$2 Conclave Arcana Packs? Let's Do It!
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Hello Praetorians!
It is I, The Psi, back with another article questioning the very fabric of the Splinterverse! You can always count on me to try and shake things up with another suggestion to make the game better for our player base!
This time, I'd like to talk about the fact that I believe the best way to move forward into Conclave Arcana would be to REDUCE the pack price from the 4000 DEC point that was established during Chaos Legion, back to the "classic" 2000 DEC price that was used in Untamed and before.
There are many reasons I'd like to offer as to why this would be beneficial, and I've created both this Hive post as well as a video to explain my position in the hopes of a successful DAO vote to implement this change. In the last Town Hall, Matt himself said that IF a DAO proposal were to pass, that YES, the price WOULD be changed! So it is not a question of "if a proposal passes, the team would consider it", NO, if it passes, the team WILL make this change! That fills me with hope that we will have a lot of participation in this conversation, as well as the DAO proposal that would accompany it. (NOTE: I would love to have some help getting the DEC together to fund the proposal! If you can help, send me a message!)
The first thing we need to consider as to WHY this would be a beneficial change would be to look at the economic position and the changes that have been made to the game since Chaos Legion, when the pack price change to 4000 DEC first happened. That was an entirely different ecosystem that may have justified such a price, but those days are in the past, and with them, the huge profits that used to be able to be generated in order to fund such a price.
- There is no more SPS airdrop encouraging people to invest in DEC and cards, so less capital coming in to earn the "free" airdrop in the form of SPS. Many who were only here for that airdrop (including the VCs) have already left the game.
- Reward cards are now SOULBOUND. You can no longer get lucky when you open a Djinn Oshanus and sell it for $30 to use towards the cost of packs. In fact, unlocking Reward cards is now a DEC sink, and the "profits" that can be earned form them are vastly reduced
- You now require a Wild Pass to play in wild, reducing seasonal profits from that format and discouraging players from playing it at all with lower tier collections.
- Wagons are now required, as well as required to be repaired to earn the airdrops, requiring further investment and reducing the amount you'd have free to roll back into packs.
- Chaos Legion has lost most of its value and will no longer be able to be sold at a massive profit the way Untamed was to fund the next Standard set.
- No more "Pack Bonuses" for buying a large quantity of packs at the same time, which for many "whales" is an additional 15% "loss".
All of these factors will result in more OUTSIDE capital being needed to purchase packs, instead of being able to roll EXISTING collection value into buying future sets. As such, we are relying on NEW money coming into the game, whereas previously there were more ways to leverage your existing collection
You also have to take into consideration community sentiment, and the fact we have a reduced player base vs previous releases. There is a sentiment that the "buy in cost" of Splinterlands is so high, that it no only discourages NEW players, but also older players! We can see this evidently in the backlash from the pricing of the "Hall of Legends" promotion, where many players felt they were priced out of important meta cards that would never be available again.
Many of the people I have spoken with over Discord have expressed that at $4 they would NOT be buying into Conclave Arcana! Based on their previous experience with Rebellion, the large amount of money they invested didn't even materialize into a max nor competitive Rebellion deck, that they will just buy singles, if even that. Would we rather have a large number of players buying lower prices packs, or a smaller number of players buying more expensive packs?
Some of the questions become:
- Do we want 1000 people buying 10 packs each at $2, or 10 people buying 100 packs each at $4?
- Will the whales buy with a number of PACKS in mind (ie: "I am buying 1000 packs, whether they are $2 or $4")
- Will the whales buy based on a spending BUDGET (ie: "I am spending $1000 whether that gets me 250 packs or 500 packs).
- Will the price attract non-crypto people, or only those who are already into web3?
I feel I should also address 2 points that have been brought up around why pack prices should stay at $4.
- "Reducing the price of packs will devalue Rebellion cards": This is a fallacy because the FLOOR price of Rebellion would remain higher since the pack price was higher to begin with. Pricing Conclave Arcana at a lower price will not suddenly make the price of Rebellion cards decrease because although if the same amount of money is spent on both, it would result in twice the supply of CA vs REB, keeping the value of REB higher.
- "Less players in Modern will result in higher SPS rewards": True, but is even LESS players in modern what we WANT? And if SPS is a utility / transactional token (utility because you need to stake it to earn / transactional because you need to burn it into DEC to buy things) would less players not reduce the demand, and therefore the price? If you are theoretically earning 50 SPS a win worth $0.01 per SPS vs earning 100 SPS a win worth $0.005 a win, the overall "value" of each win is still $0.50.
We also need to look at how competitive we are when we compare ourselves to OTHER games people could be playing.
Splinterlands is VERY expensive.
For the cost of a Diamond deck you could EASILY build multiple Magic the Gathering decks. You could buy a brand new Playstation 5 with a ton of games. You could have a Vacation. You could buy an entire bag worth of Disc Golf discs. Heck, you could buy a used CAR!
If we are to compete with these other opportunities, there has to be a strong value proposition. It's hard to justify spending thousands on mid tier deck in the face of other opportunities and the DRAW and INCENTIVES need to be there. Lowering the cost of packs would at least lower the barrier to entry and allow more people to try playing the game instead of looking at the price tag and immediately dismissing it.
I have created a YouTube Video that you can watch that further explains some of my thoughts and goes over these points in audio format. You can view that video HERE:
I hope this post has energized you to vote for reducing the pack prices to 2000 DEC. I feel strongly that this is the best way to bring in more players, and elicit more investment into the ecosystem from existing players.
The "old" Splinterlands economy is no more, we have to adapt along with the many changes both the game and player base have experienced.
Please vote "YES" should there be a DAO vote on the subject!
Until next time, it's your guy, The Psi, and I'll see you around Praetoria!
Cheers,
Psilence

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