Season End, Hive Hard Fork, & Other Updates

First "League Leaderboards" Season Completed

The 46th Splinterlands ranked play season has just ended, and for the first time players in each of the five different leagues were able to compete for the leaderboard and win Untamed booster pack prizes!

This season went very smoothly, especially compared to the tumultuous season before it while we transitioned to the new system, and we want to thank everyone who participated for their support, encouragement, and constructive feedback, as well as to congratulate the winners!

As always, we are very interested in hearing feedback from players - you! - on how the season went and if there is anything you would like to see changed or fixed going forward.

Hive Hard Fork

On Tuesday, October 6th at 10 AM ET / 2 PM UTC there is planned to be a hard fork of the Hive blockchain on which the Splinterlands game operates. Splinterlands will be put into maintenance mode shortly before the hard fork is scheduled to occur in order to ensure that everything is running properly.

Additionally, Splinterlands will not schedule any tournaments from October 4th through October 6th in order to avoid any conflicts with the hard fork downtime. The normal tournament schedule should resume on October 7th.

For those of you who are interested in what will be changed in this hard fork, you can read more about it here: https://peakd.com/hiveblockchain/@hiveio/final-hive-hf24-date-set-october-6-2020.

The only change that will affect Splinterlands is the update of the chain ID. Anyone running third party software that needs to publish transactions to the Hive blockchain will need to make sure they update to the latest versions of the Hive libraries for their chosen language before the time of the hard fork.

The latest versions of the dHive and Hive-JS JavaScript libraries can be found at the following links:

Fee for Sending DEC to Ethereum

Going forward there will be a 1000 DEC fee that will be charged when transferring DEC tokens from the game to the wrapped version of the token on the Ethereum blockchain. This fee is necessary to cover the gas costs required to transfer the tokens on the Ethereum network.

This fee will be deducted from the total amount requested to be transferred. For example, if you request to transfer 5000 DEC from the game to your Ethereum wallet, then 1000 DEC will be deducted for the fee and you will receive 4000 DEC in your Ethereum wallet. Any transfers for less than 1000 DEC in total will not go through as there is not enough to cover the fee and will be sent back to the sender's in-game wallet.

The amount of the fee is subject to change at any time based on gas price fluctuations on Ethereum, and the current fee amount will be clearly indicated on the game website when transferring DEC tokens. Splinterlands will not charge a fee when transferring tokens from an Ethereum wallet back into the game, however the user making the transfer will be responsible for handling the Ethereum gas fees for the transaction.

Marketing & Promotion

As we have mentioned, we have been working hard over the past few months to bring in more marketing and promotional deals for Splinterlands in order to help drive new player acquisition. We have already started working with a number of projects to do cross-promotion including GameCredits.org, Gala Games, and Wombat Wallet, and we have another significantly larger partner that we hope to announce in mid-October.

In order to support a potential increase in new players, we have been working on back-end scalability improvements, changes to the new player sign-up process (to be announced shortly), and completing the first version of our new player tutorial system which we expect to be released before the next player acquisition partner goes live.

We are also planning to officially announce the Splinterlands land presale in mid-October which we plan to promote across a number of crypto and blockchain news outlets, as well as through other channels. The first round of the presale will likely start in early November.

All in all, we have a LOT of exciting stuff coming up over the next few months, so hang on to your hats!

Roadmap Update

The following is the latest high-level overview of the Splinterlands development roadmap. Please keep in mind that the dates listed are estimates and are subject to change, as are the items in the roadmap themselves.

  • Mobile App Update (Guilds / Bug Fixes / EOS & Wombat Wallet Integration) - COMPLETE
  • AZMARE Dice - COMPLETE
  • Collection Power Phase 2 - COMPLETE
  • Collection Power Phase 3 - COMPLETE
  • Collection Power Tournament Updates - Oct, 2020
  • Scaling Updates to Support New Player Acquisition Channels - Oct, 2020
  • Google Play / iTunes Store Mobile App Submission - Oct/Nov, 2020
  • In-Game Inventory Management (Titles, Avatars & Skins) - Oct, 2020
  • New Player Tutorial (Desktop Site, then Mobile) - Oct, 2020 (Desktop)
  • Land Pre-Sale - Nov, 2020 (announcement & details coming soon!)
  • Guild Wars / Boss Fights - TBD
  • Achievements - TBD


Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!

