All of us who play Splinterlands regularly clearly sense that something is wrong with the game; that the game is somehow broken. This, in turn, gives rise to a kind of collective negativity that further rarifies the game’s ecosystem.
And the evidence, in my opinion, is clear. From time to time, a patch is almost mandatory to solve a specific problem. Sometimes to limit the apparent disproportionate advantage of bots, or to limit the profits that many users have with very little investment (like me). Thus, obstacles and limitations are generally imposed so that abusers cannot continue taking advantage of these specific deficiencies, but they almost always end up generating other problems not foreseen with said patches.
Thus we have had proposals to eliminate CP (collection Power) as a requirement to advance in the leagues; then the leagues are eliminated, and now proposals to reinstate the CP arise again. The image that comes to mind is the dog chasing its tail.
I don’t know if it’s not clear, but all these proposals seem like nothing more than artificial manipulations to correct the consequences of a much more fundamental problem hidden within the mechanism of how Splinterlands works.
In search of the hidden problem: the BCX factor
Almost everything I have read about the problems that need to be solved in Splinterlands has to do with two basic aspects:
- Accounts of players who have not significantly invested in Splinterladns but extract the largest proportion of the rewards.
- How unfair it is to battle against automation, helpers and bot farms, which apparently have a better ratio of battles won.
But no one complains about the game itself, but about how some take advantage of certain technical or economic aspects of the game. That is to say, the game as such, with its monsters, rarities, abilities and its ability to entertain is simply excellent.
Only when the community analyzes the general performance it realizes that some players have been taking advantage of certain aspects; that even when they take the time, the ability to play and the amount of money invested, it does not equate to what those accounts obtain with very little effort.
So, if we are all playing under exactly the same conditions and rules, how is it possible that some players can have advantages over others? And this is when the Principle of Sufficient Reason must be applied, because everything must have a reason, cause or ground.
The basic premise of the Splinterlands game
In principle, Splinterlands is a battle game between two teams of monsters. Players preselect their teams and then the battle unfolds automatically once both players submit their teams. Because there are a large number of possible combinations of abilities, monsters, type of attacks, mana, etc., it is very unlikely that the outcome of a battle can be predicted in advance.
But the reality is that, apparently, the outcome of battles can be predicted, and helpers and bot farms are taking advantage of this fact.
Playing to lose constantly is not fun at all in a game, and even more so when it is not clearly understood how it is possible to lose so many times in a row.
This problem is considerably aggravated in Splinterlands because another of the game’s premises is that it has a very important economic component: it is a game of playing to earn money. Therefore, greed plays a predominant role in almost all aspects, proposals and opinions related to the game.
In theory, if a player plays better and better, and consistently invests in acquiring new cards, then he should improve his ratio of battles won and therefore win more money. But, history reveals that it does not happen and the investments made in Splinterland monotonically trend towards zero as time passes. No matter how much you invest, assets in Splinterlands are constantly losing their value, even though another of the game’s basic premises is that all assets are scarce and should become more valuable as time passes.
So the question we need to ask ourselves is why are Splinterlands assets steadily losing their value? And for me, the answer to that question is associated with the basic mechanics of the game, which implicitly has a mechanism of value destruction of game assets.
Analyzing the game mechanics.
I’m going to create a series of imaginary battles between two selected monsters. The idea is to predict what the outcome of a series of battles will be when taking into account the elements that players value most in the game, such as the level of investment and strength of the cards used in the battle.
I have decided to put my favorite card in Splinterlands to battle, PIRATE CAPTAIN (I don’t know why I love this card even though I don’t own it, maybe because it was the first card I sat down to analyze at the time). We are going to have two PIRATE CAPTAINs fight against each other. On the left side we have a level 9 PIRATE CAPTAIN against a level 4 PIRATE CAPTAIN on the right. The combat rules are close range and mana 3. Obviously a completely fictional combat, but it is interesting for the analysis of the game mechanics.
