In case anyone hasn't been paying attention recently, the Splinterlands developers have published some information on the next proposal that will be put to vote from SPS stakeholders. If you wanted to see the details of the proposal, you can take a look at the post with details here. If you haven't taken the time to read through it yet, I would highly recommend it - this is potentially a big one! It has sparked plenty of debate within the community on its merits, and I wanted to chime in with my thoughts on this proposal.
To briefly sum up the proposal (and again, I recommend reading the proposal!), the proposal makes changes to the rewards given out for ranked play. There is a fair amount of math involved, but the general idea is that your rewards (specifically, rShares) from winning battles will be decreased if you are playing cards which are more than 1 league below your current play level. So if you are playing in Gold league, any cards which are Silver level cap or higher will earn full rewards and any cards below the Silver level will give you proportionally lower payouts.
There is a lot to unpack here - I think that this proposal has a number of things going for it, as well as some drawbacks - so let's get into it!
Impact on Play Skill, and Skillful Investment
Let's start off with the biggest downside of the proposal - the changes suggested by this proposal removes skill elements of investment, and reduces the emphasis on gameplay. Players who are able to play at higher ratings relative to their card level will be negatively impact by this proposal. There is also a second type of skill which will be negatively impacted, which is what I will refer to as "skillfull investment". Splinterlands is a Play to Earn game as well as an investment game and players should be able to increase their earnings by increasing their investment. However, the details of the proposed rewards changes reduce the impact that well-informed, targeted investment has on a player's earnings.
If a player spends the time and resources to determine which cards are most worth leveling up then it means that their investment dollars will go farther and earn greater returns than another player who indiscriminately purchases everything. With the proposed changes, a player can still use those same skills to rise more in tanking, but they will not be rewarded as much for doings so when it comes to earnings. This reduces the inventive for players to spend the time and effort intelligently researching cards and levelup benefits, and learning how to play with lower level or weaker cards. The overall effect is a reduction of skill impact on earnings as well as lower rewards for having a deeper understanding of card attributes and gameplay.
Impact on Earnings
Ranked play rewards are likely to stay the same or increase for players. While the rShare amount gained from a particular card can either stay the same or decrease as a result of these changes, the vast majority of players have a very good chance of seeing their earnings increase as a result of these changes, since their total share (percentagewise) of the rewards pool is likely to increase, especially if they have a higher amount of investment relative to the majority of the players participating in their league.
These changes are very likely to increase card combining and decrease the number of bots playing low level cards in ranked battles. Players are incentivized to combine their cards if they are playing in leagues which are much higher than their card level in order to maximize their potential earnings. Currently there are large numbers of bots playing decks of low level cards and the economic changes of this proposal are likely to reduce their rewards - forcing them to either level up their cards, rent higher ones, or accept lower earning rates.
Impact on Gameplay
While I would argue that the proposal is missing a huge opportunity in this area (see below), as currently presented it does no harm while still implementing the economic incentives for leveling up cards. Actual gameplay (rating changes, determination of wins or losses) is unaffected by these changes. The proposal has essentially no effect on gameplay. The rating system, battles, and league system are all unaffected by the proposal and anyone who is not looking at their amount of rewards won't even notice any differences as they play their games. It is important to remember that Splinterlands is a game, and it is a game which has operated more or less smoothly for years now. So while the current setup can certainly use some improvements it is in a "good enough" state at the present.
Decent Solution, Missed Opportunity
There is an alternative solution without the downsides of this proposal. The main issues that this proposal is intended to address - over-extraction of value by underlevelled cards - is currently only a problem due to the structure of the ranked play rating system and the season setup of consistent rating inflation with periodic season resets. An explanation that I have seen from the developers is that an overhaul of the rating system would be too difficult, and that the economic solution of this proposal is an easier solution. I would argue that removing rating inflation does not require a significant amount of developer resources, and that if the rating system and season were changed, then the economic changes of this proposal would no longer be necessary.
Rating inflation can be very easily removed (or at least significantly reduced) by taking out the minimum rating gain for a ranked battle win and the bonus rating multiplier for win streaks. Pair this with a system that makes the season reset net rating neutral - for example, by resetting players to the middle of their current league, or shifting them by a set percentage towards the median rating - and you no longer have to deal with the concept of an "early season climb" or late seasons where Gold is filled with level 1 cards. These changes require only small tweaks to the existing codebase. And you achieve this without the perception that certain portions of the player base are being unfairly targeted or that skillful gameplay is being penalized. There are even additional benefits, because in the early season players are more likely to be matched up with players closer to their rating, increasing the amount of "close" battles and having a higher potential for fun fights.
At the end of the day, I think I am 51% in favor of this proposal. It will achieve the dev's goals of incentivizing card combination and does so without seriously breaking other aspects of the game. I do, however, think that there is a far more elegant solution that would have the same effects without alienating as many players and would actually improve the gameplay experience. So this is likely to get a YES from me on this one, though it's a bit of grudging one.
Thank you so much for reading all the way to the end. Interested in seeing some more of my writing in the future? Be sure to give me a follow! In the meantime, if you'd like to see some of my recent posts:
Blasting Off - Using Djinn Apprentice in Battle! - Last week's battle challenge, featuring Djinn Apprentice!
Splinterlands Economics: Dollar Cost Averaging - An introduction to the concept of dollar cost averaging, and how we can use it in Splinterlands.
Splinterlands Economics: Utility - An overview of the concept of utility, and how we can apply it to Splinterlands.
Thinking about giving Splinterlands a try but haven't signed up yet? Feel free to use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=bteim, and be sure to reach out to me if you have any questions!
All images used in this article are open source and obtained from Pixabay or Unsplash. Thumbnails borrowed with permission from the Splinterlands team or made in Canva.