It's called extreme pay2win

I do agree with this. If I was a new player who just stumbled upon Splinterlands today, I most likely would end up quitting after a day or two of playing. Thankfully we joined Splinterlands on its early stages and so we were able to get and level up a decent amount of cards that now enables us to get a decent profit which can be used to buy and level up more cards. I for one though chose to cash out half of my DEC earnings while the half sometimes goes to buying more cards. But yeah I do agree that the game at the moment is on the lines of extreme pay2win.

I have been battling in the Gold League myself for many seasons now and have had similar win-streaks never really feeling it was because I played good but mostly due to opponents who are just way lower in card collection and levels. Splinterlands right now doesn't feel like a card game anymore and more like a boring reward grind where you earn 3 points on the leaderboard for a win and drop 30 points on a loss.

This is my first time choosing to stay on a lower league but I am now starting to get the frustrations of other players like you. At the moment I am currently on my 85th long winning streak and almost 95% of those matches are against low level players giving me only 3-4 Battle Points!!! Like I won ALL my matches for the last 3 days and I have only advanced 90 Battle Points! LOL

The Devs really need to start putting their focus on making the game more fun and skill-based instead of doing everything they can just to make sure the economy doesn't collapse early.

Agree. I do think they are trying their best though but the updates just takes months or even a year. They just released a new thing though called Splinterland Shards but more on governance on the game rather than the game itself. I for one am a little disappointed since I thought it would be finally about LAND and/or Boss Battles or something new to the game.