We'll see how this plays out, but I honestly can't say I like the way this reward limitation (which certainly is needed) is being implemented.
Wouldn't it be way better to just lower the rewards in general and give reward bonuses to players who do have higher collection values based on their league? This would be a positive incentive instead of a negative one which is imo way better and allow all players to reach any league they are able to regardless their collection.
This system now basically makes this the only game I know where players are directly being blocked by a paywall with skills being no factor whatsoever. It also takes away all sense of progression for new players who from the start just get the message 'give us more money'. This while the game already had huge issues to convince new players that sign up to give it a fair chance.
I have been keeping close track of my affiliates and should get a good view on the impact by the end of next season. The conversion rate of new sign-ups getting the summoner's spellbook has been 45 out of 157 with most not playing more than 0-1 games.
The retention rate so far has been quite high with most who do give the game a fair chance continuing to play. I anticipate many now will give up on it.
I hope I'm wrong on this,
It might be better to think in terms of a re-investment wall.
If somebody is playing, and doing well in their league, they're going to be winning DEC and cards in chests. That'll get them closer to the next league.
No need to crack open the wallet unless they want to speed up the process.
The thing is, it doesn't matter what it is called as long as the player experience is bad. For existing players at the top, it won't make all too much difference. For new players, the psychology behind this new system is just the worst you can imagine. If I was a new player coming into Splinterlands right now my reaction (if I get passed more than a couple matches because the initial experience is still horrible) would be like stated in a comment above. "worst Pay2Win I've ever seen"
Let's find out together, shall we?
"lets find out together, shall we?"
easy to say when you are on top , but for someone who is about to be pushed to the bottom its a different story, this is not a positive change , this is a pay2win change, when before you had a chance to earn your way now its be stuck at silver for ever unless you spend $400 in cards, before skill and tactics had a part to play and made it challenging , now ? ill be on silver within the hour of season start and stop ... they already neutered the daily rewards ... i already earn more potions than actual cards on dailys and season rewards, which by the way i have no use for.
If you're a quality player in Silver League, then the next change, a month out; will put you on that leaderboard, and speed your progress toward gold with no extra money in.
NB: I got on top by being patient.
Above 4700 points, there is no winstreak and minimum is 3pts per win, not 10pts. So playing more does not give advantage. In pessimistic scenario, you can win 10 battles and gain 10x3pts and then lose 1 battle which means -36pts. So after 10 wins / 1 lose, you have 6 points less.
And it would work the same way above each league thresholds. So a bot with a win rate 70% (which is a really good win rate for a bot) won't be able to get top position anyway.
I think sm will be more successful appealing to players who will invest money rather than a bunch of bots farming the system anyways.
Realistically from reward cards how long would it take to get from my position now of a deck value $650 and needing min 80k dec burn value.... In diamond 1 as my max level I expect this would take me approx. 8 months to progress without buying the worst cards in the game at burn value, for example Yodin Zaku is $15 per card with what, 200 dec burn rate or something? Terrible idea making any game pay to win
I sold a gfl for approx 100k dec, I then bought a bunch of summoners for that 100k dec and their value was like 12k dec instead of 75k before with my gfl. it does not work out at all.
I feel your pain, my account is supposedly worth around $1150, im in diamond 1 as well, with a collection power of 447k. even if you took all my cards on the market away from the value its still over 1k USD value but cant get past diamond 1....
I'm selling my deck and would suggest you do the same bro, I loved the game but now with these changes to remove bots which actually boosts bots it harms the genuine players like me n you who invest upwards of $750+ and still can't reach the top leagues is insane! The only other game that costs this much to reach the top league is..... oh wait there isn't any!!! (even fifa ultimate team costs less)
In diamond 1 the rewards aren't worth playing for, so I'm out, discontinuing my splinterfilter.com site and I'm done...
This change is supposed to stop bots yet instead it does nothing to block bots and now the bots in lower leagues will actually get better rewards as they will end up finishing high places in each league...
Absolute joke of a system if you ask me, and I'd already told the devs how to block bots properly without needing to change rewards.... #1. IP limiter #2. Heat Map #3. Limit number of battles you can play each day #4. Hidden invisible recaptcha (no one would see it) #5. Honeypot trap. #6. VPN blocker. These are just a few methods that would easily stop 99% of bots lol.
The devs won't do that because a lot of them use bots. Lol
Wouldn't surprise me...
They rail on bots but surprise surprise they're in the servers where you find the gentlemen who make the bot.
So if I invest in a VPN service I'm out?
Also, some mobile internet networks popular in various global regions give new IP addresses every time they connect.
There's a tonne of services and games that aren't crypto related that you can't access from a VPN for their own security purposes. You can turn it off to play splinterlands unless you're some tin foil hat wearer that thinks splinterlands team will be tracking your toilet habits because they can see your ip lol!!!
I've never seen it that way, but it sounds draconian.
Until they add leaderboards for each tier, I know for myself there isn't much reason to play other than the daily quest and tournaments. There's not much reason to play ranked matches now to progress in rank, so I imagine it will be harder to find a ranked match if others are thinking the same.
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@dexy50/re-mattclarke-qg0v2y
"Wouldn't it be way better to just lower the rewards in general and give reward bonuses to players who do have higher collection values based on their league? This would be a positive incentive instead of a negative one which is imo way better and allow all players to reach any league they are able to regardless their collection"
This is the best point so far!
That's how I also see it and I have yet to see a counter-argument. This would basically hurt a bit at the start (just like switching all card rewards to the system where DEC/Potions were included). Everyone would understand that it needs to be done though and afterward nobody would really have a negative feeling about it.
Now everyone is just seeing how they are blocked by a ridiculous paywall.