This week's @thepeoplesguild challenge revolves around the New Player Experience withing Splinterlands and what ideas the community has for its further development. So, before I share what I think is currently most important for the so-called NPE, let's start from why it's important for it to even exist. I see the following statement quite often - we don't really need NPE, we need green candles and everything will be fine. That's kind of true in the middle of a raging bull market, however, as soon as it cools off, people come back to reality and remember that this is also a game, and not just a money printer (which goes "brrr"). If we want to grow our player base organically we need to be able to attract and retain people who are not here only to make a quick buck. We need invested players who like playing the game and want to see have long-term success. Yeah, SPL has been around for more than 6 years and that in itself is already respectable but the game can be so much more than what it currently is because I really do believe it has a very addictive game loop. The battles are fast, and often fun (unless you get wrecked by RNG) and it actually also has a potential to become a good competitive game if the devs really decide to pursue that goal.
Now, in addition to what's already been done so far this year for the NPE to be improved - a new landing page, a lot of additional explanations and warnings which will be extremely helpful for new players, 1-click rentals.
However, what we really need to do is to:
Yeah, that's right. We need to bring back leagues, not because I approved of the lower-league LBs and camping of those which also caused a sort of gatekeeping of the next league due to how rating inflation worked, but because it gave a sense of progression in the game for every level of investment. I am currently a person who has a maxed CL/RW deck and basically a maxed RB deck but that was not always the case. When I started playing I jumped into Bronze and did spend a fair amount of time there until I got what the game is all about then got all the cards (CL had just been released when I started) so I did buy CL at "those prices". Then I moved up to Silver when I felt I was ready (and had the financial ability to do so). Silver is not that different from Bronze in terms of Card abilities and meta but there are still some differences so it does get a bit more complicated gradually. Then jumping into Gold is a major step both financially and in terms of gameplay. Gold is very, very different than both Bronze and Silver in terms of meta but still easier to grasp than the max-card meta.
What we have now with max cards allowed across all leagues really provides no safe space for newer players and no sense of gradual progression in terms of skill and collection. It's either trying to max at least the cheapest cards and summoners or get stuck at a level where the liquidity bots no longer act as a safety net, and you get to play other partially leveled mish-mash decks which don't really know what league decks they are, stuck in a limbo.
How I think this should be fixed - bring back league caps but allow players to choose what league to compete in. I know that this could cause a bunch of 1-bcx decks to suddenly choose Diamond and flood the low Diamond rating space trying to syphon Diamond rewards with minimal investment but that can be avoided by, for instance, checking the accounts for % maxed/partially leveled cards. Yeah, you don't have to have all cards maxed to play in D3, however, you do need to meet some sort of a collection requirement. Once this potential exploit is shut down, I don't see any other drawbacks to choosing your league. You still won't be able to choose Champion and you will have to grind your way to glory but the low leagues will be back to normality. People will be able once again to have a clear plan of what they want to achieve in the game and how much that's gonna cost them. That's really important for NPE. New players need to feel that they can progress at a decent pace in the beginning and also be able to afford progressing without necessarily having to sell a kidney. Currently CL is at such a price that it basically acts as a really cheap way to enter the game but that's gonna change significantly as soon as it rotates to Wild. Of course new players could still choose to play Wild but Wild is not supposed to be the new-player-friendly format. Modern has to be the more welcoming place for a new player to start their journey in Splinterlands.
Over and Out,
Referral