The Splinterlands team is excited to announce the second piece of the ranked battle overhaul - a completely revamped ranked reward system! The new system is currently planned to be released on Tuesday, April 2nd, 2024, during the normal maintenance window shortly after the end of the current ranked play season.
The Glint Token
Under the new system, instead of earning Reward Points for each ranked battle win, players will earn a new token called Glint.
The Glint token will be non-transferrable, and the formula for earning Glint tokens from ranked battle wins will be very similar to the current formula for earning Reward Points, which is primarily based on the player's current rating and then adjusted based on various modifiers and bonuses such as the type of cards used in the battle, guild building level, and staked SPS balance, among other things.
Additionally, as mentioned in this post, winners of Modern format battles will receive 50% more Glint than winners of Wild format battles (assuming the same rating and other modifiers) in order to encourage more players to play in that format.
Players will also no longer earn loot chests containing random rewards. Instead, the Glint token can be used to purchase a selection of different items in a new Reward Shop, which will give players much more choice and control around the rewards they receive from gameplay. At the end of each ranked play season, instead of loot chests, players will earn a significant Glint bonus based on their final rating at the end of the season.
Please note that the daily focus system will be removed as part of this update, as we would prefer that players focus on selecting the best cards for winning the match and not have to choose between that and cards that match their daily focus. We plan to implement a new system in the future that better achieves the goals of encouraging players to play more often, try new cards, and explore new areas of the product.
The Reward Shop
A new section will be added to the shop within the Splinterlands website where players can spend their Glint tokens to purchase all manner of rewards. The initial set of items that are planned to appear in the reward shop are listed below, however we plan to continually add new items to the shop over time to provide players with new and interesting options on which to spend their rewards.
Please note that spending Glint in the Reward Shop will require the Posting key as it part of the normal course of play and does not allow any assets to be removed from the account.
Soulbound Reward Card "Draws"
The primary items available in the reward shop will be five different levels of what we are calling "draws" that will grant the purchaser a random card from the current soulbound reward card set. These will be very similar to the old loot chests, except that they will only have reward cards and no other types of rewards.
The more expensive draws will have higher chances of receiving higher rarity and gold foil cards, as well as higher chances of receiving more copies of the card, just as the different loot chest tiers have in the past.
One major difference between the reward shop "Draws" and the previous loot chests, is that now players can choose which level of draw they want to purchase. Lower rated players can save up their Glint in order to purchase the more expensive Draws to get higher chances of Legendary, Epic, and Gold Foil cards, and higher rated players can purchase larger quantities of the cheaper Draws if they prefer to get more Common and Rare cards.
Additionally, the cost in Glint of each tier of Draw will increase by 50% for each 10 that are purchased by an individual player during a ranked play season. This helps to limit the total amount of reward cards that are awarded each season and also allows the lower tier Draws to be reasonably priced without allowing high ranked players to buy ridiculous amounts of them.
Keep in mind that in addition to saving up Glint to purchase more expensive Draws, players may also choose to save up their Glint until the next set of soulbound reward cards is released (currently expected this summer) in order to get a head start on collecting them!
The full details of each Draw, including pricing and chances of different card rarities, foils, and quantities, will be available on the reward shop page when it is released; however, players can expect them to be very similar to the five different tiers of loot chests available currently.
Please note that players will still be able to claim reward chests from previous seasons / focuses for a time after this update goes live, however that ability will eventually be phased out and any unclaimed chests will be lost.
Merits
Players will also be able to use Glint to purchase Merits in the Reward Shop which can be used to purchase Guild items like Gladius packs. Merits will be offered in batches of 200, and like with the Reward Card Draws, the price will increase by 50% for each 10 batches of Merits purchased with Glint during a ranked play season.
Energy & Potions
Glint will now be able to be used to purchase Energy and Potions as well. The cost for Energy will be determined by the player's current rating (as is already the case when purchasing Energy with other tokens), and will increase for every 25 Energy purchased each day like normal. Potions (both Legendary and Alchemy) are planned to have a fixed cost in Glint which is not planned to increase.
Limited Edition Titles
Finally, we plan to offer three limited-edition in-game titles as part of the initial Reward Shop that are geared towards high rated players who may already have the reward cards that they need and want to save up their Glint for a larger purchase.
