The Campaign Mode is an excellent onboarding tool that is on par with successful MMO type games. I will take you through the journey and showcase how much of a good job the designers have done. As long as you are not expecting a magnum opus for all of video game onboarding; you will find this Campaign to be satisfactory. There is even some challenging parts towards the later Chapters of Book 1. The players will be forced to think and be strategic with their gameplay. They will have to use everything they have learned during the hand holding phase. This transition is natural and ties in with the story of Campaign Mode.
Frontier Mode Live in Production
Less complexity eases the learning curve. Part of the fun in @splinterlands is coming up with strategies to new combination on the spot during Battle. Not all players are going to be open to a more failure based feedback loop to learn more about the game. It makes sense to a have a version of @splinterlands that is low in complexity while making sure that it has minimum impact on everything else we have built over 7 years.
Making the Frontier Cards massively underpowered compared to other Editions is a smart way to deal with this new non Soulbound additions to the game. These Foundation Cards will not have much use cases in other Battle Modes. The Cards are not very expensive outside of some Gold Foil Cards and I expect the prices to come down as more players join the game and more Cards get created. Visit the game and check them in the Market.
We Have A Prologue + More
It is rare to see any animation while being a @splinterlands player. Providing a classic story along with interesting presentation and animation is a great way to take newcomers along on a journey and keep them trained with the game. Better success with gameplay is going to make the Spellbook sales go up.
I Had Already Completed Chapters
This was from 2 months ago when Campaign mode was first introduced. I played through some of the Chapters and wrote about the experience. I can definitely say that the Campaign experience has been improved. Earlier it used to be a decent single player experience which was good enough for onboarding. What I see now is a good Campaign for a Collectible Card Game (CCG).
When I was first completing the Chapters of Book 1, I could have called it a 3/5 experience. What I now see is a 4/5. Making the Cards not Soulbound while keeping them less useful in other Modes is a very intelligent move. We don't have to worry too much about Card inflation or balancing.
I Remember This Owl
This design was shared in a Town Hall from a long time ago. It was the early days of designing the New Player Experience. I am happy to see these past attempts coming to fruition with good results. She is coming into the picture around the time gameplay start to get a little challenging for the players.
Premonitions of a Challenge to Come
The Challenge Has Arrived
This is where I switched to trying out the new Frontier Mode. I though I had a decent enough Deck to get started with some Battles. There is a good variety in the Frontier Cards. If the Mana cost was reduced, they could even become a decent Set of Cards. The team has done a genuinely good job. I can see that the aim of onboarding new players and retaining them is a serious one. @splinterlands is not merely throwing money at marketing to improve things. The game itself is being rapidly improved.
Frontier Mode Rewards
Winning one of the rare Cards can be significant financial Reward. That does not mean they are going to come easy. It is possible to claim Rewards 3 times in a single day. That is 15 Battles won. That could very likely mean 30 Battles and at least 60 minutes of gameplay per day. One has to be very lucky to pull out a rare Card that sells for $100+ on Market.
The results are not bad. When compared to other things I could do such as writing an article to publish on blockchain and improve SEO and "AI awareness" of HIVE and many other projects built on top of it. @arcadecolony and @gls.goals do not receive large enough coverage. I should take some of my time to write more about them in future. We can all do a part in taking our DAPPs to the mainstream.