This draft has been approved by all members of the SPS Foundation board unanimously.
Purpose
Hello again Splinterlanders. Recently I had @bulldog1205 reach out to discuss an issue which some may view as an exploit, so I ran this poll to gather community sentiment and feedback. After discussing possible solutions with the team as well as in Discord and on the post, It seems that the most functional way to approach solving this issue would be to see if the DAO would like to move to all rentals being on a seasonal basis.
Matt has shared his thoughts as well on Discord when asked and he also agrees that this would be the best way to move forward. This change mitigates the issue with 2 day rental cycling, lowers infrastructure cost for the team and would make rentals overall much simpler for new users. It's also worth noting that both land and the upcoming Survival Mode will only work with season rentals, so having parity with rentals across all game modes could remove potential confusion there as well.
Ultimately the decision is up the DAO. Thanks for your time and consideration.
Proposal
If this proposal passes, the Splinterlands card rental service will change in the following ways:
- The daily rental options for cards will be removed from Splinterlands.
- The only official option for card rentals going forward will be via the seasonal rental system.
Update 2/10/25
If this vote passes, then the season rental option will be the only available option going forward. How this proposal affects the previous proposal regarding changing the Rental price floor to 1 DEC is somewhat ambiguous. We want to give the team the freedom and flexibility to manage the rental price floor how they feel best represents the spirit of the previous proposal, taking into account their DEV requirements as well. If the DEV requirements can't be fulfilled, then the team may have to reach back out to the community.
Hello @Clayboyn, I think the proposal is valid, but with all due respect I will disagree. The proposal to reduce the single value to 1 dec has already increased the cost of those who rent cards. Note that the cards that cost less than a dec are generally cards that helped players who cannot afford to rent cards with more than 70 dec per day. There were people mentioning leaving the game on the Brazilian discord because the cost of the game would increase.
The main point I am making is this: For example, I currently spend around 500 dec on daily rentals. First, if I do not have the amount of 7500 DEC per season, I will not be able to play with them (This is equivalent to 5 dollars currently), while the daily rental costs around 0.33, which I usually only renew every 2 days, as I do not often have the 5 dollars in cash.
Following the same line of reasoning, with a 15-day rental, the market rental can and should become much more expensive. For example, today, when someone sees that the rental price has been reduced, another competitor immediately lowers the price. However, today, with the reduction in card issuance, there are some cards that, because there are few units available for rental, the price tends to go up.
We have to be aware that the game is play2earn. If the game starts to become pay-to-play, we could lose more players. Not to mention that, for example, if I'm going to play a brawl or a tournament, the fact that I can rent it for 2 days is the time I'll use the card. I don't want it for 15 days.
I know that the team is trying to reduce costs. I'm very happy to see you guys worrying about the stability of the game, but we have to be careful because if we lose the player base, how will we keep the game active? I currently see that in the last few weeks the game has had a lot of players creating accounts again, I think we are in a moment of renewed growth, I am always trying to bring more players from my country to play, I have faith that Splinter will grow a lot! Let's go for it!
I think you make some great points. This particular issue wasn't on my radar until recently. I think what would be great is if you could rent a season rental for only 1 DEC, which would basically let you still rent cards at the old rates if people wanted to put them up. I suppose we'll see how this shakes out and how the team chooses to implement it if it passes. After rereading the proposal from captaindingus it seems that it is a 1 DEC minimum rental per card. I don't see why a season rental couldn't be priced at 1 DEC for 14 days or whatever.
The 1 DEC/day price has to go. That's simply way too expensive for most 1 BCX cards.
I've been trying to onboard new players using rental decks and the cost literally just 10x for beginner decks. These were returning only small profits to begin with. Not even worth the time, just as a method for learning the game and showing players how to play and navigate the economy.
Now new players trying to use the rental market just get smacked with profit losses in bronze and have no motivation to continue.
I have actually been talking to the team about this and rereading Dingus' proposal. My interpretation is 1 dec per rental floor. I don't think the team wants to be the decider here so I'm going to set up another poll to see if we can adjust the floor back down to make it more or less a similar "floor" as before but applied over a whole season... so maybe season rentals would be 1.4 to 2 DEC for example.
This would make much more sense.
Sorry Bulldog, I have to disagree with you here. Your math isn't really mathing...
For 50 DEC/Day a player could rent 50 solid, playable cards for Bronze to try the game out.
