Splinterlands: an uncertain horizon?

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(Edited)

I've been playing Splinterlands since the early days of the game, during Steem's period, before SPS and DEC.

I've always understood and agreed with the changes in the Splinterlands team, more or less. But now for the first time, I am really questionning in which direction we are going? (Soulbound rewards, increasingly difficult access for new players, very low retention)

Here is a non-exhaustive list of ideas that could potentially improve the game, and which are not difficult to implement (I'd love to hear your opinions in comments & potentially some sharing to hopefully reach the ears of SPL decision makers).

Soulbound Cards :

Why not. But don't touch our rewards cards.
Yes there are too many copies of each rewards card in circulation, but your lvl up system is well designed. For example the Venari Heatsmith with the existing system :

image.png
Source : Venari Heatsmith @Splintershare

The high peaks are due to the end of the seasons, and are relatively well absorbed. (This is even more true with rare cards, but they are not as advanced in the print rate. Example: Exploding Rats)

The problem is that the average level of this card is lvl 2 (the others are worse). Reaching lvl 3 would mean a supply circulation divided by almost 3!

Suggestion : introduce achievements in the game, for example:

  • burn xxx bcx for DEC
  • merge xxx bcx (rare/reward/gold) everything is possible
  • xx wins in tournaments
  • xx wins in ranked matches
  • xx packs bought
  • own all shadow cards lvl 1
  • own all Chaos Legion lvl bronze
  • open x pack
  • finish xx focus
  • xx governance vote
  • etc etc...

For each unlocked achievement, the player earns xx tokens (linked to the account like merits) and this is where soulbound cards come into effect, with the new tokens it is possible to buy packs which include soulbound cards (Maybe also special potions?, Skin?)

Advantage :

  • Gives players goals to achieve (which is strongly lacking) thus improving player retention and engagement.
  • SPL can create specific achievements to push players to do certain actions.
  • Gives direction for new players (ideally once the first tutorial is completed, the player has enough tokens to buy a soulbound pack)
  • Possibility to discover the feeling of opening a pack for new players. With soulbound packs.
  • The more achievements the player validates, the more potential advantage he has over the bots
  • Dynamization of the market (Increase of the floor price of the different card rarities)
  • Possibility to have the achievements validated retroactively using the blockchain
  • More people participating in tournaments
  • The possibilities are endless...

Random Ideas :

  • Burn vouchers to make a card animated, only for lvl max cards


(Like on the great site https://www.baronstoolbox.com/) gif link if it doesn't work

Advantage : Reduction of voucher inflation, an additional motivation to maxx cards and secondarily flex during fights.

  • New players don't understand anything about ERC, why not make a simpler system? Like on mobile games, much more intuitive. XX Combat / Day, recharge one energy point every XX minutes. If no energy, play in practice mode, or ranked but without rewards.

image.png

Source : Brawl Stars

  • As for the bots problem, it is very easy for you to block the fighting APIs to external or non-white listed developers, you can also choose to put fees if the fights are not launched from the game. With the fees you could fill the DAO, and make a vote to, for example, buy DEC and thus make its price tend towards the PEG.

  • Limit new player features at the beginning, when starting a game we need concrete goals (Achievements would be a solution), various features could be unlocked as key achievements are completed -> Goal, refocus new player goals. (Tournaments, guilds to be unlocked via achievements)

  • If achievements + token are implemented, adding a payout of this token via a daily login bonus, this could help retain players.

