š³ļø DAO Proposal: Weekly Free-to-Enter Tournament Sponsored by the DAO
Author: @roguepatton
Proposal Type: Community Engagement and Retention
Status: Pre-Proposal (Seeking Feedback)
š Summary
This proposal seeks DAO support to sponsor a weekly, free-to-enter tournament aimed at boosting community participation, engagement, and visibility of Splinterlands. Each week, players will compete for Conclave Arcana packs and unique bonus prizes like Yabbaās Pickle and Rebellion packs awarded to specific finishing places.
Additionally, we request Splinterlands development team support to expand the tournament duration to up to 5 days to accommodate a larger pool of participants and to ensure that everyone has a better chance to experience the event.
šÆ Purpose & Goals
The goals of this initiative:
- Increase player engagement through consistent, low-barrier competitive events.
- Promote newer set (Conclave Arcana) by distributing its packs as rewards.
- Introduce a fun and shareable community tradition (like the ā69th place pickleā prize).
- Promote more accessible modern cards by excluding promo cards and focusing on the core and reward sets.
- Accommodate a larger player pool by expanding the tournament duration to 5 days.
š Proposal Details
We propose a weekly, free-to-enter tournament sponsored by the DAO with the following structure:
š Prize Structure (per tournament)
- 1st place: 3x Legendary Conclave Arcana Packs
- 2nd place: 2x Legendary Conclave Arcana Packs
- 3rd place: 1x Legendary Conclave Arcana Pack
- 4thā8th: 1x Alchemy Conclave Arcana Pack each
- 9thā32nd: 1x Standard Conclave Arcana Pack each
š Bonus / Fun Prizes
69th place: 1x Yabbaās Pickle
Finishing places ending in 0 starting from 40 (i.e., 40, 50, 60, 70, etc.): 1x Rebellion Pack each
- This includes participants finishing from 40th to 100th place, with a Rebellion Pack awarded to each position that ends in "0" (i.e., 40th, 50th, 60th, 70th, and so on).
ā±ļø Tournament Structure
Duration: 5 days (to accommodate more players)
- Each day will reduce the number of players by 60%, ensuring a gradual elimination process that keeps the tournament competitive while giving participants more time.
Tournament Type: Ghost Card Tournaments (Open Tournaments)
- All core and reward cards will be allowed, but promo cards will be excluded. This makes it easier for newer players to compete without facing overpowered cards that are harder to access.
Format: Bronze Modern Format Tournament
- Excluding promo cards will allow the event to focus on more accessible and balanced gameplay if they started playing modern.
š° Budget Request
We estimate the weekly prize cost as follows (assuming market values at current prices):
- 6x Legendary Conclave Arcana Packs
- 5x Alchemy Conclave Arcana Packs
- 24x Standard Conclave Arcana Packs
- 7x Rebellion Packs (from 40th to 100th place, as described above)
- 1x Yabbaās Pickle
We request an initial 1-month trial sponsorship broken down as:
- 24 Legendary Conclave Arcana Packs
- 20 Alchemy Conclave Arcana Packs
- 96 Standard Conclave Arcana Packs
- 28 Rebellion Packs
- 4 Yabbaās Pickles
All prizing can be sourced directly from DAO-held assets.
š§ Rationale
- Low cost, high impact: A small number of packs can support consistent weekly engagement across the entire community.
- Casual-friendly: No entry fee removes any financial barrier.
- Community-building: Quirky prizes (like Yabbaās Pickle at 69th) add flavor and social shareability.
- Balanced format: Excluding promo cards in a modern format simulates and promotes the early steps into ranked play.
- Increased duration: A 5-day tournament schedule will allow more players to participate and make the tournament more enjoyable without forcing players into time-crunches.
- Promoting Conclave Arcana: By offering packs from the new set as prizes, the tournament helps promote Conclave Arcana and highlights its importance within the Splinterlands ecosystem.
š Success Metrics
- Number of unique participants per week
- Social media mentions/shares of the tournament and āPickle Prizeā
- Community sentiment (via feedback polls or Hive comments)
- Engagement growth over time
- Feedback on tournament duration and format
š³ļø Voting & Governance
This is a pre-proposal. If thereās positive community feedback, the full proposal will be submitted to the SPS DAO Governance Portal for voting.
Link: https://app.splinterlands.com/governance/proposals
š£ Call to Action
Do you support a weekly, community-driven tournament like this? Let me know in the comments!