Not to mention, there are plenty of people like Tofu who help onboard people with delegation and other methods...
But your argument is "It's too expensive and not profitable for new players to play with a Rental Cost of THREE AND A HALF PENNIES per day..."
Honestly dude, if they can't swing $.035... then this ain't the game for them. There are plenty of "Free to Play" games.
I get where your heart is but if 50 DEC/Day is too much... wrong game.
Furthermore, what "profit margins" are you speaking of in Bronze? Pennies at best - especially if 10x the cost is making them not profitable.
Not a very sound argument Bulldog.
It's about progression.
If people are losing money in bronze they aren't going to be motivated to climb the ladder. The absolute numbers don't really matter.
Players begin by learning the game and the economy in bronze and then have the opportunity to build from there. If we are going to say costs and profit doesn't matter then it would literally be better to remove the earnings altogether from the lower league. Earnings turn into a negative when you are losing money.
Yeah, progression = progress to the higher leagues for better opportunity.
Plus at $.035/day for those 50 Cards... you aren't getting "Bronze Level" Cards... you're getting nearly max level cards...
Which gives players an opportunity to progress... and earn more... which is more profitable... which is what you want, right?
You can't just say they will rent higher league cards and be ok with that. This destroys the lower leagues. That's not a good thing. Lower leagues are important.
I agree this is a good compromise solution.
i rent a tofu each season, cant think of why i would rent it for only a day so sure i'll vote yes.. for now
There are those who just rent for brawl purposes.
yep and some rent just for tournaments. not sure answer on that. Allow rentals for specific purposes only? 🤔 😀
We already have the 'daily rental' to cover that. ;)
In general, we already have great options available, but it seems like we're moving towards limiting features instead of creating more.
Splinterlands have different types of players. Those who play daily, some just for fun. If we remove such kind of flexibility, then it will only cater to a specific set of players.
One thing that I actually like about this idea is that players wouldn't have to worry about their rentals being cancelled and then having to try to find a new card every couple of days. We'll see what the DAO wants to do though.
This is what I mean when I say it's a better new player experience. Managing rentals for dozens if not hundreds of cards that can all end up on different timeframes is a massive headache that most players don't want to do.
Season rentals make this so much easier. You only have to go through the rental process every 15 days and you always know exactly when the rental is expiring.
for sure!
This will just further drive away players from the game. Can't we just wait for CA release and see how it performs before implementing such ideas?
It was brought to my attention as a potential exploit. For example people can run two accounts and rent their own cards to bypass the delegation cooldown and essentially get twice the rewards for one set of cards. It's up to the DAO whether or not it wants to address this issue as suggested in this proposal or not. If not the DAO rejects this proposal then we may just have to deal with it until a better idea is suggested. I think there are pros and cons to both side of this one.
I only have a single account but the Splinterlands game mechanics allows multiple accounts for players. Therefore bypassing the delegation cooldown is not a bypass or even an exploit because multiple accounts is allowed by Splinterlands. Doubling your rewards, duh, multiple accounts is not only legal its a legitimate feature. This is just another scheme to destroy cheap rental cards from appearing on the market.
After voting no to this proposal, How to double your Splinterland rewards should be part of our new unique selling point going forward.🤑
I don't think user experience will improve, but it'll get worse. Accessibility of cards will be worse, renting for tournaments or brawls will be worse (i.e. helping your guild, fewest of them are top tier guilds where amount of DEC you spend doesn't matter).
While I get the arguments like cancelling is bad experience as well, I am convinced we will build another wall most players won't be able to climb.
I believe our larger SPS holders voting in favor of this are wrong here.
Disagree but don't have enough to vote. This appears to be seeking a solution where there was no problem with current rental system. Plus, increases the costs to entry - ie you will lose new players and good will.
Yeah, it is completely useless to vote against the few whale accounts.
Honestly... so you don't see the issue for new players or existing players to increase the rental costs? We keep coming up with ideas that increase the game cost, while we should be worrying about atracting new players and making the game affordable to every kind of wallet, both big and small spenders. I usually rent for specific time slots, such as brawls (can imagine someone who does the same for tournaments feels like I do), can't see the sense in this, apart from sending money down the drain. Unless we want to make Splinterlands a bot only mode, and in that case season rentals make all sense, since they play 24/7 anyway...
I never botted my account in Splinterlands, but be forced to play everyday only because of seasonal rentals make me feel like a bot without life..