Website | Blog | Discord | Telegram | Shop

NOTE: All rewards from this post will go to @steem.dao (the Hive Development Fund account) to support the development of the Hive platform.

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I would love for there to be something done about the bot accounts and farming season end rewards. A LOT of the accounts that are in the top ranks for all of the leaderboards are bot accounts. I think that's unacceptable, given that they are already farming thousands of DEC a day, now we are paying them anywhere between 2-100 packs in addition? I think they are an important piece of keeping the game operational but when I see lots of the opponents I have faced that are clearly a bot account (low DEC rewards per win, anywhere between 1-10 DEC when I am making 40-50 DEC per win) and knocking real human players out of the running for the packs, that's pretty ridiculous.

The season end leader rankings should take into account the persons DEC recharge rate. I have been thinking about an acceptable range but I think over 60% DEC recharge rate should be counted. Anything below 60% DEC rate would be exempt from receiving packs in the end bonus. I felt I was doing good on the rankings but then I saw that I wasn't even in the top 100 for my leaderboard because of the litany of bots littered all over the place. I don't know how that will work when writing a script to discover that information but it's getting out of hand, how we are being pushed lower as far as our ability to make rewards playing the game.

I get the necessary changes and the need for them but when a game favors bots and those that pay to win so heavily, you can definitely expect lots of people to not be excited at all about the game if they've invested in it. You need to help out the real, human players.

Another gripe I have with the lower rankings like bronze and silver is them getting almost no rewards for grinding an hour or more to complete a daily quest to be rewarded with a single potion. Bronze and silver league should be limited to either DEC as a reward (minimum of 50 DEC, maximum of 1000 since the chest quantity is so low) or a reward card. No potions at all. You need to make money, I get it but you also need to make it attractive for new players to want to play the game. I've recruited some new players in my guild and 3 of them have quit since the update because the rewards are utter trash and all they fight are really hard bots, struggle for an hour only to get an alchemy potion as a reward? I don't blame them at all for quitting.

I think for the lower leagues we should reduce the number of victories necessary to fulfill a quest (also - but not only - as compensation for the low rewards)!

Another gripe I have with the lower rankings like bronze and silver is them getting almost no rewards for grinding an hour or more to complete a daily quest to be rewarded with a single potion.

Going by the numbers it is just not scalable to give low-level players high rewards. What they can get is a fun gaming experience and a much better sense of being rewarded. Grinding an hour to complete a daily quest just to get a potion is just brutal and only gives frustration without any sense of progression whatsoever.

I came up with a different reward system that could potentially solve this. If instead of loot chests including cards (especially the more valuable ones) they would give out specific tokens to collect which fill up different reward meters that when full unlock a bigger reward, it would give much more sense of progression and a lot more loot chests can be given out. I

Example:

Since there are multiple meters, there will always be some that are close to being completed which makes it hard for players to stop playing since they always are going to want to reach just one more.

This is an excellent suggestion! I love the idea, great point and intelligent solution!

Really cool idea! I think that we need to do something to help out the lower leagues. It’s bad that they get left out unless they fork over a bunch of money. Don’t get me wrong we need people to invest but I know that I wasn’t sure I wanted to invest more than the initial packs way back when I started. I actually quit for several months before I started it back up again. The way you have it here could really do well for player retention in the lower leagues.

These rewards would just apply to novice, bronze and silver right? Or more than that? As I’m in gold and diamond league, I would rather the chests personally, at that stage.

Amazing idea!

I like the idea of using the ECR rate to limit bonus pack rewards... you can do an average for the whole season (to penalize ridiculous number of games as you suggested). For instance, if you averaged an ECR rate below 70% for the whole season then you aren't qualified for the season packs. I have played since the beginning and don't know any human that averages below 70%.... of course people can dip at the end of the season but 70% ECR is running your account pretty hard. Good idea imo

Thanks for checking it out! I think I like your idea better as it can be more of a balanced approach to it all. I’m usually hovering between 80 and 100% since I don’t have a lot of time to play but that would average out to be well above 70%. I have had times where I will grind down to about 65% but that’s rare and I stop because the DEC isn’t that good and takes a long time to recharge.

