Introduction:
Splinterlands 2023 is turning out to be really good. Lots of new projects in the way and it also feels it would go with the crypto bull run or when the market price of Bitcoin is increasing which has an effect of increasing the value of all crypto coins overall. Splinterlands Devs recently dropped their 2023 Roadmap and I want to try and explain some, if not all, since it might be confusing.
There are stuff that I will focus on and stuff that I will just make a skim because either I'm not interested since I'm not entirely affected (for now) and thus, I didn't do research on the subject. I have the vague idea for everything but not specifics. If you have questions or interested in a specific thing or section, comment down below and I will try to gather more information on the matter.
Lastly, I will try to break this down by sections rather than by quarters because some of them carries on the other quarters. It's just to make my opinion as a whole on that section.
The Roadmap are divided in 3 quarters at the moment:
Q1 - January 2023 to March 2023
Q2 - April 2023 to June 2023
Q3 - July 2023 to September 2023
I think they didn't add a fourth quarter simply because if some of the projects took more time, it might carry over to the 4th quarter of the year. In other words, this roadmap is, kind of, temporary just to give the community an idea of the projects they are working on right now.
Q1 | New Rulesets
This is pretty straight forward. There's release of new rule sets which you can actually feel as of this moment in the game.
I had this game which had the rule of combat, "Going the Distance." This rule of combat allows only range units and I got a disastrous loss in this one.
https://splinterlands.com?p=battle&id=sl_f2446a5fe3bdc803ecf78a16fa896191&ref=konaqua122
Other rule sets can be found in this post from the Splinterlands team. You can check it out to find out more:
@splinterlands/battle-ruleset-updates
Q1 | League Rating Point Changes
I have no idea of what would be the changes here. Although when I was doing my leaderboard runs, I normally encounter games where I get like 3 rating from playing against an opponent with low rating and 40 rating from playing against opponent with more rating than me. Again, I am not sure what this change is and will be looking forward to it in the future.
Q1 | 3 Rulesets Per Battle
I think this only applies on Gold league and above. In Bronze, you get 1 rule of combat. In Silver, you get two but last time I played in Gold, for like a day or two, I also get 2 rules of combat which struck me as weird. So, I think they're doing 3 for Gold and above which would make a lot of sense.
Q2 | Replace CP Req with SPS Staking
They're planning to change the Collection Power requirement to SPS Staking. They also would have SPS Delegation for the rentals once this goes live. I will go into this deeper as we go since there's another section directly related to this.
Q1 | DEC Batteries
I covered this in a more in-depth manner. You can check this link to my post for a better explanation. TLDR is you can invest your DEC for a discounted token called DEC-B that you can use for future Splinterlands projects. This DEC-B cannot be traded and will be burned once used so this would eventually turn into less DEC in the market which should help the token get to a higher price.
Q3 | Skins & Cosmetics
I think they're planning to add new card skins and cosmetics to the game. I think they're going to the Yugioh route, like if you play Duel Nexus (Free Online Yugioh TCG site) or Master Duel (Official Konami Yugioh app), you can have custom board, back of the card skins, etc.
I think in terms of Splinterlands, the best way for the cosmetics is for summoner skins in which you can also use as your game Icon. Since Land would be dropped off soon as well, they may add skins like different kinds of buildings as well. Since these are cosmetics, this wouldn't affect the game and it's for aesthetics only.
Q1 | Season Rentals
One thing I want to see on season rental change is the removal of cancellation on the seller's end. For example, it doesn't matter if I rent an Undead Badger for 300 days because the seller or the owner of the card can cancel that whenever he wants. Most of the card owners rent their cards then cancel during or a few days before the season end because of Collection Power which sounds really dumb because the one who rented the card may need that for the same purpose and now the one who rent is hanging out in the air.
Imagine you rent a car for 7 days for a vacation. Then 1 day before your scheduled trip, the renter will cancel your rented car and now you have to return it. You can't do anything about it because it's in the rental rules. It's a lot of inconvenience and everyday, you must check all your cards which were cancelled and which were retained. I hope the change would tackle on this and remove the cancellation on the seller part and commit their cards to the rental if they would.
To be fair, at least allow the cards to be rented for a season. Once rented for over 15 days, the cards would then be locked for at least 15 days and if the owner wanted to cancel the rental, they can only do so after 15 days. That gives peace of mind to the person who rented the card that he can have the said card for the whole season.
Q2 | SPS Delegation
A lot of players are against the Collection Power gateway in order to proceed to higher league. This is because there are a lot of cards right now in the market and getting that collection power is pretty easy and pretty cheap. This is the reason of the proposed SPS gateway instead.
Splinterlands planned to change the Collection Power gateway to SPS Staking. This means if you want to get to a certain league, you need to have the minimum rating and minimum SPS staked. SPS Delegation is simply the rental of that SPS. Players can rent out their SPS for people wanted to get to a specific rank but have no funds for the said SPS. This should help the SPS or Splintershards, the Splinterlands' main token to have more usage than buying packs.
Q2 | Rental Markets
For this, I think I already stated it above on the "Season Rentals". I'm not sure of the other changes so I will leave my opinion to the one I stated above.
Q2 | Card Bundles
In association to Season Rentals, I think they are planning to allow the sale of card bundles. This is not a new concept and @peakmonsters actually already does this. What this does is a player can set any cards and sell it as a bulk. You may get cheap ones this way but at the same time, you may buy cards you may not need. The only question is if they would include a rental bundle as well or just the sale bundle.
Q1 | Group Editions by Set
As a QoL change, they probably just add some new filter options. Cards are increasing so finding the cards you need can be quite a daunting task. Having more filters might help especially in the future.
