You may have lost me Splinterlands
Are you familiar with the term "jumping the shark"? It's typically used to reference a point in TV series or movies when a completely fine show goes from good to bad. For example, have you ever had a TV show that you absolutely love? The first two season are fantastic, then in the third season they decide to introduce a new character or diverge from canon? People then might say "that show jumped the shark after season 2".
Make sense?
Now, I am not going to go so far as to say Splinterlands has jumped the shark, but I have a feeling there are a fair number of people who do feel that way. I've written in the past about how I was an early adopter of the game. It was just last week I was talking about how I signed up for my kickstarter account so I could donate some money to the Steemmonsters (that's what it was called back then) cause.
Through the years I continued to pump revenue into the game and I built a pretty good stack of cards for myself. In the early years it was easy, they were giving away regular cards as rewards like candy. It was pretty easy to build a really good deck for yourself just by playing the battles and completing the daily quests.
I had a good number of Alpha cards that I eventually converted to Beta cards (stupid move). I also had a good number of Beta cards in my deck.
Then all the packs started to come out, and then the reward cards, major changes to the game, and ultimately lands. There was a point where I felt like I was a relatively big player in the Splinterlands world. It turns out I was maybe tier 3 at best. I was never great at the strategy piece of the game, and for all the magic Internet money I had pumped into the game, as I started talking to some other folks (who shall remain nameless), it became apparent that I wasn't nearly as big of a holder as I thought.
These folks with millions of SPS staked are just next level...
Rebellion was the first pack sale that I knew I wasn't going to be able to "ape into". Then the latest one came along and I just couldn't muster the funds to buy any packs. Bear market aside, I've heard quite a few people wishing they had sold when the prices were high last bull market. I also know a decent number of people who will likely be liquidating everything if even a hint of a pump happens in Splinterland assets.
I'm guessing that's par for the course with a game like this, but I still think it's kind of telling that people have that attitude.
For me, I think one of the biggest turning points in the game was land. It was released and then we waited, and waited, and waited. Then the team asked for more money, and finally land was released, and then we waited, and waited, and waited. Then they made huge changes to land, that were probably clearly laid out in the whitepaper, but it effectively made land worthless for a whole lot of people.
I was lucky I was able to pick up 7 plots of land back when the prices were so high. Even so, those 7 pieces of land are basically worthless today. I'm not talking about just the price either. Due to luck of the draw and the fact that all my lands are common with zero keeps or those other things, all I can produce is wood and grain. That basically leaves any of the features that land brings inaccessible to me.
Sure, I can trade wood for other stuff, but as we have seen the price is basically raw sewage right now. It would take me years to get enough resources to even build an Arcanum hut or whatever they are calling it. Let alone earn the 10,000 research it takes to make a potion.
Oddly enough, the people who seem to think there is nothing wrong with Splinterlands right now tend to be the folks with big money. Sure the future looks great to them because they control a vast amount of the resources. I guess it isn't much different from the real world is it?
I just think it is sad that smaller holders basically have to resign themselves to just playing the game. For me, that's not too big of a deal, brawls is my favorite part of the game and has been for a while now. It's sad though that I have been practically priced out of a game I love because I can't keep pumping money into it.
I thought about selling some of the 300 or so Riftwatcher and Chaos Legion packs that I have been sitting on for a while now, but the price is so crap that I just can't bring myself to take the loss. My hope was to move some of that income into cheap lands, but then I need DEC to make what? Wood, that is barely worth anything...
I'm not saying I am giving up on Splinterlands, but the shine has definitely faded for me. If the price does happen to pump at some point, it is going to be hard not to justify taking some profits. I think the best way to put it is they let me down.
Which honestly is more of a me problem than a them problem I guess. I can't imagine how much goes into running a business/game like Splinterlands. It's definitely above my pay grade, but I think somewhere along the line they lost the plot, and I hope maybe one day they can get it back. For the good of the game and the good of the community.
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I get why people feel like this. There seem to be a lot of early birds that now want out. I'm kind of fortunate in the sense that I still enjoy the actual gameplay element. For me it's all about the competition and I get a lot of enjoyment from thrashing players who have a far superior deck to mine. The fact that I have a tiny budget also helps as no matter what happens to the game, I'll have lost very little.
Like I said, I was never great at the strategy, but I can at least be a little dangerous. I seem to do fairly well in brawls. I don't think I could ever get to Champion league though.
Spent $500 on alpha, my reward? Buy Beta. Spent another $600 on Beta, my reward? Buy the next, buy lands...after that? buy whatever thing we come up with...nah, they lost me a long time ago.
!PIMP
!PIZZA
I totally understand why you feel that way. I get they have to keep the game new and keep the funds flowing in to continue development, but there is a point where you disenfranchise your core customers.
$PIZZA slices delivered:
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Come get MOONed!