In the image are all the statistics of this card, so that we can analyze the result of this fight. The key question is who wins this match?
The first thing we notice in this combat analysis is that our level 9 monster has 3 attack, 6 speed and 2 health; while our level 4 monster has 2 attack, 3 speed with 4 health. I don’t know what you think, but with those statistics it is highly probable that the level 4 monster will defeat the level 9 monster.
What the hell! How is it possible that an investment of only 9 cards can beat more than 229 cards? That means that if I invest 25 times more than another player in that same monster I do not have a minimum guarantee that I will win in a one-on-one battle. This is insane.
As a player, and especially as an investor, this should set off all the alarms and be identified as a colossal red flag. If you invest more and more, there is no guarantee that you will have a better chance of winning battles.
If I were a smart guy, I would start to identify the minimum number of cards I require for a given monster to win battles, since any excess is simply a waste of money. A clear consequence of all this is that you will not see any interest in having a level 9 or 10 monster, because there is no type of relative advantage that justifies that level of investment. And if there is no interest in increasing the level of the cards, it means that they are left over and must be auctioned off at a very low price in the market if you want to get any kind of economic benefit from that card.
And if you start analyzing the statistics of all the monsters you will find many similar situations. In fact, it is more the norm than isolated situations.
Does that mean that the monster statistics are poorly designed and conceived? NO, in fact, I’m convinced that the stats are almost perfect for almost all monsters. And while this is confusing, to the point that I’ve read that some are already proposing altering monster stats to address the hidden problem they haven’t identified, stats are not the mechanism that destroys asset value in Splinterlands.
The battle from another perspective: what the battle should really be like
Let’s reanalyze the PIRATE CAPTAIN’s previous battle. If we were to imagine a battle scene where our monsters are facing each other, we should not imagine it as Splinterlands presents them on the battle screen. Splinterlands shows us a single monster that represents our team, but in reality, in the case of our level 9 PIRATE CAPTAIN, there are at least 229 monsters that have shown up for battle. IT’S NOT A SINGLE MONSTER! It’s a whole army of monsters that come to defend our honor. So why does Splinterlands only show a single monster with a slightly higher stat than our opponent. What is really happening is that 229 PIRATE CAPTAIN are facing off against 9 PIRATE CAPTAIN on the right. Now, I ask the question again: What should be the outcome of this battle?
Clearly, that level 4 PIRATE CAPTAIN shouldn’t have the slightest chance of defeating my level 9 PIRATE CAPTAIN. And this is the real hidden problem with the game mechanics in Splinterlands. It seems like a small thing, but obfuscating the number of elements of the army that shows up for battle is what completely destroys the value of all the assets in Splinterlands.
If we continue developing the battle step by step, what should happen is that 229 PIRATE CAPTAIN attack my opponent, and only 9 counterattack my monster. The damage to my health should be proportional to that attack and not as if it were an army equivalent to mine. Math speaking, the damage should be equivalent to 9/229, which is equivalent to a 4% reduction of my monster’s health. Why? Because it is simple logic, if nine monsters attack 229, they cannot reduce the health of all 229 monsters. In the other case, if 229 monsters attack 9 monsters with their arrows, then I am obviously going to hit each and every one of those monsters and should effectively reduce that monster’s health by 3 units.
Until now, the economic component has not had any type of relevance in the game, since the economic part of this game is based on arbitrary prices that are assigned to the cards. When these cards clearly demonstrate that they have no influence on the game’s economy, they end up depreciating considerably. And this will always be the trend unless economic investments are integrated with the game mechanics.
The BCX factor is the only element that can amalgamate economic investments in the game with the game mechanics.
A simple proposal to fix everything
In short, the proposal is:
The damage a monster takes to its health must be proportional to the BCX of the attacking monster.
As simple as that. Nothing else is required for the entire Splinterlands economy to begin to grow, because what is achieved with this simple change is to integrate the investments into the game mechanics, and therefore into the results of each of the battles.