Q1 | SPS Validator Nodes Live Internally
Q1 | SPS Delegation
Q2 | SPS Governance Player Proposals
Q2 | SPS Validator Nodes Testnet Live
Q3 | SPS Validator Nodes Mainnet
I will sum up all of the above because I have small knowledge on the subject. First, validator nodes is kind of an investment ticket that was sold a few weeks back. From what I remember, these nodes allow you to earn more passive income in the game such as SPS. There are other purpose for it but I can't seem to see it in the website so I'll leave it as another passive stream of income for the game.
Q1 - Market
Q1 - Interactive Map View
Q1 - Surveying
Q3 - Land Phase 2 (Buildings and Resources)
Land is one of the biggest projects for Splinterlands. It's actually one of the original ones that was planned for Splinterlands. You can have a plot of land in Splinterlands and those lands and you can build buildings and towers on your plot which would allow you to gain a specific resources from that plot. These resources can be used in order to create in game items. As far as my knowledge goes, the items that you will be able to create are the ones you can use during the battle that can have effect on the course of battle.
Of course, this would also mean you can sell those resources or sell the items made from the resources. It's kind of like playing idle games where you can get something as time goes.
One last thing, I believe that you can use DEC in order to level up the buildings which would be good in lowering the price of DEC for the future. It's a good project for everyone even if you're not planning or cannot afford the land plots. You can buy your plot right now and other stuff related to it in here:
https://next.splinterlands.com/market/other-items
Q1 | Soulbound Reward Cards
Soulbound Reward Cards are cards that you can get on Season end or daily rewards. These cards cannot be sold or traded so there would be no impact in the economy even if you get millions of this. This was proposed as answer to the bot farms. Unfortunately, honest players like me are also affected because this means I cannot get less cards as a reward from playing and maybe the only way to get sellable card is by buying pack.
Even if I had a big demerit, I kind of like the idea because then if you get some good cards from the pack, it wouldn't be useless due to the large amount of cards in the market.
One thing I want to see is that these soulbound cards would be unaffected by the rewards penalty meaning since I play on Silver at the moment, if I use a soulbound level 1 common, I hope I don't see any "Reward Reductions: Low Level Cards: -21%" for playing the said soulbound card because the minimum level for Silver is level 3 commons.
While writing this article, I also got a new information that you can use the gold and legendary potions to get higher chance of getting Gold and Legendary soulbound cards. The effect of the potions would be doubled for a certain time and will only be consumed if you get a legendary or gold card. The auto use of potion can be removed in the settings menu once this proposal is in the game.
Q1, Q2, Q3 | Quarterly Promo Card Sales
For each quarter, there would be promo card sales. Now, I don't have information of if these cards would be the previous sold cards like Waka Spiritblade or if it would be new cards. Since this is in the "New cards" section, I think it would be the latter so we shall be expecting some new limited cards in the future.
This would also be a good gateway for companies to invest in Splinterlands and do a collaboration of the said limited cards.
Q3 | Rebellion
The release of the Rebellion Series has been pushed to third quarter. I honestly like this change because there's been a lot of cards in the market and I think the release of lands should be prioritized. People would most likely burn their cards for DEC to be used on Lands upgrade so there would be more DEC and Less cards during that time.
With also the release of soulbound cards, we have more card choices so I don't think a release of new series will change/improve the game. However, around September, when this series has been released, the market would be more stable and I think people also have more savings in order to get new Rebellion Packs.
Q2 | Improved Tutorial
This should be included in the Quality of Life. However, as stated, there would be improved tutorial for new players. When I got in the game, I don't think there was a new tutorial at all but I kind of got it because I'm used to playing card games online and offline. But for new players, it's a matter of trial and error which can be frustrating.
One thing I wanted to see though is I hope once the players get finished with the new tutorial, instead of giving 3000 Credit to spend or rent, they get a delegated set of cards that they can use. This isn't a level 1 set but rather probably level 5 or level 3s meaning either maxed Bronze or max Silver. This would make the players enjoy more since you really don't want to rent or buy anything at the beginning unless you have a good grasp of the game. Maybe two weeks worth of delegation for the set of cards and at the end, you will have a prompt that it would expire and teach you how to rent or maybe direct you to @peakmonsters for the card renewal.
Q2 | One - Click Set Rentals
I think this is on par with the Card Bundles but rather a Rental Bundle. I'm not sure of the "One-Click" part but I have a good hunch this is a bunch of cards that you can rent as a bundle.
Q2 | Runi Combining
Runi is a custom card that you can buy. If I am not mistaken, they have random stats, random abilities and random appearance. You can use it in any battle and works like a neutral monster. It was advertised as "one of a kind" monster because each Runi will only have one of a kind appearance due to an AI programming so each Runi is unique.
Runi Combining, I have no idea what they would do. I didn't buy Runi or will ever buy it because even if it's "unique," I don't really find it's appearance, "good."
Here's the section where you can find more information about the Runis:
https://next.splinterlands.com/collection/manage-runi
Q2 | Guild Alliances
I didn't find any information for this as of yet. What I can assume is that they would probably do like a 2v2 guild wars or something or if the Guilds have alliance, they can use each other's buildings or something. Again, these are only assumption. We'll just have to wait and see by June what may happen in the Guild Alliances.
- This post is an entry for Splinterland's Social Media Challenge contest.
- Other sources that I do not own are cited under their respective photos. Photos and drawings without cited sources are mine and made for this post.
- The background of the banners such as the one below are from Splinterlands and were edited in Canva Pro.
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