Art and Rarity of cards in Splinterlands - what can we do?

Hi fellow Mages!

This is another post in which I will compare Splinterlands with other TCGs like Pokemon, Yu-Gi-Oh, and Hearthstone. I know that this may not be very kind to Splinterlands but we need to compare this game with the best if we want Splinterlands to grow and reach more potential players. The big difference between those games and Splinterlands is that Splinterlands is a digital game built on blockchain technology with a living economy. That is a burden that classic TCGs do not have to bear but it enables Splinterlands to live in both worlds. That is why the economy and sustainability of the Splinterlands are a priority and the reason why so much time is invested in those areas.

Now when people are not talking as much about bot farms, maybe it is a time to focus more on the gameplay, card design, art, UI, and UX of Splinterlends, both in the web version and app version. In this post, I will focus mostly on the art and card design while comparing those aspects with other TCGs.

So let's get started!

The rarity of the cards and feeling of rarity

If you play Splinterlands at the top of any league you will notice that people have really good cards, legendary cards. You can see these cards in almost every game and just like that you don't have that "legendary" feeling when such an amazing card is played. I am missing that "oh god, this is the first edition Charizard" moment. I know that this is a partly "digital" problem and that you can't compare traditional TCG with digital/blockchain TCG, but still, those kinds of moments are what TCG is all about, collecting of rare cards that your friends do not have.

This "problem" is also linked with the deflationary nature of Splitnerlands assets and leveling of the cards. You need 11 legendary cards to produce 1 MAX level card. This is a component that reduces that "wow" moment as you need to go through that "wow" moment 11 times, of course if you are playing on the max level. Don't get me wrong, this system is amazing and it clearly works as intended and it should not be changed, but still this bad feeling remains.

Can this be solved, can we get more excitement while opening packs? Can Splinterlands be more than just earning money?

I think it can but we need more focus towards gameplay, game design and art. Let's check how some other TCGs solved this. Here are rarities in the Pokemon TCG:

• Uncommon, Common and Rare - Common cards are marked with a black circle, uncommon cards are marked with black diamond, and rare cards are marked with a black star. This is the basic way to tell the rarity of a card.

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Rare cards are split into multiple different kinds of rarities. There are the standard rare cards(that look plain), but there are many other variations:

• Holo Rare - as its name tells you, these cards are rare cards that have a holo picture. Basically those cards shine. Not all rare cards are holo cards which makes Holo Rare cards very desirable and collector's items. Pokemon Holo Rare card is equivalent to a Legendary Gold Foil card in Splinterlands.
• Reverse Holo - this is a card that shines on every part of the card except the picture. That would be equivalent to GF common, rare, and epic cards in Splinterlands.
• EX/GX/V Half Art / Half Body - very rare cards that are usually some of the hardest to find. Usually some of the most powerful creatures in the game. These cards are also known as Ultra Rare and they come under many different names.

• Full Art / Full Body - this is a different version of EX/GX cards with Full Art. These are cards where pictures take over the entire card. Sometimes this makes it difficult to read text from a card. I would be very happy if such card art could be included in Splinterlands.
• Secret Rare - these kinds of cards have a special serial number, let's say 113/112. These cards are some of the most expensive cards in the TCG. Such cards can't exist in Splinterlands unfortunately.
• Rainbow Rare - very rare cards that are added in the sun and moon series of cards. Those are worth a lot of money.

• Promo - special cards that are given at certain events. These cards are equivalent to the Splinterlands Promo cards.
• VMAX - cards that act like Mega Evolutions. Those can appear in numerous different forms. These cards are also very rare.

There are also a few other rarities of Pokemon cards such as: Rare Holo Lv.X, Rare Prime, LEGEND, RARE ACE, BREAK, Amazing, Radiant Rare... but I will no go through all that. This is more than enough for me to give an example how Splinterlands could spice things up when talking about the rarity system and art. After all, Splinterlands is TCG and people LOVE collecting unique cards and getting that bragging rights when talking with friends.

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Ultra Rare, Ultra Epic & Ultra Legendary in the Splinterlands

So what with all those cards that you just put out there VjekIch?

As I said, I don't like the concept of legendary cards popping out in every battle. It does not feel special, rare, or legendary. These cards feel very common. This will change with time, with more players and with more new cards that will come into the game(next Rebelion expansion). But I recommend that we add those extra rare cards that are very hard to obtain and that will cause screaming and yelling when you pull one out of your pack.

My idea is to add 3 more card rarities that would be really hard to obtain. According to Splintercards Legendary Gold Foil cards have a drop rate of 0.064% - which is the lowest drop rate in the game. Keeping that in mind I would suggest the following:

Ultra Rare drop rate: 0.0256%
Ultra Epic drop rate: 0.01024%
Ultra Legendary drop rate: 0.004096%

These would be some of the hardest cards to get, but you could get Ultra drop in any pack, in any league. You could get that card in the first pack and you may never get that card.

