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Splinterlands Town Hall Minutes for February 23, 2022

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Splinterlands Town Hall (AMA) Summary for February 23, 2022

*Please note: I cover as much as I can of the summary as a record of the conversation. I do not provide my opinion but actual conversation that occurs during the Town Hall/AMA. This summary will have questions provided from the Discord and the answers given by the various Splinterlands' team will be typed by me. Please forgive any typos or errors; some may be from Discord or some may be my own.

Founders Begin the Town Hall (formerly AMA)
Today's Town Hall included: @aggroed, @yabapmatt and @nateaguila and chatter

If you wish to contact the team, here are some of the personnel:

Aggroed @aggroed Founder and (C.E.O) Matt @yabapmatt Founder and (C.P.O.)
Hardpoint @hardpoint (C.T.O.) (Chief Technical Officer)
KBux @kbux (VP of Engineering)
Nate @nateaguila (Creative Director) Cryptomancer @cryptomancer (Splinterlands Developer) Chatter (Director of Marketing) Homestead @homesteadhacker (Business Analyst)

Introduction from Aggroed of speakers and Two Guilds, Unbound Nation and YGG

  • Introduced Matt, Liam (Chatter) and Nate
  • Guilds: Philip from Unbound Nation
    • Thanks for having me. I'm super thrilled to be here. We started our guild in November of last year. We started with Axie and then scaled up to 1100 members in December. We looked at different games, analyzed them very closely and we want a game that is sure and requires a lot of skill because we think that's what makes it the most fun. We talked to a few guys on the team and it's super cool to be here and think it's great for the guild.
    • [Guilds] provide equal opportunity for people and we were thrilled to build a community for those all over. Our ambition is at some point to transition from just a guild to a bigger gaming DAO. [The advantage of being a DAO] because the community likes DAOS because there's an aspect of contributing to the DAO and the DAO usually enables the guild to grow much faster and we really believe in the social aspect of it. I think this is where we stand out a bit because we build an ecosystem for the players. We want players to grow, to get better, to hone their skills but we also help them with their real life stuff so if they want... alot of them are students... so we help them, provide psychological support.. that's where the name comes from we really are a nation we're more than just playing games.
    • What are your ambitions? What are you looking for [from Splinterlands]? What we love about Splinterlands is it's a game that's tough to master and so what we're looking for is some support if there's someone around here that wants to help with strategy, with ideas, how we can build the community around the game, how to select cards, etc. That would be really helpful.
    • Best way to get in touch with PhillipPH @unboundnationio on Twitter or DM him on Discord PhillipH#6728 -Knightav with YGG Guild Any tips for a new player coming in
      • I call it alliances, like an affiliation of guilds. If you want to build any size you want to build an alliance. Try to identify your leads. Find out what they like, how they want to approach things. The success at any skill is going to depend upon the buy in.
      • YGG has $26 million of Axie Management. We have 16 affiliated guilds and 200 some playing. Over the last few months we have been growing. Every Saturday we run a community weekend challenge--a livestream tournament and we try to reward the top 100 players with the entry fee basically nothing so come hang out with us on Saturdays.
    • We're going into a recruiting blitz right now. If you're guild player and have a pretty good size collection, please come talk to us, we're looking for you!
    • In the next two weeks-- if you happen to be a person who minted a YGG guild badge, you'll be entitled to buy into next round of the sub DAO.
    • Aggroed thanked them both for supporting Splinterlands and being here