I like that I’ve sparked some conversation around how we can make improvements for the long run!

@cmplxty you came up with the good suggestion, its an elegant and rather simple way to differentiate a bot from a human. If they think about it, while they want the bots playing to keep the matches readily available, the skill of winning in the season challenge should be relegated to humans (or at least based on a bot that plays as much as the humans would play). So kudos to you for the idea, I haven't seen it anywhere before, but I like the idea (and it should be easy to implement if they agree with the solution).

I often dip to 50% ECR and I always play manually.

I just picked out a number that I thought most would fit in. But it could be set lower of course. The idea I agree with is letting the humans earn the season pack ranking rewards while letting the bots play as much as they want. That differentiation is something that I think could be done easier than other ideas, so where the number is set is of course up for debate and analysis if they ever agreed to go this route.

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I couldn't have written it better and I agree with you 100%

Thanks! I hope it doesn't fall on deaf ears. I enjoy the game and am positioned well to do well (>325k Collection Power and >200k collection power on my 2 accounts) but it's getting real hard to justify the 60-90 minutes I spend a day to play the game. It is fun but I could absolutely use that time to do something else. I don't want to, since I believe in Splinterlands but the current path is not going to benefit real, human players.

I think it will be listened to. They read and absorb. They might not commit just yet to a solution, but I've witnessed them change many things over time. ps... sometimes slower than I would like, but bottom line is they do listen.

I’ll take them listening, even if it takes a bit. It’s good to be cautious of changes and considerate to minimize issues so I get the slower pace for it.

Exactly how I feel as a silver league player

... getting almost no rewards for grinding an hour or more to complete a daily quest to be rewarded with a single potion.

Well said!

I am not a fan of bots, but if they have cards they can use them. The thing is to not give them advantage over human players. That's why rating system was changed from old (winstreak, min +10 per win) to current one (no winstreak above league limist, min +3 per win). So right now playing a lot of battles does not give you an advantage. It's the winrate that matters. Last season Bronze, Silver and Gold leagues was not super competitive, so strong accounts actually was able to get a lot of points just by playing a lot, but it was because of really high winrate as a result of not too much strong opponents.

I think there will be more and more strong accounts in each league over time, people need a bit of time to adjust their strategy to the new system. Before there was no incentive (except tournaments) to have a strong non-champion account.

The season end leader rankings should take into account the persons DEC recharge rate. I have been thinking about an acceptable range but I think over 60% DEC recharge rate should be counted. Anything below 60% DEC rate would be exempt from receiving packs in the end bonus

I don't think it's a good idea. What if someone plays 2000 battles in first 10 days, then let ECR recharge and then plays 20 battles last day? Still is above 60%. So maybe limiting amount of battles per season would be better? Like 500 battles per season? Well, then people that care only about packs would play most of their battles the last day, which is the most important and you gain points faster (because you opponents have more points than you).

If there is enough strong players in each league, playing more does not give any advantage. So .. we just need more players :)

As always, we are very interested in hearing feedback from players - you! - on how the season went and if there is anything you would like to see changed or fixed going forward.

This was the first season where Splinterlands was no longer an enjoyable game for me honestly. The matchup system was completely broken as for roughly 7 out of 10 matches it was clear before the match started who was going to win because the opponent had cards way above or at rare times below my power level. (I have a lot of duplicate cards to lease out to new players). It was impossible to compete for the leaderboard since many whale players just stick in lower leagues for the pack reward or bots getting an advantage being able to play countless matches getting an advantage on win streaks. Moving up to a higher league actually made the games softer.

Selling new players that want to try the game is still a complete disaster since it requires too much mental effort for most. (Te sign-up system itself is excellent)

So much of the player psychology feels completely wrong to me at the moment.

  • Players that haven't got enough collection power feel punished instead of feeling rewarded for the collection power they do have.
  • They also need to make a choice that always feels like a losing one. Compete in leaderboard for packs and miss out on higher daily & season rewards. Choose for higher daily rewards and miss out on potential leaderboard rewards. So much more can be done with them without giving out too much.
  • Regular games have worthless rewards that feel real, while Splinterlands has real rewards that feel empty.
  • The game has very little sense of progression and doesn't capture new players ^^
  • ...

