New Ranked Rewards Changes are Creating a Real Chaos Legion Next Season

Chaos Now to Spike the Football in Las Vegas?

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Businesses need some form of a predictable legal and regulatory framework to operate. Countries that constantly change laws and operating conditions eventually drive businesses out and it results in international businesses being gun-shy about operating in such unstable regimes for at least a generation. Splinterlands' development team has said that they would make changes along the way as it is a growing and still fledgling ecosystem, but the changes are too immediate and poorly timed. This approach likely stems from the erroneous belief that Splinterlands is merely an NFT game with a marketable lore, when it is really an ecosystem where users mine, purchase, and use a variety of assets in different ways.

Snap Changes

The new season starts on July 13, 2022. The new Ranked Gameplay goes into effect during the week of July 18, 2022. This means that this will be happening in the middle of a season, next season. In-season progress will be completely disrupted to make way for these new changes that are certainly not minor.

In fact, the changes will force participants to re-evaluate their entire approach to ranked play. These decisions may have to be made within a week or less. There was more of a warning about what was to come with the now present ranked play system and documentation surrounding it. Everyone received at two weeks notice and it was timed to start at the beginning of a season.

Modern and Wild Format Timing is Misaligned

Why are Modern and Wild Format set to start on July 14? Shouldn't it start on July 13 to coincide with the start of the new season?

This was something everyone knew was coming, but the timing is nonsensical.

Just be prepared for a messy season that is anything but conventional and adjust expectations on returns.

Possibly a messy Town Hall where the question is asked, "So why were 100,000 Chaos Legion packs really purchased in that short of a timeframe?" It's an awkward question and the timing gives the appearance of some parties knowing a change was going to happen and decided to make a bet on how the market would go in response knowing that the Modern Format was going to be flooded.

Complete Restructuring

These changes coming on the week of July 18, 2022 are extremely impactful and there's very little time to prepare for it.

Minimum rental time of 2 days.

This changes the rental cycle completely. Usually, owners of cards will yank cards in time for brawls so that they can either jack up prices or use the cards themselves. Now, owners of the cards have to rent their cards out in a well-timed fashion to be able to get the most out of brawls given the minimum hold times.

Alts, bot farms, and ordinary players will have to rent a set of cards that may not be necessarily applicable from one day to another. It becomes especially annoying when going from one level to another. Being stuck with lower level summoners and monsters after advancing is not exactly ideal, it's a waste.

The more regulations put in place, the more workarounds are created. People will delegate cards in exchange for all sorts of things and get around this. Keep increasing that minimum rental length and watch the black market go wild.

Changing End of Season Reward Thresholds in the Middle of the Season?

"Additionally, the number of reward shares required to earn both the daily focus chests and the season chests will be increased across all leagues as part of this change to compensate for the increased amount of reward shares that will be earned from battles through the new focus-card bonuses."

In the middle of the season, they will change the Daily Rewards thresholds for earning loot chests. However, they will also change the End of Season Rewards thresholds in the middle of the season. How is this possible? These are changes happening on the week of July 18, 2022.

See why this is a change that should be happening at the beginning of a season? This is something to be done after the rollout of the Modern and Wild formats. Start at the beginning of the following season for such changes and let everyone prepare for these massive shifts and not do it all at once in the middle of a season with a week of notice.

More Focuses and the Focuses May or May Not Matter

What's the Daily Focus bonus and how is it applied because the language used is quite interesting.

"We are changing the daily focus mechanic such that instead of an "all-or-nothing" system like it is currently, each win will always contribute focus points toward their daily chests even if no daily focus cards are used. However,** each card used that follows the daily focus will give a bonus** to the amount of reward shares earned for that battle."

In the prior rewards system, a Snipe or Sneak quest merely required that a Snipe or Sneak card be used in a victory to fulfill quest requirements. The Daily Focus will be an emphasis much like the way Gold/Alpha/Beta/Promo cards are used.

This is a MASSIVE change. The example used may seem quite odd, but it should raise some eyebrows.

For example, if a player has a Life element daily focus, then they will still earn focus points based on the rshares earned from a battle win even if they use a different element, but if they choose the Life element and use Life cards in the battle, they will receive bonus reward shares for each Life card they used.

