I have been burning SPS for Glint.
Why!?!
It makes very little sense to me.
There is little benefit to do so that I can see for me as a player, other than getting some more glint to buy some overpriced rewards chests with (which I recently discovered that despite using potions for nearly all, I get almost zero gold cards compared to others), or buying some more energy to play a few more rounds against scholars.
Can someone tell me the benefits?
I am responsible for burning over 11% of the SPS so far in Modern, more percentage-wise than my guild mate 
Modern:
Wild:
On the all time (and ranked this season too), I am the number one SPS burner in modern, having burned over 26,000 at a fluctuating street value of a current 0.0052 (SPS used to be pure cocaine, now it is low-grade Fentanyl) for about $135 over the last two and a half seasons or so.
That would have got me a Black foil Rare, Conclave Arcana card.
In Wild, I am guessing that most people are using a bot to play their account, but in Modern it is meant to be a human playing. However, about 80% of the top 50 or so are played by scholars. That means that the large majority of highest SPS earning accounts in Modern, won't choose to burn any SPS because they have to pay their scholars. So they get the benefit of manual players burning, but without the cost having to pay the cost, or even play the game. And what do the burners get?
They get to:
Compete for top spots on the SPS burn leaderboard!!!!
Lucky ducks.
Glint is not enough of an incentive to burn SPS, especially when the highest earning accounts won't do it. However, perhaps there could be an incentive (on top of extra Glint) to burn SPS. There are a multitude of things it could be, but what comes to mind right now could be entries into the draws for black reward cards, or better is copies of Luckiest Longshot (as after all of this time, I only have 18 of them and a max is 400.
Even better though...
would be an SPS burn card only where people would have to burn SPS in order to get a copy. For instance, it could be a epic card with 46 to max, where every 500 SPS burned gets a copy, Or a rare of 115 for every 200 SPS (Note: I haven't done the math on the numbers, just a guesstimate). That makes it (at current SPS prices) a $120 card, with every max burning 23,000 SPS through wins. Whether it would be sold for that on the open market, that is a different story. Throw in the potential of getting a blackfoil, and I reckon a lot more people would burn their SPS. Not only that, it would be an advantage for the account players over the scholar-played accounts, because it would mean that a scholar-run account would either they would have to burn SPS to get a copy and pay the scholar out of their own pocket, or they would have to buy from players who did burn and chose to sell on the secondary market.
Make it a good card, and it will be a highly sought after card.
My point is, that I think it is a good idea that there is an option to burn SPS, but the incentive isn't large enough when it is only for glint. Most of the accounts that earn most of the SPS, already earn heaps of Glint anyway, so there is no reason for them to do it, even if they weren't using a scholar. Make the incentive larger and make it so it is a benefit over the scholared accounts, and more people will burn SPS, which is good for everyone.
At the moment though, what is the benefit for the burners?
The reasons should be crystal clear, and compelling.
Maybe everyone is happy the way it is, but I think if we are going to be burning SPS, there should be something in return, some heat, like a kick-ass promo card that is not only great to play, but shows the opposition and community that you earned it - or was willing to buy it from someone who did.
For, or Against?
Thoughts are welcome.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]
And Matt, since you are now settling back into a role you were great at with game design, I am going to ping you
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