The Importance of New Player Onboarding
When it comes down to Play2Earn games, having more new players come in compared to going out is key in making the economy hold up and it is the main reason prices went crazy high (at the time when way more players wanted to get in while there weren't enough assets) and why they are now falling.
Looking at the new player sign-ups it can be seen that in the last 6 months, there have been 45k new sign-ups with just with in total only a 6.1% conversion rate into buying the spellbook and likely less than this actually building a collection. That is only around 15 new players each day which simply isn't enough.
The new player experience is also just bad right now and I would say this is mostly the case because the priority of the devs for a long time has gone more into 'milking the existing player base and the whales' with new cards are sales all the time along with the focus to get DEC back to peg so they can move on to the sale of the next set.
If anything, there needs to be a way for new players to come into the ecosystem and have fun right away with limited knowledge, cost, or hassle. Right now, this is just overwhelming with all the cards to choose from, the bot opponents who play optimally, the Collection Power / SPS requirements, ...
New Game Modes > More Card Printing
Right now there are roughly 500+ Different cards already in the game while the real player base I would guess is 5000-10000 players. There are 2 ways to make keep the game fresh and interesting which are:
- Create New Cards
- Create New Game Modes
So far it has mostly been creating more cards while on the game mode side, there are the 3-game rules (which are designed for players to need more cards), Brawls & Tournament. The game mode that is talked about now that will be next is Draft Mode which is similar to Arena in Hearthstone which used to be by far what I enjoyed playing the most.
Splinterlands Draft Mode
The idea around Draft Mode is pretty simple in that players get to create a collection of cards for a certain number of rounds picking between 3 cards which requires skill in knowing which are the best one and also which ones synergize best with the ones they already drafted. These are some ideas to make this new game mode work...
1. Level The Playing Field 100%
One of the issues right now with Splinterlands is that it is an extreme Pay2Win game where most of the time either the player with the biggest card collection to choose from wins or an AI bot who is capable to make way more optimal choices in the limited timeframe. For new players who don't have a big collection, this is just a torture and not fun. Draft mode should be an opportunity to make Splinterlands 100% Skil & Luck based putting everyone on a level playing field.
I'm not sure though how the battle helpers can be avoided.
2. Card Rental Pools
Right now, the Rental Market is completely dead as the rewards that can be taken profit on were highly reduced since Reward Cards became Soulbound while the SPS and Pack Prices fell. Most of the rental market existed of Bots who played with the only reason to extract value this way and they are now mostly gone
Renting cards right now is also a complete hassle since the 1 DEC listing fee was introduced which highly cuts into the earnings since most cards rent for way less. It used to be good to have it automated on Splex even though it was a hassle kind of needing a separate account for it. Right now, however, this gives only a 0.0%-1% yearly return even with card prices at an all-time low.
With Draft Mode, it would be possible to introduce something as Card Rental Pools. The main idea is that you pay an entry fee to play each round of Draft Mode without the need of owning any cards with no difference between the biggest whale and the smallest fish. The cards that are drafted and played with in this mode can exclusively be provided by players that own these cards just by delegating them into a pool. Part of the fee that is payed to enter Draft mode directly would go to players who provide the cards directly based on how often the cards are picked by players and how many of each of those cards are in the pool.
What this would do:
- Make Renting Extremely Easy: The only thing you have to do in order to earn some rental income from fees that are paid is to just delegate them into a pool and you are done. No complicated setup where you need to find individual renters where price need to be adjusted and listing fees need to be paid.
- Increase Card Values: At least for the powerful cards and those where not that many are in circulation since these will either be picked more bringing a bigger revenue share or have less other cards to share generated profit with. Less powerful cards are less suited for this but are much more useful on land for farming.
- Increase Promo Card Sales: The previous Promo card created to drive some revenue to the team barely sold mostly because players know they won't hold up in value over time the way things are now. If these cards tend to be rare and quite powerful which makes they excellent for Draft Mode Rental revenue which could drive sales a lot.
3. Reward Structure
While I haven't thought about the exact cost and fair rewards for Draft mode, it should be done in a way where bad players play in a way where they are expected to make a limited loss while great human players are able make a small expected profit.
Right now the Riftwatchers set is just sold on the website while these packs could easily act as a reward for Draft Mode. If a significant part of the DEC Entry is Burned, it pretty much is equal to buying while it adds a lot of fun to it. With 1 Million Packs left which would equal 5 Million Dollars, if ~20% of that would go to the card Rental Pool that would be 1 Million dollars toward players who own cards pushing those prices up quite a bit.
Other prizes also potentially can be included or a system where you earn some kind of non-transferrable currency in-game that can be used to buy packs when reaching a certain amount so it's possible to reward packs in fractions. This also could be done for regular ranked rewards so lower ranked players see a bar fill up to the point where they can redeem a pack instead of needing to get really lucky to catch one.
4. Battle Pass Daily Draft Mode Entry Discount
I know that there are plans of a battle pass that potentially could include a small discount to enter 1 daily round of Draft Mode or something like that
5. Draft Mode Leaderboard
Since Draft mode will be played on a level playing field, it would also be nice to have some kind of leaderboard where the best players shine. Again here though, I'm not sure how battle helpers will be avoided.
Conclusion
Splinterlands desperately needs a fun new game mode where everyone is on a level playing field and which is fun and accessible for new players. Draft Mode has the potential to do this at the same time introducing a new way to rent cards in an easy way while making the powerful and rare cards more valuable. Instead of just selling Riftwacthers Cards or future Mini-sets that are made for the SPS Dao, they can be included in the prize pool as a more fun way for them to be distributed. While there are a lot more factors on how Draft Mode could properly be implemented, I'm excited for the time it will be introduced even though I'm quite sure it's still far away.
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