The Incentives To Play Splinterlands!
I would say that when it comes down to Splinterlands, there are 2 main incentives why people should play this game. The first one is the earning incentives and the second one is to have some fun.
1. Earning Potential: I estimate that for 95%+ of the players, this is what pulled them in, especially during the early Chaos Legion Days. It was a combination of old cards being really expensive which gave the belief that making an investment in the game would potentially be worth more in the future and some direct monetary rewards to start offsetting the investment that was made.
Right now, this incentive is totally busted unless a crazy irrational altcoin season where Play2Earn does well would happen. Not only is getting in now way more expensive as packs were bumped up from 2$ to 4$. There is also a need to invest in SPS to bet some basic earnings and what can be earned is far less. oly SPS remains as a real monetary reward as everything else has become soulbound. More importantly I would say, the expectation of card values going up over time has shifted to a knowledge that values will go -90% eventually once the new cards get dumped into Wild Mode while getting inflated and Power Creeped away.
New Rare Summoner Prices...
Old Rare Summoner Prices...
So the angle of new players coming in because of financial incentives is totally busted, and it doesn't look like this will change anytime soon.
2. Having Fun Playing The Game: Many Web 2 games do incredibly well without any kind of earning potential and this purely comes from the fact that the games themselves are fun and addictive right from the start. Social buzz around the game with Streamers playing it also really helps in this regard. When it comes down to Splinterlands, the new player experience is simply not good enough yet.
The Campaign mode is better than the previous tutorial but it still kind of is an insult to real gamers coming in. Instead what would have been better is just a 2 Minute Video that briefly explains the basic concepts of Splinterlands and allow new players to discover things for themselves after.
The Practice mode is ok for existing players who know everything and all cards giving them an opportunity to test some things out. For new players however, this is just extremely overwhelming.
If you really want to get started and earn, you need to buy a 10$ Spellbook which is a huge barrier when not knowing that the game will actually be fun.
For me personally, the earnings remain the only real incentive to play Splinterlands. Wild Mode is fully automated by running a bot (similar to 98% of the battles there) and I only really play manual in Brawls & Survival mode which both kind of feel like a task most of the time as they don't bring out the true fun potential of Splinterlands given the extreme Pay2Win Mechanics along with the indirect obligation to play more than an hour each and every day.
So Splinterlands right now doesn't give any monetary or fun gameplay incentives really to play and for new players to come in with nothing really on the horizon to male this change.
The Power of Achievements in Gaming!
One of the games I can't stop playing having a ton of fun with it while it has zero earnings potential is Balatro because of the following reasons.
Fun & Fair Core Gameplay Loop. This despite the fact that a single run at the game easily takes up 40+ minutes. It's one of those games that costs 10$ to purchase, has a ton of great reviews and community engagement. Each run is also completely different and there are zero pay2win mechanics.
Easy to Learn Hard To Master. The game is fun from the fist game you play without an insulting tutorial and the more you play, the more tactics you pick up on by yourself. It also gets harder as you progress and provides a challenge to eventually master it and make all the right choices without ever getting overly complex as the choices always are limited.
Many Achievements. In Balatro, there are 20 different decks each with specific bas rules and 8 difficulties for each. Along the way there are also many cards & decks to unlock based on completing specific tasks. The fact that there are 160 different levels to complete with most of then where you don't just beat them on the first try gives so many incentives to keep playing as there is something about Achievements in Games that is very addictive to complete them. This is also something that is widely known in the gaming industry.
So Balatro for just 10$ gives me Thousands of potential hour to have fun with it and I need to resist my urges often to not play this game with zero financial incentives but just pure fun & enjoyment. Even as I write about it now, I'm tempted to just go lay down an play a single run.
How Achievements Could Make Splinterlands More Fun!
In Splinterlands there is no such a thing as achievements and the only real reason to play is for the potential earnings. This on top is only really the case for existing players who have a big card collection and a ton of SPS Staked.
I assume that the reason this is not in the game is because the devs rather put time in creating more Cards and sets to sell so the salary payouts keep on going. Card Set releases are also the one things that are never late or postopned while other things (Land, cosmetics, new game modes) tend to be delayed for years or never get there.
Achievements though should not be so hard to implement and could provide a ton of fun and incentives for both new and existing players to actually play the game more. These achievements can widely vary and some kind of Soulbound reward could be linked to them.
Achievement Examples
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You can easily come up with hundreds of these Achievement and making a full list can easily be done by the community
Achievement Rewards
While I'm not a fan of printing more cards, one of the neutral Common or rare cards from the upcoming new Soulbound reward card set could be taken and used as a reward for completing achievements. Either in a way where you get a card for each achievement or you get a certain number of cards when reaching the a certain milestone in how many achiemenents have been completed.
This makes it so that only higher level players are able to get up to 400 cards to get to a max level set while lower level players only are realistically able to get the card below Max Level.
Conclusion!
Splinterlands needs to give more fun incentives to play the game and Achievements is a very easy proven way in gaming to do this. It doesn't make the game more complicated, while it can help new and existing players explore more aspects about the game in a fun way. Even without major rewards liked to them they still give a reason to play Splinterlands making it all just a bit more fun
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