For some reason I thought that legendary Arcana packs will cost 8 dollars. So I thought about buying maybe 30. I was wrong and now at best I could afford 10 packs. That would already hurt my wallet- few hundred euros is a lot of money for me. Still I am paying 30+(?) euros every season just to rent some cards. I don't like things like season pass and soulbound cards. At times I think about converting my remaining assets to Hive/HBD/ holozing packs. But so far I have not decided to quit the game. But like you I have a very small budget and just can't keep up with all new cards being released.
Yeah, it is hard to not feel like it is just a big money grab at times. I get they have to keep the lights on, but unfortunately, the small folks are suffering. The big holders don't care, they have other passive streams of income they can just keep pumping into the game. I'm hoping Holozing can be something cool too.
I would be happier if those 30+ euros I spent per season would rent me cards for a whole month. But reality is that is impossible. If season would last a month I would still have to pay much more than 30 euros...
I'd be happy if renting cards out was as profitable as it used to be. It just isn't anymore. That or all of your good cards are locked up in other things so you can't really rent them anyway.
I've pretty much given up on it. I played for a good while, but a lot of that was against bots. Then it just seemed to become red about money and I wasn't willing to pump more in. I got a couple of land plots, but have sold one and various cards. I still wish them luck with it, but it needs to be accessible to all and fun.
Yeah, like I said, I think they lost sight of what the average user wants and needs in a game. It's sad. I'm not totally giving up on it, but I just can't justify pumping a ton more money into it. I'd rather build up my HIVE account.
I'm more into HP and supporting others. I'll keep playing Rising Star.
It will be interesting to see the direction the DAO pushes the game.
I'm probably doing this backwards; I just played my first Splinterlands match yesterday. I'm also somewhat more interested in the low-level game since part of its utility to me is as a "gateway drug" to Hive.
Not counting the spellbook that I bought years ago, I think my current team of cards cost about $2.50 - I've just made a water element deck so far, though.
I am going to make myself more competent at the low level game, and I'm interested in seeing how long that has good ROI in terms of fun.
My earlier experiences with WEB3 Gaming were on the Avalanche Chain at the height of the DeFi boom. The cost to play in some of those projects was steep, and most of them weren't even really games at all but more properly DeFI with gamified elements. When the market collapsed most of those assets went to zero pretty fast.
It will be interesting to see if adequate utility can be created for those land assets you hold to recover or realize the value you expended to obtain them.
Splinterlands definitely has a lot going for it and a huge amount of potential if they do it right. Most NFT or blockchain games these days are just glorified faucets. Splinterlands has always been a bit more than that, but like I said, the shine is starting to fade I fear.
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STOPI remember even back during Alpha, everyone outside of the major holders were accusing the game of being Pay To Win. It's even worse today.
I wonder if it even would have survived this long if not for the last bull run that bought in a ton of money and players.
Who knows. It's not that I want it to fail. I just want to get some of my investment back.
Totally. I was just looking at SPS. I invested $500 and some change into it, stupidly at the peak. I've been doing nothing but selling interest for the past 2 years and I have only gotten $19 back. That's a hell of a return on my investment....
Too bad we can't write off crypto on our taxes like stocks. I could do some fine tax loss harvesting on that.
I don't even want to look at how much I spent on cards vs how little I've gotten back...
Oh gosh,that is horrible! I did sell some SPS back when it was riding high, but nowhere near enough to cover what I put into it.
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Oh no, you enticed me to read a Splinterlands post!
I feel like I have my own version of [Name any Game] where I spend my entire time dodging Splinterlands posts. Sometimes they seem to fill my feed, nothing else gets through.
A lot of people seem disappointed. As a non-games player sitting on the outside, I'm appalled at the mismanagement of income, especially after the lesson of St**mit laying off 70% of staff. It seems like there's a new team heading it up, so all good wishes that things get better. I wouldn't mind getting my $500 investment back.
Haha, I don't blame you for any of that. I skip most of the posts about specific battles and fan art as well. Just seems like spam to me.
Feels like we’ve aged with this game. From Alpha cards to land disappointment—what a ride
Fir sure!
The unfortunate Truth about companies is that they have costs that they pass down to the customers, and, cash in / cash out, is the only value marker for token. Wages is cash out and customers are the only ones that cash in, so the customer will always lose. Don't play any game you hope to make money with UNLESS you can find the angle to sell to the P2W crowd. That's the only revenue source in the game.
Very true and good points! I'm definitely more careful about the projects I invest in now.
For sure agree with you on a lot of this man. I stopped playing the game this last time around 1.5 years ago or so, and haven't looked back. I was renting my cards actively but even that I haven't checked in 4-5 months, so who only knows what's going on with my deck. I had some good cards at that! I just didn't have thousands of dollars to keep dumping into the game, as fun as it was. I was also around during Alpha, though towards the end but for sure Beta.