Top News: Partnership with Warner

  • We are going to work together to make a game. I imagine there are a lot of questions, and worries but I'm just stoked.
  • We'll have someone come next week and we are looking at more than one product and how to make this happen.
  • We can't talk about specific details yet, but the plan is to incentivize the music fans and the players and I'll leave it at that.
  • They have 20% market share of music. They have Atlantic Records.
  • Chatter was one who has been working on this heavily for Splinterlands.
  • Matt's thoughts:
    • Everyone should be clear that our goal in life is to bring as much value to Splinterlands and Splinterlands' assets to players and the community as possible. Warner Music wanted to work with us.. we mentioned it's gonna be some new game products because it's a different audience and Splinterlands is very complicated and involved and so we're looking at simpler games with them. But the whole goal is how to bring value at those here. We don't have exact details but it came down to do we say now because we don't have the details? Or do we say yes and we figure out how to bring value from that platform and their audience and how do we use Splinterlands' assets and incorporate them. Everything is on the table at this point and it was a no brainer. If they didn't work with us, they would have worked with someone else.
  • Aggroed's Thoughts:
    • I know everyone wants the details but we just don't have that, but I hope you trust that we are here to bring value.
    • We are looking to hire people for this. Matt was very specific about this is entirely separate people for this project because we're not going to slow anything down for this project.
    • It's not like we're dropping what we're doing on Splinterlands. We are just expanding our team to take on any new opportunities.
    • I know you're wanting more details and I have another meeting on Thursday and I'll get o finalize these details but we'll see where this goes. Ultimately the people are the value and all I really care about is getting more people in this ecosystem and Warner has a giant community and fan base and if we can help capture that into play to earn games, I think we can do that without compromising Splinterlands.
    • What do you think Nate? Are we still on track?
  • Nate's Thoughts: We're great. You have to realize we've grown tremendously since then. I would say we're in a really good position and we're still hiring. As we hire, we'll be looking at creatives for Splinterlands or this product team and I don't think anyone needs to worry. We're astronomically larger and in a really good position.
  • WeirdBeard Thoughts:

    • They have access to almost anybody you can name. You can't even imagine what they can do. They are like the Walmart of music.

from Contelegraph's article

Waka Tomorrow!

  • Chatter shared this is the steps to take to get everyone exposed to the game and while everyone might not be able to get the card, it's still great for the game and please remember that.
  • Post about Waka: You can read here.
  • Be sure to check out the channel Press Releases in Splinterlands' Discord.
  • Nate explained that Splinterlands is SO WELL-POSITIONED right now. There's no convincing these guys. "We're just getting yes! Yes! Yes! on all these calls!" - Nate. It's incredible. It's absolutely mind-bogglingly incredible! It's thrilling to see it happening right before our eyes. It's history in the making! -Eye candy for Waka:
  • Matt's Thoughts:

    • There are some limitations and restrictions which includes not being able to do a lottery but we have been taking a bunch of efforts and hide the purchasing so there won't be a bunch of bots buying. Our goal is for the way to buy the card is through the website and so it should automatically switch over to the buy option. We'll have to see how it goes, and we hope to do lots of future promotions. They will probably always require vouchers. Use the website and it should automatically switch over when the counter comes down.

Validators

  • We have a team now for the Validators. How do we organize things better has been the theme for the last few weeks. Kudos to @Hardpoint for that organization so we have people working in teams so one of the big issues before had been I was the only one on that project but now we have a team.

  • The team includes 3 other developers and the goal is to get it out as quickly as we can. We'll need a little extra time to get the up to speed but the hope is to get it done even faster and continue and maintain it.

Chatter Chats

  • One thing that we are gonna try to do a lot more is I want to make sure that we're really getting representation in the physical aspect for all along the globe around here. If you're having parties, please DM me. If you want to start a Splinterlands club in your area, please let me know.
  • We're talking with a catering arena that works in the Philippines as well as North America right now to get tournaments going.

WeirdBeard Tournament Talk

  • There have been plenty of discussions, join the Tournament Discord channel and we LOVE to have the chat about the tournaments.
  • We have the N00B Format will have low requirements so that you can build up and learn.
  • New Novice and Bronze area.
  • We are tracking data right now to figure out the prize, who's entering, how in depth their decks are. If we change everything at once we can't track it so we're following that.
  • We have some internal things I've been teasing and a lot of it is what we have on the horizon in the 2, 3 4 months.
  • My calendar link is always open so I try to reach out to players, new players, guilds. etc. We want to hear from everybody. I can't play in every tournament but my goal is to hear from everybody and synthesize what we can do for everyone.

