our goal was always to finalize our numbers after we've seen what the real world current numbers look like rather than just guesstimates.
I certainly understand the prices of ARCHMAGEA and ARCHMAGEB are driven by the market. But I don't like that because I didn't get in when they were sold by the service, I'd have to pay a high price now on the secondary market or pay high fees for the service. That's squeezed too much toward early adopters.
Thus, I am waiting to see what you have in mind regarding the new fees after one more season.
I'm waiting to see what you'll come up with regarding easier to play manually while still using Archmage.
About the champ league, I didn't know it was totally dominated by Archmage. That's not a good sign, but it was probably expectable.
It's understandable that you'd prefer to have been an early adopter at this point. The way we see it is that the market is setting the price/value of those tokens rather than us having to try and figure out where to price them.
If we released them today - we would likely release them at least at those prices.
In regards to Champ league - I guess "dominated" is subjective - we had a large portion of the leaderboard represented by Archmage users, though not all were to be clear.
That seems like a very high fee. Judging by the reaction in discord, it was not very popular and many left already. We probably are seeing this on the rental market already.
Yeah, I have the same feeling, especially for ARCHMAGE holders. ARCHMAGEA holders may find it ok, especially if they were early adopters and bought it at 10$. But to buy it at 500$, nope, not interested.
I'm sure with higher fees, it will incentive someone to come up with a cheaper solution. Market forces and all that jazz.
I think there are cheaper options. But not the same quality bots, I've heard.
Thanks for reporting on how your bot is doing. Is your time worth the 35% fee?
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
I'd rather not answer this question. Whatever I answer, it's not good.
Gez these champion chests pay out huge!
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Haven't been in Champion League in a while. But I've seen some reward levels from there at this time. They are incredible.
The fee is steep… like you said before something is better than nothing if you got no time to play?
Yeah, the only reason to keep it at this fee, if you don't have time to play (or don't want to) is to keep your rating. Otherwise, I'd go full renting out most of the time.
Congratulations @gadrian! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s):
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPCheck out the last post from @hivebuzz:
Support the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!
That is a hefty fee for using the bot and I also don't think it's worth it. I would rather just do the 25-30 fights per day by myself instead. Then again, I am just used to it by now.
Posted Using LeoFinance Beta
Yes, it is very hefty. I made a calculation, if I'd buy an ARCHMAGEA at these prices, I won't make up even half the price paid for it by the end of March, using the same level of SPS rewards every season and considering the fee difference. By then maybe Land will come out and who knows how much time bots won't work anymore or how effective they'll be afterwards? So nah, I'll keep it running this season too, and wait to see if they'll be less greedy afterward, otherwise, it's probably history on my main account. I'll go for renting out instead when I want it passive.
https://twitter.com/1415155663131402240/status/1587336810123755521
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people( @rzc24-nftbbg ) sharing the post on Twitter as long as they are registered with @poshtoken. Sign up at https://hiveposh.com.