During the last Axie Infinity season I was able to reach a peak rating above 1900. It felt good to crack into the top 50k and earn those higher SLP rewards.
During the offseason it feels like the ladder has gotten more challenging than it used to be. I don't know if it is just me, but it feels like even at lower ranks almost everybody has a good team.
Highly Motivated Players
Right now my rating is 1203. That means I'm below 1,000,000th place in the Axie ecosystem!! That's crazy. My team is pretty good and I play a consistent strategy based on what top players recommend in Youtube videos.
It's just not easy to rank up in Axie anymore. Almost every player is highly motivated to succeed. People are playing mostly strong strategies and a lot of my games come down to close endings where every single card placement matters. That's what happens when real money rewards are on the line.
I guess it's not surprising that paying people to play video games would encourage a higher level of play. Even at one millionth place, I have to play carefully to secure a 50+% winrate.
Mental Focus is a Challenge
I think the biggest challenge is to stay focused and play my best every single day. For me, especially with 40 energy, it is a lot of Axie every day. It takes me 2.5 to 3 hours per day to play all of my matches and do my PvE for my daily quest.
I'm fully focused maybe 50-75% of the matches that I play. The rest of the time, I get distracted by a bunch of things. It could be the cats in the house trying to get my attention, it could be something in a web browser on my other monitor, it could just be me thinking about random stuff. Whatever it is, it's easy to lose focus.
In Axie, a player who isn't focused will immediately have a worse winrate. The most important thing to do is to count energy so you know what your opponent is able to do on future turns. If the player isn't focused enough to count energy, that will be a big problem.
1300+
My personal goal is to consistently stay above 1300 during the off-season. My team is definitely good enough to do it if I can stay focused for all of my matches.
This way I'll be closer to the top 500k which is the top 25% of active players.
Which brings me to another point, don't get discouraged. With around two million daily active players of Axie Infinity, even getting above one millionth place puts you in the top 50% of players. It is a huge player pool and it takes some time and hard work to get good at the game.
Anybody who shows up every day trying their best to improve will start to become a good Axie Infinity player. That's my plan -- to get a little better every day until I'm easily maintaining 1300+ rating again like I did during season 18.