Ruleset shenanigans

legendarycanary(51)

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2021-06-07 12:22

Greetings from The Legendary Canary!

1) Expanding rulesets

It only really occurred to me recently that Splinterlands has quite a few rulesets (duh). 33 of them, according to https://splinterlands.fandom.com/wiki/Category:Rule_Sets

And when combined with the many abilities featured on different cards, the number of potential combinations and strategies seems quite broad.

Except because I've been playing fairly consistently since the middle of Beta, it doesn't feel like its too much at all. The expansions in rulesets over time has felt gradual and 'just right' for the long-time player to keep us interested.

I've really enjoyed some of the shenanigans that have been made possible as a result of the rulesets. The featured image in this post of the 55-health Bila the Radiant was from a game on an alt account featuring the Equalizer and Fog of War ruleset. I deployed Bila toward the back. Her life leech combined with the tank healing of my opponent led to slow grind of attrition that I eventually won. I'm curious to know what is the highest health a monster has had in any battle! I'm sure there are some insane numbers out there. Certain ruleset combos lead to some pretty crazy outcomes if opponents play their cards just right.

Personally I like almost all of the rulesets except for the odd and even rules which to me seem rather disconnected from any existing game mechanic. While the other rules tweak existing abilities or mechanics, the odd/even rules seem like the odd ones out ... pun intended.

2) Reflecting on the old days

The current range of options and possibilities certainly stands in contrast with the Beta days pre-rulesets, which for me grew quite stale after a few months of playing. In fact, I remember stopping for several weeks because it was just too boring.

But even that state of affairs was already a vast improvement on the situation back during the Alpha, where mirror matchups were all too common. And from memory, mana caps higher than 44(? - can't quite remember the exact number) were introduced with Untamed. Folks who complain about low mana-cap matches nowadays would not have appreciated being around in Alpha/Beta!

So while generally speaking, it may be an age-old habit of thinking that the good old days were better, at least in the case of Splinterlands, things are definitely much better now.

3) Lending a helping hand to folks feeling a bit overwhelmed

Still, having a deeper game without much of the hand-holding or sense of accelerated progression that people take for granted in games nowadays means that the new player experience for Splinterlands can be rough going, to say the least.

Nevermind the very fact that it is on a blockchain and the steep learning curve even to get over that hurdle. Nevermind that its built on Hive, which is a niche-within-a-niche blockchain community. But then after purchasing the spellbook, to then face with the struggle to climb out of Novice against constantly fleeing opponents and bugged bots. Then immediately getting stomped by bots and full-decks as soon as you reach Bronze. The paltry DEC earnings per battle, daily chests & season rewards stuffed with far too many potions.... it's a bit much to expect most people to have to put up with.

But for the handful of people who can power on past all that, then there's the complexity of the game itself - of which many of its specific quirks and technicalities did not come from a pre-existing grand vision, but rather were developed and implemented in an evolutionary fashion over time. So regarding rulesets, for example, while there may have been a vision to have something resembling a ruleset system, a lot of the specific details were added piecemeal over time as feedback was gathered, often with unintended and serious consequences.

E.g., the poison ruleset currently disadvantages the player at the bottom of the screen since poison effects are applied to that player first, which triggers various buffs and debuffs while the poison is being applied, generally to the benefit of the player at the top of the screen (e.g., monsters killed by poison at the bottom will benefit any scavenger monsters in the top team, before the top team has its poison debuff applied)

So if the design & documentation of the game seems haphazard at times ... that is because in a sense, it was. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. It just might come as a shock to newer players who are expecting a game that presents itself as neat and tidy. Even though with Untamed we are out of 'Alpha/Beta', Splinterlands is still unpolished and not ready for a general audience, in my opinion - especially with the limited functionality of the mobile app.

But with Chaos Legion on the horizon alongside the land expansion, fuller Guild brawl implementation and the Splinterlands DAO, we may be tantalizingly close to that much hoped-for exponential increase in adoption. Just get the card market & tournaments implemented on mobile!

And with that has been said, as I've lurked in the official discord over time, I've come to appreciate how instead of the developers investing a heap of their time implementing a lot of the handholding for newer players, it is members of the community who step up. It is certainly aligned with the ethos of decentralisation and it is encouraging to see. From the delegations, giveaways & community-led wiki projects and 3rd party sites for tools and analysis, it is a privilege to witness and to be along for the ride.

Today's Featured Card

Would you be interested in a ...

Card ID: G2-127-HOP909VN00
Escrow: $1.40
Daily Fee: $0.10
Min/Max Duration: 1/180 Days

I first maxed out the regular foil version of this card back in the day because I focused on playing fire splinter only. And at that time, fire splinter was not very good and needed all the help it could get. Lord of Fire seemed pretty underwhelming to me and I would just throw it into my teams as an afterthought to make up the numbers to try and earn that extra 10% DEC bonus for being a promo card.... until I noticed that Lord of Fire was being thrown in as an 'afterthought' in something like 70% of my matches back in the day, with its silence and affliction abilities often buying just enough time for the attack power of the fire splinter to punch its way through a team. At that moment I realised that this card is pretty good after all!

I'm pleased to offer a level 3 GF Lord of Fire for that sweet 10% GF + 10% Promo bonus; providing that extra bit of low-mana buff/debuff optionality for a fire splinter that otherwise generally lacks them.