Matt Has EYE CANDY AIRDROP CARD

  • Here's the new airdrop card, Carnage Titan, with stats. It's a reach monster with double strike and shield with weakness is magic.

And here's a wallpaper from Nate of that airdrop card, the Carnage Titan!

New Accountant Drewlongshot Introduction

  • Accounting degree in Boston and was hired by Splinterlands to do some accounting stuff! (Has known Aggroed for over 14 years.) Worked with large accounting firm and TV/radio station WTGH in Boston and involved in a Career Karma Coding Bootcamp.
  • There's potential room for growth in this community and that's because of those players. It's really great to give back to a community like that where we help you and you help us.
  • From an accounting standpoint there's a lot of crypto stuff and our department is growing and I'm working with another person as well.
  • No matter what your job out there is, the more you know about coding, the better your job will be.

16Bit (AKA John) New VP of Sales

  • Aggroed introduced 16Bit; they have known one another for over 24 years.

  • Been here for 2 1/2 days and still trying to find the bathrooms. :)

  • Genuine notion to push value back out to the community. Our existence and our goal is to push value back out to Splinterlands. To me, I think that's really important and I've always found success in sales when I started to realize I'm not selling stuff, what I'm doing is I'm identifying a product, a service or a community that has a mission I can get behind and evangelize in that. I believe in what Splinterlands is doing and the blockchain and all of that. I'm excited to leverage that. There are some clearer pathways I think I can add to that. That's through trying to identify and talk to more gaming guilds and set up local communities across the country but there's a lot of green field out there and for those who are excited enough to do something and coming to a Town Hall and how you evangelize about that.

  • It's gonna take me a bit of time, but I'm excited for the process.

  • Aggroed's number one sales' rule: "If you want someone to do something, you should make it as easy as humanly possible for them to do it."

SPS/Vouchers

  • For major NFT releases going forward, will they be only attainable with SPS/vouchers?
    • Matt: Everyone's gonna be different and I can't say what they are all gonna be but I can say we will plan to use vouchers for promotions.

Potions

  • Can we get mystery potions back?
    • Probably not but looking to bring new type of potions back.
  • The quest potion has been abandoned for a long time. Is there any mechanism to treat it as a reward?

    • We are going to look at revamping how that works, but then might bring in more new potions.

Warner Music Group

  • Will there be benefits to owning SL assets for the games being made for the Artists?
    • It's our goal that Splinterlands assets will be involved in any way, shape or form that they can be involved. We don't know how that all is gonna shake out yet. Our goal if bringing this in, was Warner is gonna build blockchain games with somebody and so if it's gonna be us, it's a benefit for us. It is our goal that Splinterlands' community benefits massively from this.
  • What benefits/improvements do you see will come to the Splinterlands game from the Warner partnership?
    • One potential option is some type of utility, value or assets with Splinterlands in these new games. Some artists may be interested in doing something with Splinterlands rather than the casual games Splinterlands is looking to make. If there's anything we can co-promote with them, we will. I don't know exactly but between the two options of don't work with them at all or work with them, I think it was best to work with them.
    • WeirdBeard added: There's a whole slew of people out in the world either have no idea what NFTS are but being involved with these larger names adds power and familiarity with these other people. If I talk to my mom about what "liquidity pools are doing" versus "mom Ed Sheeran is involved" then she said "OMG I love Ed Sheeran!" It's an automatic brand win.
    • Aggroed said: We want to get cool and I think associating with main-stream artists, the more we can do that, the cooler our image can become.
    • Even at a bear minimum if we're building games with warner and they are separate products we have exclusive rights to advertise to that environment so the whole idea is to bring as many people into the space as possible. So casual games so they can start learn about crypto and then it can be like BAM you want more than this candy crush style game, why don't you try Splinterlands?
  • What kind of games will the WMG partnership create? Will it be a game per artist or more like a Warner game with artists in the in-game assets?
    • Two different games. One is a production, promotion and performance music game and one is a very casual game and we would hire two additional teams to go work on those.
    • Game for artists

      • Nate is against this, but Nate says there are pros and cons and we'll see how this goes.