Neutral cards may drop in value and Dragon summoners are going to jump through the roof. Dragon Focuses will discourage the use of going outside of the Dragon splinter because it will treat the partnered splinter like they are neutral cards.

For instance, if you don't find the summoners in the Life Deck to gel with how you like to play, this is fine. A Life Focus could still end up being quite nice because a Dragon summoner could give those cards a different synergy that may be to your liking.

Players would want the Daily Focus to be of a particular splinter because there is a chance of maximizing daily rewards. Ability-based Daily Focuses would have much less utilization and sub-optimal rewards earning.

Wait... what? Really?

The above two changes allow us to no longer set the player's current focus element to always be active for every battle each day.

So how are the active elements chosen for each battle? Is it an RNG? Is there transparency in this process?

It's a bonus that now cannot be controlled. It's a luck bonus. Bonuses for rewards were based on assets owned or rented in the battle, they are completely under the control of the player. It can be adjusted around rule sets, but this is very different.

Imagine having a Water Focus and going through 8 straight battles where Water is not an option? At least with low mana cap matches, there's an opportunity to earn a bonus based on the cards as editions and foils are not excluded in rule sets.

It's just a bonus, but it may not be and the amount that it is remains completely unknown. We don't know what the new RShare formula is (or if there is a new formula) and what the new thresholds are per loot chest on each level.

But at the least the loot chests are nice, right?

In order to help encourage more players to join guilds and participate in brawls, we will be adding Merits as a possible chest reward across all leagues. We expect Merits to be found in approximately 10% of reward chests. For this change to occur, we will be decreasing the percentage of chests that currently contain reward cards by 10%. This change will help slow the distribution of reward cards and hopefully help them retain more value going forward.

This is a reduction in rewards. Merit distribution could be quite chintzy and these are rewards for cards that cannot be used outside of Brawls. There is also no ability to practice with these cards or delegate the cards within the guilds.

To break it down by level with Loot Chest odds of receiving Rewards Cards:

• Bronze: 23%
• Silver: 28%
• Gold: 33%
• Diamond: 38%
• Champion: 43%

All of these new measures are designed for the purpose of prioritizing the sale of Chaos Legion packs above all else. Discouraging rentals, reducing rewards, increasing potion distribution, and making last-minute changes that indirectly harm the supply of the secondary market certainly can push things in the direction that they see fit.

It is a bit obvious that they want to sell Chaos Legion out by the end of Q3. There is a strong desire to "Spike the Football" at Splinterfest in Las Vegas.

Now, what does this mean for the most important part of the ecosystem?

How will bot farm owners respond?

These changes will force bot farm owners to change how they operate. It will be another adjustment for them. 50% of the active players dropped out after May 30th. More bots came back in the last week or two, but now there has to be a new strategy for them. Will they be able to churn out the returns that they are hoping to receive? These changes will cut into their bottom line.

However, some bot farm owners may be willing to take the losses in near-term in exchange for control and profits later. This is very common for new ventures to take on losses from Years 1-4 and then expect to turn profitable afterward. However, there are a lot of successful companies that have never turned a profit, but may face problems down the road when investor sentiment is not as bullish.

The plan is that all of the current DEC rewards for ranked battles - including tokens awarded for ranked battle wins and in focus/season reward chests - will be replaced with SPS tokens. This way there will no longer be a huge supply of DEC tokens entering the market from ranked battle rewards which will help stabilize the price around the value at which we accept them in the shop.

SPS is a governance token. Do we really want bot farms collecting SPS by merely winning matches? Given that bot farms have such a large presence in Splinterlands, why are we possibly handing control of the direction of the ecosystem to them? It could open the door to malicious actors as well. This should be reconsidered and taken off the table. If people want a say, they should have to buy their seat at the table. Buy SPS, just the way shareholders have a vote on particular matters for a company during shareholder meetings. The airdrop ends, now it is time to pay.

Then there's this...

Seeing 96,757 signups in a day should be cause for celebration, but when juxtaposed against 41 spellbook purchases, it is a bit confusing.

The number of active players has remained stable, but it has fallen during this weekend. We're left with a lot of questions and not much time to make important decisions.

This may be the most important Town Hall thus far this year.