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Would you participate in these tournaments?
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Any feedback on the tournament structure or prize setup?
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Should we go monthly instead of weekly?
If this post gets strong support, Iāll finalize the proposal and submit it for DAO funding.
š¬ Comments & Feedback
Comment below or reach out via Discord (Splinterlands server) if you have questions or ideas. Iād love community input before submitting the official proposal.
I do not like free to enter tournaments.
Mostly existing veterans enter
They get free rewards and they sell
Drives the economy down
Thanks for the feedback Azircon! I would present these points in rebuttal:
We have not done a free tournament since the launch of Frontier mode and the YGG campaign. Last free tournament was new years so to argue it would only be existing players I donāt think is true.
The more veteran players that choose to play will probably win early because they have more experience than the new entrants but if something like was offered regularly I would argue that a newer player base would be encouraged train and increase skills (practice mode) to perform.
If everyone sells, if there enough prizes in pool distributed weekly to notice it on the market? I set it low in hopes that it wouldnāt cause a ripple but after the trial we could always adjust if itās a problem.
The main goal here is to create another form of engagement with the game for new players to bridge the gap between free to play and fully bought in battle mage.
The free roll concept for me is derived from my experience with online poker. It kept me signing into a the site everyday and hoping that one time I would break through to the money (I did once!). I also didnāt hate the experience if I didnāt cash because there was always a metric of success in how far you make it.
Frontier mode is giving away free stuff to veterans right now and from what I can tell our ecosystem is loving it so I donāt know why that would stop us from trying with a micro percentage of our assets in the DAO.
I am worried about that.
I am worried about our existing player base being jaded, poor and trying to get their investment back at any cost.
I am also worried they they/you/I/we know all the in and outs of this economy and can take advantage of any opportunity.
We have done this mistake in the past. I donāt want to do it again and hope āpeople will be good and responsibleā.. they are NOT.
PS. You wanted an opinion, you got it. This is my personal opinion and it will not change.
I like the idea of getting some packs out of the DAO as prizes in place of SPS, we seem to be sitting on a pile of gold that we donāt want to spendā¦
Giving people 5 days to enter a tournament is definitely a very casual approach but I donāt understand how that works with reducing the number of entrants by 60% a day or am I totally misunderstanding this bit? If you are expecting a 5 day commitment from a top player to stay in the top 40% of the players each day then thatās not so casual
Looking forward to seeing more comments and @keeegs pre-proposal too
Outside your pre proposal though as more people are talking about events and tournaments though and now we are looking towards using twitch more i would like to see more short form (4 rounds) live events like a Friday Night Magic kind of thing as a casual event that runs weekly, maybe 4/6 start times on a Friday to enable worldwide start times and you could enter only 1 a week, winners picking up a pack(s) from the previous set or a promo card/cosmetic
Free rolls are actually this weird blend of both casual and competitive. They are casual in the sense of there is no risk to join and play but they are very competitive becuase there is an only a small prize for a few and a ton of people to fight through to get it. So the idea is have the tournament be 5 days long with the bottom 60% cutting everyday. My expectations is high level of entry so if we donāt extend the tournament past the normal two day max that we have now then we get into 17 player pools instead of a more manageable 6-7 player pool for daily engagement.
Ok, understood, so it is 5 days commitment for the top players to make the cash out.
But looking at 6/7 player ātablesā itās only 10/20 minutes a day
Oh I like that more people are thinking about tournaments. I will aim to have mine up in the next few days!
If anything, I'd love to see it be a Ghost card tournament to really have a level playing field.
I'm not opposed to entry fees either. It could be DEC or SPS.
Does it have to be 5 days or could it just start a day later each week? Because everybody has to at least be available for day 1 anyway.
If we just keep them as the normal tournament layouts as well then there is no dev work also!
I put in the request for dev work for scalability. We have done some free rolls in the past and I noticed at splinterfest too that when we have over 300 players in a two day tournament then your rounds are like 16 games a day. If we had more than two days then we could just play 5-6 games a day with smaller pools. We have thousands of unique accounts playing in Frontier so I am hoping these free rolls draw a similar crowd. Plus I want this to be an engagement tool so the longer the tournament the more days one would be encouraged to log in and play.
Also it is a bronze ghost card tournament but specifically I proposed no promos to simulate all the more accessible ones would thing if purchasing if moving into ranked play. I want this free rolls to help bridge the new player from frontier to full time battle mage!
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