RE: Splinterlands Ranked Reward Changes - Introducing Glint & The Reward Shop!

The shop part is fine, great idea actually. Can´t wait to see it!

But I´m noticing that it won´t matter how much we improve onboarding, player experience, looks and so on when the game is turning to a Pay to play?

With the excuse of nerfing bots, Wild format, wich by its nature will always contain the entirety of the sets, has become something like a black hole. Deprecating the value of sets that don´t fit in "modern" and already deprecating older "modern" sets. Being as it is, everyone can see that eventually their cards will lose value over time. The opposite that you would expect from a system that tries to create value by scarcity.

Then there is to consider all the people that invested but don´t have time to play wich saw the bot as a way to get involved. They will have to incline towards selling/renting everything, and wild format cards get further depreciated, as does player database. Its fine, lets pretend none of this is a loss for the ecosystem. Bots are far worse!

Now, modern league! Made you a great place. Player to player, intense action, adrenaline, all the goodies. Everyone is encouraged to play here!

Lets build our account! But what are we playing for? to be the best? you can´t, need to be rich first. To maybe complete your collection? get them all?, Nope, you will only earn untradeables that are burnt for other untradeables. You have to buy the actual sets. Maybe overtime I snowball? yea...no. You will always have to buy the latest set. And send your oldest set to oblivion. Maybe I can earn sps to sell and buy more cards? Well, the sps you earn is automatically staked, and you need to wait a month to get it + you need to stake as much as possible if you want rewards up the ladder. If I sell the older set before it goes to wild? then buy the new set? Well, you will notice that it sells for less than you paid for, since you know... it goes to bot land...
You are silly, the idea is to rent everything! Ok, very complicated subscription, for a game where you would expect to collect and own assets. (Is a soulbound really an NFT if it can´t be traded?)

We managed to nerf bots, but sacrificing cards value over time, as they soon "expire" and go to bot land. Players wont buy "old" cards or play wild because it is nerfed. And to be competitive in modern we have to buy all the new stuff, and we don´t even get a return to buy the next new stuff, because whaterever we get is either soulbound or locked. Is this really play to earn?

I like the game, but. If it is for just the fun and nothing else, it is too expensive to play. I don´t see the possibility of attracting new players, either investing or just playing, when everything is complicated, expensive and unrewarding. And as we are now, cards and sps depend on each other so deciding to take profit likely means to sell everything. How would that work out if sps gets into binance and price spikes up?

Sorry for the catharsis everyone! I really wish the best for this game. If someone is able to, help me find reasons to trust and stay. Correct me in what I said wrong.