Thoughts About The Upcoming Changes In Splinterlands - The Good, The Bad And The Neutral

So many changes are coming to Splinterlands in the coming weeks!

Personally, I also just want to share some of my thoughts and let's break down deeper between the good, the bad and the neutral. The main posts from the Splinterlands team are Battle Ruleset Updates and Announcing the New Chaos Legion Reward Cards, but I have extracted the relevant portions in quotes below too.

For background, I have been playing Splinterlands almost everyday since Sep 2021 and I mainly play in Wild Silver leagues. My card collection isn't fantastic and it's enough to reach Silver 1 every EOS. As you can probably infer, I belong to the smaller players and definitely not a whale, but I am also not that new of a player.

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The Good

1) Finally my potions have utility!

Please note that the use of Legendary potions will double the chances shown in the table below for each chest tier of getting both Legendary and Epic rarity cards while reducing the chance of getting a Common rarity card by the same amount. Alchemy potions will similarly double the chances shown in the table below for each chest tier of receiving a Gold Foil version of the card.

Over more than one year of playing, I have accumulated more than 700 potions for each of them. As I hardly opened my packs, I haven't really utilised my potions, and potions to me have always been the most "useless" chest reward all this while because before this change, there have no value unless one buy packs. I am quite sure I am not the only one that thinks this way hehe!

So for a Silver chest, after accounting for the potions, this means I have 4% chance of an Epic card, 1.6% chance of Legendary card, and 4% chance of a Gold Foil, which isn't too bad, until my potions run out. Lol!

2) I can use Gladius cards in battles!

Conscript is a new ability which will be available on Summoners only, and when a Summoner with the Conscript ability is chosen, it will allow the player to use one more Gladiator card in the battle than normal. This means that Gladiator cards will now be able to be played outside of brawls, including in ranked and tournament battles!

For those with Gladius cards like me, this is actually a pleasant surprise. Gladius cards are very strong and I think this sort of gives some form of recognition to the existing players who participate in brawls actively and grind those Gladius cases week after week. I mean, I don't have that Quora Towershead, but I am guessing I still have some advantage versus those without any Gladius cards at all. For that, I am thankful.

The Bad

1) Rental from cards might drop

While some see these changes as a good way to eliminate bots, I always say be careful what you wish for. I think bots have been so entrenched in the Splinterlands ecosystem, whether we like it or not. With the latest Soulbound reward cards, this means that SPS is the only profit for running those battles on script (at least for the short term). Even so, the SPS rewards are staked and would take 4 weeks to unstake.

I actually am not sure if this "profit model" is sustainable for bots. Assume it is not sustainable, and if we were to experience a mass exodus of bots, card rental rates might plunge. After all, we all know most of the card rentals are by bots because they hardly own cards. This would negatively impact those players who passively rent out their cards in exchange for DEC, and I am one of them.

2) Soulbound cards doesn't tie with the concept of Play2Earn

As mentioned at the start of the post, all of the cards in the new reward card edition will be soulbound, meaning they are tied to the account in which they are received and cannot be transferred, rented/delegated, burned, or sold.

I personally feel that the concept of Soulbound cards is one step backwards from the concept of crypto play to earn games. This actually reminds me of Pokemon Go where the Pokemons we catch are just largely tied to the account (though we can actually trade Pokemons with other players lol!). So how is Splinterlands different from these mobile or PC games?

Fortunately, they did mention that these cards will be unbound after 1-2 years. But we all know 1-2 years is probably 10 years in the world of crypto. Haha. No one knows what's going to happen. So we shall see.

Neutral?

1) More complicated gameplay

The primary change is that up to three rulesets may be active at the same time in Gold league and higher ranked battles, as well as all Tournament and Guild Brawl battles. Previously, only two rulesets could be active for a battle. By increasing that to three it opens up exponentially more new and interesting combinations that players will need to navigate in order to crush their opponent.

I am a Silver player so on first glance, I actually am not affected by this change. But I had a minor scare when I started on the brawls last week and had to navigate these three rulesets with no preparation at all. Hmm why do I classify this as Neutral instead of Good or Bad?

The good part - I enjoyed these battles. The bad part - mentally it was extremely tiring to strategise within that three minute or so time limit. For brawls, I think it is fine because usually there are only 4 to 6 battles and not all of them will be three rulesets. But I can't picture myself (if I were a Gold player) to be fighting these three ruleset battles every day for my focus rewards. That's so tiring, especially after a long day at work.

So I guess it depends. Competitive players will probably welcome this change, but casual players like me who just want to kill some time and have some mindless fun will probably not have the mental space to navigate three rulesets.

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So that's I have! Feel free to share with me your thoughts in the comments below too!

If you are interested to sign up to play Splinterlands, my referral link is here.