This week in the Community Engagement Challenge, it's all about Wild mode so here is my experience with it...
Wild Mode, were old cards get Dumped into!
The way I see it, Wild more originally was needed to give an 'affordable entry' into Splinterlands for new players who don't own all the cards which during the Chaos Legion era also were crazy expensive. When the call made to create a mode where only human players are allowed to play, the choice was made to make Modern into the human player mode and Wild to become league where botting still is allowed.
This kind of made Wild into somewhat of a dumpster mode where I would say 98% of the game that are played are automated making Splinterlands nothing more than a defi platform. As there were so many accounts that got a ton of reward cards especially since summoners were part of them, another measure was taken to get them out, introducing a 2$ entry tax which needs to be payed twice a month.
The SPS Requirements also are double those of Modern League
Wild Mode Earnings!
All of this creates a situation where only really players who own a lot of SPS and also have a big card collection can get out on top in Wild mode and earn more than what it costs them.
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Since it also only makes sense to run a bot in Wild since nobody really wants to grind hours each day playing against bot accounts who often just are better than humans in selecting the best lineup, it adds a cost of running the bot which for Archmage.app is a whopping 35% of the earnings at the base level.
So not do you first need to earn back the 2$ entry fee, All SPS earnings also get cut by 35% unless you gave a Beta or Alpha Pass.
Average Win Earnings
Personally on average, I would estimate that I'm earning 4.5 SPS for every win in Wild League. At the start of the season it's a bit lower and at the end it's a bit higher.
Last season, my bot played 465 matches of which 222 were wins. This adds up to roughly 1000 SPS in a season and 750 SPS after the bot running cost. This equals 8$ of which 2$ is the entry cost, so just running a bot in wild brings in 6$ a season or 12$ a month.
It's a good thing that these are only part of the earnings from the game as it would make no sense to own 10k+ of assets in the Splinterlands ecosystem for just a 144$ yearly expected return while the general trend is that more cards are printed each day diluting part of your assets.
Tha Full Splinterlands Earnings
Luckily, there is (was) also Survival Mode, SPS Staking Rewards, Vouchers which all boost the earnings in the game and I've been ranging above 10$ weekly (40$ monthly) with a peak of 25$+ in a week thanks to a good Survival mode run and an increased SPS price last week.
My Wild Mode Experience!
What to say about Wild aside from that I never really play manual matches anymore as my archmage bot is doing all the hard work. In a way it's good that there is a way where you don't have to play Splinterlands while it's possible to still put your assets to work. Howevern it's just far from optimal and again a economical choice at the cost of fun and gameplay.
This said, it is what it is and I still enjoy spending the Glints in the shop while trying to complete my Reward Card Collection to max level.
Conclusion
Wild mode at this point is nothing more than something where only players who are quite heavily invested in the game can just run a bot without really caring and make a bit more than what it costs them. in reality over time though, the dilution of cards and dropping asset prices have made it so that it actually cost a lot of money to run this mode. However, if new players would come into the game, it could have become well worth it as they will need SPS and cards which could pump those prices.
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