Does the economics hurt the game?

Been a few days since I've posted anything. Back at work and such after the holidays. Time flies. I'll probably do more giveaways soon. Have been sort of taking a small break from actually playing the game. So I wanted to talk about something that has been on my mind a lot lately but really since I started playing back in August.

Does the economics hurt the game?

I know. Most of us are here BECAUSE OF the economics of the game. And I'm not talking about the steep decline in asset value that has happened over the last month or so (even if that is kind of painful!) I'm talking about how actually playing the game is the least profitable thing you can do in the game!

Maximizing Airdrop vs Playing

When I first started, I was very hesitent to actually buy cards. I transferred a bunch of money into DEC. I was bringing in about $200 U.S. every day just from the airdrop (at the prices of the time.) Card prices were such that if I bought cards with all my DEC, I could probably go to Gold I, Diamond III. Competing daily ranked I would maybe make about 500 DEC a day at that level. My airdrop would have dropped to about $50 a day since the CP I would have would have went up but the DEC was worth about 4x that. So I always looked at this like the game would be costing me $150 a day to actually play. I am fairly certain if I sold my cards now I'd be right back up there again. Way more profit for doing basically nothing than actually playing the game.

Chaotic Decision

When Chaos Legion presale was about to start, I had a decision to make. All assets were essentially at their all time high. I sold almost all my cards, which was not a ton at the time but I really assumed they were at their height and I wanted to just max out DEC for the airdrop. At this time I had almost $30,000 of DEC. This is more than 4x what I started with. My airdrop income was even higher. I started staking some and got over 8000 SPS staked in no time to take advantage of the upcoming vouchers. But... I wanted to play the game and I know the SPS airdrop is temporary. So I needed to decide if I wanted to just continue maximizing profit and then probably sell out and cash out over 30 grand... that is A LOT of money to me.

Or I could do the opposite and go all in. 1000 pre order packs were in reach. This would be the long term play. Even as I was doing it my plan was to hold all 1000 packs until Chaos Legion sold out. I still think it is pretty safe to say, even in this down market, when the packs sell out they will at least double in price. Plus all the airdrops I'll get, I should at least not lose money but have potential to get a huge return. At the time Untamed packs were around $80 each. If Chaos Legion hit that cost and I had 1000 of them... yeah. That'd be awesome right?

Well... my decision was to buy the 1000 pre-sale packs. Not only that, I opened them all and decided to play hard and see how much I can really get. My account is worth about $13,000 now.... I'm not considering it a bad decision yet. Like I said earlier, it was a 'long play' to begin with and the market is way down.

New Dilemma

I spent two seasons after opening my packs grinding to see how high I could get and how much I'd be earning doing so. I finished both seasons in Diamond III, which was the highest my CP would allow. On average, including daily and end season rewards I made about 600 DEC a day on average. My win rate is over 50% but not by much. So if I had a higher win rate, maybe I could get that up a little but it probably wouldn't be a ton. My CP and other points gets me about 50 SPS a day, which is nice but obviously not a ton compared to what I used to get.

So I've been wrestling with what to do next. I really think all Splinterlands assets will rebound at some point. I think it is just following market trends and once crypto in general goes back up, Splinterlands will follow. Therefore I am hesitant to actually sell my cards. In fact I want to buy more and eventually start playing again when I can make it to 500k+ CP.

However, right now if I just keep playing, I'm getting 600 DEC a day and 50 SPS. OR... I could just rent my whole deck.

Yes. 2173.651 DEC per day is what my cards rent for now. Beginning-Mid seasons prices. I haven't even seen what the last couple days will be like yet.

So AGAIN I am stuck with the decision of play the game and essentially lose money or do something else to maximize profit. In this case it isn't really maximizing profit. Pretty sure I could sell my cards and get more from airdrops daily. But, renting does give me a lot more than playing and I'm not actually losing anything. I still get the CP for daily SPS drop. I stop renting for short times to play in guild brawls. I still have them all for eventually trying to rank up again. The inevitable rebound will also see my cards worth going up... eventually.

Conclusion

So if you made it this far... basically from the time I started playing it just does not make any financial sense to actually play the game. The SPS airdrop, even as low as SPS is now, is still probably the most lucrative. But even renting my cards over playing is more profitable.

Next Plans

Since I'm getting 10k+ DEC a week now from renting, and my SPS airdrop continues to increase as well thanks to renting and snowballing it into DEC I am slowly building my profits up again. Eventually I am going to start rolling some of that into more cards. I have a solid Chaos collection, mostly Gold level for now. So I need to level up my favorites. As well as buy more Untamed and Dice cards I am missing. But even before that I may invest in some land plots. Nothing is 100% certain yet, I just know I want to get a steady stream of DEC/SPS coming in so I can continue to build my account.