I hope the seasonal only rental options doesn't pass.
More options is better than less options. Players renting and testing a card they like or want to test before purchase shouldn't require them to rent for a full season. The daily rental allows for such.
As for cancellations: markets will work that out.
Meaning those renting should take notice of such actors and skip renting from them.
1 DEC Floor was a great idea and cleaned up allot of listed cards that weren't renting.
Splinterlands can also just put a blacklist option for players. Players on the blacklist won't have their cards shown on the market for that player. Although I am sure that if someone proposes this, the whales would be downvoting it and wouldn't pass because it would hurt their pocket.
I believe renting for a season vs daily makes the user experience much better for the game. I think its better to have certainty for both the renters and the people with cards to rent out. One of the worst experiences imo is when I get a card cancelled and have to find out by missing it in a match. This will solve that problem, so I support it.
This is something I actually strongly agree with. I always hated when I'd rent a card and then it gets cancelled immediately so I only have it for 1 or 2 days instead of like 5 or whatever I agreed to. I know this one is going to be a split issue either way we look at it and I get that some people don't want to see a change like this. I'll abide whatever the DAO wants to do, but currently I'm in favor of this as I think ownership should always be the most valuable option and I don't like the idea that I could run two accounts, rent cards from myself and get twice the rewards for owning one set of cards. That seems like a serious exploit and I'm starting to wonder how many people have actually been doing this and why it was never addressed earlier.
However this turns out, at least it's been brought to the DAO's attention to decide on.
I agree, and hopefully the people who are legitimately concerned about overall costs rising, see your other point in the comment section about the 1 DEC minimum application. I don't see this proposal as a cost issue, I see it as a better user experience issue. If the DAO wants to re-interpret the application of the DEC minimum, then that's fine by me too.
Wouldnt it be better then to just remove the option to cancel the rental? Because basicly I think if you agreed to rent out for a season you should have stick with it. I dont think anyone renting out cards would be hurt by this. If I rent out a max lvl Kitty for 14 days, I know I cannot play it even if I wanted it short term. It wont kill me to wait the rest.
I am always on the side of new and poor players. These are the real backbone of growth. I do think we should focus on them more. We are limiting their options more and more. I was a player with decent amount of money I think but struggled also sometimes. Imagine how it is if you come from a poor country, just want to try out Kitty or Tofu but you cant because we removed the option to rent for 2 days.
We should create more options, not limit our players more.
I'm very much on the side of the new and poor players too, but not where it creates a bad user experience. It appears to me that the people that are not for this are using 2 arguments:
This is a very complex situation involving many moving parts. For instance, my issue is the fact that when I rent cards, I don't want them cancelled.
But there are other issues people have too, key among them (and there are more).
bot services were created that enable players to squeeze every penny possible out of a rental. This created many useless micro transactions where the bot would have an advantage renting out their card at the detriment of a player simply wanting to list his card to rent out. This cost the team in extra useless server costs, and at the same time dissuaded people like me from either a) renting out their cards and thus stopping buying cards to rent out or b) running to the bottom in price, thus moving the floor lower and lower til we went to the point where it could go no lower.
longer term players that used rentals as a way to arbitrage the unintended loophole where rental players could use each card twice as much as someone that owned it. This was good for the rental player, but it put downward pressure on the value of cards because a person that owned a particular card was disadvantaged in rewards compared to the people that rented them.
So while you want to see people that are new and poor be happy (as I do), I think its important to see the whole picture. I also think once flaws get fixed, then we can give people on all sides something they want - a growing player base and a growing reward.
These flaws in the system create a perpetual downward spiral by not incentivizing things properly. So fixing them is a good idea so that we can indeed help people that are poor, new, rich, or anything in between to enjoy the game and feel confident they have a lot of opportunity ahead.
As I said in further comments on this page, I have no issue with making the total minimum cheaper on a per card/per day basis. If the rest of the community is ok with that, then I'm fine as well. But I feel that season rentals are a much better user experience for most people involved, PARTICULARLY the new players.
I don't usually interact but this made me think. What if.. instead, we combine the two solutions?
As for the tournament problem, then just combine the rental cooldown and delegation cooldown. For example, if you delegated the card and cancelled, and the cooldown is for 48 hours, there would be a warning that the card cannot be used for 48 more hours. Or an easier way is that you cannot rent/sell cards with delegation cooldown.