  • Reward cards: Make reward cards for each of the 4 seasons of the year. The rewards would be available only the 3 months of their seasons. As a result, the price and rarity would be maintained, this would break the routine & boost the market. Here is a simulation of what the price and supply curve of a Winter seasonal reward card would look like.

image.png

  • I never used a bot, until the focus update was introduced. I think the opportunity to play after the quest of the day and collect end of season chests is great, but I think that a redesign of the focus would be nice, once again, what demotivated me was not having a well defined goal.
    Previously it was easy and motivating: 5 wins = xx chests, we had numbers and precise objectives. Maybe we should put some levels for the focus (even without changing the system, just the interface). For example: we start the focus, here is the objective 8 chests. I know that if I reach the 8 chests, I get a bonus. I know why I play and I have a goal for my day. If I reach it, new goal, and so on and so forth until the limit of 30 chests.

image.png

Anyway, all that to say, I like your game a lot, but don't mess with it it has a lot of potential. Think about new players, and retention. I think this should be the priority. Deadzy


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55 comments
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I like your suggestions, I think they should be put to a community vote

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Thank you! We'll see what we can do to make it happen :)

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hey! was brought to your post through splintershare.io

really love your idea and passion for the game. though i am a small time player with small account, am gonna follow you and reblogged this @deadzy . do let me know if there is anything else i can do on my side to help this movement!

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Thank you very much, your message is really appreciated 🔥

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"I like your game a lot, but don't mess with it it has a lot of potential." I feel the same way, good post. I shared on twitter...

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Thanks for your message, and even more for sharing !

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Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below

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Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below

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Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below

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Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below

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Good post and good ideas - i agree with everything here!

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Thanks for your feedback!

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There's so much burning of the mass inflation of rewards cards that it's going to take some serious time to get things back to normal.

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It's pretty clear that it's going to take a long time! But if we look at the Pelacor Bandit for example, there are less than 200 000 cards left to be printed on the 8M scheduled. And from the 7.8M already printed, there are "only" about 2M cards left in circulation. This is still clearly too much, especially in the bearmarket, but probably the addition of achievements will greatly reduce the circulation of cards.

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Just leave it and make it harder i wouldnt ban bots outright or have a gatekeeper. There will be alot of negative impacts to which would probably be seen when those bots dump cards and other things on the market much faster so they can liquidate there holdings. Need to figure out some way around this happening. I dont think all bots are bad i run one bot for my account while I cant play it gives me a little extra and gets me a bit farther when i cant play so it doesnt take as long and anyone can do it for 20-300 bucks its not very expensive if you wanted to buy a archmage A or B or xbot or a diff provider. My other concern is that they do provide players when there may not be any or it may take forever to find a match. There are positive impacts of ppl running a few bots not thousands but i wouldnt say ppl running 1 - 5 bots are a real issue.

Posted using Splintertalk

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Since the focus update, I use Archmage. I agree with you that some bots have a positive impact on the game. It's as you say the number of bots that create problems, typically bronze leagues that are infested with bot farms, it's just unplayable for beginners and so demotivating.

There are bots that play instead of players and there are bots that steal the rewards of the game, like a cash cow.

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Im a investor and anything that increases my ROI as well as lets me have my own account to play as well while making a bunch of money so i can continue to play and also hopefully in a few years get a exit on my Splinterlands Common Stock but not until the market can support at least a 500 million valuation for the company shares and the SPS DAO would need to probably be at .15-.25 for me to sell say half and same with GLX and TD which i will likely sell half my packs the second the sps runs out but keep some for the game. The GLG packs im deff selling 3/4 and then using 1/4 to play with and the profit from he 3/4 will go to buy sps and glx as will as a addition to the stable coin reserve LP to keep cash coming in to purchase risky bets like this without losing principle. I have to think about the game from a player, a investor in the business of the game and a stockholder of Steemmonsters Corp. So whats best is not always clear because pretty much i make out one way and possibly get boned another way as nothing is free its a zero sum game. Some parts im just learning to play and damn if i new some of this stuff years ago ppl are getting robbed blind by some of these bid ask spreads and now i put a bid and a ask on every one that is huge like 1-10X and ill actually get small fills which is crazy. The more pairs i do it with the better chance i have in getting a bunch of high spread trades.Also curate the shit out of yourself using like 20 accounts you can just triple the rewards you would get and acutally outpace the inflation. You deff need to play to either make money or just have fun. I am even going to hive to post my articles again and resteam them 25-30 times to get more votes. Also hosting a 50/50 lottery daily and a progressive lottery where it goes until someone wins and each time no winner a management fee of 15% comes out to cover costs. These tokens some have like tiny market caps and you can basically acquire the majority of the tokens and then you can make the rules into a profitable trade when you conrol the outcome. If you think anything is not rigged for curation today better take a look its pretty rigged which i do intend to just brute force take over a few tokens i want basically to say fuck you to them and they cant do shit about it bc i deff have enough capital to just keep pounding at them at all fronts and they will deff not be able to defend them all.

