Sure, there are a few ways to get some kind of income from older cards today. But do you really think that after this proposal passes, that we won't see even more proposals that continue to erode the earning potential of Wild cards?
This proposal is just one part of an concerted and ongoing campaign to eliminate the value of older cards. The goal is to pressure players into continuously pumping money into the ecosystem, and older cards hinder that from happening as long as they have any financial utility.
Each time one of these proposals passes, we can excuse it by saying, "But you can still earn with old cards by doing X"... until that is no longer true.
I don't.
I think you have a point of view, but there are many people with a lot of wild cards that are voting for this proposal. Obviously they have a different point of view on the importance of this proposal and the long term benefit to the wild cards.
I am one of them. Sure the prices may go down in the short run, but I own my cards for as long as 6 years. I constantly am adding to my collection and have even been buying the recent sets. So I would say that my actions speak louder than my words for the impact of this proposal on the long term health of the game.
Having said that, people will say I'm wrong and that's ok. Everyone should always have an opinion and try to learn from each experience to improve their position in life.
I wish I had your optimism, Dave. After they relegated older cards to a lower-payout league, I never dreamed that they'd keep going after Wild players. I was wrong, and here we are, looking at the latest in a long line of proposals designed to hurt the earning potential of older cards. What reason would anyone have to think this will be the last one?
The irony is that, despite my unhappiness with the direction of this game, I am also still always adding to my collection (I recently obtained Venka, and I play her every day - she is awesome). But you and I are have been with this game for a while, and we've "drunk the Koolaid", as they say.
Why would any new player look at Splinterlands and want to collect cards in this ecosystem? People who collect NFTs and trading cards do so because they have hope that their assets will grow in value over time.
Splinterlands has a built-in mechananism to guarantee that the card you buy today will plummet in value and utility once it inevitably rotates out of Modern. And if this wasn't enough, with seemingly every passing week, we get a new proposal or rule change to erode that value even more. This is not normal. Baseball card collectors don't have to worry that their cards will spontaneously degrade after 2 years, or that Topps will introduce a $4 fee per month to keep older cards that they've already bought.
I don't know you Dave, but I read your comments in these proposals, and you seem like a genuinely good person who always treats people with respect, even when you disagree with them.
I wish that Splinterlands treated their OG players with a similar level of respect. These are people who've spent thousands of dollars on cards - sometimes their life savings - supporting Splinterlands from the start, because they believed in the game, despite the untold risks (I'm not even counting myself among them, as I only started during Untamed).
Without these folks, we wouldn't have Splinterlands today. But what do they get in return? Not only has their initial card investment shrunk to a fraction of its original value, but now they get treated like dirt. Now we put them in the same category as "Bot farms". We accuse them of only "taking from the game without giving anything back", even though the vast majority have paid in far more than they will ever get back. I guess we live in a "what have you done for me lately" world, but I had hoped for better from this game that has meant so much to me.
Thank you for the compliment @catotune. That is a very nice thing to say.
I realize we have a different opinions about what this will do for both the players and the game. I hope you stick around and find out, but if you didn't then I also understand.
As you said, I am optimistic in general. And of course I hope I'm right so we can all benefit. Thank you for the respectful conversation!