Initially, these titles will be the only transferrable items that will be available to purchase with Glint. There is planned to be one Rare title, one Epic title, and one Legendary title available, each with a limited quantity. Each account may only purchase one copy of each Title from the Reward Shop using Glint, and once they are all purchased then those titles will no longer be available except through the peer-to-peer market.
The full details, including the titles themselves, the cost, and the available quantity, will be shown in the Reward Shop when it is released.
Future Items
As mentioned above, we hope to continually add new and interesting items to the Reward Shop over time to give players more options on how they would like to spend their Glint. These might include the option to purchase specific soulbound reward cards, special promo cards, skins and cosmetics, mystery chests, or even items and resources that can be used in later phases of the Secret of Praetoria expansion - so be sure to check back in the Reward Shop regularly to see what's new!
SPS Reward Changes
Some players may have noticed that one thing that was previously available in loot chests which is not part of the new Reward Shop is the SPS token. One of the main considerations when designing the Reward Shop was that players would only be able to use Glint to purchase soulbound items that allow them to improve their account in-game rather than to purchase transferrable items that can be sold to extract value from the ecosystem (with a few exceptions such as the very expensive, limited-edition titles).
Therefore, as part of this update, the SPS token reward pools that were previously allocated to season and daily focus loot chests will be moved into the ranked battle reward pools for Wild and Modern format. This means that the amount of SPS received from each ranked battle win should increase significantly starting in the next ranked play season.
Burning Soulbound Cards
Last, but not least, as part of this update Soulbound Reward Cards will now be able to be burned for Glint at a rate of 5x the card's Collection Power, and Gladiator Cards will no longer be able to be burned for DEC, but instead for Merits, at a 1:1 rate.
This effectively creates a "dust" system, similar to those present in other trading card games, where players can burn unwanted soulbound cards in order to purchase more soulbound cards to try to get the cards they want, or to purchase other items in the Reward or Guild shops.
Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!
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NOTE: All rewards from this post will be sent to @sps.dao
The shop part is fine, great idea actually. Can´t wait to see it!
But I´m noticing that it won´t matter how much we improve onboarding, player experience, looks and so on when the game is turning to a Pay to play?
With the excuse of nerfing bots, Wild format, wich by its nature will always contain the entirety of the sets, has become something like a black hole. Deprecating the value of sets that don´t fit in "modern" and already deprecating older "modern" sets. Being as it is, everyone can see that eventually their cards will lose value over time. The opposite that you would expect from a system that tries to create value by scarcity.
Then there is to consider all the people that invested but don´t have time to play wich saw the bot as a way to get involved. They will have to incline towards selling/renting everything, and wild format cards get further depreciated, as does player database. Its fine, lets pretend none of this is a loss for the ecosystem. Bots are far worse!
Now, modern league! Made you a great place. Player to player, intense action, adrenaline, all the goodies. Everyone is encouraged to play here!
Lets build our account! But what are we playing for? to be the best? you can´t, need to be rich first. To maybe complete your collection? get them all?, Nope, you will only earn untradeables that are burnt for other untradeables. You have to buy the actual sets. Maybe overtime I snowball? yea...no. You will always have to buy the latest set. And send your oldest set to oblivion. Maybe I can earn sps to sell and buy more cards? Well, the sps you earn is automatically staked, and you need to wait a month to get it + you need to stake as much as possible if you want rewards up the ladder. If I sell the older set before it goes to wild? then buy the new set? Well, you will notice that it sells for less than you paid for, since you know... it goes to bot land...
You are silly, the idea is to rent everything! Ok, very complicated subscription, for a game where you would expect to collect and own assets. (Is a soulbound really an NFT if it can´t be traded?)
We managed to nerf bots, but sacrificing cards value over time, as they soon "expire" and go to bot land. Players wont buy "old" cards or play wild because it is nerfed. And to be competitive in modern we have to buy all the new stuff, and we don´t even get a return to buy the next new stuff, because whaterever we get is either soulbound or locked. Is this really play to earn?
I like the game, but. If it is for just the fun and nothing else, it is too expensive to play. I don´t see the possibility of attracting new players, either investing or just playing, when everything is complicated, expensive and unrewarding. And as we are now, cards and sps depend on each other so deciding to take profit likely means to sell everything. How would that work out if sps gets into binance and price spikes up?