With these things,the community can still rent for 2 days when they have the time to play or rent for the whole season if they play everyday. The daily and season rental is like combined into one which I think does a compromise for all issues.
I rent 2500 DEC worth of cards every 2 days. So putting it to seasonal, It FORCES me to have 18750 DEC (1259/week x 15 days) to rent for the season. If I only have 5k budget per week, then I will be FORCED to wait until the last 5 days until I can play because I only have 5 days worth for my weekly budget.
First, I'm very glad that you took the time to write your thoughts Mavis, interaction is great to understand other people's point of view. So thank you for the 2 messages :)
Re: your point #1, I think it might be how you are suggesting, but I'm not sure. My understanding is that you will rent for the remaining days of each season. So if that is 14 days or 3 days left, then you rent only for the days left. If I read your solution wrong, then please let me know.
Re: your point #2, I do believe (and hope) that the end of the season is the end of each rental cycle. So people can re-renew, wait, etc. I will personally just rent out everything on the first day and then not think about it til the following season. I'm not sure I understand about your point about the adjustment of the price to be favorable, but like I said IMO the goal should be for both sides to have a easy experience by just renting out/for one time per season.
On the tourney issue, I'm not sure that would work but I haven't really thought of that issue.
On your personal story, I realize this will be a big change to not only you, but to everyone that primarily rents. However this will all change a lot anyways with the new upcoming set, so figuring out how to make it work is important. I'm personally glad we can see how this works now, so that we can make adjustments if the results are negative and it needs to be tweaked.
Also if you want, I'm happy to help you earn some extra SPS that you can cover some of that extra costs you are incurring. I have some accounts that are going unplayed right now, and I am letting people play them and keep all the SPS they earn by doing so. These accounts are not top level accounts, but if you are an experienced player then you should be able to earn roughly 2 SPS per win. If you are interested, then message me on Discord and I'll get you set up.
Again thank you for the nice message and for taking the time to give some thoughts and suggestions, I appreciate it Mavis!
Well you make some good arguments Sir. Maybe we should just try out and find out.
Or keep discussing in a communicative way. I am a fan of discussion, recognition of all sides of an issue, and then constructively trying to find a solution that gives balance and fairness.
I appreciate you listening to my points @octavian1 and I also respect that you are trying to make sure that small and/or new players get thought about as well!
You don't think this is going to be yet another measure that continues to squeeze out the low budget players? Could this possibly be another tone deaf decision made by people at the top of the food chain that puts additional stress on grassroots players?
I agree this might squeeze out some players, particularly because we have such a binary culture here. Instead of people looking to "give and take" on issues to solve them, we instead fight to the death on each and every issue.
So the question is will people compromise to solve problems that the other side has? In my case, its yes, but in most cases its no.
I am willing to accept a lower rate than the 1 DEC minimum per day, to be 1 DEC minimum per season. NOTE: that is cheaper than people have now on a per day basis.
But it doesn't seem like anyone wants to budge and actually solve the issue I have (even though I'm willing to address their concern). And that applies to most everyone on each issue they have. So no matter which way this goes we will squeeze out players. Whether its small vs large, established vs new, or human vs bot; I don't think until we actually start discussing things and finding solutions in a non-binary way then we will continue to lose players.
If every decision comes down to a 'damned if you do, damned if you don't', you're just plain damned.
100% agree
Please keep daily rentals. Dailies allow people to try out new cards for a smaller cost, allow people to rent for tournaments and brawls to meet specific card criteria you may not need for a longer period, for instance Gold Foil, Alpha/Beta, etc. Splinterlands is hard at work to be more welcoming to new players and at the same time we are proposing to increase costs with proposals such as this one. Hard NO for me.
Hardy Stonefish before = 0,001 Dec per day
Hardy Stonefish after = 1 DEC / season = 0,066 DEC
I only rent for brawls, if this is passed most likely I will stop playing.
I don't think its a great idea to remove dailies so shortly after 10x-ing the DEC floor for a single rental. Removing costs from the company via server load and increasing potential costs to the players in another area is hella mehh with how costly this game is already. Give the first change 6 months to settle with the next set, etc. being released see how things roll out before making any additional changes to the rental system. No from me.
That's fair. I don't feel super strongly either way on this one, but I do like the idea of new players not having to worry about their rentals being pulled every other day when whoever's automated rental service wants to reprice the rental constantly. I always personally found that aspect of rentals extremely annoying. If I rent a card for 5 days I don't want to find out it got cancelled after 2 days.
