My current opinion about Splinterlands (2023.10.18)
I play Splinterlands again. At least in the current season.
By consistently playing, probably I will earn a few season chests in this season. Focus chests are highly unlikely, because the game is not really rewarding. Currently I am out of energy, so I cannot even play more battles at the moment.
I know that it is possible to buy energy with Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), but I am not going to buy. Because Splinterlands is rather trying to force people to buy/invest, rather than rewarding and encouraging. I saw under other people's posts that even if we earn chests, the rewards are rather poor in the Bronze leagues. Reward cards are rare.
So I am not playing for the rewards. I know that it is not worth it. I simply pass time with Splinterlands. I play it like a free-to-play game.
By the way, this energy thing is also a new thing. We could play unlimited Splinterlands battles for free in the past. This new addition contributes not only to the pay-to-win factor, but to the pay-to-play factor too.
Sometimes I buy Splinterlands cards, but mostly only to give them away. I would invest much more into this game, if I would see that it is rewarding and encouraging, as it was in the past (years ago). But currently I see the exact opposite of this. Forcing and punishing.
And seeing this, I can absolutely understand that thousands of people stopped playing this game in the recent past. Currently my rank is 39 603, so I am currently in the top 40 000 Broze players. Approximately one year ago I was hardly in the top 100 000 players, so many more people played this game in the past.
I played 72 battles in this season so far, and I won 27 battles, so my current win rate is 37.50%. My max win streak in this season is six.
Splinterlands was actually enjoyable and rewarding in the past. It did not felt frustrating and forced at all. I know that the company behind Splinterlands is a profit-oriented company, and thus they have to earn money from their game somehow, but the current business model behind Splinterlands is really bad.
At least this is what I think about it, as a relatively old player (I started playing Steem Monsters/Splinterlands on 2018.12.30 by buying the Beta starter set).
I still hope that the developers will make Splinterlands good again, before they lose another couple of thousands of players. A very different approach is needed to have a successful game. The key factor is to rewarding and encouraging players, and not forcing and punishing.
Either way, good luck and have fun to everyone.
Have a nice day. All the best. Greetings and much love from Hungary.
Splinterlands is a tough game but before the energy system, there was the Dark Energy Capture Rate. Rather than having a fixed rate, your reward depended on that Dark Energy Capture rate and each battle took like 1% of your remaining. So you could do as many fights as you could but your reward would scale according to it. So to an extent, playing more fights doesn't mean better rewards all the time, but I do understand that having the energy cap does get annoying sometimes.
The energy cap is currently the least annoying thing about Splinterlands. Currently the whole approach of the game towards the players are the most annoying thing about Splinterlands. Honestly I do not even know why I play it again (other than passing time in a not fun enjoyable, but rather frustrating way). For some reason I still have hope for Splinterlands. We will see where the developers will lead this game. If the game will remain like this, then I (with thousands of other players) will completely stop playing it.