Splinterlands Updates

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We hope everyone is staying safe and healthy and getting through the various forms of lockdown in effect all around the world. We want to ensure our community that work on Splinterlands is continuing and has not slowed down in the slightest during this pandemic. If anything it seems like the pace of work has been increasing, and we are excited to share some of the upcoming new features and changes with you!

Player Titles & Profile Updates

First, we are adding custom player "titles" that will be shown after the player's account name everywhere in the game. The first titles will be "the Untamed" which was included in the $1000 and higher contribution tiers from our recent crowdfunding campaign, as well as the custom titles from the $10k packages. In the future we will also be adding additional titles for players to earn in various ways as well.

Adding titles to the game required design updates to every part of the game where a player's account name is shown - which is a lot! You can see some examples of the changes below. Additionally please note that for the moment the titles will be purely vanity items and do not give any advantages or benefits in the game. In the future, particularly with the previously announced expansion, we plan to give tangible benefits to the different titles.

If you have a title, it will not be automatically applied to your account. To apply a title (as well as other profile changes), you can click on your account name on the top right of the game and choose the new "Profile" option to bring up your player profile popup. This will now have an edit button which will allow you to choose from any available titles you own to apply to your account. You can apply or unapply a title at any time.

Titles will also be transferrable in the near future. We are working on an inventory screen in game for players to manage all of their non-card NFTs, which includes titles, skins, and some new items that will be added in the future. We also plan to create a market for these non-card NFTs as well so they can be easily bought and sold just like cards.

You may have also noticed that the avatar images have changed as well. We will no longer be using the Steem account profile pictures for a number of reasons. Going forward players will be able to choose from a set of 20 avatar images and we will be adding additional special avatar image NFTs that players will be able to earn, trade, buy and sell.

Those of you who have tried the mobile web app at https://m.splinterlands.io should already be familiar with the new avatars as they have been used there since its launch.

These changes are scheduled to go live on Monday, April 13th at around 10 AM ET / 14:00 UTC. The Untamed titles from the crowdfunding campaign will also be given out to eligible players on or before that date.

While these changes are purely UI related, a number of back-end API calls were updated to add additional information around the player titles and avatar choices. The API changes should be fully backwards compatible and should not include any breaking changes. Any third-party developers who would like to utilize this new information or test anything out before the release can contact @yabapmatt on Discord for access to the testnet site where these changes are already live.

Price Feed Average Time Change

In the past the game used a 12-hour average for the market prices of the various cryptocurrencies accepted in the game. This was changed in an emergency update to a 3-hour average after the Hive hardfork on Friday, March 20th, 2020 as a result of the very large and quick drop in the price of STEEM.

We plan to leave it at a 3-hour average going forward as this will lead to fewer issues with fast, large movements in cryptocurrency prices. The current prices in use by the game are always available at https://api.splinterlands.io/settings.

Rating Adjustments at Champion I League

The rating system used in ranked battles in the game is based on the standard ELO rating system most commonly used in games like chess, but with a few modifications. The modifications are the win-streak bonus (which doubles the rating increase for the 3rd win in a row and onwards) and a rating increase minimum of 10 points (meaning that if you beat someone with a lower rating than you and your rating would have increased by less than 10 points, it will increase by 10 points instead).

These two modifications were made so that players' ratings will generally increase over time as they play the game, even if they are not winning more than 50% of their battles. This is quite common in games like Splinterlands and without it it would become far too difficult for players to progress in ranked play and can be very frustrating.

Things are a bit different at the top of the rankings, however, and the ELO rating system modifications are allowing some of our best players to run up very high ratings before the end of the season. Obviously the best players should have the highest rating, but it is exacerbated by the rating system modifications which are really meant for players in lower leagues.

As a result, beginning at the start of the next ranked play season (on Wednesday, April 15th, 2020 at 20:00 UTC) once players reach the Champion I league at 4700 rating points they will no longer receive a win-streak bonus or have a minimum rating increase for wins. We expect that this change will make the top spots on the leaderboard much more competitive.

