Well, I'm back... (and I have some suggestions, too!) - more than just an end of season rewards post

This is my second season since I started playing Splinterlands more seriously again. I sold my cards quite a while ago, and in exchange, I got some nice camera equipment out of it. I've come back into the game with a small collection of cards, aiming to compete at gold level, for the most part. (Not with gold cards)

I managed to make it Diamond this season, and well, how reward cards have changed. I was aware that the Splinterlands team required there to be a major change in the distribution of rewards, as otherwise, all the reward cards would very quickly be exhausted.

What I'm surprised about is that in my end of season drop of 50 loot chests, not one of them was an "original" reward card, which suggests that a lot of them are now close to, or out of print. I'm sure there's some analysis out there somewhere.

I also obtained quite a measure of DEC, and a few potions as part of the rewards I gained. Given that I don't plan on buying any more boosters for the time being, I'll have to wait and see if I get any orbs as part of my quest potion, which I've been lucky to recieve a few of so far.

The game has changed in a lot of ways since I last played, and I think its for the better. Untamed added a lot of cool mechanics and interesting things - as well as some absolutely fantastic card art - the flying creatures from life are right up there with the paragons of light that I like to worship in art (even if my own photography doesn't depict that at all)

Anyway, my ideas:

Different ladders for different leagues

When you're in Gold, or Bronze - you don't know if you're at the top of gold, or bronze. Are you 1st? Are you 2nd?, or are you 4009th on the overall ratings?

I feel as though if there were different leagues, or ladders for each different milestone, it would go a long way to incentivising people who (due to their cards or skills) can't crack the next league up. It would certainly feel a lot better to come 1st in bronze than 9045th and have a silver rating. (Or whatever these numbers would potentially be)

Tempering bots

Why do bots get to get so many rewards? Just as @j6969 indicated yesterday, something needs to change, when bots can do so much against human players. There's no easy solution to this, but a simple one is to do this: You get 20 ranked games per day. These are the only ones that will count toward your ladder rating.

Everything else still gathers DEC (but at a vastly reduced rate) - and if you don't finish your daily quest in 20 ranked games, you can keep playing to try and complete it - this would mean that any given season would see someone play ~280 games - and we may see a better distribution / separation on the ladder between players instead of asking people to grind endlessly for those "top spots".

Combine this with the first idea and you've got people critically thinking about every team they play as they know they've only got a certain number of shots in the ranked play for the season - and this will place them on a skills basis in terms of how many rewards they could obtain.

Tournament / Ranked Play Draft Mode (A higher level, separate from standard ranked play)

Another alternative is to have people require the use of DEC to "invest" in a season pass at either Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Diamond level.

This DEC gives you a quantity of "season boosters" and default summoners - (at random) - which are the cards you'll use for the season. Everyone gets randomly generated cards. At the end of the season, you get those cards to keep forever, and can use them on the regular ranked play.

If you bought bronze level tickets to play, you get bronze level cards. If you got silver, you get silver level cards. Gold, etc... The price of this entry could be tied to the price of such cards on the market, which would make for an interesting way to increase market liquidity at the start of a season, which typically sees a lot of sell pressure.

You could also look at these as super boosters, so a silver level card from a "ranked booster" would be worth x BCX - and the booster value for these ranked / draft modes would be higher. By extension, the rewards for these leagues would be higher than standard play, due to the standard to entry.

Furthermore, any entrants to this mode are barred from submitting transactions via bot-methods, similar to the recent soft fork.

I feel as though this idea in particular has a lot of potential, but probably needs a flow chart to be explained in more depth.

Player growth

This is one that I'm still not sure how to achieve. I think the community needs to focus on Splinterlands as a game first, and not just a blockchain oddity that means you can have fun, win stuff, and make a small amount of money (if you divest) at the end of the day.

Splinterlands (or Steemmonsters, as it was when I first played) opened many doors for me - I made new friends, learned a lot about human nature (and bot nature ;) ) but also, it gave me a hunger for data analytics (if anyone can remember my alpha supply decent charts that I used to publish)

Closing remarks

Looking forward to hearing people's comments on my ideas. I won't be posting much more about Splinterlands / Steemmonsters, as I've said many other places on the chain, we need more content about things that aren't steem on steem. :)

Thank you for reading, and for your considered remarks. If you used to follow me back in the day, I'm still doing the same stuff I used to - video game and movie reviews, but I'm also doing a lot more photography now, too! :)

Have a lovely day, no matter where you are in the Splinterlands!