How I Feel About The Reward Changes To Splinterlands

Splinterlands has been absolutely on fire lately and for good reason! The Splintershards (SPS) airdrops have been extremely juicy and it is driving up the price of Dark Energy Crystals (DEC) like mad. Prices for DEC are up over 10x recently and the SPS token has seen a nice run up as well. Daily airdrops are a fantastic incentive to keep holding in-game assets and to continue buying more.

Alongside this growth however there had to be some major changes to the Splinterlands ecosystem in order to keep things balanced and in line. For starters the prices of cards has been skyrocketing with the popularity and user growth. This in turn has made "reward farming" very lucrative for the lower tiers of players in Bronze and Silver. Unfortunately there were many accounts simply reward farming their accounts for the daily rewards and selling back cards at ridiculous prices and profits.

Nothing wrong with finding lucrative ways to find money in this ecosystem but it was coming at the cost of the potential dilution in the market and ruination of price structure. The recent changes the the reward chests has been drastic BUT I do think it was warranted with the data that was coming in.

It also incentivizes players who may be in those lower tiers to move up ranks by purchasing more Collection Power over time. Without any clear investment in the game, other than a spell book, players have been able to game the system to their advantage. The short term effect may be some more complaining from small players but inevitably the growth curve is accelerating and the demand is surging regardless.

I think overall the changes were positive even though it hurts to feel the effects as a smaller player at this time. I will definitely be working on moving my way up the ranks now that I need to in order to get better rewards daily. I am excited to see where 2022 brings Splinterlands and the whole community!