Proposal: Allow the Splinterlands team to whitelist specific users to the Gold Tier in the Ambassador Program, greatly incentivizing those users to refer new players into the game. The process used to determined who & how to whitelist will be up to the team.
Note - this is not yet in the proposal phase, though it will be as soon as I receive some feedback from the community
Details: The Splinterlands team previously redesigned the Ambassador program to encourage more referrals while reducing the possibility for abuse. The current system is good at the latter (reducing abuse) but introduced significant barriers to reaching the the Gold tier which is where referrers are able to earn a percentage on a user's future transactions.
Reaching 10 referrals with >$100 in market activity is difficult. As a result, influencers & content creators (particularly those outside of the Splinterlands ecosystem) have very little incentive to get involved. It's simply too much effort to get to the point where you can see a return.
When looking at the referral leaderboard, you can see quite a few users have a referrer:
However, the number is much lower when looking at Spellbooks.
And finally, you'll see that only TWO users have reached the Gold Tier where they are earning DEC from referrals.
To reach the Gold Tier, I had to provide very compelling offers to new referrals, which included set delegations, SPS delegations, pack & DEC airdrops, and more. I have spent >$1000 on new player incentives.
Clearly, the system isn't working as intended. It should be a strong enough incentive to get people to refer their friends, use their networks, etc. to reach new players. It should be a strong enough incentive for people to put their own incentive programs in place to encourage people to sign up under them. I've done this with some success, and it's come at my own expense.
While we should keep barriers in place to generally prevent abuse, we need a way to reduce those barriers as needed.
The team will need to put in place a simple process for whitelisting. For example, this might be an application form with details on how the ambassador plans to market the product, and guidelines laid out by the team on what is expected (as well as reinforcing the T&Cs). The team would then review applications to decide who to whitelist. Influencers both outside as well as within the current Splinterlands ecosystem would be able to apply (for example I think people like bronzedragon and bulldog1205 should be immediately whitelisted). The team would also proactively reach out to certain influencers offering to whitelist them for the program, in an effort to amplify referrals.
"Is it fair / "What about me?": Some people might read this proposal and think "wait, if influencers get to be in the Gold Tier for free, why can't I get it for free?". My answer would be twofold:
(1) Think of the big picture. If you're a part of this ecosystem, you want player growth. You have a LOT more to gain if we have a referral system that works and is used by people with large networks to onboard new players, than by getting a small percentage of DEC from a handful of referrals.
(2) If you legitimately believe you could be raking in referrals, then you can apply to get whitelisted. And then live up to it - i.e. refer players into the game.
I plan to speak with Clay and the SPS DAO to formalize this proposal. Before doing so, I would like to hear any feedback or concerns.
Thanks for thinking about how to grow the Splinterlands ecosystem Brave. I've said this for quite awhile now. If the team is given this flexibility, I'll make sure we use it for people/businesses that are actively engaging and searching for more players.
I'll vote for it if it becomes a proposal.
Thanks Dave. I should've pointed out in the post that this idea originally came from you & the team. In any case I'm happy to revive it so we can hopefully get more referrals into the game.
I'm simply happy that you are focused on helping us grow, no need to point out anything else :)
I know how hard it is to get people into the game. I have countless MtG connections and friendships from the 30+ years I've played the game, but in over 4+ years of talking up Splinterlands, I've got a grand total of ZERO people into the game. I even have a silver league modern deck I offer to people to take a spin through the game. Nada!
I will support any proposal that helps to support better incentives for referrals as long as people are not exploiting the system. Thank you @bravetofu for all that you do to support new players with the best new player offer available.
Would be great if you can try those MtG connections again...and again...and again. Surely there are some of those guys that would be interested. Do you have ideas on what they'd need in order to be convinced to try, or what you'd need in order to be able to convince them?
To be completely honest, I think the biggest issue is that it is hard to be all-in on more than one game at a time. When I decided to commit to Splinterlands, I left playing MtG almost entirely. I'm not sure my friends are ready to make that commitment, no matter how badly Hasbro is destroying the game I loved. I do post about Splinterlands in some of my MtG-themed discord servers, but still very little interest. I'm not giving up by any means, but just being honest that we really need to drive home the value of transparent blockchain digital ownership over the current cardboard shitshow.
Four years and nobody?
What exactly is it that fails to ignite interest or turns people off?
I'm not sure if people are turned off, I just think that these days, people have very little disposable income. I know when I decided to go all-in on Splinterlands, I reallocated my entire gaming budget to SPL and even started selling off portions of my MtG collection for SPL assets. As the world plunges deeper into authoritarianism, conflict, and financial chaos, there is going to be even less money to go around.
I continue to push on the advantages that make Splinterlands great: transparent blockchain print rates, trustless card renting, and digital ownership. But MtG has ALL of this (besides the true digital ownership) through the original Magic: Online client. Most of them still enjoy playing MtG. I never stopped enjoying playing MtG either, I just didn't have a community I could meet and play with regularly, so Splinterlands became a great option.
There is also the hurdle and desire to learn a new game and take on a new challenge. Many are unfamiliar with Web3. Most people just aren't in the place where they want to give up on MtG the way I did. I won't stop trying though!
Thanks for your continuing efforts and the thoughtful response!
One thing that struck me was this: "I continue to push on the advantages that make Splinterlands great: transparent blockchain print rates, trustless card renting, and digital ownership".
