Soulkeep | Impressions After One Week!

It's been just over a week since the Soulkeep release which gives a better view on the strengths and weaknesses of the game. These are some of my thoughts after playing for a week...

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Soulkeep Fun Game (Potentially)

I still think the game itself actually holds up more or less or at least has the potential to do so. I remember having a ton of fun way back with the original Plants Versus Zombies and Kingdom Rush which date back to 2009 and 2013. What I liked most about them is that they were fair and offered a real challenge equal for everyone.

However, the follow-up games went full pay2win allowing players to pay to make them stronger with extra heroes which for me totally killed the fun. I do get it because these dynamics just make it so the company earns a lot more. This also somewhat seems to be the direction Soulkeep is going even though the potential to be as fun as some of the Original Tower Defense Games surely is there.

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No Real Single Player Mode

So each league has 5 single player levels which are crazy easy when you have the towers and spells a the max allowed levels even without owning the Hero. Once you completed them, it's only really possible to play in tournaments. This makes it so that the Single player is just there in place to make players want to buy more packs as they need stronger towers in the next league. This in a very gradual way so it's not all too expensive at once.

This makes it so that there basically is no single players mode where players who own towers and spells can just have fun with the game and experiment just for the fun of it. What I enjoyed the most by far in Soulkeep so far was getting hit with a challenge in League 1 on the 4/5 Level with limited cards trying to overcome that. Aside from that there literally is none of that as all the play is directed to the Tournament.

Tournament Pay2Win, Top Heavy, & Botting Issues

So for the tournament you get 1 free entry each day where you can try to get as far as possible with certain game rules. If you want to improve and play extra games it exponentially cost more DEC to enter. Your rank at the end of the day will determine if you earn any SPS and how much.

Pay2Win Issues:

So there is 1 overpowered Tower with the Quad Killer which everyone needs to order to be somewhat competitive. This at the lowest Level costs 11.41$. Without this card, I would say there is zero chance to do well in the tournament. There is also the Legendary Hearthgiver Spell which is absolutely needed which costs 2.5$ at lowest level. he most extreme however is the hero of which there are 360 copies and which goes at a price of 275$ right now. While this is a nice gift to those who bought a lot of packs in the pre-sale, it does introduce a pay2win mechanic where everyone who doesn't own it is left without chance to get a top ranking.

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Top Heavy Payouts: The Tournament is the only real way to earn but they payouts there are very top heavy. The winner in league 2 gets 1864 DEC and this quickly goes down to 87 SPSfor anyone outside the top 10, 17 SPS to anyone outside of the top 30 and just 3.44 SPS to anyone outside of the top 76. This while half the players don't earn anything at all (aside from a tiny chance to earn a pack on each attempt)

The issue with this is that it totally crashes all hopes for any earnings for the casual players and likely the same best players will win the big prizes over and over again. This is completely different to Splinterlands where everyone about gets their fair share in an equal way as the win rates are designed to be close to 50%.

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Botting Issue: It will be a matter of tome before Bots, AI, Battle Helpers just play way better compared to human players as they have better tools to optimize and figure out how to beat the game optimally. This will leave real human players always a couple steps behind and frustrated when trying to get some kind or Play2Earn earnings from the game since it's impossible to just enjoy a singleplayer campaign. I do believe this is one of the major challenges for all web3 games that offer potential earnings including Soulkeep.

These dynamics in Soulkeep just gives no incentive for most players to actually throw money at it since it's nearly impossible to get any kind of return for most players. Personally, right now I just want to have some fun with the game but I have no intentions to be competitive as it just takes way too much time and I likely wouldn't even succeed.

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Earnings So Far

Days	League	SPS
Day 1	1	3.84 SPS
Day2	1	3.56 SPS
Day 3	1	3.98 SPS
Day4	1	4.23 SPS
Day5	1 & 2	4.18 SPS
Day 6	2	0 SPS
Day 7	2	3.44 SPS

So in a week of reaching a paid spot most days, I just managed to earn 23.23 SPS, which now equals 0.16$. I did at times enter multiple times which cost me some DEC let's say 100 DEC in total which takes the earnings down to just 0.1$.

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Conclusion!

Soulkeep has the potential to be a great fun game but for me the Pay2Win aspects along with the poor payout structure and potential botting issue totally kill it also because there is no real singleplayer version to enjoy. I still like the game but purely from an expected value point of view, the best things right now would be to just sell all my assets and walk away. I will however keep playing for another week and maybe me view on things will change.

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