Hi everyone, just wanted to post an intro like I've seen others doing.
I want to have semi-anonymity at least but I can say that I am from the US and am a student in the medical field. I recently got into looking at cryptogames to play and have fun while also learning a little bit of crypto. Aside from this I also enter into many different hobbies without fully completing them so I hope to share what I learn from my new ventures with everyone. I am thinking about posting random topics every now and then 😄.
This is the first time I will be blogging about my activities. But I think this is what is so unique about the hive and peakd community. There is actually incentive to post about what you do and share your knowledge and there is also an incentive to engage and interact with the community that I haven't seen in many other platforms. For those of you that are kind of confused about hive and how the blog rewards and everything works, please read this link Hive user guide and this one too. I think everyone should read this because it helped me understand a lot about how this community works. It was also very confusing for me at first too but very basically you need resource credits to do almost everything in HIVE (besides liking), and HIVE power increases your resource credits, and staking HIVE tokens increases HIVE power (again, this is very dumbed down). Liking is free and also supports the post or comment that you liked depending on how much Hive power you have. At the end of 7 days the post pays out depending on how much likes the post has, and depending on the settings the author chose, it can pay the author and those who liked it 50/50, just the author 100%, or some other variation. For example, this post is chosen to pay out 50/50 author and people who liked. Again, I just started and don't know everything but am just trying to explain it how I understand it, the two links provided can probably provide even more clarity.
**Without further ado why I chose Splinterlands over Axie infinity (or any other NFT game):
**
RISK
Right off the bat I want to say that I am very risk adverse. I usually do not like taking on risk if I am not 90% sure I can make back what I put in. This alone basically made older, more established and reputable games a requirement. Of course, this also means that I probably would not get into anything that could make me rich very quickly since I would not be an early adopter. But to me, smaller but more stable returns is worth it as there is also much less of a chance of the game going bankrupt. After all, I will also mostly be playing for fun as well. I am a broke student but I am also not planning on making this game my main income. It was going to be something I do for fun and occasionally as a side project.
CRYPTO
One of the biggest headaches for as a person just getting started in cryptocurrency and crypto games was the fact that there are soooooo many different types of crypto and so many different wallets and so many different exchanges that you have to use to sell the game crypto on. Usually the coins that these games use are very small and are not supported by larger exchanges such as coinbase (I'm based in US so Binance didn't let me make an account). Each wallet also comes with another set of phrases you have to keep safe and keep track of. If anything, I feel like this is the biggest thing that is keeping crypto based games in general from taking off with the general public. The average person looking to play a game probably does not want to be bothered to learn how crypto works and how to buy this coin then exchange it for that coin then finally end up with the game coin or whatever. Axie had an advantage here as you would need Eth to buy in which is a well known coin. Splinterlands, however, lets you sign up and pay with Paypal (fiat). From there, you can just continue using Paypal after verifying your identity, or you can explore deeper and realize that it automatically creates a HIVE wallet for you which the HIVE keychain takes care of. The community that HIVE has built lets you stay in the ecosystem for the other products that use HIVE as well without having to create a whole new wallet or account. If HIVE keeps growing I can see it being a very successful hub for games as there would be a centralized location that everyone can exchange coins at and use their coins in.
COST
Originally I was looking for a game that was completely free to play. Cryptoroyale is an example of such game but it wasn't too fun after a while and had limited earning potential. I quickly realized that many of the more interesting crypto games require some kind of initial investment. Axie was a lot of investment, it was in the hundreds before and even now the floor axies are around $40 each (not to mention gas fees associated with Eth and that the floor ones are bad). Splinterlands only requires $10 to get started earning. Now, I have to be honest here, if you only spend $10 and nothing more, initial progress is going to be slooooow. You will be limited to playing only free cards and only the lowest bronze tier which gives poor rewards. It is suggested to pay a couple $ more and rent cards which gets you enough to get into higher leagues where, hopefully, you will be able to earn more than the cost of your rentals. I have so far put in $10 of my own money, and also a little more that I got for free from doing the learning section on Coinbase (my referral if you want to use, up to you). I will try to make a separate post in the future detailing this if needed but basically sign up for coinbase, do the learning (there were 3 different coins to learn about) and they give you a bit of that coin as reward which can be converted.