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my bot is usually in diamond 1 for half the season it will make it to champion soon just need to buy all the rest of the cards for the legendary undamed and some A/B cards as well as i want all the promos not gold except when it makes sense like some gold are closer to there dec burn value than regular cards. Mihgt as well get gold. Already have that gold lux which is sweet ended up getting that at splinterfest. When i bet on this game in the start up round i just looked at a spread sheet and talked to Matt and Aggie and asked if i could get in on this and own some equity and the great part i found out i own all of it Splinterlands, Genesis League Sport and the new platform there selling, Tower Defense plus my position in the SPS, GLX and SPT and SPT i intend to go after to get 51% to force a vote on the threshold and cut off a few things to make it a bit more valueable as well as creating a card treasury to create a guild behind it as well as a botted team to play while no one else is or let NIFTY manage it. Same for oneup im going for that next and just going to add some value behind it. Get a bunch of cheap cards hand them out a ton plus have a bunch of random coins like the 400 million NFTM i bought over the years for like 30 bucks as well as other tokens i dont want which will add more value and push up the price of SPLG and i can use that to control the initial sale which will be used to create a stable coin investment club that uses interest or fees to invest in riskyer assets but never risking the principle. I think im going to price the round at 10000 initial units at 2 dollars each and 5 attached restricted units per unit to purchase additional units 5 years from now at a 50% discount from FMV. The DAO may decide to also convert the value of the options into 5 year interest only debt at 10% paid 2 times per year. At the end the debt plus interest will be converted into a combination of 20% preferred stock with a cummulative distribution of 8% and a par value of 20 dollars and 80% will be converted to common stock at FMV at the time less a 25% discount. The stock will only be sellable over a 10 week period for half and the other half will be a lump sump at the end of 12 months. Also since we will manage both the debt and equity the management fee for both as well as expenses such as record keeping, k-1 preparation, state k-1s, foreign tax reporting, active vs passive income, Income by activity, various tax credit computaitons, books and records for semi annual updates. Distributions will be paid weekly for any income in kind so that no tax is recognized as it goes against tax basis first. We will also be researching varous new methods in the space and taking a large r and d credit along with a ny r and d credit, ny property tax abatement for 10 years, ny income tax abatement for 10 years, Looking to purchase land in the USVI to build a pole barn that is pretty much a house and a station for all my equipment as i plan on mining various tokens as well as leasing out the solar power i plan to surround the land i buy with and build little guest miner huts for ppl to rent out by paying a low base and 50% of there profits. Also will be hosting staking as a service while tokens are low like xtx is at .8 i can easily buy 8000, solana can stake with one, atom will probablly use a service, eth will use lido or another service, stable coins will be 80% of the portfolio with 75% going to increase stable coins and interest and 25% going to things like spl that way the principle is always growing and may get a big gain at some point. Im working out tht logistics for the club and I think im giong to use Tribevest as they are ment for investment clubs and others can see what your doing and join if you let them so a good way to get capital. Also the legal aspect they take care of it with a Cayman Islands LLC all set up for you and keep track of the members etc. If i can raise a few hundred thousand this year liker 500-1000K then ill be on a beautiful track to have say 80% producing 15-25% in many lp positions as well as traditional equities and private deals like voyayer opp fund and the rest will be for trading crypto, Will always keep you principal safe and growing and let you take some risk which will eventually build up to a large position. Probably starting with maybe 50K my self so hopefully others will jump in with 10-100K. I have a few ppl who will put 50-100K in just need to get it all set up.

