Shiny cards are about to gain new functionality with the new Daily Play & Earn system. It isn't just about cosmetics any more, but higher quality cards now mean players can earn more every day.
I think adding functionality in this sense to the NFTs is a solid idea which will reward players who have built up a quality collection through their engagement with the game and their skill, and it will probably have several ramifications.
1) Adding functionality to the NFTs like this will add value to the cards, as they can be used to earn more Gods every day.
The demand for meteorite and shiny cards people use to win should go up, because they now are more important to use in your deck than before, if you want to earn.
2) The supply of out of print cards will tend to go down.
Players are rewarded for burning the lower quality cards to get shiny cards to earn more God Tokens, which will reduce the total supply of the expansion sets.
So it's a classic situation of demand going up, and supply going down. You don't need a PhD in economics to see that this will make out of print cards more valuable and scarce. The effect of this should be especially strong for cards with high demand, that are staples in winning decks. For cards that are still in print, although this will tend to raise their value too, the supply is flexible so people can just buy more packs or play more games to get more core cards.
3) Bot farms will be less profitable.
This is also a way to make it harder for bots to farm God tokens, as it will not be as profitable to manage a bot farm of many bots with free to play accounts.
4) Experimenting and keeping up with the meta will be costlier.
Players will need more higher quality cards in their collections if they want to be able to earn more and keep up with the shifting meta. It might become more costly to have cards available for experimenting with, with people rewarded for streamlining their collection and upgrading their top deck.
This could lead to a general slowing down of meta shifts, because it won't be so easy for everyone to acquire the new trending cards and changing strategies from one week to the next. It's not very clear, but this could also lead to a greater diversity in the meta, in that you won't have everyone acquiring and playing the same decks anymore, as the supply and cost of these will go up, players will be rewarded for finding cost-efficient alternatives.
Players will still be able to experiment and try things out without being afraid of losing any earnings, but they will probably do that only after their daily 10 first games for the gods rewards, or 25 games of weekend ranked. Buying cards on the market to try them out might get costlier. Players will be rewarded for having more specialized but higher quality collections of cards too so that might lead to less experimentation.
Some players might not like seeing experimentation become costlier, but if you think about it, it's not that strange. If we compare with competitive sports, you don't normally see athletes experimenting randomly while competing. I mean they can if they want to, but it might cost them the game or their earnings. Unless they come up with some genius idea on the spot that really works, and that's cool too.
With the new system, players will still be free to experiment all they want with low quality cards, but if they do that during their 10 first daily games, they will be missing out on free earnings. It's their choice.
5) Number go up?
Whether this leads to actual prices of cards and gods tokens going up, or more packs being sold, depends on whether the community grows, and/or if investors want to buy tokens or cards as an investment. My guess is the daily play to earn will attract more players and reward current players to play more, but until the bear market ends I think it will be difficult to see prices going up again. That might be a good thing for the community in the long term, especially offering mainstream gamers a window to get in and grow their collection without having to pay much cash.
About card prices, it's hard to say, but I think everytime they release a new expansion set like Mortal Judgment that offers tons of new great cards for cheap, that outperform or replace cards from previous sets, this will tend to lower the value of the cards from older sets. But it also depends on whether the community grows, and on what direction the team wants to take this in, and other things too of course.
Anyway, these are just my thoughts and guesses about the new system and it's implications, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball or anything. Let me know what you think in the comments below.
Check out https://gutools.net/ for more stats and figures like the one above.
If you want to learn more about this:
Preview of Daily Pay-and-Earn Percentages According to Rank and Deck Quality