I went in on it in more detail 2 weeks ago (when I still enjoyed the game) with some possible solution, in a post on Rewards & Onboarding Psychology

That being said, I still like the core of the game and see the potential even though my belief it ever is going to get somewhere is at an all-time low at the moment.

I went in on it in more detail 2 weeks ago (when I still enjoyed the game) with some possible solution, in a post on Rewards & Onboarding Psychology

Very interesting article which I saw too late to upvote it.

100% agree with you, the very little sense of progression is seriously damaging a game that has still a lot of potential. With my low Card Power I feel like I'm going nowhere and I have very few reasons to play.

The new changes have damaged the game. I gave them a chance before quitting though. I am not fussed about reward distribution. I have however given up on playing because the system is heavily stacked with bots to the point that most of my matches are bot opponents. The system is now stacked against new players and according to the stats there has been a drop in account activity, new users won't stick a pay to win model thus you guys will be plagued with user retention issues going forward. Partnerships are nothing to get excited about when your product continues to decline in quality and entertainment value. Again and I can't state this strongly enough, I don't care about monetary reward. I'm like the vast swath of gamer's out there who game for fun. A game where the new user is penalised by a system that favours bots, and high dollar players isn't going to retain players or make on boarding and keeping them a reality imo. I know the following will disagree with me here, but you guys need to focus on new players and keeping them. Real players, not bots to boost up transaction numbers. Atm there is very little top keep a player playing unless he or she is to invested to back out, or it's a bot. The game becomes stale fast imo. However I do believe you guys will ride well off of the hype around the various partnerships and some will see a peak in value on their nft's because of this. I also think SL will fair well in a bull market, before it dies down like so many other blockchain games have. I do genuinely hope I'm wrong and you guys do well. I also hope the big players don't lose their shirts later. A lot of my friends still game on SL and I don't want to see them fail. So I hope your changes and partnerships make the unbelievable happen...which is a successful dapp based strictly on high dollar investors and bots with low new users and poor user retention which isn't fun to play anymore after three matches. Best of luck @splinterlands.

Well, I started two weeks ago and so far I am rather pleased. There are quite a bit of bots, yes, but it's better than waiting 5 minutes for a match, I guess.

Regarding pay2win. I played Magic (online and real life) and Heartstone. And both games are not less p2w than Splinterlands. TCGs are always a bit about gambling. Buy packs and hope for good cards. That's the collection aspect of this game type.

Magic and Heartstone are great games to be sure. I appreciate your comment, and I'm glad you enjoy playing SL. Both Magic and Heartstone have never really felt pay to win to me personally as much as SL does now. With Magic I have the option of building slowly over time without putting a dime in on cards. There are disadvantages to not paying, but with extreme patience and skill one does have the option to work hard, develop skill, and do well. I can't see SL doing anything near that model here. SL has become to hefty on the wallet for the average new gamer imo. All TCG's have a pay to play model, but with other games (Yu-Gi-Oh, MTG, etc) 50 bucks will get you a reasonable deck to try your hands at beating regional style/level players. Capping leagues and having those leagues plagued with bots with a pay to win model to get out of the leagues, rather than just skill alone or something to game for is daft imo. Something to game for being something more diverse than just a daily quest, and stronger players who should be leagues higher dominating the top slot. Your a game dev and a serious gamer, but the average gamer doesn't want to play that model. This isn't in my opinion, there's been a sharp drop in users and account activity since the changes for a reason. There will be hype, SL will do well I have no doubt.. for a short period. But the game has lost touch and feels like it's to risky to invest in, and to boring to play. Thanks for your comment and I'm glad you enjoy the game. Having fun is the most important part of interacting with this space.

In hearthstone you spend the money and its gone. In splinterlands you're staking your money; effectively yield farming by playing. Unless you factor in the relative sale price of your SL cards ($364) vs the sale price of your Hearthstone account ($0), you're not seeing the whole picture.

