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Splinterlands | Pay2Win Balance Issues !

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Costanza
@costanza
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3 min read

I have played Splinterlands on a daily basis during 2020 which brought me some enjoyment and certainly nice earnings, but also a lot of frustration with the direction things have gone as they completely broke the actual gameplay making it right now feel like nothing more than a scheme. This is what playing Splinterlands feels like right now...

I have been complaining about how Splinterlands turned full pay2win mode (See Post) in the most extreme way since they introduced the Collection Power Score and the League Leaderboards. I was told things were going to balance themselves out and matching would eventually become more even. Now, many months later, nothing has changed and the worst part is that these issues don't even seem to be on the radar of the devs to be fixed as it has all been about the land sale and the rewards.

Basically right now when you play the game, you need to choose between 2 options.

  1. Try to compete for the League Leaderboard Rewards, deliberately staying in a lower league which reduces the daily & season rewards while you get matched with lower-level opponents which gives you a lot of easy wins making it so that completing the daily quest doesn't take any time.
  2. Try to reach a rank as high as possible to maximize the daily quest & season rewards with the side effect that you will get matched against players you have literally zero chance to win against in many of the matches
  • The 1st option gives fewer rewards but also less frustration.
  • The 2nd option gives more rewards and a lot more frustration.
  • Both options don't provide a fun gaming experience 90% of the time!
Before the League Leaderboard was implemented, I had the idea to make a fun contest post making screenshots of decks that face each other making other players guess who ends up winning the match. Right now as a player who is competing for a top 30 spot in the Gold League with mostly Level 5 Summoners, this is what matches look like for me...

These 6 matches were not selected to make a point, they are just played in chronological order getting the wins handed out to me and it continues for many more matches. ( 7 | 8 | 9 |10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 |15 | ... )

When you look at the top of the Leaderboards you see these insane win rates which are 95% pay2win and maybe 5% skill.

It is such a shame to see a game that used to be fun turn into nothing more than a money milking scheme for both the devs and the players. There is so much potential to it and despite everything, I still kind of enjoy the collecting part while following the developments that are made seeing where it all goes despite the current direction. For as far as the game itself goes, right now it's only a question if the rewards are worth the time at the moment and I guess they still are with the naive hope these ridiculous pay2win balance issues will be fixed on day by the team (@aggroed, @yabapmatt, @byzantinist, @cryptomancer, ...)

I do plan to make a post with possible solutions somewhere in January.

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