Splinterlands Updates - October, 2021

https://twitter.com/bitinvest_news/status/1451246938771398657?s=20

https://twitter.com/bitinvest_news/status/1451246938771398657
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It's good to see the developers consistently monitoring and implementing changes to enhance long-term sustainability of the game. The massive bot farms that currently exist are definitely not good for the game, and encouraging higher rating, skilled gameplay, and owning/renting more cards can only be a good thing for true long-term players.

I'm curious how pancake swap company got the 620k SPS?

• Did they buy it?
• Did they have some left over from initial deal with them?
• Did someone at Splinterlands gift them the tokens from their own pocket?
• Did this come from some sort of inflation mechanism?

*If the last option I think we'd love to hear why you think it's a good use of funds for a 60 day period to increase an already large pool by just a bit more when there was already an incentive in place and thus this is only an increase incentive. Maybe it's worth it and i'd love to hear the thought. It's a $500k USD cost... seems like you could get Bittrex/Binance maybe coinbase listing for a bit more than this 60 day perk.

Good change, DEC rewards have dropped off pretty sharply the last few days, and this should help there. Also gives renting cards more value.

This is forcing me to quit the game. I paid the $10 to start, and intended to just grind my way up organically. This makes it literally impossible to do. In order to hit bronze 2, I need to buy (or rent) 1,000 power worth of cards, which cost dec, but in order to gain dec, I need to be bronze 2.

This is an insane money-grab which prevents new players from playing without dumping a bunch of money on the market.

I appreciate the constant balancing act you have to go through. While I realize its never easy to change things (due to the negatives some will always feel when they are disadvantaged), I respect that you focus as you always have in making the game sustainable. This game is now more than 3 years old (an eternity in blockchain), and its still going strong. You haven't let us down yet, and those patient enough to see you have the players' interests in your minds will find that the game is/has been/ and will be both enjoyable and profitable to play. Thanks for protecting the player base... again!

Grate information! I think it will help much our community :)

Cool thanks for the updates. Bullish AF Spliterlands.

I believe that while this may scare off new players, it will make active players with little power come to work harder to acquire more power. every change has its good side and its bad side. everything is a matter of perspective.

Regular players seem to get more compared to bots and that is always a good thing as the game should encourage real gameplay and strategy. In addition to that, the CAKE promotion is pretty sweet, and hope the syrup will be amazing!

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To support your work, I also upvoted your post!

I'm glad they are keeping the bot game in check

Since they are forcing all users to invest in accounts that play in bronze so they can move up and earn rewards, I think they should also improve their rental system, since many of us rent cards to play a full season and they break the contracts mid-season to raise the prices. How are the accounts that rent cards supposed to play in higher leagues if they break the contracts mid-season?

Glad I am at least at bronze 2! I have saw a lot of bots that are malfunctioning and only playing one card during a battle.

Just a couple of thougts
Low league players have worse reward chances, earning crédits and potions with dailys, not to mention end season that with new adjustments only counts for current league, so forget about earning power with reward chest. Solution rent cards and keep grinding. Also every time cards give less and less power.
Next problem, cancelled rents and higher rents as season come to an end. I think that there should be a penalty to whoever cancels a contract, it is very frustrating to see your season rent being cancelled and that they are now at a much higher price on the rental market. I understand that this game works on a free market, but free market also needs to work on trust between buyer/seller. Once that hand are shaked there is not turning back. Maybe adding an option for "guaranteed time Rent" that cannot be cancelled and could cost some extra dimes. F.e if card is rentetd at 0.10/day I guarantee a 0.15/day x 15 days no backin from either side. Time límit should be also agreed by Owner, preventing extra long time renting allowing owner to rent at higher price if market allows.

Bottom thing, canceling rents at any time is not cool.
And grindding is getting grindier.
Remember what the wise guy once said "kids of today, are grown ups of tomorrow" (boy don't grew really fast?) Lets try to don't be so hard on us new arrivals...

Sad for new player

hola

Does this mean that SPS will be rewarded for those other aspects that are currently missing such as Brawls and Ranked battles? Or this simply means they will be minted and held in an account until those others drops are released?

#outoftopic

How to participate in artworks that is posted weekly winners?
what site?

Interesting the Cake swap may be worth trying later that said right now vouchers are more attractive at present later I may have to look at pancakeswap after the vouchers less airdrop points.

I get the need for the constant balancing acts... but all these balances always seem to be hurting the new players... Yes, it also hurts the bots (which I get is great for the existing players long-term), but wouldn't it be better to just ban the bots then?

I'm assuming bots are good for our DappRadar etc. rankings... so we DO want bots for that reason... but if we have this huge influx of new players because the game looks so promising, only for them to get disillusioned and quit... doesn't that hurt the game long-term as well?