Thank you for your comment and I agree with your statement regarding value. You're right there. However I don't game for monetary value, I game for fun. Many others do as well. I've been buying and selling cryptocurrency since around 2010, and I can think of better places to put my money for investment purposes than a high risk game studios NFT's. A game that has been seeing a steady decline in players, and continues to bumble its changes. For instance in February I had the option of placing 10k into SL or the defi sector. I went in on chainlink rather than SL and dumped at the last peak. In short I made far more out of investing somewhere sensible. The game is meant to draw gamer's as well as investors. It's also meant to be fun. Running on pay to win as well as a gotcha game model (player continues to dump money in for limited in game reward, or is capped until they pay more) is not sensible nor is it fun. Thus the drop off in player numbers. The approach should be balanced which currently it's not. It also should appeal to new gamer's and focus on on boarding and KEEPING them. I have no doubt that SL will have a peak, do well off of hype around partnership announcements, and the new "Lands" they bring into the game. Our next bull cycle will bring euphoria all around, and SL will ride this like other games did in 2016/2017. People will buy in and believe the hype. I've seen this before with other games. In the end though user retention becomes an issue, and the game flops leaving those who approached it for investment purposes losing their shirts. Basically the game needs to offer fun and balance first. Not a bot ridden system, not a system tilted against the newbie who doesn't want to invest thousands. Atm the changes make the game feel and play like a gotcha shovel game. Again and I can't state this strongly enough, I game for fun. If I gamed for investment I'd have to reevaluate how I'm living. If I invest time into a game I want it to grow. I've sold loads of cards below market value (including two prince J's) because I just don't care about the money I'm spending if I gain enjoyment for time spent. Splinterlands is something I throw spare change around with in the same way one would an old .25 cent arcade machine. Atm it's no longer worth my quarter.

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We're not really adding players over the last 3 months, but I don't see a decline here. The devs have found advertising on the Brave browser to have a high success rate, and with accounts which tend to stick around a while.
They're just refining the new player tutorial before pulling the trigger on a larger campaign.

Glad to hear you made the right call on Chainlink.
I look at the Dark energy crystals I've stacked, ready for the land expansion, and although they've certainly appreciated since I bought them, they can only go a little higher.
In hindsight I should've bought LEOM at a discount, and then paid full price for DEC just before the land presale, but Splinterlands is how I take wins off the table.
I muck around speculating on other stuff, hoping for a moonshot; but of all the projects out there, I think this one has the best chance of scaling well, and going mainstream.

