Splinterlands - Suggestions for Round 2
We just had the first pre-sale for the lands expansion and it went... poorly (or great depending on your perspective)
Demand was WAY higher than anyone anticipated. The region lottery ended up with 50 entries because of the proliferation of joint-venture pools. When the pre-sale opened, the site crashed from traffic and the 3000 remaining plots were sold virtually instantaneously.
There's lots of people complaining in the discord about various aspects. The reasons why don't really matter.
With all that in mind, here is my suggestion for running round 2 of the pre-sale (40% discount) on Nov 28:
The 23 losers of the round 1 region lottery (I was one) are given their opportunity to get regions in round 2. They need to get their funds in by 16:00 UTC Nov 27 to reserve their region.
25 total regions (25,000 plots) are made available for lottery at 10:00 UTC Nov 28. This includes however many of the 23 losers from round 1 want to participate. So if 18 of the loser group come back for round 2, that leaves 7 more regions available for lottery to be resolved at 10:00 UTC Nov 28.
25 tracts + any leftovers from region lottery are made available for lottery at 13:00 UTC Nov 28. This brings the total up to 27,500 plots. If all regions are assigned in the lottery, only 25 tracts are available. Each region that is not assigned at 10:00 increases the numbers of tracts available in this stage by 10. The additional 3 hours between stages gives people an opportunity to assess their winnings (if any) and decide if they want to participate.
The remaining available plots (bringing us up to 30,000) are made available for lottery at 16:00 UTC Nov 28. Again, 3 hours between the previous stage and this stage to allow time for people to make decisions.
Demand for the second round pre-sale is likely to be lower. Prices are 20% higher relative to round 1, some people will still be angry over round 1 results, and obviously people have already bought 30,000 plots/claims. I am reasonably confident this structure will be reasonably fair to all parties of all sizes. There is no optimal solution for everyone, but I think people would see this as at least OK.
I think this would work and it's highly preferable to crashing the server again.
It's easy for me to say because I won in the first lottery, but I still think the lottery probably was the best short term solution after it became apparent how big of a demand there was. Maybe they should have pulled the plug and redo the discount structure but it might have been too late for that. Now we'll have to whither the storm and hope most people that are thinking about leaving will reconsider in the end.
small number of single plots was a good thing for the game owners, but a bad thing for casual everyday players.
Most of the entries in the region lottery were pools of players. Agg and I discussed this a bit on his show last night. The people that were really at a disadvantage were those that didn't engage with the overall community.
yes some number were, but it is an outside of the game option. i am not sure how pools work, so not sure could that happen, imagine the chaos if a pool organizer just sells everything and not share it (again no idea is it possible)
Would this mean the guaranteed spot (for those who tried and failed, in the first round, like yourself) in the second round is off the table?