Either way: Good luck to the team making the hard calls ;-)

OK... musings aside, I do have a serious question:
(I have gone searching, but can't find the answer): Are regular quest & season rewards also determined by league and/or CP?

e.g. X% chance of receiving gold/legendary, or even ANY, cards in bronze leagues... but 2X%, 3X% etc. for silver, gold and so on? i.e. Are the reward %s (cards vs DEC vs packs etc.) the same across all leagues and the higher the league the more you'll get simply because you're opening more chests?

My main account is sailing along nicely... but on this account I seem to be getting nowhere on the rewards front. Yes, I totally get that 1% of 5 cards every season is gonna yield a lot fewer (actually 0) gold/legendary cards than 1% of 50 cards every season... but I'm hardly getting ANY cards in quest/season rewards while hanging about in Bronze III - isn't it be 50% chance of cards?

i.e. Is this by design, or just bad luck so far and just requires a lot more grinding?

To be honest, I am not sure if this is a good move. This penalises players in the lower leagues, who were already substantially penalised by the recent changes in the chest rewards. Also, what is stopping the bots from creating accounts and buying/renting 1000 CP of cards to farm at Bronze 2? Going down this trend, will Bronze 2 players be targeted next? That's a scary thought, knowing how the game rules can be amended just like that and within a short span of time. Just my thoughts. Have penned down in greater detail here.

Now should I stay in the bronze league where it's so easy to get a higher rating than in silver that you are lucky enough to get a 50% win rate unless you have high-level cards?

This is a nice updates and incentive for everyone 😃

By any chance, can anyone give my accounts some power for bronze 2? This would be a great help thanks. Account kaitm43, kaitm44

Bots are the problem and the majority of these bots users are old gamers who know the weakness of the system.

The problem is not the new users coming in the game and want to play the game organically rather than succumb to play to win model.

So for a new comer like me it will be harder to climb as I'm trying to buy cards with DEC so as to get more power but unfortunately it takes time.
Without DEC should I wait for season to finish and eventually get upset with random rewards?
I think I'll stop there even though Splinterlands is my best P2E game.
At least I lost $10 and 100s of hours. 😑

taking away dec rewards out of chests inturn for credits for bronze players was never going to stop or even slow bot production, unfortunately that is. but growing pains are understanding and part of the business

-splinterlife!!

The changes are really good and necessary and we players have a feeling that someone cares about the balance and economy of the game. The only thing that needs to change is not to apply decisions the same moment they are made. They should always be announced at least 15 or 30 days before they are applied ("The old rule is the best rule").
Although I am on the border between bronze III and bronze II, I think that after a few months of the game, bronze II can be reached. If you want to be among the best players with hundreds of thousands of dollars in assets in 10 days of playing, it's too much.

While I understand the need to get rid of farming accounts I don't agree with this strategy. I don't think that those farming accounts are operated by humans. I am quite new in the game, created account about a month ago. Not having luck with the chests and not sure I want to throw my money into this my collection power is very limited so I am spending my time in bronze league. On Bronze 3 almost all battles have standard rules making bots hard to spot but sometimes ruleset doesn't allowed magic monsters and you fight against turtle only xD.
Bots are the real problem as one individual can easily setup huge farm of accounts and since it is browser based game botting is simple. Moving rewards to Bronze 2 won't solve the problem. Bronze 2 is hard to get for new player since they don't know the game, renting is there somewhere but tutorial is not focused on renting. Bronze 2 is 10 dec/day so it will only make botters earning a bit lower and it will take longer for bots to reach earnings.
My ideas:

• Novice League should take longer and non standard rulesets should appear right from the start (Splinterlands is actually fun to play only thanks to ever changing ruleset so if you want to hook someone into the game give them all you have!)
• Winnings in Novice should give you cards to play with in Novice League matches. This way there will be rewards. New players will have a chance to play with more interesting and powerfull cards. Botting will be hard since higher rated players in Novice League will have better cards and won't be crushed every time by one simple strategy. Cards that you "won" in Novice League will not transition with you to bronze league.
• Introduce CAPTCHA. I don't like it myself but it works.

I think you are not very intelligent apparently, you tell us that currently many accounts are being created with new users and that this affects your economy and you seem to be blind, do not take it as an offense because many do it when they are spoken accurately, brother raise the price of the spell book, that is the real problem, not the rewards with DEC, anyone can enter very easily because it is a small investment to become a farmer, think about it and open your mind more, thank you!

Can't wait to see the SPS battle reward as mentioned in the article.
Also i think you have to help new players to build their power it needs crazy investments to get couple of thousands of power while there are others with millions of powers who no new player will ever be able to compete.

That CUB SPS Kingdom is paying out crazy nicely right now!

Im new here and hope to learn because the new patch is painful to me in bronze 3

Ok, balancing the game and preventing bot actions is great, but... newcomers like me (mainly living in a country where the dollar is highly valued) it becomes absolutely impossible to continue playing. All the money put into the game goes into the rental cards to get to Bronze II and at the end of the season, we're back to Bronze III and here we go again! Earning DEC for victory was the only viable and fun way to play, now that's gone. Finishing my DEC, it's game over for me. It was a good try.