I do often wonder about the accuracy of the figures presented there and whether or not they are actually representing real players or bots honestly. I also find it curious that state of the dapp stats haven't been updated in a very long time. Strikes me as odd for a dapp holding a top ranking. ...Lacks transparency. Aside from that, I appreciate your belief that SL has a good shot at going mainstream. I used to feel the same. At the moment it's easy to see a euphoria around the game in the crypto community buoying its progress. However a TCG going mainstream that presents capped leagues where less skilled players can't develop or move up the ranking on skill as well as investment is beyond problematic. Add the bots and the whole thing begins to become unrealistic as a mainstream product long term. Granted they are on top of issues like scaling, promotion, and partnerships, but the game itself has basically taken away any incentive for a new player to get in and build.. or further more enjoy the process of building. Now there will be suckers who buy in, newbie players who feel cheated, large transaction volume due to bots, and a whole bunch of hype. Every market up cycle has its hype and flavours of the month, and defi and gaming may be the same as ICO's were last time around. Who knows? But atm Splinterlands focus on balancing rewards and failing, along side appeasing higher ranked players and keeping bots in the ecosystem has failed. The league caps were a huge mistake as lower players should be able to out skill stronger opponents. If a weaker player beats a much larger opponent on skill and deck arrangement then it just means they are better at the game. Creating safe spaces for less skilled but heavier invested players just goes to show where the priorities are placed. If leagues are to be capped there must be a stronger incentive for the new player to game past daily quests and tournaments. But this isn't the first time devs in the gaming world have been outta touch or dismissive of what makes a game appealing. I know a lot of devs and a dismissive posture rooted in a type of arrogance regarding what works usually is their overall down fall. Selective listening to their base players rather than listening to them as much as high dollar players is a slippery slope. Long term it won't be the first time a game fails to gain a permanent foot hold either. There will be money to be made from it the same as there's money to be made out of any hyped product that fails to deliver on it's core purpose. There is a sucker born every minute after all. With gaming the core purpose should be fun and a sense of achievement for conquering challenges. SL now offers none of that imo. All other TCG's at least offer sustainable models for being entertained and limited to no ceiling to climb and challenge others. Investment matters of course, but skill comes out as a more dominant factor in the end. I'm not disputing there's money to be made. I rode the hype around Pivx at the last cycle and dumped at near peak at 9 usd after buying at 0.15 usd. I did the same with Spells of Genesis as a game. I dumped all my cards at peak and left... Though I still occasionally play with a limited deck when I'm bored on a train. It's still sorta fun. Imo SL will ride a big wave of hype for being what it is and jumping off to a running start as it arrived with an inbuilt community, good hype around partnerships, and offering a reasonably built inbuilt market place. They also have scaling more or less sorted. But I won't be surprised when it becomes a dump and jump product which is what it's shaping up to be. It's no longer a fun game, it has effectively taken away incentive's for the new gamer on the platform, it's bot ridden. The game can be on top of issues that have been problematic in block chain gaming, but if the product sucks and can't hold new users I think it will be a fad. I hope I'm wrong here btw. I mean that. I hope the game succeeds in doing what no other dapp has which is going and staying mainstream based strictly on bot traffic, high dollar investors, and newbies who show up and can't be retained. But in the mean time I can think of more promising places to invest in than SL. I don't bet on moonshots as it allows bias and emotion to creep in which skews my perception. I'd rather be realistic. Being realistic means having no bias, which I could easily develop for SL as it's in the Hive space which is a place I'm fond of. I like the people, I like their content, I like reading their interactions in comments. We have some great folks here. But if a product has grown to suck then it sucks. If SL becomes a huge mainstream gaming sensation in its current form then great and I'm happy for anyone who benefits. I have a very good friend who is heavy heavy into SL recently state he wouldn't recommend investing in the game to a family member which was telling. He's still pro game, but there's powerful doubts. I'll name no names but suffice to say I have a deep and abiding respect for a lot of other top tier players. I hope they know when to jump ship here. It is a product starting to look like that will be required. But despite the super optimism the devs are plugging and what's being rolled out.. overall I don't see it living past fad grade life expectancy.

Can we allow players to burn the potions for some Dec value. Like say 10 Dec per potion.
Due to the collection power update, low league players already have a challenge because the reward chests are limited. In that if I play my daily quest to open 90% of potions then it's highly discouraging.

agree, I just posted something to get rid of my potions. I have 1000ish of each in my accounts. would be nice to be able to burn them for dec somehow

Sometimes potions are very frustrating. I mean you play for an hour for the daily quest and you get like 7 potions and 23 Dec. Becomes very depressing.

Yaba said several times that potions are not supposed to be burnable / tradeable.

Some players just do "private deals" when one player open packs belonging to another player, using potions that he wants to get rid of. But yeah, this requires a bit of trust ;-)

I opened a pack of Dice for someone in the discord channel. I would be happy to do that for anyone. I did it for free and will continue to do it for free.

I know this is new and this is going to be hard but it does not seem fair somehow that players with 2million score hang back in gold to take the prizes. It seems kind of counterproductive somehow

@felander, I believe the way the game has been designed is that each league has its own Summoner Caps (and thus monster Caps based on the summoner Caps). So whether someone has 2 million collection score or 200k collection score, the higher level doesn't give anyone an advantage. So if you have your cards up to the league's summoner and monster cap limits, then you will have the exact same opportunity as the accounts that also have theirs too. The fact that they have 2 million more in collection power is effectively wasted by them, not a punishment to you. In other words, if you are efficient, you can be better than those decks by being more efficient in your purchases and having the proper key cards as opposed to just owning everything in gold which gives no advantage in the season rankings.

The fact that they have 2 million more in collection power is effectively wasted by them, not a punishment to you.

They have a much 'deeper' team, a huge variety of different monsters and summoners which are strong even at comparable low levels.

