One of the biggest issues for any game that gives out rewards with real value is ensuring that the economy is set up in such a way that those rewards are limited by some external factor that cannot be manipulated. If they are not, then players will inevitably "farm" the rewards (whether via automated "bots", or with real users) and the entire system will be unsustainable.
One area in which the Splinterlands game is currently failing in this regard is with the Loot Chest rewards given out via daily quests and season rewards. These are currently limited only by account, which is an easily manipulable factor. As a result, we see many large, and continually growing, groups of accounts set up specifically to farm these rewards.
If left unchecked, issues like this will undermine the Splinterlands economy, so we feel that it is in the best interest of all players and stakeholders to address it as soon as possible.
Since this is a significant change that will affect most players, we wanted to give some additional notice about what we're working on and planning and allow ample time for feedback. Please keep in mind that this is still early in the design and development process, so everything is subject to change before release. We will provide another update closer to when the changes are scheduled to be released with the full details.
Currently, the amount of Loot Chest rewards are determined by a player's league (ex. Silver II), and a player's league is determined by their ranked season rating. The issue is that it's relatively easy to get to higher leagues with nothing more than a small set of level 1 cards - or even just the "starter" cards - which should not be the case. To address this, we plan to introduce a new requirement to get into each league called the Collection Score.
The Collection Score will be a measure of the size and level of each account's collection of cards. Then, in order to move to the next league, players will not only need to get the required number of rating points, but they will also need to have a high enough collection score.
The collection score is planned to be calculated by simply taking the sum of the DEC burn rate of all of the cards that the player owns that are not delegated out or listed for sale on the market and cards delegated to the player.
The plan is that the Collection Score will only limit a player's league, not their rating. For example, a player might have a rating of 1400 - which would normally place them in the Silver II League - but if they only have a collection score high enough for Silver III then that is the league they will be in.
Many of the details around this are still TBD, and everything here is still subject to change, but as we mentioned above we wanted to give everyone a heads-up about what we're working on and we will provide another update with much more information when it is closer to being released.
The collection score change will also enable us to add another feature that has been heavily requested by some players for a while now - separate leaderboards for each league.
This means that players at all levels of play can compete each ranked season to be the best in their league and earn some extra season rewards similar to the Untamed booster packs given out to players who top the overall leaderboard each season in the game currently.
We plan to release the collection score change described above first, since that's an important issue that needs to be addressed asap, but then our next focus will be on getting the league leaderboards added in as quickly as possible thereafter.
There are still a LOT of details around how exactly the league leaderboards will work which we are in the process of figuring out, but just as with the collection score change, you can expect a more detailed update before it's ready to be released.
As always, we welcome constructive feedback about these changes (or anything else) from our players. In fact, all of the changes described in this post were a direct result of player feedback themselves.
The Splinterlands team recognizes that the game would not be anywhere close to where it is today without our amazing players, and we listen closely to all feedback and take it very seriously.
We are also planning to do an AMA with 
P.S. We know that it's almost time for the next Legendary Summoner airdrop and that some Reward Edition cards are nearly sold out, so stay tuned for updates on those in the near future!
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