Greeting Battlemages!

You're not without knowing that the SPS stacking requirement for rewards has been implemented. That's certainly the biggest of the multiple changes to the reward system lately. And while I could easily accomodate myself with the others, this one proves to be challenging. Let's see the eye I lay on it!

"Haha! You didn't even get airdropped, sucker!"

A bit of context is needed I guess. I was late to the party, and actually joined Splinterlands a couple of weeks before the end of the SPS airdrop. So I did get some but it's really negligible.

And so I'm a pretty small player. My fun is to grow my account little by little. I usually stop playing a game once it becomes too easy because I progressed too much. I barely finish games as a result, the beginning with the difficult progression is always the best part in all cases.
Anyway, all that in order to say that I own a somewhat decent Bronze CL deck, and usually play in Silver and jump to Gold at the end of the season.

With all that, I carefully stacked all SPS I got, never sold it and now own a whopping 2000. Woohoo!
And so while I consider myself a "good" player, in the sense that I grow my account and assets consistently, why do I feel punished now for being a newsih player?

"Haha! Your rewards suck, sucker!"

We all saw the table with the expected multipliers per league. How do the rewards fare for a random guy (let's say me)?

Not surprisingly, the reward increase with the rating, but, up to a critical point. Past a certain rating, there is no point of improving if you don't have the SPS to go with.

For the reference, below in orange was the rewards before the change.

Sucks for me indeed. Well, my fault for missing the airdrop, I guess.
It's still better for me to play as usual, but with rewards divided roughly by 4. Downgrading wouldn't make sense, with rewards divided by 8.

For your reference guys, I have prepared graphs to see where you are at.
The "Critical" line represents the highest reward you can achieved based on your SPS. The "Equal" line represents the couple rating/SPS for which the rewards are the same as before the stacking requirement (the famous *10 multiplier). If you play below this line you get a bonus. Above you get a penalty.

"Haha! Just rent the SPS, sucker!"

Right, indeed! That may be a solution!

Let's see. I need 9000 SPS to get the *10 multiplier at a rating of 1900.
Renting SPS costs apparently something like 0.01-0.008 DEC per day per SPS. So let's say 0.009 DEC, that would cost me 81 DEC per day. Around 0.065$ per day.

And as I'm a rat, I will minimize my spending to only rent during the second half of the season, when the rating is higher and so are the rewards. So let's say I will rent only with a rating between 1800 and 1900.

With that, I will increase my rewards (on average) by a factor 2.66, so instead of earning around 2 SPS (0.04$) per day, I will earn 0.066$ per day. Minus the 0.065$ needed to rent the SPS, I make a profit of........ drumroll.......... 0.001$

So I guess I'm supposed to go through tedious micro-management of renting, to spend liquid money, in order to gain 2% on it, paid in unaccessible stacked form. And if I did that along a season, the return would be negative.
Well, I guess I will pass...

"Haha! Just buy the SPS, sucker!"

Didn't you just read the beginning of the post? I own a crappy 100$ Bronze deck that I managed to assemble within the year I have been playing, more or less. Am I supposed to spend twice its value just in order to use it?
If I had 200$ to spend in Splinterland, I would have bought a better deck already!

Even though, let's say, if I had 180$ to buy 9000 SPS, on a year I would make me roughly an additionnal 23$, 13% on the investment, paid in unaccessible stacked form.
Or I could just spend them on HBD and buy SPS with the interest.

"Haha! Just suck it up, sucker!"

Yeah, I know. As you understood, I plan to do nothing for now. Yet as it doesn't look good for small players like me, I doubt the increase of the paywall will entice new players to join and stay in the game.

But there's still light. The reward pools and shares will be adjusted this season. Maybe it will be interesting to rent SPS (although, damned micro-managing it, I signed up for a card game). Maybe the bots will leave Modern soon and my win rate will increase.

Still, see you on the Battlefield!
Not afraid of the challenge? Join us! https://splinterlands.com?ref=engilhramn