It won't console the frustrated newbie to contemplate if his superior opponent wasted his collection power or not. :)

I agree with this point 100%

It won't console the frustrated newbie to contemplate if his superior opponent wasted his collection power or not. :)

I like the change, but they need to now focus on making it fun for the newbie. Rewarding low level bots wasn't right, but keeping humans happy and engaged is something they should strive for.

Very true, this was going to be my retort. I’ve got decent cards but someone that’s got access to all of their cards mac level for the league is going to have a better shot at beating me. Not guaranteed by any means but likely to beat me if I make one mistake.

Full Gold level deck (literally 100% of regular cards) has Collection Power around 1.3M DEC, so what does it mean that someone has collection power 2M or 10M in gold league if max is 1.3M? It is Gold Foil cards that boost collection power because of 50x higher burn value. But Gold Foil cards are not better in battles. And at the end of the day, it's summoners level that matters, not collection power, which is only a minimum requirement.

Yeah my alt account is a gold foil account and it’s got 230k collection power I think because of the higher rate. The summoners aren’t that good but it does well here and there. Definitely helps to have great summoners, that’s my biggest regret from when beta still was around.

You are right! I know quite some players with smaller collections who don't enjoy playing anymore because nowadays even in the lower leagues they keep losing against way superior teams.

I like the idea of "League Leaderboards", but why not just force players to ascend into a higher league if their "Collection Power" is high enough AND the qualifying rating is reached, as well?

but why not just force players to ascend into a higher league if their "Collection Power" is high enough AND the qualifying rating is reached, as well?

It would make sense if Gold Foil cards wouldn't boost Collection Power so much.
That's Silver level account:
image.png
image.png

It is summoners levels that matters, Collection Power is only a minimum requirement.It summoners levels that matters, Collection Power is only a minimum requirement.

It would make sense if Gold Foil cards wouldn't boost Collection Power so much.

Just calculate the collection power of gold cards as if they were regular ...
(At least when it's about in which league one is playing.)

Actually, I was not a fan of a way that Collection Power is calculated! I even made a post about it and this was Yaba response: https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@yabapmatt/re-jacekw-qell5k

I think if someone has all gold level cards (100% of them) then idea to force him to move to diamond is ridiculous, because he will be killed by maxed out decks over and over again.

But if some maxed account (max level cards, high collection power) decided to drop to Bronze just to have fun, that's something different. Maybe he should be forced to play in Diamond/Champion, maybe not. But again, it is summoners levels that matters, if someone want to win Bronze league, he should be the best bronze league player and have deck competitive enough to be able to get this 1st position. Instead, right now there is a lot of complaining like:

  • he should not play here,
  • he is too strong
  • ban all good players
  • let me win
  • he should advance (despite having level of cards the same as the league he is playing)
    But that's not the way to win ;-)

Actually, I was not a fan of a way that Collection Power is calculated! I even made a post about it and this was Yaba response: https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@yabapmatt/re-jacekw-qell5k

You both have some good reasons for your positions.
You suggested similar things like I did in my comment above (not to differentiate between gold and non-gold etc.).

However, I (as an example) don't care so much if I am on top in Diamond League or 'anywhere' in Champions League (if players with some skills and a good deck invest enough time they can get their piece of the cake anyhow and anyway). If you reach a certain level you can have at least some fun or try to reach even more.

What really worries me is the playing experience of players with more or less mediocre decks and non-expert skills. I understand that not everybody can (and should) earn a lot, but I think at least they should have some fun (I think that if the player base of Splinterlands should grow that will only happen with the big majority of these players who aren't fighting for top Champions League spots)!
When as a test I used the deck of a friend to see how it feels to make a simple quest for him, I have to admit it was really frustrating: very strong opponents (in comparison with his deck), "grinding an hour or more" (as @cmplxty wrote) and then winning a few potions ...
Maybe in lower leagues one could reduce at least the necessary number of games to fulfill a quest (as compensation for the low rewards)?
But that's just one idea, and we need to do more to increase playing experience of non-professional players.

Yeah the experience of the folks in the lower leagues shouldn’t necessarily match those in the leagues of diamond and champion. We want it to definitely be fun to play and they should enjoy the game instead of loathe the lame reward they will receive.

