As most of you are already aware, one of the Splinterlands team's major areas of focus for 2024 is building a better overall game experience for both new and existing players. This includes things like simplifying some of the mechanics to make them easier for players to understand, providing more tutorials, help text, and other information throughout the game, and addressing certain areas that lead to perverse incentives or unfair situations for certain players.
The first area of the product that will be updated as part of this initiative is the ranked battle system, which will be getting a significant overhaul starting at the end of the current ranked play season on Thursday, Febrary 29th, 2024. This is something we feel has been sorely needed for quite some time, and we look forward to this update creating a better experience for all players.
There are three goals that we have had in mind when re-thinking the ranked battle system, and all of the changes discussed below are aimed at achieving these goals:
- Simplify the system as much as possible to make it easier for players to navigate and make it easier to identify and address issues and misplaced incentives
- Ensure that it is always in a player's best interest to get more / higher level cards and to achieve higher ratings
- Create a proper rating system that accurately reflects a player's likelihood of winning a match and therefore makes matchmaking more fair
Removing League Limits
First and foremost of the changes is that we will be completely removing all limitations around the different leagues for ranked battles. Going forward, with the exception of Novice league, a player's league will simply be a cosmetic, visual indicator of the rating range that they are currently in.
This will be accomplished with the following changes to Ranked battles:
- There will no longer be leaderboards for any league except Champion
- There will no longer be maximum level limits for cards nor will there be penalties for low level cards
- Players will no longer be able to choose not to advance to a higher league (since leagues will just represent a rating range)
- Matchmaking will no longer be limited by league and will seek to match players with the opponent closest to them in rating
- The SPS reward pool for ranked battles will no longer be divided by league, and will instead be one single reward pool for Modern format and a separate, single reward pool for Wild format
These changes work to address all three of the stated goals. First, the system will be much simpler and easier for players to understand and navigate. They will be able to use any cards they have, at any level, and will not have to worry about keeping their cards under the max level caps or losing out on rewards by using cards that are too low level.
Second, this new system will allow players to benefit from higher level cards at all levels of play, which means it will always be in players' best interest to acquire more cards and we hope to see this increase the overall demand for cards over time.
Third, players will no longer be incentivized, or even able, to stay in specific leagues, and the matchmaking system will no longer be limited by matching people in the same league, which should allow for much fairer matchmaking.
Please note that these changes only affect ranked battles and not tournaments or guild brawls. Those will still work as they have previously with league level caps and other league-based restrictions.
Flat Rating System
Next, we will be getting rid of the current ELO system for ratings and replacing it with a flat system where players will always gain 20 rating points for a win and lose 20 rating points for a loss, regardless of the rating of their opponent.
Please note that win streak rating bonuses will still apply for all leagues except Champion and will give double the rating increase (40 instead of 20) for wins when on a streak.
While ELO works very well for completely skill-based games like Chess, it does not work as well for games like Splinterlands which have a significant luck component. By changing to a flat rating system, we eliminate the situation where a high rated player gets matched with a lower rated player and loses to RNG and then suffers a disproportionate loss to their rating.
We hope that this change will encourage players competing for spots on the Champion leaderboard to play many more battles as well. In the current system, due to using ELO for ratings, players at the top of Champion are incentivized to stop playing once they achieved a high enough rating, but with these changes players at the top should be incentivized to play as much as possible. This should create more match liquidity at the higher rating levels in addition to more energy purchasing at the top pricing tier.
Please note that ratings will be capped at 5000 for the purposes of calculating reward shares for loot chests and SPS winnings. This means that even if a player attains a rating above 5000 (which should be possible after these changes), a rating of 5000 will be used for calculating their reward shares. This will allow players to compete for high ratings while preventing them from taking an inordinate share of the rewards.
Ratings will still be reset as normal at the end of the season.