Sorry for the catharsis everyone! I really wish the best for this game. If someone is able to, help me find reasons to trust and stay. Correct me in what I said wrong.
You're spot on with all of this. Now if only if the Splinterlands team would listen but it seems to always fall on deaf ears.
I suggested a way to make the game more fun/accessible without having to poor hundreds or thousands into it.
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@dmah/attracting-new-players
Im really not a fan of this. I always found Modern to be less fun than Wild and now because of bots old cards will further lose on value because you cant earn as much in Wild as in Modern.
Why take this path? Why punish players?
The rest of this is fine. A new token is probably an overkill. There should be a way to merge a bunch of this stuff all together and affect rates.
Merits and glint could probably be the same thing and supply adjusted based on game mode.
Why take this path? Why punish players?
This. 100% this. Made a similar comment on yesterday's post. I can't understand why the shots in the foot, between good overall changes. And any new player will think twice in investing knowing that, things staying the same, after some time the only way of not having rewards nerfed and playing in bot heaven is to invest more and more.
Agreed not a fan of it either. I only play wild. Not sure why you would punish people that have older cards like beta etc you know the ones that supported from the start and still support.
You see it as a punishment and I see it as a reward for players who acquire new cards to play in modern.
We must not forget that it is a company that has to make money and to do so it releases new editions that it wants to sell, which is why they encourage the modern format to encourage sales as well. We always see everything from our position but we have to put ourselves a little in the company's shoes.
It is a punishment, all cards become old, if they lose their value, there's not much point buying new cards. No doubt they will have to change this again, shame they keep making stupid mistakes, I hope that trend stops soon.
I have no Guild anymore, there is no PVE, my Cards are not suited for Modern, no clue what those changes all mean honestly. I dropped everything into the rental market, waste of time at this point.
I love these new changes.
Looking forward to this.
Looking forward to the Reward Shop getting populated with more and more items! I love when I have choices!!! Thanks :)
I'm looking forward to it too. Maybe finally I will be able to max some of my SB Legendaries that eluded me for far too long.
haha indeed! Same boat, you and me xD prob many more as well :P
Ayayay, this is so cool! Reminds me more and more of world of warcraft now where we earned DKP to buy Eeeeepiiiics! ;) haha love it!
And then the GM went rogue and ran away with the Warglaive of Azzinoth, kek bur :D
Hahaha kek bur😂👌🚀
Well, let's go
I would like to give an honest opinion about the updates:
Firstly, players earned 50% more in the modern format, that is, if the person does not have cards in the current format, they will always receive less, in other words, with each release of card packs our options reduce, given that today most of them are in circulation from modern it is CL.
As I understand it, the game must undergo updates and improvements, but with more tokens and fewer NFT cards, for an NFT game, it ends up being somewhat confusing as to the direction the game is taking.
I believe that changes are necessary to maintain the gameplay and quality of the game, however, I think that decisions that affect the player at this level, should be launched as a proposal and the holders vote, or suggest changes, we hear about "bringing in" new players, but Are we not pushing the old ones away?
Splinterlands was a game that we recommended to friends out of love, not just because it was crypto, today I see many dreaming for that feeling to return so the game can grow again.
please, no BOTS, no playerd help, no scripts, OR SPL IS DEAD
Hahaha. I laugh to keep from crying. The user experience is on the floor, and now with these changes that are coming, much more.
I'll have to burn all my Gladius cards for dec before the update and not play any more brawls.
I wonder when we will be able to sell the soulbound cards? Created under the promise of sale after a while, but nothing at all.
Less sps now that we won't get them in chests. The play2earn is looking more and more like a web2 game where only the company earns $.
Regrettable
Wild players do not deserve to be punished this way. Create a system for the bots. There are still real players in wild
It seems that the main Web 3 NFT game is becoming less and less NFT every day. First, gladiator cards: not NFTs.
Soulbound cards: also not NFTs.
Now, glint: likewise not NFTs. Things are getting interesting around here.
New NFTs are still there in plenty, Rebellion is in full force!!
Soulbound rewards are a great complimentary addition that make the game more fun.
