I don't like the thought of "charging" people to play when they have old cards and supported the game from the start or most likely paid much higher for those cards to be able to play in that format in the first place.
Either
- Just go back to making it one battle arena for ALL cards or
- Instead of charging people simply burn part of the reward order or reduce the rewards earned. The whole idea of charging someone to play I feel is more negative compared to simply reducing the payouts. I don't like either one though as a solid good solution though.
This doesn't only apply to you old whales, it applies to everyone that wants to play Wild.
I have been boycotting it since the bot ban in Modern, but am considering returning to it if this proposal is implemented.
The amount you pay should be less than the additional amount you earn, since a large amount of bots will stop playing and thus they will stop extracting. All the SPS they stop earning will now be earned by other players in wild. Overall, this should be a huge upgrade to the quality of wild and serve as a good source of DEC/voucher burn.
It doesn't work like that.
There is a certain reward pool in Wild and next to that, there is the card supply with a certain combined value that can be used to earn part of this reward pool. Introducing a tax pretty much equals reducing the reward pool. What will happen is that card values equally will go down. This makes the card value drop from Modern to Wild even bigger and nobody in their right mind is ever going to want to pay for packs knowing this.
Low Old Card Prices = Nobody buys new cards/packs = No Money to Support SPS Price = Lower Earnings = Card Prices drop more = Dead Spiral/Negative Feedback Loop
High Card Prices = Willingness for new players to buy new cards/packs = More Money to Support SPS Price = Higher Earnings = Card Prices Increase More = Positive Feedback Loop
Fair points but just the mentality of having to pay to play now I think is going to have a negative impact over all on new players etc. I could very well be wrong but that's just my two cents on the topic.
Correct, it will be negative for new players but the whole point is that new players will begin in modern, no new player should be starting in wild. If new players become old players over time, they may transition to wild and buy more wild cards then, but by that stage they are no longer a new player.
I personally think this idea is genius and should have been implemented long ago. I personally can't think of a single downside for the game (and as a wild only player/botter).
When CL rotates out of modern, it is still going to be the cheapest way to get into the game by far. And you can currently buy maxed untamed cards for as little as $6 (and dropping quickly). That won't be the case with rebellion or the next set until they rotate to Wild. So, new players are going to be attracted to wild and they will be confronted with a choice. Either they can buy a bunch of powerful and inexpensive cards and start playing in Wild (and have to pay to play-yuck!) or they can dump a bucket of money on modern cards but skip the pay to play. Both options have an element of feeling bad and that means most players will not stick around.
That was kind of where my head was at @imno I mean it makes ok sense now I guess but next year when the new pack drops I don't see it being a good option but I guess we burn that bridge when we get there again?
Hey Cryptoeater! I agree there are benefits to this idea, but to say there aren't downsides isn't true. Like anything in life, there will be trade offs.
For one, this earlier comment you made elsewhere :
While more of the pool will be available for the remaining players, this statement will not be true for all players. The immediate effect will effectively chop off the bottom of the distribution and reallocate the reward pool across the player base that is paying the fee. But some of those players will not recover their season pass fee. This is simply logic... because if every player could recover, then profit-seeking bots will scale back in until the bottom is unprofitable again.
A second notable downside is it will reduce the demand and utility of low bcx wild cards. Low BCX cards have limited value on land and will probably be at the bottom end of value in wild ranked due to competitive forces. So the floor prices could be quite unstable. I suppose we will see there, markets are gonna market anyways.
Finally, the third downside I've thought about is that the ranked playerbase in wild is likely to erode from the bottom, just like we saw in Modern. If lower value accounts drop from wild, and fewer bots are profitable, then maxed wild decks will start to reset lower and lower, creating a similar chokepoint in ranked leagues like we see in modern currently.
All in all, there are some clear benefits to this proposal, and I don't want to be all doom and gloom.
But I'd also urge you to temper your enthusiasm and remember that nothing comes without tradeoffs.
