The Splinterlands Ranked Update and What it Means

Greetings everyone, it's been a while since there was anything serious stirring up the "gameplay" of Splinterlands for quite some time (for the better anyway). And this update, albeit having potentially agregious reprecussions (explained later), is a step in the right direction for Splinterlands to be considered a competitive card game in any degree whatsoever.

This update essentially means there will be no divisions for earning and everyone will be motivated to climb to champion. The reward pool will also be split amongst all users in each ladder and bracket. The good parts of this are that no card levels are required, but there are a few flaws (including bots becoming an issue in Wild effecting the overall "competitive energy" of the game and given exponentially greater extraction potential) with this system despite there being numerous pros. Which brings us to the next section...

Why this is a good step, with repercussions to ponder

What I would call the most glaring issue with this update is that it ENABLES ALL BOTS IN WILD TO FARM CHAMPION LEVEL REWARDS VIA WIN TRADING AGAINST EACH OTHER. As this has been going on in the background behind the scenes while the small percentage of humans are playing in modern at this point (for the most part), these bots have been reaping rewards for the game. And now they can extract faster and stack (what will later be saleable cards mind you) at an exponentially greater rate win trading against each other. Additionally, any player who is introduced to the "competitive" modern mode may in fact try wild to compare it. When these players realize half the reward pool is going to bots "just cuz it's how it is" they may not feel nearly as motivated to invest in this economy where massive bot farms work in the foreground devaluing all human player time (it's a sad truth). Why buy cards as card player if I know that my cards have a shelf life of being played against real people? (For context)

What does SPL need to be an eSport?

It's pretty simple, you need your competitive modes to create a sense of valuing human play time and interaction. Currently there are steps being done to make the game more competitive that are overall healthy for the game, but botting needs to be addressed otherwise patching the ship might actually create more leaks in this case. I know a massive portion of the playerbase are obsessed with passive income, and your ranked GAMEPLAY is not where that should be obtained. I hate to say it, it's in fact rather greedy at this point to act like it's "necessary" to profit on cards at the detriment of the games health and ability to draw in real players. There is no excuse for botting being used as a pseudo investment vehicle when land, rentals, and SPS delegation exist to be used with your cards to yield PASSIVELY. There are plenty of ways to gain passive income from your cards and SPS without gutting the goose that lays the golden eggs, which is what botting in SPL has effectively done. It's tarnished it's reputation to the point where even updates like this aren't enough and at the end of the day only one thing will assist enough optically.... a botless ladder. If bots continue to be allowed to run rampant it will continue to be hard to onboard players into this game regardless of what else is implemented, even more so if you expect them to spend money in a TRADING CARD GAME (which is a genre notorious for players wanting "vs players" interactions). This update will create a more competitive environment in modern, but will cause a massive torrential leak in the economy due to the dynamics of wild. It's a mixed blessing at best, but is in the correct spirit for providing a nice competitive environment.

There are also solutions of having an autoplay league or having botters design the official practice bot for the game via an open source public bot library or previously mentioned things in previous posts (I will put them together in a collection to not have to link them like this anymore). But at the end of the day if you want humans to maintain interest in playing this game to earn you can't let bots leech off of the economy eternally, similar issues tanked the WoW gold economy and other various in game economies in web2 that had real world value over the years. Don't let that happen to Splinterlands when it's on the cusp of something great.

Giveaway and Talking Tidbits

The giveaway this week is a delegation of ANY card from my collection for a whole season and to potentially win this prize all you have to do is comment, that's it. Voting is as always optional but always appreciated.

I have had a mixed position on Splinterlands as a competitive card player for numerous months, and you can always pop by my stream to check it out if you're curious. The main issue with the game is the rampant use of bots as a third party exploit, and either a) getting rid of them or b) allowing "botted autoplay" to be a main part of the game. Both have their pros and cons, regrettably including autoplay in any facet detracts from having the game appear competitive. It's just that simple, the gameplay loop is actually fine (even though the lvl structure is p2w by nature but I suppose that is what it is in this game. It is in the "Diablo Immortal" realm of game power systems). That's all a topic for another time and I'm starting to ramble, anywho hope you folks have been having a wonderful week and thanks for all the continued support. You all rock. #play2earn #Splinterlands