It seems to me like your dislike of bots has got you tunnel-visioned into this concept of "the earning opportunities must be proportional to the amount of in-game assets acquired and held", and you're ignoring or de-prioritizing the core values of this game. What are you ultimately trying to do? At this stage of the game's lifetime, you're trying to grow and reach new people. The game should incentivize new players to join and stay. Opening cards from reward boxes has been proven time and time again, by so many games, to be successful at keeping players engaged and motivated to keep playing. Your average NEW player isn't going to check out the market with their handful of credits because they won't know what to buy. And they will look at the outrageous prices of some cards, and look at the credits they accumulated so far, and be demoralized and quit.
You compare this game to Magic: The Gathering but to put it bluntly, Splinterlands is not as fun. I'm not saying it won't ever be as fun, but right now it is not as fun for most people. People have less of an incentive to buy cards because there is no concept of a "deck" in this game, so people won't go out and buy specific cards to complete their deck, or to build a new deck around. And honestly, the concept of owning digital assets is still new and hard for your average new player to wrap their head around. Your average new player is much less likely to fall in love with the game or with specific cards, which would drive them to be more invested and to start collecting. People will not play the game just because it is free. It's just too early in this game's lifetime to be making a change like this.
Not at the expense of the game's economy. Axie infinity, plant vs undead, cryptoblades, etc. etc... all those games got a huge popularity increase in a very short amount of time and all those economies crashed.. splinterlands is a great game, and they have a good economy going. I only own a couple of cards and I'm at bronze but I rent to reach to silver, so I don't see the big deal. New players with zero owned nfts can reach to silver 3 rating and rent for the end of season, thats how I started.
It's no fun if you don't actually try to win by strategy. All the work is done after the Line-Up and there's a lot of room for improvement all the time.
You can watch the replays of absolute top matches to see how there's just A LOT going on.
@draicor why do you think splinterlands economy is not going to crash?
Yes, splinterlands is hot right now but that wont last for ever. All those games had a surge in players and the stopped, well, the same is going to happened here, you cant expect to grow exponentially all the time
This is the HIVE, none ever leaves.
I don't know if its going to crash or not, but I believe the splinterlands economy seems better designed.. lets take for example, axie infinity. SLP which is the token people farm, its only used for breeding axies. Thats the only way to burn that token. When the popularity tones down, people stop buying axies, the SLP becomes useless and the price drops, because a lot of people are still farming SLP. You can't combine axies either, so they drop in value over time, since more and more axies show up in the market.
In other games like, PVU, or cryptoblade's SKILL, the coin is only useful to buy in the market other plants or other characters or weapons. Where is PVU token sink? people just sell it on pancakeswap or use it to buy other plants, which cannot get combined or burned either, so the plants drop in value over time. Same with cryptoblade's characters.
At least in splinterlands, you can use the DEC for more than just selling it for profit. Haven't you noticed how in splinterlands if you get a good card, you tend not to get rid of it asap? either because its a good card than can help you win and climb the ranks, or a card that gives you power and you can advance to better leagues? You see how you end up combining cards (burning the cards) to get better at the game?
I believe the splinterlands team makes good decisions when it comes to the game's economy, at least, better decisions that the rest of the NFTs games out there, that is why I believe in this project.
Sure and let alone that you get emotionally attached as collectors usually do.
I beg to differ. Why would a new player not check out cheap cards on the market?
Yes there is, each Splinter works as a separate deck of cards, except Dragon which has the ability to merge with another deck.
I understand that this decision is frustrating but I feel like this is better in the long run. The last players you want to alienate are those who have actually invested a lot of money in the game. But I understand that this comes at a price and that some feel frustrated by the move. However, the ability to play with cards that you do not own takes care of making sure new players can have fun and earn.
good job ❤️