So, i work hard to earn less than minnimum wage here in Brazil ( i earn like 200 usd/month, meanwhile minnimum wage is 256), and that low DEC helps buying a rice pack for my children in the end of a tight month. Now i see that i need to inject more money in order to earn the regular DEC because i still can't improve my account to bronze 2. Is that what i read?

And yes. Situation here in Brazil is almost miserable. College degree, Msc and even PhD means nothing, thanks to our flatearther anti-vax Trump clone president, BOlsonaro.

Thank you for the updates about upcoming changes. These players (or bots?) who undermine the game system are annoying and I fully understand that you have to find appropriate measures. To find these is very difficult, because it changes the balance of the game and like some other posters I am unsure if it is right to penalize all the honest beginners, who might become frustrated before they become hooked by the great qualities of the game.
But now, I want to draw attention to a completely different point, that has nothing to do with the recent changes, but is something, which annoys me quite a bit and I hope this is the right place to post this, because here we are talking about changes...
I am or more was a passionate MTG player (and investor) and have been playing Splinterlands just for a short while now. Since I have already made some investments in splinterlands too, because I am quite convinced that Splinterlands has great potentials, I now even earn a bit with it, still having fun.
But now I, like maybe thousands of other players, have the problem that for the tax return the income must be cleanly proven to the tax authorities. Unfortunately, Splinterlands only offers a barely usable report tool. It would be extremely helpful if the balance history had an export function. It would be even more helpful if a current conversion into USD and Euro was provided for each income. Currently, I have to copy out the many lines from the balance history in Excel every day, find the daily DEC/SPS rate somewhere on the net, and convert the DEC/SPS taken into euros for each day in Excel. This is very tedious and time consuming.

I would be very grateful for a short feedback whether a revision of the report tool is in planning. At least an export function where you can generate detailed reports about daily incomes (also giving the numbers translated into Dollar and Euro) would be great. I don´t want to become a criminal by playing Splinterlands and earning money.

I would also be grateful to hear, what other players are thinking about this issue and how they handle it.

Many greetings
lordwindgrace

I mean I understand trying to want to get rid of the bots, but it puts newcomers like myself in an impossible spot. I don't have the dec to rent enough to get out of Bronze III and I don't have enough SPS/vouchers to be able to buy packs.

Has Splinterlands thought about people like me as well? What is the proposed solution for us? Will we just have to grind for a year to get anywhere or will we just be expected to put more funds into Splinterlands? Surely there must be a better option for genuine new players?

Beginners will never advance in ranks with these new actions, these actions will harm the players and thus cause damage to the game

I - who am farming 12 accounts for the last 3 months - find this change necessary for the long term. Yes I could find a lot of benefits including DEC and rewards with my time grinding - 2 hours per day and all manually till recent, but I have always thought about bots who can do the same with multiple outcomes and flooding the market with all reward cards as well as reducing DEC value. I hope new players still find Splinterlands promising to invest. Compared to other crypto games that require hundreds to thousands of initial USD investment, Splinterlands offer a fair entry to anyone. Spend less than 100 usd and get it back soon is not a bad deal. Keep going with the plans and make the game shine even brighter, devs!

I understand that you need to take steps to control the economy.
I don't feel constantly reducing the rewards for low level players is the right approach.
Especially when higher tier players get exponentially more rewards.

I really wish you'd take steps to encourage players to grow as opposed to throwing hurdles at them.
For instance, when you gave EVERYONE access to cards even if they didn't own them that was GREAT.
It shouldn't be hard to build on that.
If you are going to reduce DEC rewards, instead give low level players account bound cards so they can power up and move to higher tiers. You can even cap how high the account bound cards can be leveled to minimize impact on the market.
And get rid of the potions from the rewards for the lower leagues... If you are a bronze player, or even a tier 1 silver player, you are never going to use even a fraction of the potions you get....

But anyways, good luck... I'm on a splinterlands vacation so I'll check back in a few months.

Updates are needed but new players just spent their money buying the spelbook and are being hurt.

Hello All, I am the new Bee in the Game.

I am not sure why we allow Bot to play the game. As currently, games like AXIE are trying to stop bots from playing auto farming. This Bot user will be making entry very difficult for new actual users.

Just Thought!!!

Has there ever been consideration to adding KYC verification to the game so an actual person is verified against an account (or limited number of accounts)?

I've noticed recently that bots may have moved into Bronze II. With more rulesets active for a game the bots currently seem to deploy incomplete teams. Perhaps adding more frequent rule sets to Bronze level games could be an alternate solution.

thanks for the news staking more now!@

Great to see more utility for SPS!!!

I just sent 49,516 DEC to my hive engine wallet. It was taken out of my account on steemmonsters but it has not been sent to me on hive engine. It has been an hour, do yall have support or is this the kind of situation where I will have to make a post about it before anything will happen?

I still dont understand why bots are permitted on the game; it seems like it benefited the early players and adopters but now it seems like it just hurts the noobs like me who are trying to understand an already complex and changing game.

such a great stuff