Good evening Splinterfriends and Soulkeepers!
It's ya boi, CaptainDingus and I'm back with another Soulkeep Update đ
Naturally, I know I must be your favorite SK Blogger at this point... never mind the fact that I am the only SK Blogger... #erroneous
If you have followed Soulkeep at all - that's the Tower Defense game from Double Coconut that is linked to Splinterlands.
There was a bunch of drama and some questionable choices made by the devs that ultimately allowed a few players to get to the top and prevented the others from having a fair shot at joining them... this would have led to 1 player earning over 1M SPS due to multiple factors: including them playing a LOT in the beginning.
This needs to be recognized, they didn't "cheat" in the sense that they did something unfairly but due to their rapid progression, they were able to achieve certain things, that once patched, allowed them to remain ahead... unfairly.
Now... the 
Eventually, DC decided to fully reset everyone to League 1 after they applied the fix(es) - there were pros and cons to this... but we all dealt with it, one way or another.
One major issue of contention was and still kinda is (but not really)... Multi Accounting (MA) and now, somehow... Botting?
The problem with MA is this - the map of the day is "fixed". That means, once a player figures out how to maximize the score on the map, they can "tweak" it until they get a top score.
That's fine but you only get one free attempt per day... so if you had say... three accounts in a League and everyone else had just one...
You could play for free THREE times whereas everyone else could only play once... this would give you a MASSIVE advantage.
This is where a group of predominantly Russian players earned the nickname "The Russian Mafia".
There was a good bit of not-so-friendly chatter in the Discord pre-launch by several of these players - who think it's ok to call other people "peasants" and "only fitting of crumbs from the masters table"... one of them even caught a ban for a bit due to their remarks lol
So... post launch... post clamoring... how's everything shaking out - did the Reward Pool abuse get fixed??? That seems to be the biggest issue...
Well... let's look at the Leagues as of 12-15-2024...
As you can see - Vassal7, Vassal8, Vassal9, Vassal 10 all played their free attempts and are in the top 10 although that player isn't good enough to earn a place in the top 3... they did manage to place 4 accounts in the top 10...
League 1 doesn't have a ton of Rewards in the Reward Pool though. Lets look at yesterdays Tournament Results to see what kind of Rewards they won.
It looks like 1st place took home about 283 SPS while 10th only took in about 30 SPS - however, the only issue still prevailing here is that there were very few Tickets spent.
Most players were happy to spend their Free Attempt and take the results they got... these players probably won't move up and will settle for these awards.
The best part about League 1 (L1) is that this it is easy to play, cheap to play and the cards can be rented for SUPER CHEAP...
L2 has a big bump in Rewards and as you can see... with the bump in Rewards comes a bump in Attempts, which equals a bump in DEC burned :)
As you can see here in League 3, even though there are only 19 Players in L3... we only have ONE Player who spent only one attempt... everyone else played 2 or more with 
Momojuice took home 849 SPS with their 1st place win and 
Prizes start to get pretty big in L4 and MR-RIP managed to take down 1st place with only one attempt - which is crazy! Either they have mad skillz or got lucky... or both... but nice work taking down 1,494 SPS for first place!
There were several players spending 3 & 4 attempts here and as you can see 
The best thing about leveling up in Soulkeep is even 10th place in League 4 took home 160 SPS!
Here's where things get spicy! League 5 is where Players are winning a LOT of SPS... but they're also spending a LOT of DEC!
The big dawg 
In 10th place 
But more importantly, look at the attempts! All players in the Top 10 played at least 3 Attempts!
I'd like to point out that 12th Place was taken by 
Things are really heating up near the top of the ladder! As you can see, Bakenbard takes another L to myself and others, despite their bluster, they are mediocre at best as a player...
The important thing to note is that 
I snagged 1,850 SPS with my 3rd place showing - but more importantly... beat Bakenbard... Now I just need to beat Ksanto!
Of further note, I was out of energy for my cards and could only spend 2 attempts but BaconBits spent 3... however Ksanto, 
Well, well, well... League 7... Top of the heap. The Champs. The Big Dawgs. Numero Unos...
One of these players happened to be the top player last time, who through a series of events, made it into the top League... the door was closed behind them allowing them to unfairly win so much SPS...
So how did they end up in the same spot, up top? Simple: they played an INSANE amount of times... like... all 10 in some cases!
They bought tons of cards. They leveled them up. They spent mountains of DEC... and they are reaping the Rewards of a level playing field...
Isn't this the EXACT MISSION OF SPLINTERLANDS?!? Incentivize the players to Level Up, Combine Cards... and win bigger prizes?
It is. That was the entire pitch of Splinterlands... Level up and earn bigger rewards...
Previously, we had an issue where if there was only one player in the League, they won all the Rewards... for the entire League!
Look on the left side of the above photo and see that the Total Rewards for League 7 are 21,962 SPS but only 5,819 SPS were distributed per the NEW Reward Distribution rules, where each player can only win a set percentage of the total League Rewards instead of ALL the League Rewards :)
Here's today - League 6... and I just want to point out that I absolutely DUNKED ON
Other than bragging about beating the brakes off Bakenbard... I'd like to highlight something...
I played 6 times... and the others played 2-5 which means everyone spent DEC here... but let's look at what that means.
My previous attempt was 2,016 Tickets... but each Ticket = 4 DEC...
Which means I spent over 8,000 DEC on Attempt # 6 Alone...
2 Attempts = 126 Tickets = 504 DEC
3 Attempts = 252 Tickets = 1,008 DEC
4 Attempts = 504 Tickets = 2,016 DEC
5 Attempts = 1,008 Tickets = 4,032 DEC
6 Attempts = 2,016 Tickets = 8,064 DEC
If I hold onto 1st place, I stand to win about 2,350 SPS... which is a LOT! However, I did spend 15,624 DEC to get that win - and took home a ton of souls too :)
Is Soulkeep perfect? No.
Did they solve a LOT of the issues that were plaguing Soulkeep and allowed one player to unfairly win an absurd amount of SPS? YES.
They continue to work on improving things and listening to community feedback.
They have eliminated the Reward Pool drain. They have imposed SPS Delegation Requirements for upper leagues.
Players have shown fierce competition in the upper leagues are and spending lots of DEC to be on top as well as keep advancing...
It seems things have moved in the right direction... but ultimately... Soulkeep faces the same problem Splinterlands currently faces...
Until then, it will be a race up the ladder, with a few players overall winning a big chunk of Rewards... but this is NOT a bad thing... because it is being done EXACTLY as the DAO wanted đ
Hopefully this will help 
Which basically means that Soulkeep is just like Splinterlands in the sense that they aren't perfect... but they are working on it :)
That's all I have for you today folks!! Thank you for reading and I would LOVE for you to join me in game!!
Naturally, after everything leading up to this moment, I do think Splinterlands and Soulkeep are some of the BEST web3 games out there!
They bring the #play2earn feature to the forefront of development as well as many opportunities for people to earn rewards - whether Player or Investor!!
If you're interested in the future of gaming, it's worth checking out!
You can sign up here: Splinterlands
Cheers đģ,
- CaptainDingus
#Splinterlands #Hive #Soulkeep #play2earn #web3 #NFTGaming #Rebellion #Conflicts #TowerDefense