I like the idea of the rewards shop and the RPG feel this adds as more and more story elements are integrated into the game, same as has been done with conflicts. These creative efforts make the game more intriguing, it will help the new player experience and retention if the day after your first experience you are still thinking about something interesting from the game.
Just some random thoughts!!
"Soulbound rewards are a great complimentary addition"??? Sorry what, an addition? They were a damn subtraction. We used to get tradable rewards that had actual value, which is what we understood when we spent thousands of dollars on cards, only for them to move the goalposts and say sorry guys now you can only have worthless cards that you can't trade. An addition? And "complimentary"? gtf outta here those rewards were earned through paying thousands for a damn deck
That is actually a good point. The promise of the game and their founders (including Matt) in the first years was, to offer a decentralized game, wher you own the assets. In addition there is a free market and value determined by this approach.
We have completely lost that path. The company makes changes more and more in the ecosystem, trying to fix the unfixable. And losing it´s core and unique selling point.
Thanks for the update, anyway good luck.
"Good luck" has some meanings here.
I miss the old Splinterlands, when I play for fun in my free time ans earn some $. Now, the team is focusing on making $ than playing experience.
Good luck to Splinterlands
I do think that it is still a great game for anyone who has been in the Orca Range, 20-50k$ in Cards, or upwards. That is not where I am, so lay back and observe it is.
Will potions get used on draws the way they currently affect loot chests, or is rarity/GF chance determined solely by the tier of the draw?
Good question! Yes, potions can be used with draws just like they could with loot chests.
This was great to hear!
Must be a joke 😬, burn useless cards for another new token in a game that should focus on improving game fun, player retention and attract new folks. Adding another useless token might indeed attract thousands of new players from the outside, well done 😂
I do wonder how long until another token is introduced to help the eco system.
DEC
SPS
VOUCHER
MERITS
GLINT
I think i will not be playing at all in future, glad i burned all my gold gladiator cards before this current update.
I lost hope with DEC, every other token seems like a nail in the coffin. Devs just can't resist printing their own money. I never thought I would become a Bitcoin maximalist, but now I see the advantage of fixed supply, compared to infinite tokens.
What's up with the Wild format? Are you punishing those who enjoy the classic collections?
If they are going to punish the Wild format that heavy WHY not give me an option to swap my Wild collection for RB one?! This is NOT fair at all
You have that option. You sell your Wild cards and buy RB cards. ;-)
I think the team want more players to purchase Modern Cards/Packs and create more match liquidity for the new players. Although I am one of the players disadvantaged due to this change, I think this change could be a good move for the long term. We need more players!
I think you have the right point on this, however if this is the thinking of the team behind the updates, they may lower the price/need for older collections.
Then those new cards become old and useless, what's the point in buying them? I could see the point if old cards became more valuable, now I think this game is guaranteed to fail, unless they stop punishing people that invested in it.
A lot of people commenting here seem to forget one pretty important thing - the rating inflation in Wild is WILD. You can get in Diamond with literally any deck which has a few SB cards and some supporting CL/RW cards at low level. Yeah, and what? - you may ask, well, you basically earn right now a lot more chests in Wild than your level of deck should actually be earning compared to a similar deck in Modern. 50% more Glint is totally justified having this in mind.
That is not the fault of the player I guess. You are now trying to make it look like it’s the fault players that this is happening. We proposed kyc. The team said no and they created 2 formats to accommodate bots now things are working in favour of bots the team is now trolling back making it look like it is a crime to play in wild. I actually think these changes should have be really discussed in an all inclusive manner not the direction we are taking. Even we propose to ban bots completely and make it one format the team also said no. Ruling with a fist and disguising to be aspiring decentralization.
I'm not saying it's the fault of the players. :-) I play my alt in Wild (manually) and I am in Diamond on it. I earn almost as many chests on it daily as my $10,000+ Diamond account cause currently Diamond Modern is a Bloodbath. I don't really care whose fault it is. All I am saying is that my alt account is earning probably 20X more than it should in this disproportionate rating distribution in relation to card levels.
Btw, I am totally fine with the team creating a bot-free Wild League, so we end up having a Bot-free Modern, a Bot-Free Wild and a Bot De-fi Wild leagues. Especially since they are planning to provide liquidity with company-ran bots. I don't think we can ever pass a full ban of bots, so we will have to figure out something else.
