Some big Splinterland news broke on yesterdays town-hall. That news is that the Splinterlands team is thinking about making Reward Cards Soul Bound. For those who might not be familiar with the term Soul Bound; Soul Bound Reward Cards would mean Soul Bound Reward cards would be non-transferable. Put another way one could not trade their reward cards. Currently the Brawl System has their own set of cards that can be found in Gladius Packs. Cards found in Gladius Packs are Soul Bound so making cards Soul Bound to a specific account isn't something that is completely new to Splinterlands. To the best of my understanding of the potential new change current Reward Cards would remain tradable. This change would be placed on new, yet to be introduced Reward Cards.
RentMoney's Thoughts
As much as I hate to say it as it would hurt my overall ROI if/when implemented. In truth I think Soul Bound Reward cards is likely the best idea the Splinterlands team has come up with that fights against bots in which I heard them speak of. When cards become Soul Bound bot owners will have to sell accounts instead of individual cards. This turns some of the negative impacts bots have on the game into a positive as its likely a percentage of players who actually purchase an account with Soul Bound cards attached would be human players. A percentage of those human players will likely be new players. Its not the most ideal situation but its an improvement over allowing bots to continuously earn and sell individual cards. Selling an account of bulk cards is likely to mean that account will have to be sold at a deep discount when compared to selling individual cards. Thus hurting the overall ROI of bots (something I'm in favor of).
I've always said that Reward Cards hurt the sale of the main packs. The reason being; why purchase a pack of five cards for $4+ USD when you can open "packs" for free in ranked play. I'm a classic example of a person who implements such a strategy. If you take a look at my collection its two main card sets is BETA and REWARD Cards. How does this get in the way of my Splinterlands Play/Earnings? It doesn't, if I wanted to I could still make it to diamond league using the same cards I had Since ALPHA/BETA with a mixture of Reward Cards to help my progression. Now imagine someone with my mindset that has an army of bots in which they unload any won rewards onto the marketplace. Soul Bound cards removes those sales from market and guess what happens to the extra income that previously was spent on Reward Cards. That's right it migrates to other cards thus pushing up their prices. So while I'm not ecstatic about Reward Cards potentially becoming Soul Bound I can see the logic and reasoning for it. HOWEVER and this is a big HOWEVER; current and past Reward Cards should never be changed to Soul Bound as they were earned and purchased on Market while advertised as Tradable. Lets hear your thoughts below in the comment section.
What is Splinterlands
Splinterlands is a blockchain game built on the Hive Network. The game itself utilizes NFT's for game play. These NFT's can be won in battle and/or purchased from the official Splinterlands marketplace or many other secondary markets. Game play rewards players with cryptocurrency and in game assets. Click here to get started with Splinterlands.
Splinterlands Town-Hall (11/21/2022)
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Bots are just a nightmare the team is having to deal with and some of the means being deployed to fight bots tends to hurt especially the lower league players. I play in the Gold but wishes conditions are favorable to lower leagues because that is where newer players come in and should be retained. Soul bound might just be a tougher means to be deployed, So this is telling me I can't buy a reward card if I want to have it leveled up.
Perhaps I need to deliberate on this to see the overall positives.
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I think the idea is to encourage play and combining of cards while fighting against bots who earn and dump. Something I did forget to mention in my post is that the plan (at current time) was said to be to allow Reward Cards to be burned when they are maxed.
Thanks for further elaboration, hopefully, it works out well for the game. Regardless am in for the long run because I enjoy the game.
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I'm not sure this is a good move, it discourages play. Not to mention that it is an anti-crypto movement. The Cards must be the player's. But I hope I'm wrong and that the splinterlands guys are right.
Discouraging play might happen and there is certainly a feeling to Soul Bound cards feeling icky but in fairness we are talking reward cards not cards that come out of purchasable packs. To me that is the key difference. I'm not sold on the idea but I do see the logic and potential benefits. Counter-point: it might actually increase play. This is because it would make sense to combine and MAX every reward card if they are Soul Bound. There would be zero reason to hold stacks of level one/two/three ect. It was also mentioned that once maxed they can be burned for DEC.
hmmm... when I first read this statement I was like "what?!". but following your reasoning it sounds like a logical consequence.
still and however I think it will again(!) put pressure on the secondary markets. fighting bots is fine, but on the other hand they also create demand on the rental and card sales market.
Still I go with your reasoning ;)
Bots will likely continue to run regardless. They would just adapt to the new changes but with the key difference being they can't dump cards on the marketplace. For this reason I suspect minimal collateral damage done to the rental market but one won't know unless implemented.
A game that rewards assets that are valueless is a traditional game, not an asset based one. Whether the assets are valueless because they are not tradeable, or they are valueless because they are vastly oversupplied vs what the market demands makes no difference. They are still valueless.