I see both worlds with my accounts. My main account oh this username has decent collection power to hold my own in gold and diamond leagues. My alt account, the gold foil account, it’s not as strong but it’s often very challenging to do a daily quest if it’s not a dragon or a life quest. Sometimes I just skip it entirely and gain a little DEC to compensate for the loss of chests and wait for the following day to try.

I just hope that the Splinterlands team will take all of our thoughts here into consideration. There’s a heck of a lot of great merit to go around and definitely some things to chew on for adjustments.

I appreciate everyone’s dialogue here, I don’t feel as frustrated now that folks are agreeing and modifying my proposals and highlighting others they came up with. All around great stuff!

It is summoners levels that matters

Exactly, this might be the solution to a lot of the problems the current rankings and collection Power system brings about. It is simply not fun to lose or win against other players just because you have better or worse cards and the outcome of the match is known before it even started. I personally don't mind losing against players who are at a similar summoner level but just have more cards available to choose from.

I'm not sure how rankings and a matching system can be implemented based on summoner levels. It is an interesting concept and I'm sure it can be done one way or another.

So... one more month to get to 850,000 DEC :D

Good job on the separating the leagues and having rewards for all levels. Now I hope we add specific tourneys to those new league levels too. It would be great to see bronze playing bronze in tourneys too. Not just the card level caps, but actual bronze level accounts playing other bronze level accounts. I think that will bring excitement as these league levels have also accomplished!

But good job and a very good step in the right direction!

and we have another significantly larger partner that we hope to announce in mid-October
In order to support a potential increase in new players, we have been working on back-end scalability improvements, changes to the new player sign-up process (to be announced shortly), and completing the first version of our new player tutorial system which we expect to be released before the next player acquisition partner goes live.

That sounds like some good news!

Going forward there will be a 1000 DEC fee that will be charged when transferring DEC tokens from the game to the wrapped version of the token on the Ethereum blockchain. This fee is necessary to cover the gas costs required to transfer the tokens on the Ethereum network.

I missed the memo on this one. Wrapped DEC. Is there a pair on uniswap?
It's important to start strong with a heap of liquidity to attract volume. Will the game be providing any?

People with high Power in Little League - LOL changes!

:reply:
I know I have spoken against implementation of Collection Power, and explained about big bad negative side effects, that I am unhappily seeing nowadays it literally came true. No more new words for game status, but facing the facts.

:facts:
This Collection Power system is not for human players, because the most important fact is that playing game now and competing in a league is producing only frustration which is payed for with starting 10 USD. Starting from my beginnings at November '19, every next system change was making game worse for humans. It is now only for bots that this environment is working very well in every aspect. The few named mavericks of the game being in Champion 1 are probably the only ones being happy now, but each of them invested up to 10000 USD (I think this need better assessment).

:thought:
Why not admit saying "I am not capable to solve these negative issues around bots"? (Every change from pre-Collection-Power era is pointing to that.) Also "Bots have always been exploiting the game system and taking plenty of good rewards". Allow me to call You, Splinterlands Company, to dismantle the Leagues and everything else and make new environment good for bots and also good for humans. As a starter I am seeing 1) forming Leagues for bots where bots must be placed (environment good for bots and accomplishing their goals) and 2) forming other Leagues for humans where humans have a choice to pick either of the Leagues, some might want to compete with bots (good for humans to have fun, make investment, compete, etc everything that is making them feel humans).

For the sake of love of the game!

So I'm curios to know if I actually do own/hold complete power over my collection, since i saw some interesting statements regarding the fact that you never asked permission to move my cards etc to another chain.
You swapped did you not? Did you ask my permission to remove funds from my wallet, which is what moving my dec and cards is? or did you just do it?
If you just moved them without permission then I guess I dont actually own them and you can take them away anytime you like. Regardless of if this is super unlikely I don't like that it's a possibility.

The question is, can you, have you, and do you move things from peoples wallets without permission? the answer is yes. and if you say otherwise you're blatantly lying.

"... we have another significantly larger partner that we hope to announce in mid-October."

Please tell me you guys are talking to Naspers Ventures or Prosus Ventures. If Gods Unchained can get 15 mil, this deserves way more.