One thing that I think could actually make this a win with the new rental floor price is if season rentals could have a 1 dec floor. For example, rent 14 days at 1 DEC which equals like .07 DEC a day. Could be a good way to offer cards at a lower price while locking in a season rental. I think I'd prefer it to work like that.
Anyways I suppose the DAO will do what it wants on this one. Appreciate your input!
Great compromise to make the cheaper cards actually cheap again for those that want to rent low level cards. At the moment there are cards where levels 1 to 4 are all the same price to rent. This idea may not cure that but it may help.
I 1000% agree with all your points as I absolutely despise dealing with renting, therefore I own all of my cards. I don't rent out my cards either cause I don't wanna manage them and keep track of the dailies & checking constantly. I would hypothetically LOVE to remove daily rentals and only have seasonal as I would actually participate in renting out some of my cards. Personally, the only problem for me is the timing right after the DEC floor rental 10X increase. It's a psychological-financial change problem. Most people take a while to digest change. Gotta let the floor price settle & become normal, then roll out another change that'll increase player base costs a bit. I'm voting no just for this point in time for the psychological ramifications of the majority of renters. I like your idea about overall season rental floor having the option for being priced at 1 DEC as well!
Fearful about what will happen to the tourney/brawl renters. I understand the current exploit, but I'm not sure if things would get better for the card and rental market after this change.
I think there are pros and cons no matter what happens on this one. Ultimately it will be whatever the DAO wants to do I suppose.
I don't even understand why some people calls exploit to the action of renting only for brawls and tourneys, isn't it suppossed to be a free market?
This proposal makes it a lot more expensive for people who only need rentals for brawls or tournaments. Are you sure that new players will like this idea? Don't they want to try before they buy? Season only rentals would also make it more expensive for them to learn which cards they do and don't need. There are other people who can't afford to rent cards like Tofu or Heliose all season. And if someone is in danger of getting kicked off of a leaderboard then they only want a strong card for 1 day. Not the entire season after it.
Well the way season rentals work, if you needed to only rent for a couple of days at the end of the season to stay on the leaderboard you can. The season rental system adjusts dynamically based on how many days are left in the season, so they'd only pay for like 2 days of a season rental.Apparently it just makes you rent for the next season as well if you rent too late in the season. Just tested it. Tournaments and Brawls could be problematic though. I'm not married to this proposal or anything, just putting it out there for the DAO.Splinterlands already have a bot that declares when a card rental has expired. It's high time we had an alternative proposal for a bot that can be edited to automatically renew each individual card rental near expiry.
I get that we can save from infrastructure cost but I don't think it was an issue when Splinterlands was on its peak (i.e. volume of transactions very high). Unless, Splinterlands is actively looking ways to cut cost. Either way, need to check on the cost-benefits.
Flexibility is always a key benefit. We should all think about the player demographics. Do you think majority of the players play every day? Because if not, renting for the whole season is just a waste of money.
There are a lot of unknowns yet so I think doing this is premature. Land 2.0 , Conclave Arena, Survival Mode, etc. We should monitor first the market response on these upcoming BIG releases before we do any adjustments.
That's a fair position. I do think it's important to keep in mind that Land and Survival Mode only work with season rentals though. I can see pros and cons on both sides of this one, so ultimately I'll just abide whatever the DAO wants to do. If someone offers up a better solution that's cool as well.
Thanks for the feedback!
Here you go: it's finished... 3,750 words later...
Why I think this is a terrible idea... with EVIDENCE
It's all there... all the data. All the evidence... and all the rewards go to @sps.dao
Go... read it. All of it. There is only one way this works and it's in there. Check behind me. Verify. Look at the data yourself.
sorry to say that but you are driving players away.
you made the rentals bidaily. no one really liked it but said "ok, not something bad".
you separated the two leagues and put a fee on the wild just to be able to play. basically, you killed your casual old players.
you stopped giving unbounded cards. that killed the mood of play2earn
you made the 1dec minimum rent. That already hit some players who rent a lot.
now you are thinking of making the rentals seasonal? what are you expecting from the players who are inactive daily due to life? you are going to lose them
do that and you will have a bit backlash to your number of players. not to mention the new players ratio. who's gonna start playing today and rent for 15 days? total joke
I think this is a bad idea and let me elaborate on this:
We have just implemented a change from .1 DEC to 1 DEC.