Certainly, the bots will stop playing Splinterlands when the rewards are valueless.
But if the Splinterlands team wants to have an assets based game without the bots, they are going to need an approach that is different from "make the rewards valueless." That's what the bots do by oversupplying the market! Is there a difference between becoming a traditional game because bots sucked all the value out of the rewards and becoming a traditional game because no tradable rewards are awarded?
I don't care much about botting. But I do care about farming--just getting rewards to get the rewards and sell them. If a bot wants to roll its rewards back into the game and play champion league, so be it. If a bronze league human wants to just keep selling off reward cards and not advance in the game, that's the botting problem. At a smaller scale, yes, but the same problem.
Farming needs to be addressed, yes. But addressing farming by making the rewards valueless just brings the negative consequences of farming down on us all in one fell swoop. Farmers might actually be better, they do it more gradually, at least.
I don't know. It's a problem, but I can't shake the feeling that you address it on the front end (the farming behavior as it is happening) or you won't be able to address it at all without just saying, this is a traditional game, nothing to earn here. Which I think is fine, too. Just own up to it.
Just because Reward cards become Soul Bound it doesn't mean they are valueless. It only means they can't be individually traded. They still have play-ability and can be burned for DEC when maxed. Plus they add to collection power. Bots won't stop playing, there is still SPS and Booster Packs in the daily rewards. They can build decks of MAX reward cards and then sell the full account. This potentially stops bots/farmers/general players from earning rewards for the purpose of dumping on market.
I think soul bound reward cards would be good for new players to build their accounts. Perhaps they could remove any penalty for rewards payouts for soul bound cards.
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The penalty would almost certainly need to be removed or re-worked to not include upcoming Reward Cards.
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Soul bound cards are no longer NFTs they are just an ingame asset. The only original, unique thing about Splinterlands are the NFTs.
I'm not a big fan of the potential change either but I do see the logic and potential benefits. I guess we will have to wait and see if it gets implemented or not.
I agree with your analysis. Its just a BIG announcement. I was a bit emotional
Soul bound cards means they are hard to level up since you can only rely on what you get from chest. That means this reward cards will only reduce our earnings as long as we didn't level it up at least one league below the league we are playing. I am playing Splinterlands fro a year and I still wasn't able to maxed out all my reward cards even when I was also buying on the market.
A fair point about leveling. Splinterlands might need to increase the amount of Reward Cards handed out if Soul Bound or possibly reduce the amount needed to level so individual players can level in a reasonable amount of game-play time.
Wouldn't they just burn the cards and sell the DEC instead of selling the account itself?
From my understanding only MAX soul bound cards will be able to be burned but yes some might take the option of burning over selling the account depending on which brings more value.
Oh I see, definitely missed that part of your post.
I'm in favor of soul locking cards tbh but I'm not really sure I agree with limiting to only max level cards.
Although 'free to play' or generally low investment players could be argued to hurt the game economy it has been proven that low level players that may only spend marginal amounts on the game are critical to stick around and this would effectively end the idea of progression for those players which ensures they likely spend $0 instead of the $5 to $10 here and there which is a detriment. These types of games require at least some form of progression for all levels of players or else that addiction loop that keeps people coming back breaks and you lose players.
I am not a fan of this change and it will also disrupt the market. It means that people can't even upgrade their cards if they want to spend. Treating it as an asset that you can't even trade around means that this isn't even an NFT anymore. So I guess people would have no choice but to burn cards if they even want to convert anything.
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That is a fair stance to take. Its likely they (Splinterlands) will have to do some adjustments to Reward card combine and/or drop rates of Reward cards in ranked play if they do decide to implement Soul Bound Cards. Players will need to be able to level within a reasonable time frame. That in itself might be hard to balance.
I don't think it's a terrible idea to have some non-transferable reward cards. I think having just that as a reward/prize me ght be a mistake though. Maybe some combination would be better? I played back in the alpha/beta days and I don't remember losing so easily and being so difficult to get to the different tiers.
I don't think it will be only Soul Bound reward cards offered for ranked play. We still have SPS and Packs along with Merits and who knows what else in the future. If you mean Mix and Match kinda deal. Some Soul Bound Reward cards with Tradable that is an interesting idea but I'd personally prefer 100% of either or for any future Reward sets. Its certainly harder to win these days but the BETA/ALPHA cards are still strong enough in league play. Tournament play is another animal altogether.
Why not remove gifting out rewards cards entirely in chests, and pay out in SPS instead? In this way, we the players decide how to use that SPS: stack, trade, or spend (packs, cards, or rent).
