The Days of Renting for Power Are Over
Splinterlands wants you to play the game and fight 30 battles per 24 hour period. The incentive to fight 30 battles with the same splinter or using a card with a particular ability is also quite clear. What is not as obvious? Splinterlands wants the lulls of ranked play to end and the inflation of the rental market to go away as well. This Rewards structure is not conducive to the typical rental market cycle.
The Rental Market Cycle
The pattern is quite simple.
Cycle Part 1: The Fire Sale - Prices are at their cheapest at the beginning of the season.
Cycle Part 2: Brawl #1 Preparation - Cancellations and tightening of the rental market takes place. Rental prices rise.
Cycle Part 3: Brawl #1 Ends - Prices fall on rentals, but they do not reach the lows of the beginning of season Fire Sale period.
Cycle Part 4: Brawl #2 Preparation - Cancellations and tightening of the rental market takes place. Rental prices rise more.
Cycle Part 5: Brawl #2 Ends - Prices fall a little bit, but End of Season mania is about to happen.
Cycle Part 6: Cancellation/End of Season Inflation: Time to hold onto whatever you may still have as far as rentals are concerned. Ranked play dies during this period, cards are taken off the market, and rental prices are extremely inflated.
This is how it works and how it is assumed to always work, but not anymore. We have a paradigm shift.
The Rental Market Cycle Should Be Gone
The emphasis on End of Season Rewards based on Collection Power and rating is over.
Designations within levels (I, II, III) mean very little beyond where players must start the following season. There is no need to rent for power within a particular league anymore. What matters is winning within the league and having the cards to do it.
Going above one's league level impacts the current season and the following season and it is both expensive and challenging. Carrying cards for an entire season is not necessarily practical because Daily Rewards are just as important, if not more important than End of Season Rewards. It is easy to make the case that the rental market is truly a market that is geared toward the convenience of fulfilling the Daily Focus.
Old habits are not just going to go away immediately as far as the cycles are concerned, but how renters use the market is going to be considerably different once the realization that intralevel designations mean very little. A Gold III or Silver III player can accrue 20-25 chests in a day and 120-140 chests in a season without trying to make any advancements. Splinterlands is actively trying to discourage "fake it to make it" as far as rentals are concerned.
The rental market will adjust to this new paradigm. Greater price stability throughout the course of a season and more modest spikes in prices will take place in time for brawls should be the new shift.
Bot owners have to decide whether to make greater investments into the game. Players have feasted on bots with their predictable and underpowered lineups. Bot owners must make adjustments immediately to how they do business or else they will have problems earning the rewards cards that they seek to combine and sell at the lowest prices on the market.
Many players certainly have noticed that the level of play has risen since starter card penalties were imposed. This game is not as easy anymore and the number of battles have fallen.
Renting for Performance, Not Power
This is where everything changes. There was a time when renting for Collection Power was a big deal because ranked play was relatively easier and chasing after an End of Season set of loot chests and more daily loot chests was the goal.
Now the only reason to move up a level is to get better rewards, not more rewards. The level of play is much tougher and moving up a level means that a player better enjoy playing at that higher level for at least a month.
Splinterlands' development team does not want players to move up to just chase better rewards because many are in for a bad time. They want specialists and to create stars within each level because each level is competitive and requires a particular knowledge and skill set to play. Diamond and Champion League players may not necessarily thrive in Bronze and Silver League environments and vice-versa.
This new system is going to force players to play multiple summoners from a particular splinter. It will eventually punish Modern League players as they will find themselves more limited in options if they want to maximize Daily Loot Chests. Players with particular playing habits will need to learn how to play different looks because the opponent is going to be predictable in what they put out there, unless they have a Snipe or Sneak Focus.
What We Can Expect...
Love those 1000+ CP/DEC deals? They are going away.
Hate those End of Season 29 CP/DEC ripoffs? They are going away too.
The market is going to level off and CP/DEC pricing is going to vary based on what gives bonuses. The intraseason spikes in prices will not be as pronounced as past spikes, but they will take place during Guild Brawls.
The game changed. It will take some time for the market to adjust to it.