  • Will the WMG games run on the Hive Blockchain? Congrats on your partnership.
    • Validators play together here. Matt explains: Everything that we are building for SPS validators and to have an open-code source base, we're planning to use that for any future things that we do. So in a way, it will be our own little blockchain which uses the Hive blockchain for our security. That being said, the Hive blockchain is not as well known. I can't guarantee that it will be on the Hive Blockchain but what they do like about what we're doing about the human readable account names, the different level of keys securities that we figured out with Splinterlands and they're working with us because they said hey you guys have figured this all out. There hasn't been 100% decision of what chain it will be on but we have all this work done on the Hive chain and so that is what we're promoting and pushing. And I also tell people, it shouldn't be important what blockchain it runs on, just like when you use Netfix, ... the blockchain is just the technology platform. So we're really pushing that they don't worry about what blockchain it's on but that they get a good product.
    • Utility on Hive but going out to different ecosystems... Aggroed is suggesting that you build it on one place and then you go trade on all of these ecosystems.

Marketing

  • Could we get an update on the partnership with TeraBlock? (this is for Matt)
    • The integration with TeraBlock is done. We have the Waka thing for this week and so I think we're looking at next week. TeraBlock will be taking over the bridge service rather than what we run.
    • Benefits: They do this as their main thing their company does versus us where it's a side thing. The UI is much more clearer and all the steps of the process. It frees up the workforce to focus on Splinterlands. They have worked with Polygon and so we can have SPS and tokens on Polygon. And so they are ready to work with other chains like Solana and other brands. So then it should be a flick of switch to get us on those chains. We want our assets to be available everywhere. We want to get our products (assets) out to as many stores (blockchains) as we can. You can trade anywhere you want is the goal.
    • Splinterlands SPS is the default token on TeraBlock website.
    • Currently TeraBlock has made a bridge between Ethereum to Binance right now and what we're working on integrating you'll also be able to use their service into your game account.

Waka Spiritblade

  • For the Waka card, poison seems a pretty overpowered ability to give for a 3 mana cost summoner. Feels like a harder to counter Mylor. Do you feel like it will mess with gameplay?
    • Possibly. We always do our best. Our goal is to make it FEEL like they are overpowered but don't actually cause an issue in the game. I learned this from Ben Brody from Hearthstone. They are always worried about that so then they make everything boring, so you want it to seem exciting but has that balance. We have taken the approach that it's clearly overpowered and a problem rather than nerf the cards, we enter new rule sets to add counters to those things. I do agree poison seems very powerful but as best as we can tell, we don't think it will be overpowered but it's almost impossible to know that for sure until the card is released. If it's a problem we'll figure out what to do with that or add counters.

Brawls/Tournaments

  • Could you give an update on allowing "reward cards" in the tourneys in their proper format?
    • Modern and Wild format hopefully released in March so the modern and wild tournaments will change. Once modern and wild is done we can put a tweak in there for all the frays, brawls, brackets.
  • Could you give an update on adding "chaos legion" frays to the brawls?
    • It's just modern and wild. I think that's done (Matt says) but we're waiting for the release on that for Chaos Legion brawls.
  • (For Weirdbeard) The current Silvershield Knights Tournaments (silver level all cards) is filled with champion and diamond players that evidently paid the higher entry fee to enter and compete. Right now, of the current top 10 players of that tournament, almost half are champion/diamond league players. Do you think there should be further disincentives to somehow avoid having those tournaments filled with higher league players? Or do you think the higher entry fee is enough?
    • The tournaments are not in a closed ecosystem where we see this. It's not as simple as flipping a switch. "Hey you naughty boys, don't you enter this tournament." We're working on the back end that will address things like this. I can't tell you everything yet, but we're working on it in the back end. We need to figure out what are the incentives that will keep people playing in their bracket and we have some things we're working on. The big thing is , Yes, we acknowledge it, and the knee-jerk reaction is to tell people OH we will make sure they can't enter. It's not targeting larger players and gate out the lower players.
  • (For Weirdbeard) Right now I feel that SPS and collection power are the main reasons people don't participate in tournaments. How do you plan to reconcile in the future the SPS requirements and your philosophy of "I want more players playing the tournaments"? I also want to take this opportunity to thank you for all your hard work and everything you have been doing to try to make tournaments more inclusive.
    • I don't agree with the fact that CP and SPS are keeping people out of tournaments. I think it's a roadblock but what we learned was people didn't even know about tournaments except from people like Bulldog. Really we have to set our baseline and those two levers at the same time.
    • We have to figure out the two different play areas (do people only want CP or only want SPS). How do you use those as cattle prods to get them into the correct player area and how do you use those as guiding rails. We are using those to collect data. This isn't based on WeirdBeard's gut feeling. We're doing this based upon the numbers.

