I read an awesome article by @rimurutempest here:
https://ecency.com/hive-13323/@rimurutempest/splinterlands-the-end-of-reward-cards-enpt-9np
The thesis of the article is that Splinterlands can keep their commerical enterprise running by eliminating free card giveaways, and that Splinterlands is competing against itself by giving out free cards that can be exploited by players with multiple accounts. It's a really good article you should read.
As a Splinterlands fan, I believe that getting card rewards is a huge part of the game. I understand how players with deep pockets and multiple accounts can add more selling pressure to the NFT card and lending market.
Opening playing cards is a great memory of mine, and it's a great reward for a winning season. Free cards or prize cards helps the game by attracting more players who love cryptocurrency and TCGs. Ask players of Magic the Gathering or Pokemon how cool it is to win packs during tournament play and they will agree.
We should fight abuse of the rewards system. We need to address decentralized business models and funding, which is essentially what the Hive blockchain is doing on many fronts. The inclusion of multiple Splinterlands assets is alot of fun, and I love buying and staking SPS and SPT. Could players who abuse the rewards system use other rewards tokens similarly to card NFTs? Could said players also use these tokens to buy more high-powered game cards?
What do you think? Is it worth eliminating free cards from winning seasons or should we solely distribute other Splinterlands assets?
The opening packs and the grinding is something we player don't want to lose at all, but this Reward Cards thing will be a huge problem down the road, because you could rent a good deck for some seasons, then you could use your "Free" cards + Some Chaos and rank pretty high in Wild.
There is also the possibility that this "problem" will be solved by the wild pass, because the low level accounts are not playing anymore... Thanks for the mention, nice post! 😄