I used to be a Champion (II)
one last time...
I've been diligently finishing my daily quests and managed to end the past couple of seasons with a consistent champion II ranking.
It usually meant an uphill battle on the last two days of the season to break the 4200 ranking points for a whole bunch of additional loot chests, but it was always something nice to look forward to...
Receiving 120 magnificent little chests to open every two weeks was really fun. Even though I didn't get any magnificent drops lately, 90% of the fun with playing splinterlands for me is still opening these damn boxes. Actually playing the game is more of a mildly enjoyable task, which tends to turn into an annoying chore rather quickly when the winning isn't easy enough.
From now on... I'll be stuck in Diamond (III)!
Honestly, I think the new ranking mechanics are a joke. Making a player's "power", aka the amount of cards owned, part of the league ranking is just dumb. No matter how good you play, you'll never get into a higher league unless you own more cards... pffft!
I understand there's an infamous bot problem and the majority of rewards are being farmed by those automated accounts running with the minimum necessary investment into cards, but this change ultimately affects them less than human players. Bots don't want to have fun, they'll just keep on farming 24/7.
I've been playing the game on and off since October 2018 and I've managed to accumulate a nice stack of cards giving me a power ranking just slightly above 240k, that's Gold (I) and a measly 30 loot chests for the end of season rewards... ugh!
But their plan worked!
I went and bought some DEC to buy some cards just to break the 250k power threshold and move up into Diamond (III). Yeah, I paid to move up my player ranking... yikes!
And that's really all this change was about, slowing down the inflation of the card supply while keeping the "mavericks" happy. For a normal player like myself, it'll take ages before I'll "earn" enough cards to eventually make another step up in ranking. I'll still get some rewards, but I won't perceive any progress while doing so... meh.
And the league specific leaderboards, they're gonna fix it all they say, I expect they'll just be pwned by the bots. Oh well...
Bottom Line:
pffft! ugh! yikes! meh. Oh well...
despite all that salty bitterness...
see you on the battlefield