Perhaps than focusing on those angles, try communicating the fun! I always say to people, iti's a fast, fun card game, me and my cards versus you and yours, with lots of fun and great rewards to be had.
Fun is a prerequisite. I guess I just assume that as a given.
There are a lot of games that are no fun at all, especially blockchain games!
The gold tier should be left 'for free' only to those who can bring results, if you white-list an influencer and brings 3 people in a year it doesn't make sense leave it
Having some performance requirements to maintain the tier (when whitelisted) is not a bad idea. If anything it might motivate influencers to at least try. At the beginning I'd probably prioritize making things easy and attractive though. However I'll let @davemccoy and @blazekos determine whether they want to add some rules around that.
I would agree with this, there will be rules we would institute to white-list someone.
Very well
Some good points. I've done what I could over the years and am on the list of top referrers, but it hasn't amounted to much.
You should get whitelisted. Hopefully that would encourage you to renew your efforts.
Dear Brave, I do completely agree on the proposal and I will support it. I saw how many efforts you put on that, investing your time and money and I cannot be more favorable to an enhancement of the program. Even more, at the light of the fact that we are not having an organic marketing.
Thanks Meredorn :)
Influencers are a major way gamers discover games to play. Whatever that get more outsiders to bring in users is a good move IMHO. I support this completely.
I like your proposal on this topic, and I want to add my thoughts.
We have learned that any drip of value will be hunted in this space.
Thus if there are tangible rewards in the system, then people will attempt to abuse that system for their own gain.
I think there are two things you could consider for your proposal:
I am not a fan of a completely unmonitored system for the Gold tier where rewards become "real" in the form of DEC. Whitelisting is good, but there should also be automated monitoring in place to catch/flag abusers, so that things just don't go on until they explode. (Simplest flagging rule would be: Transfer of assets/token to their referral account)
Thanks for the proposal. Community is a driver for adoption :)
Thanks for the thoughtful comment.
(1) I believe the ToS already protects against bad faith actors, but that is definitely something @davemccoy & team should ensure is the case. If someone is fast-tracked to Gold Tier and then blatantly violates the terms, I believe they should stop receiving benefits.
(2) On the scenario you're talking about, I think that's only the case if there's collusion between a referrer and referee accounts, and it should be prevented by the ToS and discovered with some automated analysis of what accounts are doing. E.g. if an account uses a referral code and then the referrer account is paying a dividend of some kind to the referee, that should flag something for the team to look at. It's not immediate disqualification of course, as some users may use rebates as an incentive to use their account as referrer (I've done this in the past, with mixed success), however if it's systematic and with no end, then it's likely abuse.
Completely agree with layers of automated monitoring. We need that even if we do nothing in fact, to ensure that any account who does reach Gold (whether granted or on its own) isn't abusing the rewards system.
I agree that unmonitored systems are not the right way to go. If this passes then we will strive to whitelist people that we can monitor.
Needing 10 referrals to count is ridiculous. ANY referral should count. You have consistently proven to act in the best interest of the game and community, not just in words but in actions. I would definitely support this and think it's actually a very important change. Thank you for bringing this up!!
Thanks Jimmy :)
I think it makes sense that the team put up barriers - they did so to prevent abuse. But without a whitelist mechanism it basically makes it extremely to incentivize referral activity.
A whitelist mechanism makes more sense than a blacklist mechanism as it should be easier to manage.
I like this idea of incentivising participation while safeguarding against abuse.
Wider and more active outreach benefits everyone and every new addition to the ecosystem is valuable.
I don't see a risk or downside, as long as this is monitored for abuse. Why would anyone who has a stake in the game vote against it ?
Nobody does it better than Brave!!
I hope this helps. Maybe just removing the $100 spend is fine? I think we have a complicated system compared to a lot of other referral programs which like you said is hard to reach anything meaningful.
It's a balance between encouraging participation and preventing abuse. Removing the $100 spend limit essentially requires the company to then monitor and blacklist as needed. Enabling a whitelist approach as suggested is likely safer, but it does require referrers to do some work to apply for whitelist or the company to do work to acquire referrers.
Frankly I'm fine with either one - I'd go with whatever is lower effort for the company.
Do you know if there was much abuse in the past? I personally think lower barrier for referrals is a good thing as that can play a big impact in growing players
I doubt that you will get new players to join with the current battle matching system. It's seriously flawed. Skill is irrelevant as you will always lose to a bot with more power. It makes playing at low levels boring and a waste of time. You might get them to fork out the initial $10 but they will drop out quickly once they have frustratingly tried renting andget pounded in bronze by a neverending series of tofus, lorcuses, dragons and maxed out bots.
battle matching needs to be based on owned/rented/delegated power. Basic maths dictates that when two players of equal skill fight each other the person with the most power will always win.
Also you want manual players at higher levels otherwise it will just be a few of you with just a bigger number of bots. You might as well circle jerk.
Thanks for sharing! - @alokkumar121
If someone plan to spend $1000 in ingame market. Instead, he registed 10 accounts and buy $100 each and transfer bought cards to his main account. He became gold tier without affiliate any people
That would be abusing the ToS. Can't refer yourself, otherwise there's a loophole. And it's exactly why there are requirements, and why we need a whitelist approach to let the company approve folks who can bypass the requirements.
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