The other thing that I would suggest is that those cards drop at the MAX LEVEL as they are really rare. That would add even more hype to the pack's opening as your pack could be worth a few thousand USD. One pack could change everything for you.

Ultra cards and packs design & iconic cards

Same as with Pokemon, there could be variations of some cards. For example, Splinterlands could do something like this, or something similar.

• Regular Card design (for example regular Djinn Oshannus)
• Half Body or Full Body Art Card (for example Full Body Art Djinn Oshannus)
• The card that is available only in the ULTRA version (a card that is not available as a regular card)

Variations of cards would be something new and exciting that people could talk about, A LOT. Imagine that Full Body Art of Yodin Zaku drops on the live stream. That would be special and those kinds of moments would build hype around Splinterlands even more.
At the same time, you would get that ICONIC variations of cards that could be pulled out of booster packs.

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What I am suggesting is a combination of Waka Spiritblade and Runi projects. The main difference (and that is the important one) is that you could find these "special" cards only in packs and those would be extremely rare. The beauty of this would be that anyone could get dropped like this from a pack. A person that bought 1 pack or a person that bought 7000 packs. That is what we like about TCG, you never know if the next pack is the lucky one.

Art of Splinterlands

Art is getting better and better with each expansion. I guess that we can say big thanks to @nateaguila and his team for doing that amazing job.
If you compare Alpha/Beta cards with newer expansions(Chaos Legion and Riftwatchers) you can notice a considerable improvement.

What I don't like?
I don't like that complete characters are not designed - but only cards and that is something that should be fixed. We had full characters in the past, at least in the lore part of the card. The best example that I have is Vera Selacia. A forgotten card with amazing art!

Why am I bringing up art here?

I appreciate the amazing work that the art team is doing and I am sure that they will keep it up but with Half Body Art and Full Body Art, they would have much more freedom when designing those cards. We could have something like Vera Selacia Art throughout the whole card. Don't know about you guys but that is something I would be really excited about.

Booster Pack Design

I do understand that Splinterlands is not coming from traditional TCG where you play the game in person with other players. You are not going into physical store to buy booster packs and cards. You do all that online with a few clicks. That is probably why we don't have packs created like in traditional TCG-s where you need to rip open a pack of cards. In Splinterlands we have Packs, Cases and Orbs. And those are not pretty I must admit. I would say that this is another opportunity for the Art/Design Team to create something beautiful instead of those little icons that we have know. Yes, those are fun but something like digital packs in Pokemon or Hearthstone would be way better.

Skins

Skins are something that I don't rally like in this game. Why? Skins do not have that collection aspect. Yes, you can collect skins but they are tied to already existing cards and if you decide to sell that card, you don't have any use of skin tied to that card. On the other hand, alternate art would not act as a skin, rather as same card but with different art that you could use or sell as any other card in the Splinterlands.

Trading option

In the end I have one last idea and that is card trading. There is really low possibility that Splinterlands team would consider changes regarding Half Body and Full Body art (or anything similar) but regardless of that I think that Splinterlands will be in need of trading option in the game. Why? With every day more and more cards are combined into higher level cards and in a few years it will be very hard to get particular cards. People may not want to sell really rare card for money because they could not buy another card of that rarity. They would rather exchange one extremely rare card for another extremely rare card. It is my opinion that such feature will be needed in the future as many cards will just disappear from the market. Aquire cards that you want now, while you still have opportunity to do something like that.

Summary

Splinterlands is an amazing game and I love playing it and writing about it. It is not cheap game, but collecting is huge part of the game, even now, at the start of the game. Developers mostly focused on balancing the economy and now when that is stable they should tune all those little details that make games amazing. Hearthstone is here 8 years already, Pokemon are here for 32 years. Splinterlands is still young and this game can set up some new standards and on top of that it is built on blockchain technology which combines best of both worlds (digital and physical). I hope that my thoughts make some sense for rest of you and that there is a slight chance that this post will inspire developers and designers of Splinterlands to improve this game even more!

Let me know what you think about this down in the comments.

It is the perfect time to buy some cards and rebuild your deck. Packs are not selling as fast as expected so prices are stable. I expect them to go down even more once we sell more packs. But there is always a possibility of new players joining and buying tons of cards, so be careful. If you are not playing #splinterlands yet, now is the perfect opportunity to join while you can get all those amazing cards at special prices. Come and join Splinterlands Discord and find out more.

Official Splinterlands Discord: https://discord.gg/A6yNcVqbU6

If you are new here

If you are new here, #splinterlands is the amazing #NFT trading card game with the #play2earn model. That means you can have a lot of fun AND you can earn money (DEC - Dark Energy Crystals) at the same time. If you don't have an account yet consider registering with my link. If you sign up with my referral link, please DM me and I will send you 100 DEC that will help you start with the game(of course if I see you on my referral list).

https://splinterlands.com?ref=vjekich

Have fun and see you on the battlefield.