The Splinterlands team has a number of relatively small changes to league ratings and ranked battles that are currently scheduled to be released during the next maintenance window on Tuesday, February 28th, 2023.
The current mana cap logic is a bit complicated, with things like the mana cap only incrementing by 2 between 40 and 60, so we are planning to simplify it by implementing a max mana cap for each league as shown below. The minimum mana cap will still be 12, and each value from 12 to the league maximum will have an equal probability of occurring.
Please note that all tournament and guild brawl battles will use the same mana cap settings as Gold/Diamond/Champ leagues.
The main result of these changes is that the max mana cap will be increased for Novice and Bronze leagues from 30 to 40, decreased for Silver league from 60 to 50, and high mana cap battles will be a bit more common in Gold league and up, as well as in tournament and guild brawl battles.
Additionally, the probability of an unlimited / 99 mana cap battle is being reduced from 4% to 2%, which will make it roughly as likely to occur as any other individual mana cap value.
We will also be making changes to the rating resets so that players don't drop down as far in rating at the end of each season (particularly in the higher leagues) and we will be changing the min and max rating thresholds for Champion league so that each tier is 300 rating points above the previous tier rather than 500 as it is currently. The new rating and reset values for each league and tier are shown in the table below:
| League | Min Rating | Max Rating | Old Reset | New Reset |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Novice | 0 | 100 | 0 | No Reset |
| Bronze III | 100 | 399 | 0 | 100 |
| Bronze II | 400 | 699 | 100 | 300 |
| Bronze I | 700 | 999 | 300 | 400 |
| Silver III | 1000 | 1299 | 500 | 550 |
| Silver II | 1300 | 1599 | 700 | 750 |
| Silver I | 1600 | 1899 | 900 | 1000 |
| Gold III | 1900 | 2199 | 1200 | 1300 |
| Gold II | 2200 | 2499 | 1400 | 1600 |
| Gold I | 2500 | 2799 | 1600 | 1900 |
| Diamond III | 2800 | 3099 | 1900 | 2200 |
| Diamond II | 3100 | 3399 | 2200 | 2500 |
| Diamond I | 3400 | 3699 | 2500 | 2800 |
| Champion III | 3700 | 3999 | 2800 | 3100 |
| Champion II | 4000 | 4299 | 3100 | 3400 |
| Champion I | 4300 | No Cap | 3400 | 3700 |
Additionally, players who have not played any ranked battles in a particular format in the current season will not drop down in rating at all at the end of the season. This is so that players who take a break from the game will remain at the same rating and league in which they left off rather than falling all the way back down to Bronze and having to slog their way back up when they come back.
Please note that these changes are not planned to go live until after the end of the current ranked play season, so the end of season changes will first take effect at the end of the next season (the one ending mid-March).
Finally, we will be making the following changes to Novice league which will help get ready for a larger effort around improving the new player experience in Splinterlands that we plan to work on in the coming months.
The rating reset for Bronze III league will be changed to 100 from 0 meaning that players in Bronze league will no longer drop back down to Novice league at the end of the season, and once hitting Bronze league, players will not be able to fall below 100 rating from losses either. This means that once a player gets to Bronze league, they will never fall back down to Novice, and therefore Novice league players (eg. new players) will no longer be facing Bronze league bots.
In order to ensure that new players can always find an opponent, Splinterlands will be running special bots in Novice league that will not earn rewards or gain rating, and will be programmed to play relatively poorly against new players. Additionally, wins in Novice league will always award a fixed 10 rating points, so new players will always need to win 10 battles in Novice before moving up to Bronze.
These changes aim to make Novice league really more like an extended part of the tutorial in order to give new players more time to get familiar with the game in a controlled environment before being sent out into the fray of Bronze league.
As part of that, we will also be adding new messaging that will be shown when a player moves into Bronze league from Novice that will attempt to explain that in order to be competitive in the game it will be necessary to buy or rent cards, and provide links to various guides and third-party tools and services that are available to help them. Please note that this messaging will be a work-in-progress and we plan to get feedback and make regular updates over time to better help new players get acquainted with the game.
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