So when I initially found R-Planet I thought it was amazing. There was a place where you could put to use all your extra NFT's that wouldn't do anything but collect digital Dust (and not the currency). I started to play Alien Worlds and had all these extra minions and weapons I couldn't use yet because Alien Worlds hadn't released Thunderdome yet (still haven't). So I started to stake them with R-Planet and I was earning some Aether as a passive income. It was great.
Back in those days, R-Planet hadn't released its own crafting mechanic to their "game". So we were all stock piling Aether so that when it went live we could rush to spend our Aether on the different elements to combine them into new elements. At the time it seemed very promising. In Hindsight I wish I saw the writing on the wall. When crafting went live I immediately tried to buy elements. It turned our that you needed 10,000 Aether to buy just 1 element. You needed 4 elements to combine. So that meant you needed to spend at least 40,000 Aether to build anything. At the time I had about 12,000 Aether. I bought a Fire Element. Then I was lost.
I was in a mad scramble to get more Aether so that I could buy 3 more elements and combine them. There was a sense of urgency because only the first 400 or so who crafted a particular element would get a NFT of that element that they could then stake in R-Planet and earn more Aether. I wanted a stupid element so bad. So I started to look through the various NFT's that you could stake on R-Planet and dug into them a bit. I saw that Garbage Pail Kids was an option so I went to Atomic Hub and bought a cheap one for 5 WAX.
Well it turns out that this particular GPK was not stakable on R-Planet. I still have no idea why but once I figured that out I needed a new game plan. I saw this NFT collection called Koloboks. I did some research and realized it was a pretty simple enough game to get started. I bought 6 Kolobok's on https://wax.simplemarket.io/. I meant to buy only 2 but I had no idea what I was doing. So with 6 of these little ugly creatures I sent 1 on an adventure. When they go on adventures they can return with a NFT as a prize. It is those NFT's that you can stake to R-Planet. The adventures can take anywhere from 5 hours to 20 hours depending on the stats of your Kolobok. I soon realized that sending 1 at a time wasn't a viable solution. So I immediately bought more adventure spots.
I ended up eventually buying 5 extra slots. So now I could send 6 Kolobok's on adventures at the same time. That also meant I needed more Kolobok's. I spend the next couple days religiously playing this game to breed my Kolobok's to gain more and sending my crap ones on adventures. I soon amassed a little collection of 50+ Kolobok's. I was sending 6 out on adventures a day and I was racking in a lot of NFT's. I would stake them all to R-Planet immediately, since they was literally no other use for them. You can see that they aren't anything special.
Now mind you I had to pay 31 WAX for my 5 additional slots. So it was a little investment to be able to crank out those NFT's. But at the time I thought it was totally worth it.
So everything was going great. I was earning a good chuck of Aether a day. Then this happened...
R-Planet nerfed all staking rewards across the board. It's a little fuzzy on this because it seems they tried to hide the fact that they did it. But I can tell you that they tanked all the staking rewards. It was at this point I started to see the writing on the wall. R-Planet was selling these 'miners' that would greatly increase your Aether earnings. What that means is that if you didn't buy one you can kiss R-Planet goodbye. They alienated a LOT of their user base because of it. If I make say 400 Aether an hour staking all my NFTs that I collected over the last 2 months. Then bobby comes along and buys 2 miners and he is earning 4,000 Aether an hour. What chance in hell do I have to create elements? Bobby will have bought 4 elements and turned them into a new element and got the NFT already.
By the time I had made up another 30,000 Aether to buy 3 more elements so I could combine them into a new element it was pointless. There is a site that tells how many people made certain elements already and if there are any of the 400 spots left and how much total Aether it would cost to make the new more complex elements. When I had that 30,000 Aether to put to use I saw that I needed at a minimum of 160,000 Aether to make an element that still have spots open out of the 400.
It was then that I sold all my Aether on Alcor. I lost all hope. I figured I would at least make some WAX back as I sell my investment. It was a losers game at that point. You had to spend soo much money, like real life money to make a good amount of Aether. OR you had to have a crap ton of NFT's which you probably would have had to buy anyways. It just wasn't worth it.
Then a few weeks later R-Planet announced that they were going to do another round of Miner sells. So just so you are all following this logic here.
Step 1) let people stake their unused NFT's to earn Aether. = even playing field
Step 2) NERF everybody's earned Aether so that they all earn way less than what they are used to.
Step 3) Release & sell these Miners so that you can earn crap ton of Aether again. = not even playing field
Step 4) Price of Aether tanks on Alcor because people are not stupid.
Step 5) Release & sell more Miners again to gain back some cash. = WAY not even playing field
Current day
Step 6) Probably release more stupid miners or some other crap to make more money.
So here I am. I went from loving R-Planet to absolutely hating it with a passion. It has turned into a money grab and it's unacceptable. I left some of my NFT's in R-Planet to earn some Aether and now every day or so I log into Alcor and just sell my Aether for WAX. I get like 0.5 WAX a day at BEST but it's something. I want to regain my investment but it is going to take a while for sure.
To that end I created a new NFT. I drew the main artwork so I hope you like it! :)
https://wax.atomichub.io/drops/10068
If you have Aether you need to sell then go here: https://wax.alcor.exchange/trade/aether-e.rplanet_wax-eosio.token
