The depth of the game is what fear me.
Here you need to reject your knowledge and game expert level.
To look again at all as the pure newbie.

Look at the vision, that after these updates, while we all Splinterlands gamers and devs will hurray this fact...
That we will have the situation, when the newbie, who would asking me (you, any old gamer): "So you are the fan of Splinterlands, please, tell me about, I wanna start"
And then the newbies will meet enough big description of the game depths (which will appeared). And then we would see they could say: "Nah, this is a real tough game, lets me go to another simplier one (also collectible card game on blockchain)".

I think that we here have enough joyful, fascinating and unpredictable with auto-battles. And it is really enough for me (to have fun).
Playing and arranging something during the battle on arena - seems to me tedious, even exhausting thing.

IMHO this one aspect would kill the mass expansion of the game,
even whether you think how to make the money or not (and if in these is the mass expansion sense - skillfully distribute the expendable part to a larger number of players - I appreciate this, no doubt), but
my fear is about "narrowing" of the gamers contingent due to the complexity of the gameplay of battles appearing.