background image source - pexels edited with canva
Last week, I shared my thoughts on the upcoming airdrop card, Rage, for the social media challenge. Today, I want to share some good news for new players. These changes are amazing and I'm super bullish for Splinterlands for this year as I feel we are finally making the right changes to opening up to more and more players and to really go big. There's no way Splinterlands is a worse game than Axie Infinity come on. I'm saying worse by comparing the market value of the governance token AXS vs SPS.
Ranked System Rework
First phase of the ranked system rework will be deployed on February 29th.
Will no longer be able to choose not to advance to higher leagues
Will remove card level caps in ranked battles (not tournaments/brawls)
Will remove leaderboards except Champion
Will give flat +/- 20 rating points for win/loss (could be more or less, but let's start w/ this for now) - if going w/ 20, should make all resets be multiples of 20
Will remove league-specific SPS reward pools and make them one big reward pool for modern and wild ranked battle wins
Will change matchmaking so that it's not limited by league, it should just try to match to the closest rating possible
source - Taken from Splinterlands townhall summary
I feel these changes are going to be super beneficial to new players. I think for new players bronze has been a struggle. With levels caps being removed in the upcoming update, new players will just be able to rent higher level cards and crush their opponents. I'm unsure how the big reward pool will work but I think it will also increase the earnings for lower ratings as well so it should be a good change.
Overall, I think the above changes also makes the system more simple. I feel it's too much having to explain new players that oh they can't play under leveled cards or shouldn't advance because they get crushed by higher level cards. This new change will just let them play comfortable where they belong because eventually they will reach a rating where they win 50% of the time and if they want to start climbing more new players can just upgrade or rent higher level cards. I'm also loving the matching by closest rating. I've seen cases where rating 300-500 would match again 700-1000+. It even happens in diamond / champ. I've had a case where I was like 3000-3300 rating but playing someone with 3700-4200.
In addition to that, removing the leaderboards except champion will be super helpful to new players. The leaderboard rewards in each league were basically gatekeeping players from ranking up. The bronze leaderboard players play almost every optimal lineup so how are new players able to reach silver and go up. It was probably super stressful and they would pretty much have to pray to not fight a leaderboard player.
Source - images taken from splintercards
It is super cheap to own cards now. A max bronze deck for chaos legion is only 115 bucks and for silver it's at 370. I think these were triple the amount when I first started! I feel like this is truly the best time for new players to get in and take some ownership for the game. With the burning event happening soon, this will most likely increase the price of CL cards. It's the best time to take advantage of buying cheap cards now!
Thank you for reading and supporting me. What do you think about this news for new players? I feel like I can actually have an easier time inviting and explaining to new players about Splinterlands now after the changes. They can also get in with a solid deck and start playing and enjoying without getting bullied by leaderboard players / stressful low level bronze optimal plays with not much variety.
Referral Link
If you are interested in trying Splinterlands please use this link here. If you did use my referral link, let me know in the comment section, I will do my best to help whether that be delegating you cards, sending you cards and teaching you how to play. Once again, thank you so much.
