As we have mentioned, the ranked rewards system in Splinterlands will be a constantly changing and evolving process over time as more data becomes available and as players continue to adjust their behaviors to the new system.
This post is a follow-up to the last ranked rewards update post here (@splinterlands/upcoming-changes-to-the-new-ranked-reward-system) and we will continue to post regular updates as we evaluate the data, listen to community feedback, and make adjustments.
Completed Changes
The following two changes mentioned in the previous ranked rewards update post were released on June 28th, 2022. Initial indications show that they have generally been favorably received by the community and are helping to move the rewards economy in the right direction:
- Daily Focus Chests Based on Current League
- Starter Card RShares Reduction Formula Change
Changes Planned for Week of 7/18
The following changes are planned to be released during the week of July 18th, 2022, after the release of the Modern & Wild format changes for ranked battles the week of July 11th, 2022. The first two changes below were already mentioned in the last update post, and the others are new changes just being announced.
New Daily Focuses
We will be implementing new daily focuses based on using cards with certain abilities, rather than just cards from a certain splinter/element. The plan is to add between 10 to 15 of these types of focuses. Each one focusing on a few different abilities with a common theme. For example, a focus based on playing at least one card that has either the Sneak, Snipe, or Opportunity ability.
These new focuses are to be added alongside of the existing element-based focuses so it will be possible to get either type of focus each day. Please note that not all of these ability-based focuses will be available in the lower leagues, due to fewer cards having certain abilities in lower leagues. We have evaluated each of the new focuses based on how many cards have the required abilities in each league to ensure that players will always have a reasonable number of cards to select from for their daily focus at all levels of play.
Daily Focus Mechanic Update
We are changing the daily focus mechanic such that instead of an "all-or-nothing" system like it is currently, each win will always contribute focus points toward their daily chests even if no daily focus cards are used. However, each card used that follows the daily focus will give a bonus to the amount of reward shares earned for that battle.
For example, if a player has a Life element daily focus, then they will still earn focus points based on the rshares earned from a battle win even if they use a different element, but if they choose the Life element and use Life cards in the battle, they will receive bonus reward shares for each Life card they used.
Please note that using focus-specific cards will provide a bonus to the overall reward shares earned, which will apply to focus points, season points, and DEC earned from the battle - just like the other bonuses that can be earned by using gold foil cards or older edition cards.
Additionally, the number of reward shares required to earn both the daily focus chests and the season chests will be increased across all leagues as part of this change to compensate for the increased amount of reward shares that will be earned from battles through the new focus-card bonuses.
Focus Splinter/Element No Longer Guaranteed to be Active
The above two changes allow us to no longer set the player's current focus element to always be active for every battle each day.
Going forward, players will need to have a more diverse selection of cards in order to ensure they will have cards from an active splinter in each battle. Players owning or renting more cards is something we are looking to encourage. We hope this change will help drive even more demand and value to the card market.
Changing Minimum Card Rental Time to 2 Days
We will be updating the rental system by setting a minimum amount of time that a card is able to be rented to 2 days rather than the current minimum time of 1 day. Rentals and payments will still be handled on a daily basis, the only change is that the minimum rental time for all cards will be 2 days instead of 1. This also means that if a rental is cancelled by either party within the first day, it will not end until 2 days have passed since the rental started.
After the minimum 2 days have passed, then rentals will still continue on a daily basis as normal for payments, cancellations, and extensions.
We believe that this change should have a minimal impact to most players - especially when combined with the other changes mentioned above - but it should help to reduce some exploits around renting cards for a single day and burning down the ECR on an account. Please note that we will continue to monitor data and it may be necessary to increase the minimum rental time in the future, but we wanted to start with a smaller change and see how it goes first.
This change is also separate and unrelated to the new season rentals feature announced in the last ranked rewards update post. This feature is still in the works and is discussed in more detail below.
Adding Merits as a Chest Reward
SPS rewards will be coming to guild brawls in the not-too-distant future, and as a result we expect to see increased competition in the frays and higher demand for the gladiator cards!
In order to help encourage more players to join guilds and participate in brawls, we will be adding Merits as a possible chest reward across all leagues. We expect Merits to be found in approximately 10% of reward chests. For this change to occur, we will be decreasing the percentage of chests that currently contain reward cards by 10%. This change will help slow the distribution of reward cards and hopefully help them retain more value going forward.
The number of Merits received from a chest will be randomly determined in a similar manner to how the DEC chest rewards are calculated. As always, higher league chests will contain far more Merits, on average, than lower league chests.
Finally, the "Merit Bonus" from the guild store building will also apply to Merits earned from the reward chests - so make sure to upgrade your stores! For example, a level 3 store will result in 40% more merits that are found in reward chests!
Higher Potion Quantities in Higher Tier Reward Chests
One additional, smaller change is that higher league reward chests that contain potions will give larger amounts of potion charges, just like they give larger amounts of DEC tokens. For players who purchase packs, potions can be very valuable, and going forward getting into higher leagues will provide significantly more potions from reward chests.
Future Changes
Season Rentals
We discussed the plans for season rentals in the previous ranked rewards update post so you can read more details about it there, but we wanted to mention it again here so everyone would know that it's still on the roadmap.
Replacing DEC rewards with SPS
As most of you are probably aware, the year long SPS airdrop is quickly coming to an end. Shortly after the airdrop ending, we hope to implement the SPS rewards for ranked battles in order to reward players with SPS tokens for their participation in the game.
The plan is that all of the current DEC rewards for ranked battles - including tokens awarded for ranked battle wins and in focus/season reward chests - will be replaced with SPS tokens. This way there will no longer be a huge supply of DEC tokens entering the market from ranked battle rewards which will help stabilize the price around the value at which we accept them in the shop.
There is a fixed supply of 7.5M SPS tokens per month allocated to ranked battle rewards, and this supply will be portioned out between ranked battle wins and focus/season chests, with a separate pool for each chest tier.
All of the exact details about the SPS ranked battle rewards will be provided before it is released, but we expect that it will significantly help towards our goal of incentivizing players to move up to higher leagues in the game rather than using multiple accounts at lower leagues.
Finally, please keep in mind that even at current market prices the overall value of the 7.5M SPS per month available for ranked battle rewards is significantly higher than the value of the DEC tokens currently awarded through ranked battles on a monthly basis, meaning the overall amount of rewards available to players will continue to increase.
Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!
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NOTE: All rewards from this post will be burned.