Splinterlands - Town Hall (AMA) Summary - Friday, December 03, 2021

PRESENTERS

• Aggroed (CEO) - @aggroed
• Matthew Rosen (Matt) - (Founder and CTO)
• Richard Adleta (VP of Engineering)
• Nate Aguila (Creative Director) - @nateaguila

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CHAOS LEGION UPDATES

• Team's topmost priority - Successful CL edition release
• Great presale with the initial goal reached: 1 million CL presale packs sold
• Phenomenal achievement - Beta Edition's 900k packs took over a year to sell whereas 1 million CL packs sold out within a month!
• Testing phase for CL has been great so far - some card stats have been updated based on the player feedback
  Note - Card stats are not final until the actual release.
• Around 92 new cards are to be released as part of the CL
• The team is on target for the general release. There will be a technical release the night before, and the official release will be at noon (EST)
• Team is still working on getting Dr. Blight airdrop ready. Some updates to QA expected in the coming days
• Highest cost mana card - Chaos Dragon, 14 mana cost will be out in the CL release
• 0 mana cost cards will potentially be the most sought out cards in the game
• A launch party could be expected during the CL launch. Open packs, have fun, celebrate with the team!

Formats:

Two formats will exist in the game - Modern and Wild Ranked.

• The majority of battles will be seen in the modern format as very few people have access to Alpha/Beta edition cards. CL cards would be complementary to other modern format cards (Untamed, Dice, Reward)
• The Alpha/Beta edition that will be valuable in the other format is expected to shine during the land expansion. The goal overall is to provide ongoing utility to older edition cards along with the new releases instead of discarding these assets away

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CREATIVE UPDATES

• Tackling a lot of lower tabs (not quite filled yet)., Completing the storyline of all the characters, making sure it all makes sense
• In the past, the stories that were launched are essentially a prequel to the Book. Book 1 will be reflecting upon the first story - The initial arrival of the Chaos
• Aggroed still envisioned on a full-animated Splinterlands series, comic books, and mystery novels
• Animations in-game are in progress - aiming to make the game look more realistic
• The Creative budget has been doubled. More and more hirings. in hopes for more creative developments
• Animators have been doing a great job on these animations. The original arts don't have all these moving elements, and thus the animators think and innovate as to how they can make these characters more alive
  (You'll find some examples of idle vs attack positions with animation)

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LAND UPDATES

• Land is still being called the biggest update after the CL release
• Players can expect something in the Q2 of 2022
• After the CL launch (including the general sale and modern format release), the Land expansion would be the team's 100% focus
• Huge project, not just another card edition release, thus delayed
• Initial timelines were destroyed as SPS token release came into play. On the contrary, this addition led to over 20X growth in player count, which will make the land release even more successful than originally expected
• Land will allow players to create new types of cards - Item and Spell cards - which can be expected in the game along with the land release

How will they work

• Essentially, when you jump on the battlefield, you'll have another chance to cast spells and equip items on the monsters based on what you see in attempts to change the course of the battle
• Item and Spell cards WON'T be sold by the team. They will be created by the landholders, who'll be free to use them for themselves or sell/rent them on the marketplace
• It mimics a real-life economy, rewarding players who create value
• Team is thinking as gamers, what the coolest things are that they'd want in the game, and thus building on those ideas
• Matt quoted " I've never been more excited about an update as I'm for the Land expansion"

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DEVELOPMENT UPDATES

• Over 13 Devs in-house - leading to 6 times the development capacity for the team
• Team's been loading enough staff to potentially work on land updates along with the wild and modern format. As a result, the time horizon for land just moved in quickly (no promises!)

Support Tickets

• Support tickets for Splinterlands are different that support for a typical game - in a sense that these tickets hold a certain value and involve money. Thus, these have to be dealt with differently and carefully
• Team has solved over 5.5k tickets in the last month
• Team is actively working to get a Zendesk live chat in-game to connect players to support. Essentially an entire knowledge base system linked to the chat system
• Basically progressing on an entire suite of support tools to help players get answers for anything related to Splinterlands
• Team is also framing together some of the biggest issues they're getting from support tickets with a goal to find a permanent fix for certain repetitive issues so they are addressed quickly in the future
• This entire system is being worked on in parallel to the game (CL updates, creatives, all the other stuff) that will allow the team to address the tickets
• A lot of pieces are being worked on by the Dev team under the hood to build a stable foundation for Splinterlands
• Several of the highly requested features are already a work in progress. Game development is being upscaled significantly to support the massive transactions that are expected during the CL release, and other future game updates
• Players can expect to be blown away by the flow rate of Dev updates and how quickly they'll come in by the Q2 of the next year

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SPS GOVERNANCE UPDATES

• Team's working on getting the SPS validator, hopefully by EOY
• An open-source software package will be available with free access for anyone to download and run
• The software will essentially read and validate all SPS-related transactions

How Players enter the Picture

• Players will be able to use their staked SPS voting for both who the top validators are, and people who'll run the validator
• They will be able to submit proposals to have a say in where funds are spent from the SPS treasury. They can vote for or against a proposal. If the vote passes, the top validators will submit signatures for the transaction and it will then be broadcasted, with funds then transferred to where they are intended
• Aiming to build a semi-decentralized system for controlling everything about SPS - balances, rewards, spending funds, and treasury
• Goal is to have the test net version up and running by EOY

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The Town Hall ended with the usual Q&A session. Tag along at 1:27:00 in the recording to check the questions that were addressed.

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WRAPPING UP - KEY TAKEAWAYS

• With the launch of a 14 mana card, 0 mana legendary cards, and two battle formats - Chaos Legion will change the entire gameplay
• Animations in battle will make the game a lot more exciting, active, and realistic
• Thanks to the Item and Spell cards, Land's are HOT! Get them while you still can
• Dev team is working way harder than we realize from the front end. They deserve a sincere appreciation
• For everyone who is fed up with the painful process of support tickets - a permanent fix is coming!
• SPS governance will make a whole lot of difference in 2022!

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Like this format? Let me know in the comments!

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EYE CANDY

Shadow Snitch - Idle Position

Shadow Snitch - Attacking position

Flying Squid - Attacking position

Animated Insidious Warlock

Wallpapers:

14 mana cost Chaos Monster

0 mana cost Legendary monsters