Splinterlands Updates

Ranked Updates for Champion I League

At the start of the current ranked play season we removed the win streak bonus and minimum 10 rating point gain for players in the Champion I league. These changes were made in order to try to prevent players from being able to run their ratings up to very high levels just by playing more games.

After reviewing the results and feedback from this season it is clear that these changes made it too difficult to move up in rating at all at the Champion I level, so we need to dial it back a little bit.

Starting with the next ranked play season, which begins on Thursday, April 30th at 02:00 UTC we will be re-instating the 10 point minimum rating increase for Champion I league players. Please note that the win streak bonus will still be disabled in the Champion I league.

We hope that this change will help adjust the base ELO rating system to account for the element of randomness in Splinterlands battles (as compared to a game like chess) while also prioritizing win rate over sheer number of battles in the highest league.

Swiss Format / Anytime Tournaments

We are extremely excited to announce the first end-to-end test of the new swiss format / "anytime" tournament system has recently taken place on our test environment! We identified a number of relatively small bugs and UI improvements that we are working on, but technically it all went very smoothly - kudos to @cryptomancer once again for that!

We plan to open the system up to the Mavericks to help test on the test environment in the near future, and then barring any unforeseen issues it will be released to the live site for everyone!

We will likely start off with smaller tournaments to make sure the system is working properly at first, but after that - get your collections ready for some big tournaments with high dollar-value prizes to celebrate the launch!

Please note that when the new tournament format is released, cards played in ANY tournament game will have the 7-day cooldown applied if they are transferred (just like they currently do when used in Ranked battles). Additionally, cards that are on cooldown due to having been recently transferred will not be able to be used in any tournaments. This is necessary to prevent players from using the same set of cards across multiple accounts in the same tournament. This change will apply to both the new and existing types of tournaments.

Steem/Hive Engine Booster Pack Transfers

As a small, but hopefully helpful update, we have added the ability to transfer booster pack tokens into the game from either Steem or Hive Engine directly from the game website. You can click on the 3 dots icon next to the quantity of booster packs in the "open packs" page and choose the new "Deposit Tokens" option.

That will bring up a popup allowing you to specify how many pack tokens of the selected type you want to deposit into the game, and from which platform you want to deposit them.

Then it will set up the transaction for you and prompt you to approve it either through Steem/Hive Keychain or SteemConnect/HiveSigner. This should hopefully alleviate the issues of players sending the pack tokens to the wrong account by accident.

We are also working on updating the design for the pack options to make it easier to see and use than the 3-dots button, which is very easy to miss.

Mobile Web App Updates

We realize it has been a long time since the last update to the mobile web app. There have been a number of issues that have come up that have slowed down the development there but we hope for the pace to pick back up in the near future.

We expect the next update to be within the next week and it will primarily include the addition of the "Shop" section and the ability to purchase Credits, Untamed booster packs, Essence Orbs, and Potions. It will also include a number of bug fixes for issues reported by the player community.

Finally, we have been simultaneously working on the version that we will submit to the Google and Apple app stores which we hope to have ready for submission within the next month.

Splinterlands at Virtual Blockchain Week

Finally, Splinterlands will be taking part in the upcoming Virtual Blockchain Week being put on by the team from the Bad Crypto Podcast (on which we were also featured last September).

From their website (virtualblockchainweek.com):

Virtual Blockchain Week promises to be a one-of-a-kind virtual conference focused on creating valuable education and entertainment by hosting a dynamic mix of industry leaders, innovators, futurists, and thought leaders who will share valuable insights on the current state of the blockchain industry, how our digital future is being shaped, and what is NEW on our horizon after the effects of the global crisis. The event is free for general admission tickets and will be streamed live on major social and video platforms for six consecutive evenings from 6:30pm -10pm Eastern Standard Time (EST).

Splinterlands is currently scheduled to make a brief presentation on Thursday, April 30th at approximately 9 PM EST. There will likely be booster pack and Summoner's Spellbook promo code giveaways at that time too, so be sure to check it out!