Examples of how the game mechanics work
Take as an example the battle between two PELACOR MERCENARY, one level 2 with a BCX of 5 and the other level 3 with a BCX of 14. The statistics of these monsters are shown in the following figure.
As we see, the PELACOR MERCENARY level 2 has a Melee attack of 2, a speed of 2, a shield and 9 health. The Pelacor Mercenary level 3 has a Melee attack of 3, a speed of 2, a shield and 9 health. Simply put, the only difference between these two monsters is that level 3 has a melee attack of 3 while level 2 has a melee attack of 2. If the BCX factor is not taken into account, there is not much difference between these two monsters.
According to the proposal, the BCX factor does matter, and therefore we are going to take it into account. Thus, the battle occurs between 5 pelacor level 2 against 14 pelacor level 3. In this case, each time the pelacor level 3 attacks the pelacor level 2, there are 14 melee attacks 3 against 5 pelacor, therefore, there is an effective reduction of Pelacor’s health level 2 of 3 health units. But, when the level 2 pelacor attacks the level 3 pelacor, only 5 pelacor are attacking 14 pelacors, therefore the damage to health is 5/14 or what is the same, a reduction of 0.70 (0.35 x 2 melee attacks) to the level 3 pelacor’s health.
Evidently, Pelacor level 3 is much more likely to emerge victorious in this contest against Pelacor level 2, as it should have been since the emergence of this game.
The most important thing achieved with this proposal is to integrate the value of the investments that a player has made in cards into the game mechanics. This means that investments in cards have greater weight or preponderance in the outcome of battles. Now, every card counts towards advancing and making a difference in a given battle.
Is it complicated to implement this proposal?
It is ridiculously easy to implement this proposal because the only thing you have to do is take into account the monster’s BCX and show the monster’s health ( and all defenses in general) as a health bar instead of numbers, or simply in numbers but now with decimals.
Benefits of adopting this proposal
The main and most important thing of all is that it integrates investments into the game mechanics, and this eliminates the perverse mechanism of destroying the value of Splinterlands assets. In the current mechanism there is a very weak relationship between investments and game mechanics, leaving the value of Splinterlands assets to be imposed almost exclusively by speculation on card prices, whose perceived usefulness is practically nil.
The cards begin to have greater value per se, since each new unit contributes to the outcome of the battles. This is important for new players or players who have basic cards. A level I card with a BCX of 1 will no longer be perceived the same as a level I card with a BCX of 4.
Battles are automatically fairer, as the chance of a Tier I card beating a higher Tier card is drastically reduced.
Of course, extracting rewards with very little investment will be drastically reduced, because the advantage in battles will go to the players who have invested in their decks.
In my humble opinion, this simple change will create a positive economic change in the entire Splinterlands ecosystem, and will make constant patch proposals to balance and repair the economy unnecessary.
Another benefit, which I will discuss later, is that rare, epic and legendary cards will regain their true value, becoming essential and important in any deck. A very concerning red flag right now is that a legendary card is selling for pennies, even for much less than many common and rare cards.
How to implement this proposal.
The implementation of this proposal is direct and simple, since you only have to take into account the BCX of each monster that participates in a battle. The only complication that arises is that rare, epic and legendary cards have different BCX than common cards, and even in different editions. Therefore, what you have to do is assign a multiplying factor for each of the existing rarities.
For example, rare cards can have a factor of 10X. That is, each BCX of a rare card is equivalent to an army of 10 monsters to account for their attack and perceived damage to their health. An Epic card can be assigned a factor of 25X, that is, each BCX counts as an equivalent army of 25 monsters. And in the case of legendary cards the multiplier factor can be 50X.
Again, this makes the battles fairer. So the legendary cards that are so rare and unique will now not be able to be easily defeated by common or very low BCX cards. I assume that for some reason they are Legendary, and I have always imagined that they are legendary because they are capable of destroying entire armies by themselves.