Suggestions/Requests

Note go to: https://feedback.splinterlands.com/ To provide your feedback

  • When the season ends and we can't play etc. while everything resets, can we get some Lore or animation story to watch while we wait to play again? I think it would be cool to watch it. Also, thank you guys for all of your hard work! Exciting times are among us indeed!!

    • Add that to feedback.splinterlands.com

    • Nate shared a concept to discuss how important story telling is going to be in this game.

  • Will Splinterlands enable buying credits or buying packs on mobile iOS?

    • Eventually yes. In the meantime we had way too big of an issue of fraud and chargeback and they don't have as much flexibility as we have with things like PayPal. Overall the mobile app hasn't been forgotten but it's not the highest priority. We're thinking of having a whole separate team for it.

  • Could we have a sound notification for when the timer is about to run out?

    • I thought we do. If there's an issue with it let us know. Add that to feedback.

    • Nate hopes to have things shake and rattle to give audio and visual clues that way you can focus on building your team but you're aware of the time.

  • Lama and Yodin are OP and offer a lot of auto wins, which makes them an obvious choice for bots. Would it make sense to raise their mana cost a bit?
    • So yeah Lama and Yodin and potential issues. One of the interesting things is it's only in lower leagues so I have a lot of ideas on things we can do with Lama and Yodin. I prefer to avoid nerfing them but really I've been trying to wait until SPS governance is available because that's a good first test for SPS governance and get some proposals about it and kind of see if there's some consensus among the players of a good idea of how to address that issue. Obviously the governance has taken longer than I planned but that is the hope to be a first test case.
  • Could Splinterlands do anything to simplify/streamline the process of getting money into the game?

    • This is a huge, huge, huge area that we're trying to focus on. It needs to be even easier to get money into the game. I know a whole bunch of people who want to buy significant amounts of SPS and are new to crypto and they are having trouble getting into it. Just making it easier to get these tokens will help everything. TransAc is a 3rd party service using a credit card to get DEC and SPS but it's outside of the US right now. But I've been talking to many, many partners and my goal is to offer many many options when you click on that plus sign next to the DEC (in the game). I think this is just a hugely important thing.

  • Could future promos be purchased with staked SPS only? With a week of notice only players that have 4x the amount required can participate. I would have tried to buy a Waka, but was unable to because I would need more than a week to unstake enough SPS.

    • You are still able to buy the card, you just may need to purchase more SPS to do it. yes it takes time to unstake and I can't guarantee we'll always be able to announce things ahead of time. Every promotion will be different. This one includes vouchers and liquid SPS.

Guilds

  • If you upgrade your guild arena to level 3 (two stars) are you moved to a specific pool of high guilds with the same or higher level arena? Or do we just mainly get additional frays?

    • Yeah I don't remember off the top of my head but I think you can choose what level you go into. So if you choose level 3, you'll only be with those level guilds.

  • Do you plan to expand Guilds gameplay in the future? And will the Land expansion have a use for Guilds?

    • 100% Guilds hasn't had a lot of updates but it's coming, a lot of economic updates that I have in mind. We absolutely have an important part to lands. You can wait until then, or getting those guilds up so you're more prepared.

