For the past few years, Splinterlands has been my main way to relax and entertain myself amidst all the stress of simulations (in n dimensions of quantum mechanical states) for a unification that I know will never happen. I always counted on Splinterlands to relax because it was a simple and mechanical game, where with a plan and a basic strategy you could see a slow but continuous progress of your account. It didn't matter if your interest was focused on the financial, the strategic or the playful, because you could always perceive some degree of progress on each and every one of those fronts. However, that reality has changed radically over the past few months, to the point that I consider that from the playful aspect playing Splinterlands no longer makes any sense.
When someone wants to relax by playing a game, what they are looking for is to have fun and have a good time. The last thing you want is to end up stressed, angry, and feeling like you've wasted your time for an hour. Perhaps for those who see Splinterlands as an investment, the game is still interesting because they have the hope or faith that in some not-too-distant future their assets will appreciate, and with it comes the reward for so much effort. But without a doubt, in the current situation, investors are the ones who are least enjoying the game.
Personally, I am only interested in the playful aspect of Splinterlands. My interest has never been and will never be to invest in the game, at least not in the form of fiat money, since I have invested something that is worth thousands of times more in today's world than any currency or cryptocurrency, which is my time and attention. By the way, those valuable assets such as time and attention are perhaps the most undervalued in the Splinterlands ecosystem. There is nothing more valuable than those posts of complaints and tantrums that players publish, because they are true emotional manifestations of the interest and attention that those players invest in the game, but that go completely unnoticed and are sometimes even penalized.
Nowadays, from the playful aspect Splinterlands is unbearable. You spend hours and hours playing to always be in exactly the same situation, in the same ranking, battling against the same user accounts that are perhaps simple bots. The only thing you get as progress are glints and SPS. The value and utility of the SPS you earn with battles for your account are diluted much faster than what you can manage to obtain daily; so they really have little value. The glints can only be used to obtain more soulbound cards that only serve to keep you exactly in the same place in the ranking. That feeling that you are exactly in the same place at the end is what ends up being perceived as meaningless, and that makes you reflect and think that it is no longer worth wasting time on this game.
Where are the hundreds of hours invested in Splinterlands reflected?
The feeling of continuous progress or advancement is what keeps us motivated as human beings to persist in a task or activity. But persisting in tasks or activities in which there is no progress or advancement is perceived as acts of stupidity or madness. Therefore, it is essential that the Splinterlands game recovers that feeling of progress that it once had. A while ago,for me, the CP parameter used to access the leagues was enough. I did not care that I was advancing very slowly because I had a clear and precise objective and metric, until suddenly they removed it in an attempt to artificially manipulate the markets. It was supposedly very computationally expensive to keep track of that metric, but it was the only parameter that motivated me to continue advancing in the game. Since then, my interest in the game has been in sharp decline, until today, when I realized that I don't even take into account how much energy I have to play because most of the time I stop playing after four or five battles, and I start doing something else without even noticing. That's how boring Splinterlands is!
Splinterlands has become so boring that it's not even worth complaining anymore, because these types of posts that in most cases should be written with a lot of emotion (hey! attention and time), become a pain to write and even more so to have to read them. Luckily in Splinterlands there is no real community, except for those that are motivated by financial interests or greed, for which these types of posts usually go completely unnoticed or ignored.
If a player quits the game right now, and picks it up again a year later, chances are that their performance and achievement will be exactly the same. That is, that player will eventually get a new ranking that they will consistently stay at throughout all seasons. They will neither go up nor down in the ranking, they will simply be able to accumulate more cards to stay at the same point. The same thing happens if it is a new player, who if they do not have the cards, rents them, to stay in the same ranking and situation permanently. There is no way to feel like you are an advanced player who has invested time and/or money in the game for years, that is, you have not progressed in absolutely anything and there is no way for you to differentiate yourself from the newcomer. Your time and attention have no value in the slightest in Splinterlands!
The experience for new players
One of the aspects of the game that depresses me the most right now is finding teams of level 6, 7 and 8 (summoners and monsters) in the Bronze I or Silver III leagues. This makes me think that one of the following situations is happening:
- The players are so bad that they cannot even advance with a team of that level, the detail is that there are many of them and in fact almost the majority of the players.
- The players are so desperate because they are stuck in the ranking that they rent these cards to try to advance in the ranking in an accelerated manner, but evidently they still do not achieve it.
- Finally, the ranking system is designed intentionally or not to prevent players from advancing to the higher leagues.
In any case, the experience that a new player can have in these conditions is simply atrocious. This clearly shows that there is no structure or design to progress in the game gradually, that is, in this game there are no kittens but you are thrown right away with the lions. It must be very bad to live that experience as a new player, and in fact I doubt that it is possible to retain new players in such circumstances.
