Guh. . . I'll have to read more to make sure I understand the (additional) nerf to Starter cards, but it paints a rather disappointing picture. Splinterlands has a critical flaw in its overall design where NUX (new user experience) is concerned, as a steadily widening chasm has appeared to block the way.
Think of it like this: You start a game for the first time and see that after playing a dozen or so games, you earn a few cards. They're all commons, but it's progress all the same. This incentivizes continued play by establishing an expectation that players will be rewarded for playing. This is so common to collectible games that it's not unreasonable to expect the same from Splinterlands.
Splinterlands defies this process by instead giving new players the impression that you can't earn anything. You spend money to play, then you use the cards you "bought," and you're massively penalized for doing. Nobody likes spending money on a game only to immediately realize it wants you to spend more money almost immediately. Worse yet, I guarantee you some players don't even bother to look past the "-100% RP" penalty to see what caused it.
They just quit.
Fingers crossed Splinterlands figures out this grave oversight by introducing some way for new players to progress within the game without feeling pressured to spend on top of spending.
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I agree with that the new user experience would be rather daunting. The "starting curve" has definitely increased from when I started just 6 months ago.
However, I do understand where they're coming from too, with tons of bot accounts in bronze just grinding it out with starter cards. And from a botter's perspective, even a 1 dec profit is worthwhile as they can go on and on all day with zero effort.
I think what Splinterlands has to do is make the entire game appealing as a GAME on it's own. So less play2earn emphasis in its marketing/adverts and more of a focus on it's appeal as a TCG.
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