It has been a while since the Splinterlands ecosystem was just about a monster based card game, as time goes on we get more resources to add to the game like terrains to acquire resources, new monster collections that can't be sold until the end of their printing and the new game in development along the lines of "Tower Defencer" with so much to worry about maybe the team has dropped the main focus from the beginning: Catching in new players.
Splinterlands after numerous updates since the daily missions and final rewards that included only a fixed value of chests for the current system that added the focus on elements to earn points needed to purchase the chests, this in a way that was good for the pocket of those who invest in cards to get some profit by renting for this purpose, however the game seems to be walking the steps of other NFT games also successful that ended up having the same result: **Your tokens melting away to the point where the return obtained by playing is less than just buying some cryptocurrency for a purpose and waiting for it to be valued or leaving it in pools of liquidity to get a daily income.
Splinterlands is not open to beginners
Just as is occurring in another game in the Hive ecosystem the dCity, Splinterlands is no longer as "open doors" for beginners as it once was, this may be my own opinion but we have the following situation:
I get to know the game Splinterlands through a video, Twitter post or something like that, after a look at the whole website and the game documentation with the tutorials I understand that my initial investment will be $10 dollars to acquire a game pass, so I research more on how I can get my invested money back (understanding of course that this game is about a long term return) just with the initial composition I would not be able to withdraw even 50% of the return playing only in Bronze league since I will not be able to sell my cards acquired in chests, the gain in SPS both in battle and in daily missions and end of season would not get to pass 10 SPS, that is if I was very lucky to withdraw this amount in 2 or 3 seasons, with the price of SPS being less than $0.1 I would think twice before spending my $10 to enter and stay playing this game (disregarding the fact that initially I would not know some platforms that can help you with the gameplay as 
Another important point is about the reward reduction when using "ghosts" or starter cards, for each card of this set used your reward is decreased by a percentage reaching -100% if your team composed in battle is made entirely of this set, would not be of better interest instead of acquiring this pass to play Splinterlands the player who acquires the entry to the game after purchase get some amount of random card non-negotiable as happens with the new rewards attached to the account until a certain time / completion of its printing? It could even be the removal of that reduction for those cards after all he already supposedly paid for that set, maybe remind me of the problem of multiple accounts benefiting from that last part as was happening but one thing is fact: regardless of the game involving money or not there will always be second accounts to benefit their owner.
Splintershards price and DEC, game tokens
The current situation of the token that came to replace the old one named Splintershards (SPS) since its launch saw its price being dropped on the great process of acquiring the token, and I'm not talking directly to the players but to those who simply bought it and left it stored in their wallets, is this a bad thing? Not for those who want to increase liquidity with the passive income of the token, however it is strange for a token that came with the promise of replacing the old DEC in battles that so far has not lost its usefulness being able to use it for the purchase, sales taxes and rental of cards, not enough about this process came to further assist this fall to purchase license to mine or validators as they decided to call to further increase the net token without being acquired through the Play2Earn as was the initial proposal of the developers.
Maybe we will not reach the price of the initial token by its way of acquisition is not only reserved to players who are investors buying card packs, moving the market with the same and contribute to the community with great content and tutorials as is what happens with the weekly social challenge and weekly battle challenge, I still don't understand why Splinterlands is opening itself to other games like Tower Defencer since it carries the name of the actual game in question and not of a development company, maybe separating the other games as it happens with its soccer project Genesis League Sports, it has not been disclosed yet or I don't have the knowledge of the official currency of the game but if it shares the same ecosystem as Splinterlands certainly could be the SPS, DEC or this other "new" novelty that is the DEC-B. Here an update on the old DEC token that was to be paired to the dollar at 1000 = $1. I hope the current token does not follow the same path of being worth less than pennies.
My link Splinterlands: https://splinterlands.com/?ref=diskordoba
My twitter: @badinfluencer.dev