The market is shifting and cards like a Max Djinn Biljka used to rent for 2, maybe 3 DEC when the floor was .1 DEC... are now renting for 10 DEC
We have just breathed life into the Rental Market for the Renters... who have seen Card Values and Rental Income drastically drop over the last 3+ years...
But if we implement another change on the heels of this one, without taking time to observe the results... we could unintentionally undo the positive effect on the market we just had.
If we are going to do Season Rentals Only, then it needs to be 1 DEC/DAY Minimum.
In case no one else has made this connection... the VALUE of cards is directly related to the Rental Cost and not the other way around!!
I am about to write a post about this and it needs to be read by the team, the DAO and everyone because apparently, no one has realized this yet... but that's a major reason why card values have dropped so much.
just the final nail in the coffin. I always tried to find some excuse to stick with this game, but spl team is busy doing the reverse. So be it then.
The downside is affordability. I don't see a point to rent for brawls on my alt anymore if this passes. My alt is the guild leader. Top 50 guild. If you have a dolphin saying this...?
I also wish these proposals would include some actual data so we could make truly informed decisions. I don't see how we are expected to be a community-led game by shooting in the dark.
Bulldog did provide some numbers and it was confirmed by others. Essentially they rent cards and are able to easily get 2x the value of the rentals using this "exploit" and one can then deduce that this is likely why we see so many rental swarms in Modern these days.
As far as affordability, one thing I've been thinking with season rentals is that we should have a 1 DEC floor on season rentals. Meaning if you want to rent a card below 1 DEC per day, you can but you have to commit to spending at least 1 DEC to rent that card. I'd sincerely hope that's how the team looks at it. After reading the proposal to go to a 1 DEC floor, that seems in line with the wording of that proposal.
On a side note, I know this may not impact you if you're only renting for brawls/tournaments, but as a user I absolutely hated the daily rental system. I'd try to rent for like 5-10 days so I don't have to check every day and then they're constantly getting cancelled and repriced and then I have to deal with it all over again. I do genuinely agree that moving to "season only" would be aa better end user experience in that regard.
Thanks for the response, Clay.
That's great that Bulldog had data and it was confirmed. It would be phenomenal if we could move toward having data points like these included in the proposal so that all of the critical references aren't so fragmented. I realize that might be a lot to ask for where we're at, but many times I'm voting based on feeling instead of from an informed place, and for me, that feels like I'm casting irresponsible votes.
I really appreciate what you're considering for affordability + seasonal rentals. That floor wouldn't help my specific case, but I think it would go a long way in helping a lot of other folks.
And dude for what it's worth, I 100% agree that the daily system falls completely short for everyone trying to rent longer than two days. It's a complete cluster in that regard.
If I could recommend a do-over, which I know I can't lol, I'd love a daily rental system on a longer minimum (3, 4 days, whatever) that locks in the renter's max (5, 6 days, whatever).
@clayboyn What I am confused here is that the issue I read are these:
These are the two main problems, right?
Then how about doing these suggestions instead that will only target those issues and not everyone including those not having any issues?
Solution for Early cancellation of the rentals.
Let's combine both daily and seasonal rentals. To do that, let's do this rule. You can rent a card up to 365 days or more (like the usual daily rental). The new rule to fix it would be this:
Any rentals for the current season cannot be cancelled. If the current season has 5 days left (let's say) and you rented a card for 5 days, that cannot be cancelled. If you rent a card after the season, for example, 30 days rental, then the owner of the card can cancel the rental BUT the rental will only be cancelled at the end of the current season (like how seasonal rentals work). This way, people can still rent daily (2 days minimum) but can also rent for up to 15 days that cannot be cancelled (If you rented at the beginning of the season). The daily renters aren't affected and those who like renting per season can still do it. A compromise between both.
Soluition for the tournament exploit.
This one is simple to be honest. Why not combine both card delegation cooldown and rental cooldown? If the card delegation cooldown is 24 hours, then even if you rent it out, the one who rented still cannot use the card for 24 hours for any play. That's it.
What I hate about this proposal is that it seems they gave up thinking for a compromise. I understand though because as a dev, it's easier to press the delete button than to create new series of codes that would fix the problem for everyone.
