Hey guys, I found the recent changes to be pretty amusing and wanted to give you some thoughts of what I really loved, why, and what could be improved for the future.

If you haven't read the recent update yet, you can find it.

The two main points of change in the recent update are:

• DEC Ranked Battle Rewards

• Loot Chests for Bronze and Silver League

The recent rise of Splinterlands asset prices on third-party markets has caused a situation in which players are able to earn a significant amount of rewards with only the purchase of the Summoner's Spellbook, and without ever needing to acquire or even rent any in-game assets. While this may benefit the Splinterlands company in the short term (due to increased Spellbook sales), it is unsustainable for the overall game economy and therefore also bad for the company and the community in the long term.

It is very important to the overall game economy that players are always incentivized to get to higher leagues and obtain more cards, so when a situation like this arises it is critical that it gets addressed as quickly as possible.

With this I agree fully, and it is great to see that the founders are this deeply concerned about this issue because it shows their understanding of the game economy and care for the long term prosperity of the game.

Following that is the one sentence that I find a little troubling:

For a healthy, long-term game economy, the earning opportunities must be proportional to the amount of in-game assets held.

The concept that earning opportunities are proportional to in-game assets held is one I disagree emphatically.

Value in Splinterlands and Game Economy

If you are into the crypto universe you know that there's a lot of projects that are pure speculation, filled with nothing but emptiness and people holding bags at the end of the day. So it is clear to me that value and the fact that somebody holds an asset have no necessary co-relation whatsoever. When we talk about the game economy of Splinterlands, we must remain conscious of the word game. Value is added to the game economy when people wanna invest their capital and time to play it. Sure, everything that has value will gather investor's attention, meaning people not interested in the game itself but only of making a profit from the game, but that is just a part of that economy, and that can only exist because of the people who find those assets actually valuable (players). In short, players are the ones that actually drive value into the game, and as such I believe they are the ones who should receive the better earning opportunities, and although that has a relation with in-game assets held, I don't believe that this should be the only metric.

I believe that the concept of collection power being a need to rank up is a great economic thought from the Splinterlands team, and with that they tied the game and economy side of Splinterlands into one integrated whole. By doing so, they can now treat Splinterlands as a game, rewarding players by being better or worse players accordingly, and the economy side of things will still make sense perfectly. That's the beauty of a functional, well thought concept. It works and integrates.

Incentives of Holding Assets

I understand the reason why that crossed the minds of the founders, or at least I have an idea of what it can be, and it is to generate an incentive to hold assets. That makes perfect sense and you should incentive your players to hold game assets. Power is one incentive as I talked before, it forces you to hold assets if you wanna earn better rewards and rank up to compete in higher leagues. The problem of expanding this concept of holding assets to everything is that you start to give rewards for a lot of people that do not provide value back into the game. It is great to give rewards for early adopters that have hold their assets for years, and they have earned a lot with the rental system and airdrops even if they do not play the game. The ones that are currently putting some hours have even been blessed with some SPS bonuses in the tournaments that can only be played by some with gigantic SPS rewards. So I don't believe Splinterlands is being ungrateful to their most faithful players, and I think all those things are really amazing, but there has to be a balance between the rewards given to passive holders and the reward given to active players, and I believe that has to change in the future. Players who are either renting, or owning a lot of assets to reach higher leagues have no real incentive to put the hours, nor the effort if they are considering it a monetary matter. You'll make 100x more money if you just rent your assets than if you play to reach Champion III for example, and people who rent to reach to those leagues are not profiting unless they open a lottery loot chest.

DEC Ranked Battle Reward

Starting shortly after the end of the current ranked play season on Thursday, September 30th, 2021, the DEC rewards given out for a ranked battle win will be based on the minimum of the winning player's current rating and the maximum rating for their current league within the game.

For example, if a player's ranked battle rating is currently 2,500 and they are in the Silver I league, then when they win a ranked battle their DEC reward will be based on a rating of 1,899 (the maximum rating for the Silver I league).

To be honest I always thought that was the way this worked, and this is the only way that makes any sense to me. If you reward people for the rating without the power, you're pretty much breaking the concept of power to get rewards you don't really deserve. This for me is just the fix of a bug. Very well done!

Loot Chests for Bronze and Silver League

The second area that needs to be addressed is the rewards given out in loot chests in Bronze/Novice league specifically. Starting shortly after the end of the current ranked play season on Thursday, September 30th, 2021, loot chests earned in Bronze league will give out Credits instead of DEC tokens, and will also have a lower chance of containing reward cards as compared to loot chests in Silver league and above.

The new percentage breakdown of receiving the different types of rewards based on league are shown in the table below:

This is another great change implemented by the founders, and it aims at the overwhelming number of players that have been farming rewards with close to no skin in the game. I embrace this with all my heart and just wished this incentive to being a better player (higher league), which also implies in holding more assets had continued throughout all the leagues, following Gold, Diamond and Champion. Hopefully this happens in the future and we create more incentives to grind it up!

Conclusions

I feel like there's a little bit of confusion still in the air about the path for the future and what will be the focus of the future incentives, if passive holders or active players, maybe both. But the general changes that will be implemented seems solid, very straight forward and effective in what they want to achieve.

This was my little take on the recent changes, I'd really love to know if I missed anything, and your own thoughts on it. What do you think will be the impact of these new changes in the Splinterlands Economy?

Thank you for Reading!