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That is an interesting idea that I won't be surprised gets implemented at some point but we need something other than what we already have to replace them. More SPS in chest just means the SPS supply for rank play shrinks faster which puts a shorter life span on the token being dropped to ranked players.
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Yes, the SPS would be used up faster so we need a different approach then. Instead of reward cards, perhaps we need a series of new specific reward tokens?
NFT tokens
Maybe we get rewards for a token that can be used only for buying cards, such as what we could do when we used to get DEC. These specific buying tokens - DEC-NFT perhaps, to differentiate them from DEC - could be soul-bound so only able to be spent on building up that player's own collection; cards themselves can then be made saleable through the marketplaces, or be used as players see fit (e.g., through delegation and gifting). In this way, we the players take control over what cards we get, and demand for certain cards will push up their prices and in turn, over time, all cards will go up in price. Also, removing reward cards from the algorithm and replacing them with new tokens should make the Splinterlands network operate more efficiently, and perhaps remove the need to spend monies on new servers.
Packs tokens
We could also perhaps have a separate reward token for buying packs, maybe DEC-PX? The gifting of merits in the chests has successfully encouraged players to join guilds. Maybe a similar approach with packs will push their sales along and remove the need to burn CL packs and others going forward?
Seems to me that a lot of the decisions being made by Splinterlands management are being done behind closed-doors, with the end users (we, the players!) having to suffer fait accompli results that are over-complicating what really is a very simple game: power to the people!
I really like your first suggestion. It would help the rental market be healthy and players will be able to choose what card they want to purchase instead of getting random drops.
so our premiums will be worth less, which will cause people to rent less. so we make less in the rental market and our premiums are also worth less. to me, this looks like a loose/lose situation.....
to this you have to say reward cards already bring hardly any money when renting. but it has an advantage, because so dec comes from bots to real people and a fee of 5% disappear by this also!
if you can't sell and rent the cards now. many people will start to burn these cards. so dec will be printed again, and that's something we don't need at all we want dec to peg!
Why do you want to install a new declination machine? 😒
also, if the cards are not purchasable and rentable, you have to rely on luck, for example i play with 3 accounts, since the release of the reward cards every day and i haven't received a single countess sinash yet! and even if i would get one, i couldn't use it because i would get too much minus reward in the gold league if i use a 1bcx card there oO
I do not see how it should help against bots, but honestly it pisses me off also for a long time that the team at all proposals that are basically crap the argument bots advances. because you know you can wrap people around the finger because almost all are against bots. but unfortunately this is just a deception. because the team is not against bots. not only that they do not ban bots, no they now even advertise in the splinterlands game a page where you can order a bot!!!!!!!
Burning cards is something that is encouraged in this game as it creates scarcity which the game is centered around. In most cases (just like packs) their value comes after being out of print and/or a large amount is burned.
They likely can't ban bots or multi account holders because they encourage such play early on. I and others cautioned not to allow bots but ultimately the anti bot crew lost that battle. Now we see the issues that are arising in which the anti-bot crew warned about. Getting big companies to sponsor games and getting the general masses to enter the game requires one account per person. The general public do not like bots or multi-accounting. Example. If a big company put up $1000 in a Splinterlands game they want to make sure each pay spots goes to an individual person. This is because they want each of those people talking about their brand. They don't want Ten people/bots with multiple accounts earning multiple pay-spots as that gives them less bang for their buck. As for how it hurts bots, I went over one reason in my post. It hurts their ROI. The change also stops bots/ large multi account holders from earning and dumping on market. I'm not a big fan of the potential change but I do see the logic and reasoning behind it.
``Burning cards is something that is encouraged in this game as it creates scarcity which the game is centered around. In most cases (just like packs) their value comes after being out of print and/or a large amount is burned.´´
in what way does this apply to soulbound reward cards? these would only print dec but not increase card value, as these cards would no longer have any value because they cannot be sold, cannot be rented, but can only be burned ;)
splinterlands promotes splex on the hompage and splex is partner of archmage bot. so the splex hompage inevitably leads to the bot. so splinterlands promotes a bot. so i don't know how much faith you can give the team when they act like they want to do something against bots!
Scarcity will still bring value. You assume everyone will burn cards. Some will, others will opt to hold them in an account and sell the full account with full sets of Soul Bound cards attached to said account. If the Soul Bound cards in said account have high play value and/or are scarce because many are already burned its likely such an account would be more valuable than an account without such things.
i don't know if a company should calculate with account sales, because this is not a serious business if you don't know what the seller does with the keys
Keys can be changed by the purchaser before sending funds.
Use an intermediate like one should do in any private sale.
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this is a big NOOOOOO since they capped levels in every league to get the full rewards, so having a low level reward card soul bound is just having a playable card that is useless due to lack of level.