The WAX land sale on AtomicHub over the weekend was a huge success with over 7,000 plots worth of land sold over a 24-hour period. One of the primary goals behind the sale and the WAX integration in general was to attract new players to the game, and from that perspective it was an even bigger success with over 670 new players signing up since the sale started, over 20% of which have purchased the Summoner's Spellbook at the time of writing.
Overall, between the recent Brave announcement and the WAX integration the month of March has seen a significant increase in the number of new players coming into the game, and we hope to keep that momentum going through the remainder of the year and beyond. While getting new sign-ups is great, we also need to work on getting those players to stick around and realize the enormous potential that Splinterlands has to offer.
With that in mind, we have a bunch of smaller updates to announce which are planned to be released on Monday, March 15th, shortly after the end of the current ranked play season, unless otherwise specified. The majority of these items are a direct result of player feedback and many of them are also specifically targeted to helping improve the new player experience which we plan to focus on more heavily going forward.
Before jumping into the changes, we want to take a moment to welcome anyone who is new, and thank our existing player community who have been incredibly helpful and supportive in Telegram, Discord, and other social channels. Our awesome community is definitely Splinterlands' best and most valuable asset and we never take that for granted!
Updates to "Starter" Cards
Starting on March 15th, we are going to expand the set of "starter" cards to include the level 1 versions of all of the common and rare cards in BOTH the Untamed and Beta editions, regardless of when the player joined the game.
The "starter" cards are the cards that all players are able to use a level 1 version of in battles even if they do not own an actual copy of that card. This allows new players to try out the game without having to purchase cards first. These are also sometimes referred to as "Proxy", "Phantom", or "Ghost" cards.
Many players have commented that the current "starter" cards (which only include the common and rare cards from the Untamed edition) is too limiting and does not provide a good first impression of the game, so we hope that allowing new players to also use level 1 versions of the common and rare Beta edition cards in addition to the Untamed cards will help with new player engagement and retention.
The plan is that the "starter" set will include level 1 versions of the common and rare cards from the two most recent core editions, so that means that when the next edition of cards is released - currently known as Chaos Legion - after Untamed sells out, the "starter" set will include cards from Untamed and Chaos Legion instead of Untamed and Beta.
Please note that we will be looking very closely at the data and player feedback to gauge the results of this change and we may roll it back or adjust it if we find it to be causing problems in any way.
Finally, we will also be updating the UI to make the "starter" cards very clearly distinguishable from actual cards, as well as including a tooltip with additional information about them, which should hopefully alleviate the confusion that many new players have about these cards.
Limits for Accounts That Do Not Submit Teams
Another major issue affecting the new player experience is that there are a number of presumably broken bots that constantly queue up for battles but then never submit a team. Since these accounts lose all of their battles, they are all in Novice league and get paired up against new players, which obviously leads to a poor game experience for those players.
In order to address this, we will be making the following change: If an account does not submit a team for a Ranked battle three times in a row then they will not be able to queue up for another Ranked battle for one hour. This will continue to increase by an additional hour each time they do not submit a team. As soon as they play a battle and submit a team the restriction will be removed and they can enter the Ranked battle queue as normal.
This change is planned to be released right away instead of waiting until the 15th, and, as always, we will keep a close eye on the results of this change to ensure that it is having the intended effect without any unintended consequences, and will adjust if necessary.
New Daily Quests
Many of you have requested that we add some new daily quests into the mix, so here they are! The following two new quests are planned to be added with the March 15th update:
- Stealth Mission - Win 5 battles with at least one monster with the Sneak ability on your team.
- High Priority Targets - Win 5 battles with at least one monster with the Snipe ability on your team.
We hope that these new quests add a little more variety to your daily play, and we also hope to continue adding new quests in the future. Player suggestions for new daily quest ideas are always welcome!
New Rulesets
In addition to the new quests, we will also be adding the following three new rulesets to help shake things up and keep you on your toes:
- Explosive Weaponry - All Monsters get the Blast ability
- Holy Protection - All Monsters get the Divine Shield ability
- Spreading Fury - All Monsters get the Enrage ability
These type of ability rulesets are relatively simple to add and can make for some very interesting battles, especially when combined with some of the other, existing rulesets, so we hope to add more of them in the near future as well.
Limit Rating to League Maximum When Advancing
This change is meant to address a particular exploit where a player can accumulate a very high rating in a lower league and then advance to the next league at the end of the season and jump right into the leaderboard for that league. It will not affect the vast majority of players.
The change will make it so that when you advance from one league to the next, your rating will be limited to the max for the league to which you are advancing. For example, if a player with a rating of over 1899 points advances from Bronze to Silver league, their rating will be reset to 1899 (the max for Silver league), so that they will still have to compete in Silver league for leaderboard spots at the end of the season.
Last Call for Claiming Raffle Prizes
Finally, the Raffle tab will be removed from the Shop page as it has been well over a month since the drawing occurred and the vast majority of winners have claimed their prizes. Anyone who has not claimed their prizes will need to do so before the option is removed from the website on Monday, March 15th.
Roadmap Update
The following is the latest high-level overview of the Splinterlands development roadmap. Please keep in mind that the dates listed are estimates and are subject to change, as are the items in the roadmap themselves.
- Land Presale Raffle Drawing - Jan 2021 (COMPLETED)
- Mobile App Tutorial - Q1 2021 (COMPLETED)
- WAX Integration - Q1 2021 (COMPLETED)
- iTunes Store Mobile App Submission - Q1 2021
- Guild Brawls (v1) - Q1 2021 (v2 - Q2 2021)
- New Card Delegation & Rental System - Q2 2021
- Praetoria Map Release & Land Claims Redemption - Q2 2021
- Major new thing we haven't announced yet - Q2/Q3 2021
- Land Expansion Release - Q4 2021
- Boss Fights - TBD
- Achievements - TBD
Stay tuned for more updates from the Splinterlands!
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