Key Highlights and Updates:

• Frontier Mode: This mode has been a significant success since the last Town Hall, with positive reception from players. It was highlighted for surpassing all other game modes combined in player numbers within its first two weeks, indicating strong player engagement, including returning and new players. Frontier mode offers tradable cards, providing value that can be bought, sold, and traded without an initial monetary investment. It serves as a testbed for new ideas, with lessons learned being applied to the rest of the game.

• Crypto Gaming Recovery Fund (CGRF): Officially launched, this fund aims to assist other crypto gaming projects that experience "rug pulls" or failures. Splinterlands is leading the way in this initiative, hoping it will serve as a template for future crypto projects. A press release was issued, generating interest from journalists, and a landing page (slenderlands.com/CGRF) has been created. The first approved projects are Tokyo Beast and Walking Dead Empires.

• Marketing and Onboarding: Significant efforts are underway to attract and retain new players, which is a top priority. Tools have been implemented to track customer acquisition and retention, allowing for real-time adjustments to the new player experience. Advertising tests are being scaled up using platforms like Facebook and X.

• Conclave Arcana: Arcana Conflicts is currently in its second phase, with work for the third phase already in progress. Sales have reached 3.4 million packs, and the number of participants has more than doubled since the pre-sale. Fortune Draw events are ongoing, with gold foil arcane draws nearing an end, to be followed by black foil arcane auctions. Legendary Archons are expected to drop after Conflict number three.

• Quality of Life Updates: The team is continuously rolling out updates, including improvements to the guild chat (ability to scroll back further) and an updated front page to feature news and events. The mana caps and rule sets for battles are being tweaked to allow players to utilize more cards and introduce new rule sets.

• Twitch Integration and Airdrop: A Twitch airdrop campaign will be launched shortly, allowing viewers to earn Glint and a fabulous rewards card by watching streams. Community members, like "Tails," are actively assisting in setting up and testing this feature.

Major Upcoming Projects:

• Player Avatars and Cosmetics: This project aims to allow players to create unique battle mages, offering extensive customization options for facial features, clothing, outfits, backgrounds, frames, and badges. These customizations can be earned through gameplay, achievements, or purchased, with Glint expected to play a big role in acquiring avatar items. The goal is to allow players to show off their achievements and tenure in the game.

• Guild Overhaul: Following the player avatar project, a significant overhaul of guilds is planned. This will include new buildings, benefits, and diverse ways for both free-to-play and pay-to-play members to contribute. A complete reimagining of Guild Brawls is also planned, potentially introducing an entirely new game mode. Land will be integrated into guilds, requiring "land people" for upgrades and benefits.

• New Campaign Modes: Beyond new player onboarding, the team is developing challenging single-player campaigns designed for all players. These campaigns may tie into guild updates and player avatars, allowing players to unlock new badges or outfits upon completion.

• New Reward Set: A brand new reward set is coming to the Glint shop around October. Discussions are ongoing about whether these cards will be soulbound or tradable, with Frontier Mode serving as a test for non-soulbound cards. The aim is to make Glint "super exciting again".

• Mini Set Proposal: A proposal for a new mini-set, part of the Conclave Arcana edition, is being discussed to directly benefit SPS token holders. A pre-proposal is expected next week, with a target release around December.

• Land Updates: Cryptomancer is currently focused on developing special land cards that provide benefits on land and cannot be used in regular gameplay. The long-term plan is to focus on "Land 2.0," which includes building upgrades, storage, and establishing more mechanics and utility before releasing new resources. Land is expected to be integrated into both the guild overhaul and player avatar projects. A new resource called "Cinder" will be obtainable only by burning cards (including Chaos Legion cards), providing a direct incentive for card burning and being required for crafting future items like land cards.

Community and Vision:

• The team emphasizes that Splinterlands is a community-run project, with the SPS DAO owning and operating much of the ecosystem. Players are encouraged to be partners and collaborators, with even one SPS ownership signifying a stakeholder role. Community feedback is actively sought, for example, through the Discord UX channel.

• The project aims to balance free-to-play and earnable content with premium paid offerings. While more free content is being introduced, premium items are essential to ensure the value of assets within the ecosystem.