Also, if I may rant a bit more, this just smells profit than quality of life change. I'm sorry but I really cannot see this any other way. This is more proven by the strong pass on the proposal despite a lot of people saying no because the majority saying no don't have the voting power to turn this proposal down.
The issue that spurred all of this is that rentals don't have any delegation cooldown and people can use them to more or less bypass energy limitations on an account. It creates a situation where it's more beneficial to cycle accounts to get twice as much energy/earnings via renting instead of owning cards. Making rentals not able to be cancelled would make for a better user experience but not close the exploit. One of the earlier discussions before creating polling and proposals for this issue involved creating a cooldown similar to delegation for rentals, but ultimately it was viewed as an ineffectual solution and problematic for card owners again.
For example, if you add the delegation cooldown to rentals, then owners would be renting roughly half as much, which could lead to cycling more card rentals throughout the duration of a season, but would ultimately be a net negative impact to owners that do want to rent and wouldn't solve the problem as people could then just rent someone else's cards for 2 days and repeat the cycle. There's no perfect solution here, but the season rental approach is the best that was presented during the discussion/debate leading up to the proposal and it seems like the proposal has a strong majority support from SPS stake.
While I'm not opposed to someone presenting a better solution, we've explored many of the suggested 'better alternative' lines of thinking and potential solutions before getting to this point and seasonal rentals are the best way we could figure out that closes the exploit while it also encourages card ownership and creates congruency in the rental system going forward as both land and survival mode will only work with season rentals. Having all card renters move to season only will hopefully create a much better overall price for season rentals as they become more competitive with all renters focused there instead of split between daily and season rentals.
I see I guess I did not think of it that well. I apologize.
No apologies need it, I get change is frustrating. This particular instance I'm actually hopeful will be a net win in practice. The area that I'm personally a bit concerned about is people that only rent for brawls. Hopefully we can figure out something there or the cost of season rentals will drop enough that it makes sense to rent for the whole season and play ranked/tournaments/brawls with the cards.
I also rent a few days a week and not whole season so I understand the sentiment of those who are only their for their guilds. It just seems and sounds like a price hike for playing the game rather than an overall better experience.
I do hope they can find a compromise between the daily and season rentals or at least, put this in pending and discuss this further before applying it not like a ticking time bomb that will be applied anytime soon.
Honestly, I feel bad because if this happened, like with what I told to the other person, the only compromise I can see is the daily renter like me, are the ones adjusting. I will be FORCED not to play on the start of the season and just play like 5 or 7 days towards the end of the season because the rental would be too high to rent it at the start of each season. This means the overall playtime of this game would be lower.
Lower playtime means it would also be harder to find investors outside Splinterlands to invest on collabs for this game. It's like lowering traffic on a website, which I think investors also check before doing any investment. Not a lot want to invest on a game where only few people play
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Link to this Pre-Proposal
Updated At: 2025-02-14 13:39 UTC
😃😆🤣sure why not!!!! BUT AT THE END OF THE DAY!!! WHEEEEEEEEEERRRRRRRREEEEEEESSSSSSSSS LLLLLLLLLLLAAAAAAAAAANDDDDD?
Problem with season rentals is simple, many cards with resonable prices will be rented at start of the season and when brawl start or important tourney there be only overpriced cards like cards, which should cost like 5 dec for 100 dec. I have to overpay for anything i need so i see it as "not renting at all" and i think many players will only relay on cards they have or they will rent only these, which still will be with normal price. Another thing is i am now more casual player than pro i take a rest, so i no need to play everyday. After proposed changes I would be forced to rent for whole season.. and play to get some dec back. This is a game so i should play whatever time i want.. not everyday, when i need to recover rental costs, so big NO from me.
@atnazo I have a suggestion because this is looking for what would happen to me. Stop playing the game for half the season and only play for the last half. Since this would be season rental only, Then I'll be FORCED to wait until there's 7 days on the clock before renting because the budget I have for this game is only for 7 days.
It is very funny to watch the same 2 or 3 people defending this proposal all along the comments :)
Player sentiment is proved to be useless for the company once more compared to the few players with high SPS stake. Seems to me like in a few weeks these high stake accounts will be the only ones playing the game.
I think the entire rental market is just an issue these days, I used to rent out my cards in the past, but it is just to much trouble these days, thus I just leave it. In the past, I could just put my cards out for rent and leave it, and adjust the price now and then, now it is constant work.
