I've stumbled across Parallel in early September and have been playing ever since. I've already talked about a lot of what they are doing right in my recent article. Something that was added after that article, though, is their Battle Pass and I have to say, this one is really brilliantly set up! Being the Splinterlands Maxi I am, I'm not only going to talk about how the Battle Pass works and why I think it's great, but also give some ideas on what Splinterlands could borrow from their design. Let's get right into it!
In Parallel, each season lasts 30 days and each season has its own Battle Pass. It's made up of two tracks, one that is free and one that you have to pay for. Access to the premium track is 2400 Glints, parallels premium currency, which equals about $15, depending on the package you bought. Both tracks are unlocked in the same level structure and if you have access to the premium track, you get rewards from both tracks at the same time.
To advance the Battle Pass level you need to accumulate experience, which is given out for all kinds of activities in the game:
- Winning matches
- Completing daily quests
- Completing the weekly challenge
- Collecting a bounty (Which means defeating 20 players)
- Using different keys to buff your experience gain
As of now, the exact amount of experience you get for the different activities is changing constantly, so I won't get into the details here. Nevertheless, this system creates a very rewarding game play loop where more often than not, you'll find yourself close to completing another quest or fulfilling that bounty. Once you've done, though, you maybe only need one more win for the next reward level and thus you just keep going. This is something that is working really well for me and at the same time something I'm missing a bit from Splinterlands. Once I get into two digit reward chests I usually just stop playing eventually because playing another game just doesn't feel worth it.
Right here I'd need two more wins more the next chest and so I just stop. With a Battle Pass in place that would provide different rewards or incentives, I might play a game to further my Battle Pass only to then realize that I only need one win for my next chest and so on. By providing different levels of incentives, I stay more attached to the game and that's something that Parallel understands very well.
It's not the only thing I really like about their Battle Pass system, though. The obvious reason to care for the Battle Pass are the rewards, and there are a lot of different rewards available:
- Apparition Packs (Containing Ghost Cards)
- Keys that boost your experience gains
- Glints (the premium currency)
- All kinds of cosmetics
- Tournament access tickets
- Titles
- Cards
While a lot of these rewards are interesting on their own, the most relevant one is no doubt the new card. Every season, there's a brand new card in the Battle Pass that can only be obtained there for the whole season. After that, the card is added to the apparition packs, but if you want the NFT, you do have to buy the Battle Pass and you have to make it to level 30 during the season. Only then are you allowed to mint the card as a NFT, only having to pay the ETH gas fees in order to do so.
This is what really sets the Battle Pass apart and it's a great way to keep players engaged and reward them for sticking with the game for the whole month. Last season, the exclusive card was Mirielle, the Ghost of Mars and as you can see down below, only 1300 copies of the card were minted:
The card is tradable on Open Sea and I could sell it right now for about $100 which is pretty decent considering that I only had to pay $15 to get access to the Battle Pass. Now Mirielle was a pretty strong card and moving forward, not every card might be as strong, but I'm still pretty confident, that the card value is always going to be higher than the cost for the Battle Pass, simply because getting to level 30 does indeed require some discipline and time spent. So again, to me that's the perfect combination of keeping players engaged with the game but also handsomely rewarding them for sticking with the game the whole month.
This concept is exactly what I'd love to see for Splinterlands as well and I really think it wouldn't be too hard to set it up. One Battle Pass could be good for two seasons, so we'd only have to have 12 new cards per year. To achieve that, the next reward card set could simply be a little smaller and the cards could actually be split out across the year. Each of the cards would then only mintable during its corresponding season and would go out of print the moment the Battle Pass ends. Now for Splinterlands, we'd obviously need to make some adjustments in terms of when you can mint a copy because we require multiple copies to get to max level but I feel like that could be figured out. Minting a BCX could also always require a voucher, giving these a small additional use case.
I really hope we'll see something like this coming to Splinterlands eventually but at the same time, I'm really excited to see what the guys at Parallel will come up with next. It's really refreshing to take part in another game again. While they obviously make mistakes just as we do, they also have a lot of interesting new ideas that could be really interesting for us as well! If you do want to try Parallel, they are still in Closed Beta, but if you ask nicely in their Discord they should usually grant you access pretty instantly.
And that's all from me for today, thank you all for reading and see you next time!