We know that marketing campaigns are extremely successful nowadays in achieving positive results if the money is invested properly. Therefore, I am convinced that the advertising efforts that Splinterlands plans to carry out will be able to attract a large number of new players, but at the same time, I am convinced that in the current conditions of the game, it is almost impossible to retain a high percentage of those new players. All these campaigns should only be considered successful if they are able to permanently hook a large number of new players. But if Splinterlands cannot keep its long-standing, experienced players hooked, will it be able to keep new players under the current conditions? I don't think so.
We need a real community
Finally, I think that Splinterlands lacks a true community. A true community is one that takes ownership of its product and seeks to make it shine and sparkle for the joy of all. A community is not one that is built with bootlickers and sycophants, whose shine is fleeting and illusory. A true community is built with abrasive elements that are constantly scratching and making scratches on the surface of that product, always randomly and unintentionally, until the entire surface is homogenized, resulting in a product with a perfectly polished and shiny surface. This is how gems are made...
I support your feelings and im glad someone talks about this :) The present state of Splinterlands made me take a break. I know i will come back one day but when? I really miss the old system. One thing i would say tho, the gladiator cards are what made me feel like my account was progressing. Cheers and thanks for sharing hehe
Thanks for your comments.
I think we are all on the same bus, with the same feelings. And precisely for me the most worrying thing is that no one even complains or writes about it anymore.
I haven't decided to leave Splinterlands yet, because I like the game, but I hate that now it's not even 10% as entertaining as it was a while ago.
And yes, the Gladious cards still have that nice feeling that you're making progress in the game. I hope that the developers do not have to improve this part of the game that still works correctly. If it's not broken, don't touch it!
Greetings...
I agree, after 6 years the game also lost me and I just bot my account now with an eye to get out. I do find Soulkeep actually much more fun & simple, and way cheaper to get into compared to Splinterlands. I believe the marketing will be a total deception as the new player experience is just still horrible and I don't believe it can even onboard that many players let alone keep them. The reality is that most do care about their investment in the game and that problem just isn't getting fixed. The sense of progression also needs to improve as now it's just the most extreme and frustrating Pay2win ecperience.
The way I see it, Splinterlands needs a new simple game mode where everyone plays on a level playing field which provides the most fun at an affordable price. I broke it down last week here
Hello @costanza. Thank you very much for your comments and your support.
I completely agree with you and with many of the suggestions you have made in your posts (post1, post2). The sad thing is that many of the suggestions that players make remain up in the air, ignored and/or dismissed without any type of response from the developers. I suppose that the vast majority of the suggestions made are not aligned at all with the plans and objectives that the developers have in mind, and therefore they have no opportunity to contribute to the future development of the game. But right there lies one of the big problems we have with Splinterlands, that the vast majority of players and investors in Splinterlands are not clear about what specific objectives the team is working on right now. Perhaps Splinterlands should publicly state the key questions it is asking itself about the current state of the game. The people in management almost always know what the problem is, and what the possible solution is, but the difficulties lie in how to get from point A to point B. That is where possibly the Splinterlands community could contribute more effectively and efficiently with suggestions that are completely aligned with the developers' specific goals.
The townhouses are nothing more than a salute to the flag, where they limit themselves to reporting the tasks that are routinely done in a company, when in reality they should be guiding or asking their players/investors what should be done to go from point A to point B.
And you are absolutely right, Soulkeep is much more fun than Splinterlands. I tried it several weeks ago and I was hooked, in fact that was the problem because I was playing for several hours until I had to tell myself to stop playing it. Now I only play it on the weekends because it's really addictive.
This is the most depressing point in the game. That feeling that absolutely nothing is being done to solve this problem, making people not give a shit if there are new players or not, since that will not generate any change in the situation.
Despite everything, I am convinced that the Splinterlands team is doing its best to alleviate all these disagreements with players and investors, even if they do not get the ball rolling.
Yeah, I also don't see it as bad intentions especially from Yabapmatt (most other devs likely just work caring most about maintaining their paycheck). It's also a lot easier to shout things than actually developing them and changing things. If anything it has been just frustrating to see the direction they have taken and most of all at this point just the lack of belief that things will turn around at some point. For the longest time I stuck to the idea that Splinterlands as a game had real potential. At this point this is merely some hope and copium.
I just did a summary on the year earnings of the 3 play2earn games I'm into (Link) and the main takeaway is that if the game fails to somewhat maintain core asset prices, there is no point to it because you will always lose more in that compared to what you can earn from the game and getting new players in this setup is exponentially harder.