My Splinterlands Blog #143 – Maybe Modern Isn't For New Players
Welcome to another article where I write about my journey playing Splinterlands! We've reached the end of the August season, with no land 1.5 release, or even public testing of said release occurring. There wasn't much at all released in the last weekly patch, just a fix for a weird issue where it was trying to submit battles twice and some database work.
The fairly recent banning of bots from Modern was done with the idea that it would make it an easier format for new players to get into, but after the last couple of season I'm starting to think it has failed on that point. I'm not advocating putting bots back in Modern, and perhaps the proposal that passed to ban battle helpers is what's needed, but from my perspective it certainly seems like it is a much more difficult environment than Wild.
To be fair, my perspective isn't really that of a new player. I do have some older cards that new players probably wouldn't own, although you can realistically rent pretty much anything quite cheaply right now. That being said, after struggling all season on both accounts, I switched over to Wild at the end of this season and jumped from Silver III to Gold III quite handily.
It may just be that most real players own max sets of cards, so Modern is almost a constant match up against optimal collections. Wild play seemed to be against a lot more opponents with under max level cards. Granted it was end of season, which is normally easier as stronger opponents have moved up already.
Aside from no news on when Land 1.5 will come out, there also haven't really been any updates on the Tower Defense game. There does seem to be progress on the soccer game, but I'm not really following that too closely, let alone playing the beta. And, with that lack of news, that's about all the news there is to report!
I did open another couple of Chaos legion packs, which I am still sporadically getting as rewards:
A pair of very solid packs, with triple rare cards in each.
Guild Brawls:
Guild Brawl #169, playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in third from last place, with the same person failing to submit teams who did this the last several brawls.
Vs. IMNOOB2006 of THIRD EYE UNRULY
Guild Brawl #170, playing Bronze League Gold Foil Only. The guild came in third from last place again, with only 4 people signing up for brawls. At least everyone submitted teams, we just lacked the participation to do better.
Vs. BBGKEVIN of LEGENDARY DRAGON BABIES
Vs. RAGK88 of ACOLYTES OF HELIO
Vs. TRIPLEYYY of YGG BRAWLERS (MIDGUARD)
I also opened two more Gladiator packs:
Worse luck on these, getting only the base single rare card from each pack.
The Rest:
After struggling most of the season, I did finally break into Diamond at the end on my main account. After finally getting there, I did manage to run up to Diamond II before the season ended, though most of the season was a real struggle in Gold league. My Silver alternate account really struggled this past season. I ended up a few points short of Silver I in Modern, though to be fair I got pissed off and tried switching to Wild - where I catapulted from Silver III to Gold III in a day of playing.
After getting kicked around for most of the season, I didn't get a lot of seasonal chests. Here's what I got on my Silver league account, which I jumped up for Gold rewards chests as the last end of season:
Still a decent haul with an epic, a pack, and one decent sized SPS chest.
My main account got slightly more chests, of Diamond league quality:
A pack, an epic, and a few gold foil commons of note here.
It may be that I, and others, are just too used to being able to compete in leagues with mostly leveled cards and that's no longer viable to be at the top of a league. It's still particularly unfun to lose the majority of your matches, though someone is always the loser in every match. Maybe they should look at adding a player-versus-environment game... though, I think the tower defense game was supposed to help fill that niche. Granted, that was with an entirely new set of cards.
And, that's about it for this week/month. I'll be back in about a week with a mid-season update, though I don't expect there to be any real news with the upcoming Labor Day holiday in the US. Thank you for reading!