The point of play2earn is also out of the window, with soulbound cards, where it cost more to unbound cards, than what you can earn with them. Further on wild card value just dropped with this thing that one needs to pay to play and then you are rewarded with cards that you can't cell if you wish to do it. My total account value just dropped, and my earnings also just dropped. The experience is just not the same any more. I think new players, just have an uphill battle. I am disgruntled and I am playing for a very long time!! Every now and then I am just thinking to call it a day.
Apart from the minimum 1 DEC rental price floor having to apply to the season rental cost and not per day for this to make sense, I think this completely eliminates the "I want to give this card a try" option.
Imagine a player who gets completely demolished in a couple battles by a certain summoner or card and said player thinks "this card is so OP". Often it is enough to play a couple battles with the card yourself to realize its weakness (unless it has none like the truly OP cards 😉 ). This option is simply gone and instead you are force to either live with the mystery or you rent the potentially very expensive card for a whole season.
I think a good example of this would be a Akane + Venka which kills you in turn 0. Currently this would be 250 DEC per day, so 500 DEC to give it a go, seems reasonable. But to rent it for a whole season is already quite steep.
Disagree this will be crippling.
Preserving Player Choice
Restricting rental options does not benefit new players. Consider the previous ECR system, which allowed unlimited games with ECR draining from 100%. In contrast, the new 50-energy system ties rewards to an SPS-based multiplier based on rating and delegation, making it more complex. While the goal was to prevent bots from draining rewards, ECR was simpler and more intuitive.
Although I don't suggest reverting to ECR, there should be incentives for players to engage freely. Formats like Survival Mode would greatly benefit from daily rentals, encouraging more gameplay without long-term commitments.
Supply Restrictions Hurt, Not Help
Higher prices for low-supply, owned cards won’t necessarily drive demand; rather, they may limit availability and usage, concentrating play around heavily used cards like Lux Vega. Instead of artificially restricting supply, we should explore ways to expand player access to older editions.
A Potential Solution: Opening Wild & Managing Bots
One possibility is opening Wild format while transferring bots out, allowing players to experiment with out-of-edition cards. However, before making changes to daily rentals, we should analyze usage trends to ensure that any adjustments truly benefit the economy and gameplay experience.
Having read through the arguments, I also see both sides. Personally, I tend to lean towards the keeping-things-as-they-are-for-a-while side. I get the frustration of early cancellations on rentals but is this the right fix? How hard would it be to implement a 5-day minimum rental market? I think this really needs to be thought through with a look towards what everything is going to look like once Land and Spells and such come out. I hate to strain the resources of the team restructuring the rental market only to find out that it needs to be reworked again within a year. I'll probably vote no to this proposal but I'll keep watching the arguments.
Would this also address cancellation of rentals? Would it lock in those renting the cards seasonally also meaning they cannot cancel the rent, one of the biggest frustrations amongst our Community especially newer players is that " 1 day they have the card" the next they don't which can be quite frustrating especially for cell phone users.
@mangomayhem The funny thing is they already have the seasonal rental and it's working as intended. If people don't want their cards cancelled, they can do the seasonal rental.
I fail to see why the need to adjust or remove daily rentals. The idea of daily rentals is for those people who don't play everyday. They can just drop in, rent some cards for a short while, then dip out.
Season rentals are for those who play everyday. People do daily rentals for a long time and then get mad when it gets cancelled but at the same time, they don't want to use the season rentals which is intended for that same reason, so you won't need to think about your cards getting cancelled.
Hi Mavis, thank you for your response, but in my experience, seasonal rentals could and were being cancelled, at least key cards which is quite frustrating especially for people playing daily. I would like to see more daily players as opposed to those that only play a few days in a season, it would be better for the overall gaming community. I think if the rental costs are adjusted to where people could rent and make a profit at the end of the season regardless, players would still continue to play.
Yep that is actually the thing I most agree with about this whole proposal. Season Rentals cannot be cancelled.
A proposta é boa, votei favorável. Porém, é necessário remover a taxa para colocar as cartas no mercado tanto para vender quanto para alugar.
E também aumentar o tempo de disponibilidade de 30 para 365 dias, no caso do mercado de aluguel, renovando o prazo sempre para a carta alugada.
By occasion I saw a post about the propose and went to read it. No wonder overall base reactions here are eeehh interesting...
At least nice that the zeitgeist of proposes are taken into account lol.
I think this kinda takes out a bunch of freedom of choice / options again... But whatever, right?!...