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i may just create my own experiment with like 30 bots see how much money they make. If there making alot maybe ill build some tough bots with cards they are not used to and destroy them and limit my level to silver and just keep losing when i wnat to go down and see if i can be profitable even with just one or two bots with way jacked up cards for the level.

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Those are some really great suggestions. The daily focus is too confusing rather than a simple. I like the number of wins = xxx chests idea particularly.

The animated cards look cool too.

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Thanks for your feedback, yes, the current focus system is too confusing, I hope they will be able to set up a more motivating system, I can't wait to turn off Archmage and play every day like in the past !

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I am playing every day still. Do you prefer to let the bot play?

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I am playing every day still. Do you prefer to let the bot play?

I would like not to use the bot, but I must admit that the focus system has demotivated me a lot to play every day. The switch from fixed chests to chests from 0 to 30 depending on how much time you have to play (if there was a better optimized mobile version, maybe I will play more)

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I agree that the game needs to be more simple for the new players and some achievements have to be implemented so you have a sense of reaching some goal, not just dumb grinding every day.
I constantly repeat that the future of the game lies in new players, in increasing the player base. In today's world economy:

If you don't grow you die.

Simple as that.

Do whatever it's needed to bring new players to the game. You will fix half of the problems we face today with new players.
More players = more revenue to the company
More players = bigger card demand -> prices go up
More players = more competition -> more interest in the game
etc...

Company needs to stop thinking about how to protect whales and old alpha/beta players and start working on changes to bring new players in.

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Totally agree with you! And once they're here, they have to want to stay. How many times I can see on the discord new players who don't understand why they only earn 1 RP per fight and 0 SPS..

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I totally agree with you deadzy they will kill the game with soul bound reward cards.
I see alot of complains about that and most of em will sell their assets and quit the game if it’s the way splinterlands team will works for the nexts collections.

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Indeed I see more and more players selling their collections, I mean players who were very involved in the game, not only new players

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(Edited)

100% disagree, people still look at soulbound as a fight against bots while it can help SL has made it clear it is not the reason why they are doing it.

Play2Earn is not sustainable and never has been it been a novelty and in the play2earn structure and overall in the cryto structure for every person that makes a dollar someone losses a dollar.

Aggy and Matt has always made it clear their goal for the game was asset ownership and those assets were the assets you purchased. There will still be earning potential in earned SPS and packs from rank battles.

With the shift from away from play2earn you need more of a game and any good game will have soulbound pieces. I don't know how many people I heard at the beginning of the summer say they were selling everything and would buy back in when the market started to rise again. This is bad for the game. People do not have a reason to play and keep playing during "down times" soulbound reward is a necessary fix for this.

It has little impact on new players are people keep wanting to suggest. All new players will be in the same boat when they start. Someone can't just join and pay to be at the top whether it is renting or buying. Soulbound reward cards is in line with SL giving benefits to long term players and a benefit that doesn't have to be bought a long the lines of benefits alpha and beta cards have already.

Most gamers will stay away from pay to win games and right now SL is a pay to win game. Soulbound reward cards removes some of this. People don't want the loss of "earnings" from reward card but it will also be card you don't have to buy which most people will spend more buying the cards they need then getting earning from selling cards unless they don't care about card ownership which right now is a huge problem. There was a graphic a while back from Tales that showed how many people actually own card and overall it is very low. Overall 100% of the games assets whether it be DEC, SPS, Vouchers, or cards are mostly owned by 10% or so (I don't remember the exact number) of the player base.

Soulbound cards increase ownership and on top of that it allows reward card to be stronger / powerful cards which can be earned at higher rates then they are currently.

Overall I 100% support soulbound cards if SL is going to succeed and in order to succeed it will need to be on the back of the game not crypto because in the next few years more and more games will come to the crypto space which will easily push SL out of the space if the game isn't an even playing field and a good game.