Side Conversation/End of the Conversation

  • Matt: We have no control over the market price. Our goal is to add as much utility in the game as possible for SPS. We had some posts a couple months ago so a lot of this is just re-hashing what was in there. The majority of the SPS token issuance happens in that first year. 400 million Tokens in total dropped and the private distribution until the end of April for private sale distributions. That will be completely done at the end of April. We're on airdrop day 212 so there's 153 days left. This year the airdrop will be done.

  • Riftwatchers will only be purchasable with SPS tokens. That will 100% be SPS and go to the SPS foundation. The more promotions we have, may lead to additional promotions to the Splinterlands' game and all of that will require vouchers and if you need vouchers you'll have to have staked SPS. If you want to have a say, make proposals, choose who the validators are, etc. you will need SPS staked to do that. These things take time, but I think we've been super clear and shared with you the distribution schedule and what we're 100% planning to do with SPS.

Rapid-Fire Questions

  • where can we find all the splinter bites to read outside of the pre battle screens?

    • Under revamp

  • will we be able to grow poppyproof in land to have a divine shield or short term health buff in matches?

    • I don't know about poppyproof but the whole idea with land is you'll be creating item and spell cards.

  • we have a spiritblade and a fireblade do we have a group of blade monsters/summoners or is it elemental/splinter based?

    • First it's flameblade, not fireblade. The concepts are made independently. Who knows, maybe we can figure something out in the future.

  • are there any troubleshooting steps to seeing or recovering missing VOUCHERS sent from hive engine to splinterlands?

    • Support ticket for that

  • QUESTION: What's this week's latest accomplishments on land development. ๐Ÿ™‚ (will probably be a regular question as the company appears to add more and more to the agenda of things to do)

    • There's a team now that has been put together that 100% focus is on land. It just kicked off. We're getting going on what we've already done, and getting them started on phase 1. There is a specific team though for it. My hope is that in the not too distant future we'll have some progress we can share.

  • Question: Are there any plans to have tournaments "all day long". For GMT timezone they are only night and early morning spots.

    • times rotate

  • QUESTION: Are there any status updates on the validator software?

    • No timeline but full team dedicated to it

  • QUESTION: Would Splinterlands ever consider moving out of the US if over-regulation becomes a real problem and a major hinderance?

    • I mean they might come and arrest me... you see what's going on in Canada. Who knows what the governments would do.. If we have to move, we would move.

    • Nate: WHAT IF WE WANT TO LIVE ON SPLINTER-ISLAND! Matt: "Nate, we have a place reserved for you there"

    • Aggroed: I am planning to buy a Splinter-Island.

  • When the games goes into maintenance, why does the ranked game not draw?

    • Well, if it goes into maintenance mode, it's often because there's a problem, so it's not so easy.

  • Question: is the timeline for Land and Riftwatchers still on track?

    • That's still stuff that's Q2 and Q3

  • QUESTION: are there any plans to make the attack animations/effects better than they are?

    • Yes coming

  • Question : Are the rewards structure change plan to be release with wild / modern format update or later ?

    • Probably later.

Here's the Link to the YouTube video from Splinterlands' Official YouTube Channel if you want to see the Town Hall as well for a reference.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuE_4WMCRpk

If you enjoyed my post and want to try Splinterlands, please use my referral link: https://splinterlands.com?ref=rosiew Please remember my post is not meant to be financial advice and is just my opinion.
Follow These Folks: Splinterlands: https://peakd.com/@splinterlands/ PeakMonsters: https://peakd.com/@peakmonsters/
Monster-Curator: https://peakd.com/@monster-curator/
1Up (#oneup): https://www.1up.zone/

Here are some great links to join as well! Splinterlands Discord: https://discord.gg/Tw7KjNsQGs Monster Market Discord (Monster Curator): https://discord.gg/DR3J9rfRFV
PeakD Discord (PeakMonsters as well): https://discord.gg/7mQmzZeugE
NFT Studios Discord (aka 1UP Discord #oneup): https://discord.gg/4VYBcNuVQd