• SPS rewards are expected to continue after the current distribution phase, with the DAO allocating a portion of its earnings from sales back into gameplay reward pools. NFT-based rewards are also anticipated to continue, potentially with more tradable cards.

Q & A

• Q: Are you still working with Notcrupt Media?
  • Answer: Splinterlands is not currently working with Notcrupt Media anymore due to misunderstandings and disagreements. While they contributed to past efforts like the home screen redesign and overall strategy, the company decided to move forward independently, primarily for cost-effectiveness. Splinterlands will continue to evaluate other companies that can bring value and aim to cost-effectively add new players.

• Q: If the mini-set proposal passes, when do you aim to have it released?
  • Answer: The goal for the mini-set release is December, though it could extend into January. The team is also targeting October for a new reward set, making for a tight schedule. A pre-proposal for the mini-set is expected next week, with the aim to directly benefit SPS token holders, especially if approved during a potentially exciting crypto market.

• Q: Will Runi lore be more significant and relevant in the future, and will Runi owners be kept in mind for the avatar discussion?
  • Answer: Yes, the team constantly looks for opportunities to highlight Runi lore. While Runi was mentioned recently in Yaba's Pickle lore, there's an active desire to integrate them more deeply. For player avatars, a Runi graphic was shown on the profile screen concept, and it is expected to be prominently displayed on avatars for Runi owners. This integration could also extend to other aspects of the player avatar project and the guild overhaul, providing benefits for Runi holders within guilds. Runi cards already have a decent use case on land.

• Q: What will incentivize playing and old card ownership once the SPS distribution phase is over, besides non-tradable rewards?
  • Answer: The plan is for SPS rewards to continue after the distribution phase, with the SPS DAO allocating a portion of its earnings from new card sales, packs, and avatars back into gameplay reward pools. The amount might fluctuate based on DAO earnings.
  • NFT-based rewards are also expected to continue, potentially with more tradable cards, similar to Frontier Mode, as the need for soulbound cards might decrease.
  • Glint, while not directly valued, can be used to acquire items that improve gameplay, indirectly helping players earn more SPS or tradable assets.
  • For old card ownership, the primary incentive is Land. The plan is to constantly add new in-game items that can be created via land resources, increasing the value of land resources and, by extension, old cards. This is envisioned even before the ultimate item and spell cards are released.
  • The community, including figures like Clay and Brave, is encouraged to collaborate on plans for post-SPS distribution incentives, with the goal of bringing in more SPS than is paid out. Frontier Mode, which offers no SPS rewards, demonstrates that players can still enjoy the game without direct SPS incentives.

• Q: Why does survival cooldown stop you from leveling up cards?
  • Answer: This was an intentional decision during the initial implementation of survival mode, where cards were considered "dead" and unusable in other formats, including for combining. While the restriction on using them in other formats was walked back, the combining restriction remained. The team acknowledged that this might no longer make sense given game changes and will look into changing it to encourage combining cards as much as possible.

• Q: Will the team focus more on Frontier Mode by creating a real economy for the cards with a small printing cap and utility for gold/black foils? Also, should new sets limit playable cards from previous sets, with others burned for a chance at max gold/black cards?
  • Answer: Frontier Mode was designed to have a real economy with tradable cards that have value, without earning tokens or having burn value. The suggestion for a small printing cap was intentionally avoided in Frontier Mode to ensure new players can always come in and earn cards to build their collection, preventing a situation where cards run out and new players are forced to pay or leave. The team views Frontier Mode as a "starter set" for players to transition into the "premium mode".
  • Gold and black foil utility is being considered, including potentially adding Glint rewards to Frontier Mode in the future. This would allow players to buy items usable in Frontier Mode, and gold/black foils could continue to offer bonuses for earning more Glint and rewards in battles.
  • The idea of burning older cards for new ones is not explicitly addressed as a general strategy, but the team emphasizes that Frontier Mode is a testbed, and successful aspects will be applied to the rest of the game. While the regular foil and gold foil cards in Frontier Mode are time-limited rather than cap-limited, the bucket cards (gold foil arcane, black foil arcane) do have limited prints.