Players that have bought bronze and silver wild decks may not be able to sell them economically to rotate to modern and may feel abandoned. I wanted to give them a voice so I've encouraged them to tell their stories here.
It's around 3 vouchers a day. Otherwise, there are plenty of ways to get a return on older cards. Land, rentals etc.
Sure, there are a few ways to get some kind of income from older cards today. But do you really think that after this proposal passes, that we won't see even more proposals that continue to erode the earning potential of Wild cards?
This proposal is just one part of an concerted and ongoing campaign to eliminate the value of older cards. The goal is to pressure players into continuously pumping money into the ecosystem, and older cards hinder that from happening as long as they have any financial utility.
Each time one of these proposals passes, we can excuse it by saying, "But you can still earn with old cards by doing X"... until that is no longer true.
I don't.
I think you have a point of view, but there are many people with a lot of wild cards that are voting for this proposal. Obviously they have a different point of view on the importance of this proposal and the long term benefit to the wild cards.
I am one of them. Sure the prices may go down in the short run, but I own my cards for as long as 6 years. I constantly am adding to my collection and have even been buying the recent sets. So I would say that my actions speak louder than my words for the impact of this proposal on the long term health of the game.
Having said that, people will say I'm wrong and that's ok. Everyone should always have an opinion and try to learn from each experience to improve their position in life.
I wish I had your optimism, Dave. After they relegated older cards to a lower-payout league, I never dreamed that they'd keep going after Wild players. I was wrong, and here we are, looking at the latest in a long line of proposals designed to hurt the earning potential of older cards. What reason would anyone have to think this will be the last one?
The irony is that, despite my unhappiness with the direction of this game, I am also still always adding to my collection (I recently obtained Venka, and I play her every day - she is awesome). But you and I are have been with this game for a while, and we've "drunk the Koolaid", as they say.
Why would any new player look at Splinterlands and want to collect cards in this ecosystem? People who collect NFTs and trading cards do so because they have hope that their assets will grow in value over time.
Splinterlands has a built-in mechananism to guarantee that the card you buy today will plummet in value and utility once it inevitably rotates out of Modern. And if this wasn't enough, with seemingly every passing week, we get a new proposal or rule change to erode that value even more. This is not normal. Baseball card collectors don't have to worry that their cards will spontaneously degrade after 2 years, or that Topps will introduce a $4 fee per month to keep older cards that they've already bought.
I don't know you Dave, but I read your comments in these proposals, and you seem like a genuinely good person who always treats people with respect, even when you disagree with them.
I wish that Splinterlands treated their OG players with a similar level of respect. These are people who've spent thousands of dollars on cards - sometimes their life savings - supporting Splinterlands from the start, because they believed in the game, despite the untold risks (I'm not even counting myself among them, as I only started during Untamed).
Without these folks, we wouldn't have Splinterlands today. But what do they get in return? Not only has their initial card investment shrunk to a fraction of its original value, but now they get treated like dirt. Now we put them in the same category as "Bot farms". We accuse them of only "taking from the game without giving anything back", even though the vast majority have paid in far more than they will ever get back. I guess we live in a "what have you done for me lately" world, but I had hoped for better from this game that has meant so much to me.
Thank you for the compliment @catotune. That is a very nice thing to say.
I realize we have a different opinions about what this will do for both the players and the game. I hope you stick around and find out, but if you didn't then I also understand.
As you said, I am optimistic in general. And of course I hope I'm right so we can all benefit. Thank you for the respectful conversation!
I wish the plenty of ways to get a return on old cards was true. With the exception of a few that most people don't own like a maxed kitty (which currently rents for 30% of what it did a few months ago), there's no money in the rental market and land is pretty stagnant. The cheapest maxed dice and untamed cards are currently under $7. If DEC were at peg, some untamed cards would actually be below burn value right now. Wouldn't be that way if there was a return to be had.