As always, we will keep a close eye on the results of these changes and listen to player feedback to determine if the results have been positive and if any additional changes are necessary in the future.

New Rulesets

Last, but not least, we have two new rulesets that we will be adding into the game! The first is:

Heavy Hitters - All Monsters have the Knock Out ability.

This ruleset should encourage the use of a lot of Monsters with the "Stun" ability, as well as the "Cleanse" ability to remove Stun from friendly Monsters.

The second new ruleset is:

Equalizer - The initial Health of all Monsters is equal to that of the Monster on either team with the highest base Health.

We think this will be a fun ruleset as it will let a lot of "squishy" Monsters with low health be able to take some hits, and it will require some additional anticipation of what your opponent might do.

These rulesets are planned to be added on Monday, April 13th along with the titles and player profile changes.

Development Pipeline

We also wanted to keep everyone up to date on what is coming up next in the development pipline. We're excited to report that we have completed the initial development of "anytime" tournaments (thanks to @cryptomancer) and are undergoing internal testing. We expect to start public testing of those within the next few weeks.

After that, @cryptomancer is also working on creating separate leaderboards for the different leagues - which is something the community has been requesting for some time. This will allow skilled players who don't have max level cards to still compete for recognition and prizes each season against other players with similar sized card collections.

Many more details about both of these will be announced when they are closer to being ready for release, so stay tuned for that and more updates from the Splinterlands!


Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!

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40 comments
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I love the new rule sets.
Any update regarding the potion and skill manufacturing, buying buildings etc. kind of stuff???

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The Equalizer rule set sounds fun, just imagine Furious chicken with 14 health, like cross breeding Godzilla with Farm Yard Hen.
20200406_181739.png

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Why 14 ? The Peaceful Giant has 17 Life and I think summoner buff +1 Life and Strenghen will also count isn't it ? So 5-Mana-Water-Summoner + Sea Genie and Mermaid Healer will be 20.
But the strenghen-ability will loose her charm if not only you but also the opponent take advantage from her.

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To be fair as I was half asleep and I didn't check the max stats

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OK I found also not the maximum. @jacekw pointed out that it can be even 21 with the dragon summoner.

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It can be 21. Dragon summoner + Black Dragon + Scale Doctor +

  • Wood Nymph + Failed Summoner
  • Sea Genie + Mermaid Healer
  • Corrupted Pegasus + Shadowy Presence
  • Lord of Fire + Zalran Efreet
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Cool, I didn't thought about the Scale Doctor.
But in the end it's the question if strenghen is really so usefull in this ruleset as it not only helps you but also help your opponent.

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Looking forward to the asynchronous tournaments! Also the profile stuff is a nice addition!

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Pretty cool updates will make it interesting with the new rule sets!

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Exploding Dwarf will be overpowered in that new Equalizer mode. Is Splinterlands really thinking this through?

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Yes, that's kind of the point of the whole game - certain cards are very powerful in certain situations and very weak in other. The skill is in knowing which to use in which situations and anticipating what your opponents will do.

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They're still under 1.5c, can't understand why they're not being snapped up.
I just bought a heap of gold foils uner 50c
4 of those get you to level 6, with pierce, blast and retaliate.
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and here's that same card if he brings a Molten Ogre with him.
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The bots have farmed them and put them on the market at a stupid price. I'm buying all I can.

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Hahah these new rules will surely be something fun to mess around with! Though I don't think furious chicken needs a hell of a lot of health, it will certainly be fun to see a max HP chicken.

Thanks for the work and updates! Too bad the Steem blockchain is pretty spotty lately, I've had several matches get cancelled due to the poor performance, and opening packs this morning I lost out on figuring out what I got due to request timeout.

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What about some trivial things like ability to select any card for the battle from the cards we have (chicken is perfect example with and without melee)? This was mentioned multiple times on Discord.

New rules are always welcome.

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I imagine spells and items would be the best avenue for that.
The cape of gentleness prevents a card from attacking.
I'd wrap Brownie in that cape so fast :)

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very nice... looking forward to all this. Those anytime tournaments sound great

  • Any chance of a filter with attack speed hi low or low high?
  • any update on the land purchases?
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Looking forward for the offline tournaments. That should bring some fun in addition to the daily quests.

