It's not often the end of season time on Splinterlands coincides with a time of day that allows me to play during the last few hours without changing my schedule for that.
Sometimes I don't need to, as I already reach the Champoins League with enough time to spare.
But not this season. This morning I was about half-way Diamond 1, aiming to reach CL3 by the EOS. My thoughts were it will be doable, relatively easy even.
But things were dragging, time was passing, and I was still in Diamond 1.
The day turned out to be a veritable roller coaster. I was 3 times within 1 win of reaching CL3, last time with 10 minutes to the EOS.
But no, it wasn't my day. Every time I was within reach of CL3, a pull back followed that made CL3 like Fata Morgana. Apparetly within reach but getting further away the closer I got.
It remained a mirage till the very last minute, but I couldn't make it over "the edge". Diamond 1 was my peak this time.
At least I received a gold foil card on the DQ for my efforts, not epic or legendary, not even rare, although Pelacor Conjurer is very useful for a 2 mana common card.
Recently a certain free+premium service for Splinterlands gained some traction. Even before I knew about it, I felt some players were using it. Does this offer an advantage to players using it (in particular the paid version)? I believe it can, but not always. It's a matter of improving winning chances, but can work against the player using it.
I don't use this service, not even the free one. But from my experience, it's not often that I chose a lineup especially to conteract a probable lineup of the opponent (when same summoner is used in all battles for example), and I end up losing because the opponent chose to switch his team right on that game.
Following the increasing popularity of this service, and probably other scripts that are used with similar intention to gain advantage over the opponent while the countdown runs, Splinterlands team came up with the solution to hide the username of the opponent until both teams are submitted, after which analysis on the opponent is not useful for the current battle, no matter how good (or bad) it is.
It's not the first time Splinterlands team reacts to neutralize a potential advantage one could gain during the battle. Probably not the last one either. I remember something similar happened some time ago with a paid service (much more expensive than this one) which was rendered useless when something was changed to conteract it.