I think the reason I actually stopped playing was because the mechanics changed quite a bit, not that I was upset it changed but I was losing a lot more and ended up getting way more frustrated than I should have been, as I'm not an angry type of person.
Sadly it was one of the best things for me when I committed to not playing anymore, and I haven't looked back since. It's a shame too, because the game was a lot of fun and had a lot of potential.
I don't know where things went wrong, most certainly as someone who isn't in the team of people building and trying to improve the game I can't say a lot in that regard, but it for sure is something I don't really intend on playing again, sadly.
To one of your other comments, I'm pretty sure MOST people that play the game truly can't afford it and end up going into massive debt because of it, so that's pretty fucked.
I think there are two main camps, the people who just play it for fun and the people who expect to make money with it. I feel like I sit somewhere in the middle. The diminishing returns is definitely a kick in the nuts and the mismanagement of the funds before should have been a red flag. I'm sorry I didn't take more profit when the time was right. I tend to do that a lot.
Yeah, I'm really lucky in that the beginning of SPS, I sold ALL of it for the first 2 or 3 months I think. I ended up powering up like 6,000 Hive Power which was awesome! That was my best thing I did with SL lol. I for sure enjoyed it quite a bit and didn't really expect to make a TON of money off it, but I didn't expect to put a bunch in and then everything tanked in value.
I didn't sell as much as I should have because I was hoping the staked SPS would end up generating a nice passive income for me down the line. How foolish I was back then!
Yeah it's hard to see into the future with those things. I know I never assume anything is going to give me something besides enjoyment, it's not an optimistic way to view them but it doesn't leave me disappointed lol. dCity was another one that was fun but then it fell apart
Yeah, I am totally familiar with the feeling. I have a large number of NFTs over on WAX that never amounted to anything. I was hoping Splinterlands would buck the trend, but I'm not so sure that is possible now.
Sorry I haven't commented in a while but took a moment from work this morning to look through some of your posts and catch up on what you've been doing these past few months.
I had to laugh at something you said because it is so true...
Ain't that the truth.
Haha yeah, it's a pretty sad state of affairs. I totally understand how busy life can get. No worries!
I go through various feelings with splinterlands. I still love it, despite the fact that I only play guild brawls and land now. I love the epic vision of it, and its probably my favourite drama to follow as well (listening to people talk endlessly about splinterlands is genuinely my favourite way to fall asleep sometimes!). But you are right that the big players are having a lot of fun while small players get a bitter pill. I really hope that this is changing with the campaign mode, at least for beginners. We need to be able to have more fun with the assets we own but I think the team knows this. The free to play version is coming (fingers crossed) and although it might never make up for the pain us OGs have experienced, I like to think they will get it right for future players. There has been so much mismanagement across the entire Web3 world that I cant help but feel proud of splinterlands just for surviving, and still holding on to a glorious vision, while still building out the experience in to quite a deep and complex ecosystem. I guess we were guinea pigs. Naive, wide eyed sacrifices on the road to glory. Some will never forgive them, but I still see splinterlands as the most impressive forerunner in web3 gaming, pumping out cool products, generating revenue, facilitating a DAO, carving out a long term legacy on the very brink of a confusing and unstable new technology. Its actually stuff of legend (imo) and the fact that Im not rich enough or smart enough to make a passive income from it has sort of made way for my sense of appreciation at being present for the construction of such an ambitious conceptual behemoth. Its perhaps easier for me to say all this because I took the plunge and bought a tract in the land pre-sale. Ive only got 25% of it working but honestly Ive enjoyed being a land holder more than I should, considering how little utility its had all this time! I just hope that once theyve launched the free-to-play mode, they get down to brass tacks and make sure that the fun factor is absolutely prevalent, for every player, from the bottom to the top. I don't know what it will take, but I still have faith that this team can deliver a genuine market contender to satisfy a whole galaxy of intrepid collectors. And if it fails? Well, despite the mistakes and regrets, and the financial ruin, I will still feel that I was part of a seminal, historically significant web3 project that held a place in my heart and mind in a way that no other game has ever done. 7 years and counting. And im still fascinated to see where its going!
Yeah, I wish I had been able to afford more land when the sale was on. My seven pieces are pretty lame and worthless to be honest. A tract would have changed things quite a bit for me. You are right though, compared to most of the games over on WAX that I have played it is still impressive that Splinterlands has come this far for so long.
I haven't pulled the trigger on buying any packs yet because a lot of these reasons I pumped heaps into cards and the few plots of land I could get at exorbitant prices and it is all pretty much worthless now. Even the SPS flywheel doesn't seem to be flying that hard with the new set....
Yeah, it is pretty disappointing. I'm actually surprised you haven't bought any yet though. I'm sure it will all come down eventually.