Any soulbound reward card will only be "hindrance" for the duration of them in the modern league. I hope soulbound reward cards are never able to be unbound.

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Thank you for your well constructed and argued answer! On the other hand, I have the impression that you did not fully read my post, or maybe I did not express myself well.
I'm not against soulbound assets (cards or coins) Just about rewards cards I disagreed. I think that if you read the whole article, we would be almost on the same wavelength.

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(Edited)

It's probably bit of lost in translation maybe on my side. I already had a book going and tried to trim some of it. I did understand from your post that it was against the soulbound reward cards which is what I tried to argue the point for soulbound reward cards. I'd love to see other soulbound stuff but I also feel there is a need for the reward cards to be soulbound also.

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I'm not an English speaker either ahah, so maybe it's from me too. It's cool to have different points of view!

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This was very refreshing to read. This is pretty much exactly how the team feels and why we are going down this path. I'm convinced that this will be one of the best changes made to the game over the long term.

We do plan to make the souldbound cards be unbound at some point in the future, however, when they are no longer available to be earned anymore, and possibly for a fee.

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I think there's some good ideas here. Thanks for sharing!

I personally like the direction they're heading with SoulBound rewards cards based on what's been discussed on TownHalls. It's not that they're against being able to sell the cards, it's moreso trying to figure out a way to attract players that want to grow their collections rather than simply farming cards to sell and or having no real incentive to play the game to improve collection.

On a recent town hall, Matt mentioned the idea of the SoulBound rewards cards being able to be sold once they go out of print - I think this would be a good happy medium. Players are incentivized to acquire as much as they can during the period when they're not sellable and be able to use them... yet have the ability to sell them at some point still.

I like the Thetan arena example for how to clarify ECR as well, I think that's a clearer way to display that info.

!PIZZA !ALIVE !CTP

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It's not that they're against being able to sell the cards, it's moreso trying to figure out a way to attract players that want to grow their collections rather than simply farming cards to sell and or having no real incentive to play the game to improve collection.

So I think that a system of quest and achievement as I propose it would be much more relevant.

This way the players have goals set by the game, it would help to guide new players.
With soulbound rewards I see an acceleration of SPS dumping by bot farms (well yeah they will only have that to sell)

Seriously I don't understand why there are no quests set up by the SPL team yet.

Regulation of inflation, guide new players in their choices, push players to participate in tournaments

Soulbound Ok, but soulbound for cards that you earn by doing quests. And it could give an advantage to the players against the bots.

I don't know if you've ever tried to build a new account from scratch, but it's a real horror

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This way the players have goals set by the game, it would help to guide new players.
With soulbound rewards I see an acceleration of SPS dumping by bot farms (well yeah they will only have that to sell)

I don't know if we see an acceleration actually - I bet it would stay about the same. I'd be that the farms are generally liquidating as much as they can.

I think the soulbound rewards mainly just cuts profits by 50% or so - sometimes more in the lower leagues.

Honestly... I think the soulbound rewards goes a VERY long way to destroying bot farm incentive.


I do think the things you're saying are on the table though, I think the reality is how much time it takes to actually get anything done in a solid way... The answer to why they haven't been done yet... is because they're not the high priority compared to the other things they're tackling.

I'm not sure if it's the right decision what they've focused on or not - but I think it needs to be looked at from that perspective. Like... "They should not be spending time of X so they can pursue my idea of Y" - I think that at least helps to figure out the reality of how the prioritization would be going down.

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Yes I hope you're right, I understand that we can't have the same regard as a player or as a team member of SPL, but I still think they should try to put themselves more in the place of new players. This is just my opinion.

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Hi Deadzy!
I agree with you. For my part, I think that the latest decisions (not only soulbounds cards) taken by the team for some time are not going in the right direction. I think the team should focus on trying to attract players and the latest decisions seem to have the opposite effect. I don't see how the team can attract new players, and worse, as you said, even players who are very invested in the game are starting to leave it.
If the team doesn't reverse the trend soon, things could get worse. I'm starting to wonder about the point of continuing with splinterlands myself. In fact, if it wasn't for the guild and the Brawls, I'd probably be gone by now.