• Q: Would you consider making a special and limited collector's edition of Conclave Arcana using the sketch art?
  • Answer: This is a DAO-owned project, so such an idea would need to be proposed to the DAO. If the DAO approves it, it would happen. The team views it as a neat idea.

• Q: Will there be regular card releases or new additions/changes to Frontier, and will there be a raffle system in Wild with black foil and arcane cards from older sets?
  • Answer:
    • Frontier Mode updates: At this time, the focus is not on regular card releases for Frontier Mode itself, but rather on applying the successful elements of Frontier to the rest of the game. The purpose of Frontier is to onboard new players and transition them to the main game, which brings value to assets and tokens.
    • Wild raffle system for older cards: There is a "huge opportunity" to release black foil and arcane versions of older sets. The mechanisms for releasing these could vary (e.g., black foil Gladiator cards from guilds). Such initiatives would require proposals and overwhelming community support, which the team plans to test in the near future. The team has a long list of ideas and is prioritizing current projects, but agrees with the direction of this suggestion.

• Question about Frontier Mode's non-soulbound reward cards: Is there a reason not to try this with the main reward cards?
  • Answer: Frontier Mode serves as a testbed for non-soulbound rewards. With recent game changes, the team is rethinking the entire soulbound reward concept for future card sets. The next set of reward cards, targeted for October, will heavily consider the non-soulbound approach.

• Q: Chaos Legion cards are close to burn value. Any thoughts on a burn/merge event to reduce their supply?
  • Answer: Yes, there are plans for this. Future land cards will require "Cinder" as a crafting resource, which can only be obtained by burning cards (including Chaos Legion cards, Alpha, Beta, etc.). This directly incentivizes card burning, rather than indirectly through DEC conversion, and is a top-of-mind upcoming feature.

• Q: Does the 350 max copies (of a specific card like Elanor) include liquidity bots? He also notes losing frequently to promo cards used by liquidity bots in Gold League.
  • Answer: No, circulation counts do not include liquidity bot cards. The team uses liquidity bots to ensure matches due to insufficient liquidity. They are actively working on tuning the difficulty of these bots, acknowledging they can be too strong at times. The goal is for liquidity bots to emulate real players and their card collections, even promo cards, but the team is open to feedback and makes daily adjustments. The long-term goal is to not need liquidity bots at all once sufficient player liquidity is achieved.

• Q: Have you considered adding SPS staking to land for boosts, given that maxing out the multiplier leaves little use for SPS?
  • Answer: The current system aims to indirectly give value to SPS by requiring DEC staking on land, which in turn influences SPS burning. However, this hasn't worked optimally as DEC is below the burning value. The team is considering ways to directly give value to SPS, similar to the mini-set proposal. Adding SPS staking to land is a possibility, but needs careful consideration of long-term implications, especially if SPS value increases significantly. Ultimately, this is a DAO-owned and operated aspect, so a community-supported proposal would be the path forward.

• Q: Regarding reintroducing leagues back to ranked mode, especially after a recent proposal failed to reach the supermajority.
  • Answer: Matt does not necessarily believe reintroducing leagues is the "right way to go," feeling it might not magically fix problems. While he respects community opinion, major game changes require a strong, consistent agreement (supermajority) from the community. The team will continue on its current path unless there's a clear mandate for change. The current system benefits from requiring a supermajority to prevent constant back-and-forth changes.

• Q: How much more Glint do players in Modern earn compared to Wild?
  • Answer: Players in Modern typically earn more Glint because the SPS staking requirement in Wild is double. This means the Glint bonus for Wild players is about half of what it is in Modern for the same SPS stake. The reasoning is that Wild players often include those who received more SPS during the airdrop.

• Q: Will we ever get a Dragon Splinter Foundation Archon?
  • Answer: The intent of Frontier Mode is not to give players "everything". It's designed to introduce players to the game and then encourage them to move into other modes that are the main purpose of the game. Therefore, consciously, not all Splinters or card types are included in Frontier Mode.

• Q: Are the stream camera frames something you pick yourselves or randomly assigned? Nate's looked especially OP.
  • Answer: Alfredo from the creative team made the frames and their stats. However, Nate specifically asked for his own "OP" stats, which were then applied. The general assignment is randomized by Ron, but Nate influenced his own.

There might be some errors in this summary.