An Avatar to Own

The "Jacek" card dropped today, which also means that 10,000,000 Chaos legion packs have been sold, which is the equivalent to forty million dollars worth of cards, plus whatever vouchers were used for presales and bonuses - which for me at least, was very expensive. Granted though, in recent months, a lot of the packs have been bought using cheap DEC and of course, there are also thousands that have been given as rewards, but I am not sure what the total is on that.

For the airdrop, I was "unlucky" and got 7 cards, which is exactly what I should have got based on my pack purchases. However like everyone, I was also hoping for a gold foil, or at least an extra card or two in the luck of the draw. But, it wasn't to be, which means that with 7 cards, I would need another 4 to max it so it is useful for me to play.

So, I went to the market straight away and bought the four I needed, so then I would be able to jump in and get killing with it!!

So far, I have played it in a few rounds and ....

I am yet to win a single one!

Most weren't even close. I got hammered.

Fair enough, I might have tried to squeeze it into rounds it was not appropriate for also.

But, I guess I have to work out how the sucker plays, as I am not very good with new cards and do not predict them well. I also thought the scattershot would apply to all the cards including melee for some reason - but apparently not. Still, I am sure with a bit of buggerizing around, I will get into the groove with it, just in time for Rift Watchers to come in and screw me up all over again.

These kinds of mass card introductions releases are very disruptive to the game meta and it takes me ages to learn and there are over 40 new cards coming into the mix, which essentially increases my playing set by 20%. This takes time to learn and see what cards are keepers and which are less so, but I also notice that some people seem to dice the crappy ones, only to have to buy them back later at times, because another meta change revives them.

With so many cards added, the combinations for each round is far more difficult to predict, so there is going to be more "luck" in some way brought into it, because it is going to depend a lot on who is faced. Though I am guessing that at the top, there will be largely the same set of players with full or near-full decks and those renting key cards (like me) to fill some of the gaps.

Again, my ECR is hammered.

I have impulse control problems with playing Splinterlands it seems, so I will mindlessly play and kill my ECR, then have to wait while it moves a bit above 50% so that I can play another round. This forces me to slow down, but I don't get why I can't just play an hour a day and let that be it. I think it is because I spend so much time sitting in front of the screen, that I end up playing rounds on my work breaks, even though for me - it is not the best time to play in general.

What I would love to see on Splinterlands though is more stats. Currently, there are the stats from the previous season available and perhaps more can be scraped back from about 30 days ago, but I reckon all battles should have at least the basics recorded in an off-chain database that can be used to build up player profiles. I believe it would be very, very popular amongst players and then could also become searchable and customizable information that could be used to populate many different kinds of third-party front ends and applications.

The more tailorable things are, the more people geek out on them and invest their time and effort into developing their unique brand. I think that the new Runicore card tells how people like to have original and if they are able to build their own profile page even, people will. While this is not a necessary part of the game, it does give a huge amount of value to the community by giving people ownership over how they present themselves in game.

Currently, it isn't even possible to have a custom profile image.

I think the Runicore will be able to be used as a profile image in-game:

We look forward to seeing Splinterlands players showing off their unique Runi as their profile pictures both in-game as well as on the various social media apps such as Discord, Twitter, Hive, and others.

In game.

I understand why they don't want people to upload their own images, but why not take the same logic of the 6 billion possible combinations and let people have a few thousand to build their own profile image for in-game play too? Giving some building blocks to generate a Splinterlands avatar would create a lot of usage of the game, that isn't directly tied to the battle or trading, but would give people a consistent, but unique face in the community.

This is mine.

Which is the default image and I have never changed it, because there are 20 other ones to choose from, but none of them feel "like me" - so why would I use them?

I don't think anyone really relates to these:

And, they don't even feel like they are made for Splinterlands at all - it is like the default Avatars for a kids Halloween game. This is a game of monsters, fire, death and destruction, and they seem very out of place when the average background images used look like this:

Sure, it seems like an irrelevant point to be focusing on, but when it comes to branding "look and feel" consistency is key. The way the Runicore card is designed to be generated is clever as it fits in with the game mechanics, but that can "easily" be pushed into a little avatar generation app of some kind, for the tens of thousands of daily players to make the game they partly own, more theirs visually also.

Would you create an avatar for your profile? Would you want your profile page to be customizable to some degree? Would you want to get access to a long view of your game stats? Would you want to see stat leaderboards?

This is me:

Does that capture "me" in any way?

It doesn't feel like it to me, but perhaps I am mistaken and the average person playing Splinterlands doesn't care about these things at all. After all,

no one ever used "memojis" ...

Wouldn't it be cool to be able to not only build your own unique profile image, but perhaps also have it minted into a unique NFT - perhaps by burning a few vouchers or some SPS? It could even be set that once a particular combination is used, it can't be minted again, something would have to be changed.

Most people will never have a card named after them, but perhaps, everyone would be interested in having a personalized NFT that they can call their own, even if they are the only ones who ever care about it.

At the very least, people will have some fun creating something that is their own.

Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]

Edit: Forgot to add the cover image and now, even though I have updated it, my entire personal blog feed is out of whack, as all my other images are 16:10... annoyed.