5 Simple Things To Improve The Game
#1 The biggest and simplest improvement that the Splinterlands game could make is to have saved decks that you could choose fast for any battle you encounter.
To make it faster, you would be able to quickly load them and even name them after different strategies that you devised. This would help prevent confusion, at least for the newer players, on what cards they picked last. They could even show the point totals easily and even have your last deck preloaded already (if the rules don't prevent that summoner/monsters).
You could make a lot of card decks for each point total and special game rules that come across, but it would be better if you could just load any deck, have it show that it's over the point total, and then take the cards out on the load screen.
So if my perfect deck is 30 points, but the game only allows 22, I would be able to subtract 8 worth of cards, or even take out more and substitute a card here and there.
#2 - Have a button to soft archive cards that you would never pick because they're obsolete or are never part of your deck plan. The goblin sorcerer has 1 magic power, 2 speed, and 2 health for a price of 3, the enchanted pixie has 1 magic, 2 speed, and 1 heart with the special float power. No one would pick the pixie over the goblin. It would be better to darken that card, so you'd know not to pick it.
#3 - Make the guild purchasable by coins. This would fight against the inflation of the DEC. The price of a quest potion is $5.50 if bought through DEC, but only 75 cents if bought by Fiat USD. As I mentioned in my other post, the price of a guild is close to $80 USD now, when it probably started at around $5-$10.
#4 - Get rid of the opponent's history. It's a distraction. You should just pick your best deck and hope for the best. The reason for this is because you invest in a certain amount of rental cards to build a great deck, then it's countered when they see you're using the same deck each time.
This will probably have a mixed reaction. It does add a level of strategy to get a preview of what strategy you should use. An alternative idea is to have different game modes you can choose within the ranked category. So you'd be able to choose ranked mode blind or ranked mode preview, so to speak.
#5 - You should be able to make DEC wagers for battles. I think it would add an element of fun. You can even wager cards, or have spectator bets. This sort of borrows from the setup of fan duel. They allow head-to-head games and whoever hosts the match gets to set the amount of money wagered.
It doesn't even have to be a single match. It could be out of three, five, or even seven. If you miss the match live, the preview is already built-in. Perhaps for people that don't attend the live event, have Splinterlands wait to adjust the spectator's DEC amount until they manually accept or skip watching the match.
This could add a whole other level to the game's popularity, even though it's already popular as it is. I think this would be a good idea because competitive gaming has kept the DOTA games popular for years, like League of Legends.
To be fair, there are tournaments, that do add a higher level of competitiveness and they're a great start.
I believe the simpler mechanic changes #1-4 that I introduced would take some of the tedium and runaway inflation out of the game. The battle overall would increase the spectator atmosphere would help with gaining even more money and popularity within the game.
Just my opinion. Thanks for reading!