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What's the idea behind: "Rating Adjustments at Champion I League"?
I really don't understand this change. They went really high because they are good and play a lot. Some players remember playing in Champion 1 without Win Streak and describing it as frustrating. Current system already is frustrating, but with this change will be even more.
Example: Player with the full deck that plays only quests (not much in general) at the end of the season might have few hundreds points less than somebody at the top, so player on the top after loosing with him will lose let's say 35 points, as the player on top have no opponents with more points than him, getting back this 35 point will take like 10 games? This definitely will be frustrating.

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This change is completely unnecessary and will only make the game very frustrating for a lot of players. I know that the current rating system is not perfect, but it is far better to leave it as it is than making it even worst. I am also one of those players who remember playing without the win streak and it was a truly horrible experience which was taking away almost all fun from playing the game.
Also, I'm pretty sure that this will change nothing at the very top of the rating. Why? Because the best players already have a win ratio of around 80% and more so this change will not affect them much. But it will affect others who will try to catch them.

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mebey i bad to english but is ther talk abuot the new tournment in this post?
and what will this name Titles do good for me?

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Well actual ELO ranking system for Champion is a start. Soon the rest of the leagues will have their own ranking system. But for now I guess I'll keep having my $200 silver accounts ending up in diamond league against the people that spent thousands of dollars.

And of course looking forward to game play improvements like Play Anytime tournament!! Always the thing I've been most excited about.

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Equalizer is going to be huge and fun. thanks for thinking up this crazy rule set. Can't wait to have some overpowered fun 😎

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Very nice change. I think the champions league will be much more interesting with this change.
If the top-ranked player loose in the moment 36 rating points in one match he can get this back in 3 matches (+10, +10, + 20 because of winstrike) - if he now get only 3 points he need 12 matches to get back his old rating.

But I have one question:

"once players reach the Champion I league at 4700 rating points they will no longer receive a win-streak bonus or have a minimum rating increase for wins. "

If a player reach 4700 he will loose the winstrike and the minimum rating increase, but what will happen if he fall back under 4700 - will he than again able to have a winstrike bonus and the minimum rating increase or will this change be active until end of the season ?

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It will change nothing at the very top of the rating. Remember my words.

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OK I will remember and check it in the next season.
I am very curious.
In every case I am in doubt if we will really in the next season see ratings over 8000, I let myself be surprised.

To be honest I was really surprised that @jacekw was dominating the last season so clear - I mean in the end he had even 630 points more than @bji1203.

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And I'm not surprised at all, he is currently the best player playing this game ;) And I agree that there will be no rating score around 8000. Or maybe someone will surprise us?

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This game is going to be a heavy hitter. It will knock out every other dApp on the Steem blockchain. :D
By the way, I am also excited about the upcoming achievements. When will the achievements arrive?

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(Edited)

Is it also an update to reduce the delegation of steempower to the players ?

I play since the SEED/Germinator-Campaign and bought the starter pack but now I could not play anymore and I checked with steemworld, that steemmonsters cut the delegation from 60 Steempower to 20 Steempower a little bit less than 2 hours ago.

Why you do so ?

I have not only took part in the SEED/Germinator-Campaign but I also invested in the last kickstarter campaign 1005 USD in the game and now you are so greedy that you cannot let me the delegation of 60 Steempower to be able to play or how I should understand this ?

And you do this without any Advance warning ?

So please I really wait for an answer from you - thank you in progress !

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The delegation from the steemmonsters-account to me was cutted from 40 Steempower to 0 - two days ago. Is this also part of the updates ?

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Interesting rules. I have never tried the knock out rule yet and the equalizer will be a gamechanger for many battles. I see the fire splinter being a big beneficiary from the equalizer

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(Edited)

The two announcements at the end are just awesome! Asynchronous tourneys, and separate leader boards, both awesome editions to the game, congrats!

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Very excited to test out the equalizer ruleset! I've barely seen any stun units so no idea what to think from heavy hitters... Doubt it will impact me much down in gold...

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