Now, if you do not want to invest ANYYYY money at all, I think I have found a way. You can use Brave browser to surf the web and get ads which reward you BAT tokens each month and eventually you can have enough to get started in Splinterlands. I am currently using this browser to play splinterlands and browse 😁. I am planning to reinvest whatever I get from Brave to Splinterlands. Obviously getting started in Axies using this method would take forever.
TIME INVESTMENT
Now I know I just said with consistent play comes rewards, but I have this issue where I can spend tooooo much time on a game. As I said before, I know some people play crypto games to earn a living which is fine to spend all your time on, but for me, I have studies and other things in my life I need to spend time on. One of the reasons I quit Summoners War was that it got too addicting and that I spent too much time on it. Part of the reason I didn't try Axie was also because I was reading everywhere that people have to spend ~2hrs a day just to do the daily missions and max out how much SLP they would earn. In Splinterlands, there is actually a mechanism where the more you play, the less you will earn. This is sometimes annoying because when I do have time I want to play and earn more but it also keeps those like me without self control from playing all day 😅.
After playing a few days I have also realized this limitation is a downside if you are renting cards because it keeps you from maximizing your use of the rented cards in the time they are rented.
ECONOMY
One of the more unappealing things about Axie is how many people seem to be playing for an income. As a result, many people are playing on accounts that are not their own and do not care about the accounts. The assets/coins won are also immediately transferred out and turned into money so none of it goes back into the game to grow it. In Splinterlands, you need the DEC you earn to get better cards to get into a better league and earn more rewards. You can also stake DEC to get additional free rewards (staking is almost like putting your money into a locked savings account that you cannot immediately withdraw from but get interest as a result). It creates a real incentive to actually invest in your own account and I find satisfaction is seeing something I own grow (I like planting plants too haha).
FUN
Of course, part of playing a game is having fun! If you get into something with the idea that you just want to make money from it, it will end up feeling (and being) like a job. That is fine, of course, if you are actually playing it as a job. Originally Axie did look very fun. Just look on youtube, there are so many videos of these cute creatures performing these animated attacks which look very pleasing. However, if you think about it long term you realize it is essentially only a card game...and one that you have to play 2 hours of every single day with the same set in order to earn a little bit. In order to add more variety to the game, you would have to buy another
Axie with different abilities or breed them (both options cost a looot). Another game, Thetan Arena, is really fun as it is a shooter game like Brawl Stars. The issue, though, is that the heroes you can earn crypto with cost a lot of money and then they only have a limited amount of times they can be played to earn crypto! This puts excessive pressure on winning which takes away part of the fun. Splinterlands is a card game like Hearthstone, Pokemon, Yugioh, etc. which I have always enjoyed playing. It is fun to figure out strategies that work together even though I am still learning. You can start playing with just free cards and slowly expand your deck and level up your cards for new abilities and better stats. All this adds up to many hours of play that is always changing and kept interesting.
LUCK/GACHA
I've always been drawn to games that have a certain element of luck when it comes to the rewards (gacha games). In Splinterlands, the luck can happen during battles but also when you open reward chests and packs. I think that is a big part of why card games are so successful in general. It is catering to the addicting feeling you get from gambling and from getting good rewards (that dopamine). You can get super lucky and pull a really good card and make a good amount of money instantly this way. Axie can do this too as there is some luck in the gameplay and luck in what comes out of what you breed but again, it costs a lot.
Ultimately, however, if you have time and want to make 💰💰💰...honestly Axie Infinity is probably still on the of the best if not the best game out there for that. To get around the initial investment, if you cannot afford it, you should go on Discord chats and apply for scholarships. If you just want to have fun while potentially making some money by playing a game, Splinterlands is a great choice.
Let me know what you guys think or if you have any other cryptogames to recommend. If you have any questions about anything feel free to ask and I'll try to respond...If I have enough hive resource credits left 😬 (still trying to figure out how this works lol but you can go to https://giftgiver.site/ to get some hive power delegated to you to get a free temporary boost)