The unitial agreement was to put 50/50 prize pool right?? So what is wrong with that now lol ?? By reducing my rewards in wild you are making it look like it is a crime playing that mode and it also tells me that the plan of separating modes is not working otherwise we should just go back to the old system of one mode of play. Not this drama of saying we will put 2 modes and there is also no guarantee that people are not using bots in modern. It is also proving that the problem was not bots lol
It also tells players "If you buy any cards from us, you can bet their value will be ruined in a couple of years when you can only pay them in wild."
Exactly, this goes totally against what they said from the start, older cards should be more valuable. I'm sure they will have to do something to make older cards worth buying again, or they will see all their long term investors leaving.
KYC is one of the worst forms of centralization and it is against the ethos of cryptosphere. Having special sections of the game that has optional KYC is fine IMO. Locking players out through KYC on the other hand is inexcusable. KYC completely goes against decentralization and permissionless systems.
I know and understand this very well however spl team are working on both sides at the moment the game is not fully decentralized. My thinking is since there is now a Dao important decisions like this change was supposed to be greatly discussed now how it was implemented. I am quite certain we lost a ton of players due to this
That doesn't matter at all, because a more fundamental consideration is that decentralised play to earn gaming being sustainable is the most asinine brain AIDS idea ever hatched. If you put cash on a table and say "Hey guys, come get some free cash, but you can only take $1 per person, but I'm totally not gonna check your ID, or check who you are, or watch who's taking what off the table, but I just trust you'll just take a dollar each," guess what happens. Ok so now do you want a) play to earn gaming not to exist at all or b) play to earn gaming to exist with KYC?
I am agree with your point,the previous system already taken care of this but still since old player good variety of collection of cards, it help then to grow at higher level without having new cards. This is not players faults if they have good vintage and summoner collection.
I’m not a fan of the changes yet remain hopeful that it will at least mix up the game to make it a little better for existing players with the shop vs chests. I agree it sucks to have wild be “punished” but also understand SL needs to incentivize people into modern to buy more packs for revenue. This would all be a moot point if they instead pushed to grow the user based. Instead we’re stagnant and the market is saturated with existing players who don’t really feel the need to buy new cards. I certainly don’t knowing that in a year it’ll lose 50-75% of its value and I can’t recoup that in SPS or reward cards. Therefore the company is taking the approach of trying to incentives players to burn their cards which is a solution but hardly a good one. Plus, shouldn’t those soulbound cards be unlocked soon so they can be sold on the secondary market? Why burn them to “try” and get the one I want when I could wait till they unlock to purchase the one I want? And apparently we’ll need to pay a fee to unlock them?
The issue remains that we’re not attracting new players and none of these changes address that. We get an average of 200 new accounts each day and only about 3% of those people buy a Spellbook. I would wager of that 3%, 1-2 of it is existing players opening an alt account. The conversion rate needs to drastically increase. The game first and foremost must be fun and right now it is not fun for new players.
Here is how we attract more players and increase the conversion rate on spellbooks.
https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@dmah/attracting-new-players
How does wrecking old set card values incentivize us to buy new sets? It just makes it clear that if we do keep buying cards, the team will ensure they're worthless in a couple of years, and frankly that puts me off
Same here, I stopped buying new cards because of the insane supply. Now I know they won't hold value, there's no incentive to start buying them. They will have to add value to old cards, or people wont buy new ones. I'm sure some people sold old cards to buy new ones, that doesn't work now.
Cost for every individual player will increase? Not the general cost? I mean if we save up at the start we won't wake up one day and draws cost 10x more because other ppl bought out?
And then at the start of the season it all goes back to 1x?
50% seems a bit too much. There are still some real players playing Wild League ('m NOT one of them, just for the record, I don't have cards for that, lol), do we really wanna discourage them from doing that?
30%, or something like that, seems a bit more reasonable.
But, hey, that's just me. 😆
oh, btw, FIRST! ❤️
Yes, it's per player, so other players' purchases will not affect you. As for the Glint bonus for Modern, I don't believe it is too much. We really need more players in Modern and I believe that it makes sense that players need to have and use the newer cards to earn the newer rewards.
