Better or worse? The real impact of Splinterlands' reward changes

fuente
Good evening everyone again. It's the weekend again, and it's time to take advantage of the time to spend with family. This weekend is going to be special for me because it's my mother's 78th birthday, and we're throwing a family party at a restaurant. That said, today I want to change the subject a bit and write about something I think many players are a bit worried about: the changes to Splinterlands rewards and their impact on players.
What rewards were there originally?
The topic of reward changes and their impact on Splinterlands players is very important if you want to understand this evolution of the game, and more specifically, its play-to-earn model. This evolution has users who like it and others who don't. I'll try to explain all this.
Surely the oldest users remember when you played in Splinterlands, you could earn DEC (Dark Energy Crystals) and you could also do so in ranked battles. In addition, there were daily and end-of-season rewards (chests) containing cards, potions, DEC, and packs. Everything was fine up to this point and everyone was happy, but this caused the smartest users to start creating multiple accounts with bots to squeeze the most out of these rewards. But I'm one of those who thinks that these multi-accounts with those bots were created by the game's creators themselves. Of course, this was profitable in the short term, but in the long term it inflated the game's economy and reduced the quality of the ecosystem, so they started making changes to the game.

What were the important changes that have been made to the rewards?
1. End of DEC as a direct reward in battles
- They removed the direct DEC gain from winning from the game, and that didn't go down well.
- And to appease the beasts, they introduced Reward Points, which influence reward chests.

fuente

fuente
Modern and Wild Chest System
- Wild: All cards.
- Modern: Only recent cards.
These are different depending on where you play and also the cards you have in your possession.
Changes to Reward Cards
Reward cards now have a limited lifespan (with an expiration date).
This is intended to prevent the inflation of cards that lose value over time.
Energy or Stamina System
- Limits the number of battles a player can play per day to control excessive farming.
Power Requirements to Level Up
- Even if you reach a certain ranking, if you don't have enough "collection power" (the value of your cards), you can't advance or receive better rewards.
With all these changes, the number of users with botted accounts began to decrease, leading to the botting of Splinterlands accounts. This was introduced due to a lack of players.

Of course, whenever there's a change, there's a negative impact on any game, and Splinterlands' was the difficulty for new players, since it's now harder to generate income if you don't invest or rent good cards, and this is very noticeable. This creates frustration among many players due to lower profitability, since players were accustomed to higher passive income, and this has fallen significantly. But the best part of all this is that these changes were implemented abruptly or without clear communication.
Conclusion
This is what it is, and this is what it's going to stay, no matter how much you complain.

If anything, they should for once stop caring about the economy and just make the game as fun as possible, especially for new players.
And you've been in the game for a long time. You think it's fun?
I would say it used to be more fun, and it has the potential to be really addictive fun. Right now though, nothing in me ever really feels like playing Splinterlands, and in fact, it feels more like a task when I do.