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Yes we are many to think like you too, if the situation does not improve it can quickly become catastrophic. It's hard to know what to do, for the moment I keep hoping, but we'll have to think of a "plan b"

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I first want to say that I very much appreciate your long-term support of the game and your suggestions. That being said, I think you vastly underestimate the difficulty of some of the things you are proposing and also vastly overestimate the actual impact your suggested changes would have. For example, you start off with:

Here is a non-exhaustive list of ideas that could potentially improve the game, and which are not difficult to implement

And then proceed to suggest building an entire achievement system in the game, with minimal actual details. That is a BIG project to implement. Even just designing out the entire thing (including the economics) is a big project, not including the art and design work and then the actual development work.

Additionally, even if we did all of that work and implemented an achievement system right now, at best it might improve the metrics you identified like burning and combining cards slightly, but in reality it would just be giving out a whole bunch of additional stuff to the existing player base for doing what they already do, which would continue to decrease the value of the assets.

Then there's this one:

As for the bots problem, it is very easy for you to block the fighting APIs to external or non-white listed developers, you can also choose to put fees if the fights are not launched from the game.

I have no idea where this idea came from, but this is just flat out wrong. You cannot just "block the fighting APIs" for certain people. It is not possible to tell if "fights are launched from the game" or not. As I've said many times on town hall calls, the only way to ban bots is to have someone who does their best to determine which accounts are bots or not and bans those accounts. Since it is very hard to accurately determine that, it would likely mean that many regular players also get banned and many bots get missed. On top of that, bots can very easily just transfer their assets to a new account, unless we are freezing their assets which would just be insane in my opinion.

The only suggestion from your list which I think is actually relatively easy to do and makes sense is changing how ECR works and is displayed to users, which I will consider and see where we might be able to add it into the roadmap.

That all being said - we now have a community proposals system which would allow you to actually propose changes you would like to see to the community to vote on. This would require you to fully think through and design out your ideas to present, and going through that process I believe will help to show how these types of changes are far more difficult than many people understand.

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First of all, thank you very much for taking the time to read this post, and even more for responding!

Indeed I probably underestimate the work required to integrate these different features !

As for the achievement system, I'm still convinced it's a good idea, if you look at most addictive games, most of them have a similar system, and often it even serves as a tutorial/guide for new players. Having a clear goal in a game is very important for player conservation.

I can imagine that it's a big job, but I believe that it would be a big improvement for the game.

The only suggestion from your list which I think is actually relatively easy to do and makes sense is changing how ECR works and is displayed to users, which I will consider and see where we might be able to add it into the roadmap.

I'm really enjoying reading this! I even think that just this first step might make me play again instead of the bot.

I have no idea where this idea came from, but this is just flat out wrong. You cannot just "block the fighting APIs" for certain people. It is not possible to tell if "fights are launched from the game" or not. As I've said many times on town hall calls, the only way to ban bots is to have someone who does their best to determine which accounts are bots or not and bans those accounts.

My English is unfortunately not good enough to listen to the town hall, I only read the recap.

Regarding the APIs I was thinking of a system with API keys, and maybe encrypted if needed with the system already available on hive with the memo key. But I'm not as good as you in DEV, maybe it's impossible, or maybe this would slow down the game too much.

Indeed, banning bots by hand is just not possible and counterproductive.

Burn vouchers to make a card animated, only for lvl max cards

Concerning the animated cards in exchange of vouchers, is it so complicated to set up? (of course if you forget the time to do the animations) I was thinking of doing it the same way as for gold cards. You already have a number of them in stock, releasing the animated cards little by little is not so bad, and it would be a good way to burn voucher or dec.

I will see about using the new proposal system. Thanks again for reading, Deadzy

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