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 :
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
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
I'm not an English speaker either ahah, so maybe it's from me too. It's cool to have different points of view!
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.
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:
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:
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.
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.
I'm really enjoying reading this! I even think that just this first step might make me play again instead of the bot.
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.
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
I like your suggestions, I think they should be put to a community vote
Thank you! We'll see what we can do to make it happen :)
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.
Indeed I see more and more players selling their collections, I mean players who were very involved in the game, not only new players
Very good ideas!
Thanks for your comment!
I subscribe to every word!
Thanks to you ! And also for sharing
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.
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 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.
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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
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.
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.
"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...
Thanks for your message, and even more for sharing !
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Good post and good ideas - i agree with everything here!
Thanks for your feedback!
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.
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.
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 !
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)
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.
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..
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!
Thank you very much, your message is really appreciated 🔥
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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.