I was playing Splinterlands earlier and I was pretty good, I enjoyed playing it and it was fun. I had invested some money to it and had a OK deck.
If I remember right, I usually reached Diamond. I even made it to Champion III. Then Splinterlands updated the game requiring certain value/amount/level/whatever of the deck for every league level. I was capped at low-silver because of my deck. I had been able to play on goddamn diamond and champion level and now was stuck on silver. I sold pretty much all my cards after that.
Yeah, I think that would have sucked, especially feeling like the investment was wasted. Looking back, it was probably a good call as a differentiator for Leagues - but I agree, if you have the skill, the cards shouldn't matter that much. But - it would also suck to get pushed into leagues to play against people with full decks and the skill to use them.