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title: Access to high quality cards for new players via NFTY Arcade

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# Access to high quality cards for new players via NFTY Arcade
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Splinterlands reserves the right to not sell card packs. Right now we're considering not selling a section of packs to instead create bronze and silver level decks for NFTY Arcade's Gateway platform. We can use these newly created decks to improve new players' first experience with the game, and create more ecosystem participants who will add value for everyone here.  

The purpose of this post is to give notice to the community and gather feedback.  If this is overly contentious we can move to a DAO vote to see how stakeholders actually vote.  If it's not terribly contentious we'll proceed as this isn't technically a DAO issue.

For deeper context on why NFTy's platform is so valuable to everyone in the ecosystem, have a read of [16bit's recent post](https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@jmonahan/market-making-via-gamer-enablement-with-nfty-arcade).

# Background - Fatigue Rounds

Splinterlands is currently in fatigue rounds on our Chaos Legion packs.  That means that every day we are burning 25,000 packs.  We also have a burn day upcoming on March 31st where all remaining packs are burnt.  There are currently 1,903,998 packs for sale.  There are 56 days between now and march 31 so a total of 1,400,000 packs are likely to be burnt leading up to March 31st.  Once we hit March 31st something like 500,000 packs will be burnt minus buying activity between today and then.

# Background - NFTY Arcade success to date

One of the main drivers prompting this decision is the success NFTy's Gateway platform has had with improving the new player experience, and creating new ecosystem participants. The evidence is compelling in just the first 2 months since Gateway launched in November.

Currently, the new player experience is not only lacking, but it creates a situation where too many give up before they truly understand and enjoy the game. It can be perceived as too expensive to buy cards/packs, and too time consuming to figure out what cards (and how many) to rent before knowing the enjoyment of playing the game at a higher level.

We're seeing strong evidence that NFTy Arcade has a strong solution to these issues. Splinterlands took a few hundred thousand packs that we had reserved for general marketing of the product and used them to build decks for listing on the Gateway platform already. Community members have also listed decks to help get them started.  The results that came in were pleasantly surprising.

Borrowers have been building their accounts via purchasing from Splinterlands:

![](https://i.imgur.com/wNllGig.png)

And a significant portion of that purchasing activity is coming from new SPL accounts created through NFTy Arcade:

![](https://i.imgur.com/q9BN12G.png)

Here's the average purchasing activity for new players on the platform:

![](https://i.imgur.com/knQwPVg.png)

Perhaps more importantly, Gateway borrowers are becoming strong participants in player to player markets:

![](https://i.imgur.com/bJcxHmJ.png)

And a good chunk of that market activity is coming from new players via NFTy Arcade:

![](https://i.imgur.com/4HSbzHp.png)



The results are impressive in this formative stage. It likely makes sense to throw fuel on this fire.  If this behavior is encouraged, it will likely boost value for everyone here.  Projecting this trend into the future, it's easy to see that it could be a key onramp for not only new players, but more capital into the ecosystem from outside sources.


Ultimately, what we saw is that decks created and put on the platform have resulted in new players and a better onboarding experience.  This isn't a way that humans come in to simply farm rewards and cash out.  What we actually see is that players that get a taste of good cards go out and add to their deck.  In just a couple months the participants utilizing Gateway bought 128k packs, and purchased $500k worth of cards and rented over 100k cards.  That's an incredible amount of activity for packs that were very recently deployed on the platform in a mostly horrific bear market.

Furthermore, there are many players waiting in line to play with great decks in spite of almost zero marketing effort, estimated at 1 diamond+ rental deck for every 4-9 players (depending on whether Riftwatchers cards are in the deck) who want to rent one. There are also several gaming communities who want to come in using NFTy's Gateway platform, including Metanomy who wants to onboard 300+ players using rental decks next week. There are simply not enough decks listed to satisfy gamer demand.

# Won't this just help bots? The answer is "No."

NFTy Arcade's policies around bots are something that should be applauded.  They have a strict no bot policy and actively police it with a proprietary tool.  If accounts are using bots the rentals get cancelled and those accounts get blacklisted from the site.  If Splinterlands were to open packs and list cards on the market, they would get consumed by bots... but that's not the case here.  With the plan to make decks and put them on Gateway it's unlikely that the benefits accrue to bots.

# Actual plan

1. Remove 500,000 packs that are currently available for sale and instead use them to deploy decks on NFTY Arcade (the ones that would have been burnt on March 31st).
2. Create a good chunk of bronze & silver level decks that can be used by new players to build rating for access to higher leagues.
3. Use the rest to create gold & diamond level decks for players to experience the upper leagues.
4. Make those decks available to anyone in the community (who follow the no bots rules) to rent via NFTy Arcade.

# Will this have a negative affect on the economy?

That's a key question to ask, and one that we have thought through...

1. Technically this will not inflate card supply.  We aren't adding more packs to initial supply, and in fact will still burn many pack. Also, we've always reserved the right to reserve for marketing purposes, which is intended to benefit the economy via new gamer acquisition.  This effort will improve the new player experience, and make the game more accessible to more gamers.  A more accurate statement would be "Splinterlands is not decreasing the supply by the maximum amount possible."  That statement is true, but we're not obligated to and now the opportunity at hand is to expand the ecosystem for everyone. Furthermore, these decks will remain in company custody. At worst, the cards can be burnt at a later date as we have no interest in truly inflating supply on the market.

2. Will this encourage leaching from the economy?  We don't think so. The data is pretty clear.  Players that utilize these decks want to build their collection. And with the advent of soulbound reward cards, evidence is cropping up in NFTy's Discord server that players are excited to be able to build their own decks even more quickly and effectively. Our decks listed on Gateway will typically have a 30 day max rental period. That's enough to get a taste of the game and inform purchasing decisions, but not enough to leach off of the economy indefiniately.  With the time cap these decks should fulfill their true purpose of giving someone a taste of Splinterlands and then shuffling them after they are more experienced into long term Splinterlands players just like the rest of us.


3. Will this flood the ecosystem with too many new decks at the detriment of existing players?  No. The data is showing this is adding productive new participants in the economy.  If you look at total accounts playing from the high of 550k DAU early in 2022 to where we are now with 150-200k we're significantly down from all time highs.  It's also real humans who are hopefully introducing new real humans on a regular basis, to everyone's benefit.


# Possible outcomes of this post
1. Proceed as planned
2. Reduce the number of packs and proceed as planned
3. Post a proposal if this proves overly controversial. 
4. Decide not to do it.

Hopefully most agree on the potential value of doing this. Before long you should see lots of new faces, players, renters, pack buyers, card buyers, and an overall increase in beneficial members of our community.