Well, as an all time wild HUMAN player, this just makes me a little less likely to invest, actually. You're maintaining a bad situation - a gameplay type full of bots - and making it worse, efectivelly. You need players, period. And nerfing one kind of play (which in my opinion is by far the most fun, and I'm likely not alone) and keeping an uneven playing field certainly doesn't help neither the npe nor the existing player experience. Just my two cents. As for everything else, a big thumbs up for the changes!
i would say i agree with you
No, I'm all for more players in Modern, that's for sure. But I do have to feel for the OGs that still rock around the Wild 😎
It is quite obvious why Modern needs more players, isn’t it? No one is stopping the team from getting rid of the bots in Wild. But there’s one thing about Modern that Wild doesn’t have: you always have to buy the latest cards, or else you can’t play there anymore. And that’s the whole point. Kill the card values so that they can sell more packs yourselves. Ridiculous. There are plenty of other ways to generate income in the game, which would be important anyway. Because even if there weren’t the Wild problem, every new edition would dilute the card values. And instead of addressing or countering this problem, it’s actually made worse. Why? Because people are too lazy to explore other sources of revenue. Here’s a little tip: don’t allow third-party markets; the company loses a lot of revenue. But no, instead, they’d rather destroy the players’ wealth… and think that people would still invest in something that they know will lose value in 2 years and not gain value. No one invests in something without the hope that it will rise in the future… 🤔
No worries about OGs, they will anyway soon
Dude, my shit-a** alt with CL at silver level with a bunch of cards missing, a few silver level RW cards, and a bunch of SB cards is now sitting in Diamond in Wild earning almost as many chests as my main which has cards which cost over $10,000. I just spam SB summoners for 20 mins per day in Wild and that is my whole commitment to this account. Yeah, I do play it manually. You can't tell me that Wild takes the same level of investment and therefore risk as Modern. So, yeah, 50% more glint is totally fine... ;-)
We're not all pro players like you 😆💪
Yeah, all the level 1 bots and I are the only pro players in Wild Diamond... :-D
Will we still get the chance to unlock soulbound cards? or is the only option going to be to burn them?
👍
We should be caution about this dust system. If most of the players burn the excess bcx of soulbound reward cards, how does a new players enter the game after the next set of soulbound reward card to obtain the out-of-circulation soulbound reward card?
Even when soulbound reward card can be unlocked at a cost, there will not be sufficient bcx to meet the demand of new players. If new players can not obtain a card to be competitive and having fun in the ranked play, they will quit the game.
I think that the store will keep the reward draws separated by edition so that new players can get them. This way there is no need to unlock soulbounds.
I am looking forward to the items that will be added to the Shop. Hopefully, one day, grains can be usable in that shop too. Just to clarify, players can now earn Glint and SPS in Ranked battles, right?
I like how Splinterlands is now trying to get inspiration from other games. The burning system is a good idea. There are quite a number of useless soulbound cards and now we have use for them instead of being designs in the arsenal. I do hope they do take Yugioh's balance system as well. In Yugioh, some old cards are errata or change effects in order for them to be usable in the current format.
There are a lot of old cards in Splinterlands and a lot doesn't use them now even in wild because the newer cards are much better. There was a summoner for fire from Beta series that increases melee damage by 1 for 3 mana cost. BUT why use that if you have Tarsa who can increase not only 1 melee but also 1 health for an extra mana cost (total of 4)? Therefore, the previous summoner is now useless.
Thank you for the update
Peace
Happy Battle on Splinterlands' board
IM READY FOR THIS LETS GO
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My journey continues! What new rewards await me in the #Splinterlands?
Burning all my GF gladiators and most of the unused ones. Stocking up on DEC
Thank you sweet baby Jesus - this is a major step in the right direction...
Next - paying "X" to break those chains and unlock the Soulbound constraint :)
my only regret is the last rule about soulbound cards and the way they can be burned from now on.....except from that everything else seem to me very good changes for the game...
The closer this comes and the more I think about it, Splinterlands seems to be heading in a bad direction for players and heading away from the crypto ethos. I believe I'm going to stop buying new packs for awhile and see how this shakes out in case it might be time, (earn-ability; past time,) to sell out and head in a different direction myself.