Splinterlands Prepares a Few Reward System Updates

Two seasons into their new Rewards system, the Splinterlands team is ready to make a few tweaks. So far, their new system has worked very well, but the team is open to taking feedback and making improvements. These reward updates encourage players to find a comfortable league rank and stick to it, while also further discouraging reliance on Starter Cards as players rank up.

At the beginning of the next Splinterlands season, on June 28th, a few changes to their play and earn rewards system take effect. Nothing major. Just a couple of changes to encourage players to play the game rather than try to game the system.

First, the rewards chests from the Daily Focus will be based on the player’s league when the Focus quest started, instead of the highest league achieved from the previous season. This gives additional encouragement for players to try and play at the same league level from season to season. This does not affect the season reward chests. Those rewards will still be based on the highest league reached in the previous season.

Secondly, they changed how the formula for using Starter Cards reduces the reward share when winning a match. The reduction percentage is now applied to the player rating, making it even less rewarding to use the free, Starter Cards as a player’s rating increases.

They mentioned considering altering the way rankings reset at season’s end, which would be nice. It can be annoying to spend the first few days working your way back up to the previous rank. Especially with this change to the reward chests.

But Splinterlands has more in the development pipeline in regards to the reward system!

Future Reward System Updates

The Splinterlands team is also working on adding new Daily Focus options as well as updating the Daily Focus mechanic. They want to add Focuses that are for one Ability, like there used to be in the old Quest system. This would include Focus options like using a card with Snipe or Sneak.

They also talked about changing the Focus mechanic away from an all or nothing system. IE, they want to provide the option for players to earn Daily Focus points on every battle. The example they use is that having a Life Focus would reward the player bonus points for the number of Life cards used, not just for simply using a Life Summoner. So a player using a full Life deck would earn more than one using a lot of Neutral cards. Or someone could play a Dragon summoner, and still earn points by pairing it with Life cards.

Interesting idea, but that seems like it would not work so well with the Ability Focus. It’s kind of hard to put together an effective team that all have Snipe. I guess you could create a different formula for the Ability Focus calculations, but it feels like we’re making the system overly complex at this point. But since this is still a feature in development. Hopefully we’ll get some more details soon.

And finally, something that many players have wanted for a while, a Seasonal rental option. Card owners would have the option of setting their rentals as Seasonal. The card would still have a daily cost in Dark Energy Crystals (DEC), but both the owner and the renter will be locked into the rental contract for the current season. Neither party can cancel the deal, and the owner can’t change the rental cost. I suspect that many will still use the daily rental system, but this is a great option for those who want stability in their card rentals.

What is Splinterlands?

Splinterlands is a play-to-earn, trading card game that started on the Steem blockchain as Steemmonsters. However, over time the project changed its name and switched to using the Hive blockchain. The game plays in a browser. Thanks to cross-chain functionality, cards and tokens can also be traded on the Ethereum blockchain and on Wax. Splinterlands now also has a governance token, called SPS.

Splinterlands is a cross between a deck-building game and an auto-battler. Players use their cards to create a combat lineup based on the rules of the match. Then, once both sides submit their teams, the cards battle it out until only one team remains. Players earn Dark Energy Crystals when winning matches, and can also earn additional cards and other rewards through Daily Quests, Seasonal rewards and a recurring, two-week leaderboard contest.

Players combine cards to level them up for better stats and additional abilities. Cards come in both regular versions and rarer, gold foil versions. Splinterlands features its own in-game market and allows for buying, selling, and even leasing cards!

Read our full Splinterlands Game Guide here and visit Splinterlands.com to start playing.