Final words
Well, I’m tired of writing and I want to dedicate myself to doing other things. I think the basic idea is already laid out and it seems to me that a change as simple as the one I’ve proposed can radically change the economy of the entire game.
@clayboyn , what do you think of this proposal?
I hope you think it’s a good idea and if so I hope you reblog it so that it is taken into account. If you don’t think it’s a good idea, at least I hope you comment to say hello. Happy day for everyone.
A very interesting article, even though I think it is not the reason why the assets are loosing worth.
They are loosing worth since we have to many BCX available for the players who want them.
Why this? CL was just immensly overprinted. The other editions hold a bit better, but since most players left the game already, even the neweer editions fall, since more players want to sell, than to buy. This can be seen by the great "success" the Baron had. He is an incredible card but the event only brought around 200.000 DEC. Laughable.
If not new impulses to gameplay come, differentiating Splinterlands from all the really good games coming out on other block chains our assets will devalue further until they reach 0 $ worth. Latest when the company is bancrupt.
Maybe you're right, and the reason cards lose value is because there are too many BXCs for too few interested players. However, I interpret that we are losing too many players and therefore there are plenty of cards.
The general perception today is that CL was immensely overprint, but at the time it corresponded to player growth projections. The problem, as you point out, is that the players left the game, and basically because the fall of the crypto market began. And that is the part that bothers me the most about the game, that its financial and economic destiny is so linked to the ups and downs of the crypto market and not to the benefits of the game or the company's ability to keep its players.
I am assuming that it is possible to have a stable and constantly growing economy regardless of the crypto market. Therefore, it is necessary to identify the problem that is preventing the development of the game, and apparently it is an excess of BCXs. After much analysis, from a purely optimistic point of view, I have come to the conclusion that the problem is not so much the excess of BCXs as the perception of usefulness of those BCXs. Nobody is interested in increasing the BCX of their collection because it lacks any financial, economic and, above all, in-game utility.
If there is no natural demand for those BCXs they end up accumulating, and any excessive accumulation of a good that is not in demand is simply garbage. Burning all that excess is not an option either, because it does not change the perception that it is a garbage product and that idea is strengthened in the community. What is required is that each and every one of these cards be useful, and that there are no weak cards but ones with low BCX.
And you are absolutely right, Splinterlands needs a new boost that vitalizes the game and changes the general perception of its current players.
Thank you very much for commenting @kheldard1982, it is really appreciated.
The problem is that the game did not develop further. So other games have overtaken them. On Hive SPL is still the most developed game, but there are a lot of other blockchains, which are having better games in the meantime.
SPL needs to reinvent the game. New game modes and a better new player experience. Having now all players be able to play their best deck against reach other is not exactly a good npe in my opinion.
But who am I. I hope now they will look really into the issues and not only fighting the bots. That is not the main issue.
I'd suggest maybe asking Matt to review this. I don't really know how much dev work this would take and it would likely create some balance issues.
Thanks @clayboyn for commenting.
I didn't want to bother Matt until I had some kind of feedback from the community. I understand that this channel is not the most suitable for this type of discussions and proposals, since no one usually participates, but it is the only one I use. I wanted to see other players' opinions on how they perceive the excess of BCXs, whether as a problem or an opportunity to improve Splinterlands' economy.
Regarding whether this proposal could cause an imbalance in the game, I firmly believe that it will: it will shift the balance towards the players who have invested the most time and money in their decks. The game is already unbalanced, and it is evident in the number of tricks that have to be constantly made to return things to balance, even if it is momentary. I know you are referring to an imbalance of power between the different cards, but that is the idea, that there are no weak cards but rather cards with few BCX.
My objective in mentioning you is that you read about the proposal, and become a little contaminated with this idea, so that at some point in the discussion of so many possible changes, your unconscious presents it to you as a possible great solution.
Again, thank you very much for participating and have a great day.
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