Updated Energy Costs, League Ratings, & Resets
As part of this update we will also be adjusting the costs for purchasing additional Energy for battles. The cost will now increase at each tier within each league and not just at each league level like before. This should make the cost of Energy more consistent relative to the rewards as players move up in rating and will lessen the incentive to stay at lower leagues in order to take advantage of cheaper Energy. Also, Energy will now also be purchasable with Voucher tokens at the rate of 100 DEC per Voucher.
Finally, we will be adjusting the rating ranges for Novice and Bronze league which we believe will help with the new player onboarding experience, and we will be adjusting the end of season resets for the other leagues to ensure they are all multiples of 20 to work with the new flat rating system. The new ranges are shown in the table below:
The updated Energy costs, rating ranges, and resets for each league and tier are shown in the following table:
| League/Tier | Energy Cost (DEC) | Rating Range | EoS Reset |
|---|---|---|---|
| Novice | N/A | 0 - 259 | N/A |
| Bronze III | 2 | 260 - 399 | 260 |
| Bronze II | 5 | 400 - 699 | 300 |
| Bronze I | 10 | 700 - 999 | 500 |
| Silver III | 20 | 1000 - 1299 | 600 |
| Silver II | 40 | 1300 - 1599 | 800 |
| Silver I | 70 | 1600 - 1899 | 1100 |
| Gold III | 100 | 1900 - 2199 | 1400 |
| Gold II | 130 | 2200 - 2499 | 1700 |
| Gold I | 175 | 2500 - 2799 | 2000 |
| Diamond III | 250 | 2800 - 3099 | 2300 |
| Diamond II | 325 | 3100 - 3399 | 2600 |
| Diamond I | 400 | 3400 - 3699 | 2900 |
| Champion III | 500 | 3700 - 3999 | 3200 |
| Champion II | 500 | 4000 - 4299 | 3500 |
| Champion I | 500 | 4300+ | 3800 |
With these changes, new players will have a little more time in Novice league practicing against the Novice bots before moving into Bronze, and once in Bronze the rewards will be higher right out of the gate since rewards are based primarily on rating and Bronze will start at 260 rating instead of 100. For reference, a player at 100 rating will receive around 1 RP per win, whereas a player at 260 rating will receive around 17 RP per win.
Future Changes
The items listed above are just the first set of changes that are planned to go out as part of our overall focus on improving the player experience. In the near future we are also planning to release a completely revamped reward system for ranked battles that will replace the current loot chest system, one-click set rentals to allow new players to easily obtain a decent deck that will allow them to compete in the lower leagues, and an amazing new onboarding experience aimed at teaching new players about all of the different aspects of Splinterlands in a fun and engaging way.
Comments
With such a major change to the system, it is going to take some time for things to settle in after the launch next Thursday, and we expect that things may be a bit chaotic at first. Player's ratings do not accurately reflect what they are supposed to at the moment, and it will take some time once the changes are put in place for the ratings to be adjusted. This means that, at first, some players will have many easy wins and will quickly move up to an appropriate rating and some players will have many losses until they move down to the appropriate rating.
After a season or two, we expect that players will all mostly have settled in to the ratings ranges that accurately reflect their ability to win a match against a similarly rated opponent. Once achieved, we expect it will make for a much better and fairer matchmaking system that always encourages players to get more and higher level cards in order to continue to move up and earn more rewards.
Additionally, we don't expect that this will be perfect out of the gate. There will likely be some things that don't go exactly as we planned or situations that we didn't consider. As with most changes, we will be keeping a close watch on how things go once the changes take effect, listen to community feedback, and make any additional tweaks that we - and the community - feel are necessary. We also feel that by simplifying the system it will make it easier to identify and address any issues that do arise.
All in all, we feel that these changes will significantly improve the player experience across the board, and that they are an absolutely necessary step towards our goal of significantly growing the player base over the coming years. We are extremely excited to kick off the first release in this major initiative alongside all of you and we appreciate all your support, ideas, and feedback along the way!
Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!
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NOTE: All rewards from this post will be sent to @sps.dao