To say that 2021 is off to an amazing start for Splinterlands would be quite an understatement, and most of the new features we have planned for the year aren't even released yet! None of this would be possible without our amazing community of players, which is why we're happy to announce the following changes which have mostly all come as a result of your feedback.
Guild Brawl Updates
The new Guild Brawls feature has been live since the beginning of the month and we've spent a significant amount of time evaluating how they have gone and discussing the various settings and mechanics with players. As a result we have a number of changes to announce that are planned to go live before the next guild brawl starts this Friday, April 23rd, 2021.
Increased Brawl Cycle Time
Going forward, both the "prep phase" and "battle phase" for guild brawls will be extended to 2 days rather than 1 day. The "results phase" will remain as 1 day for the time being, which means that once the changes are released there will be a new guild brawl every 5 days instead of every 3 days as they have been.
We hope that this helps give guilds adequate time for planning and submitting their battles.
Reduced Crown Costs for Building Upgrades
As a result of increasing the amount of time each guild brawl lasts, we will be reducing the crown costs for building updates so that the amount of time it takes on average for guilds to be able to upgrade their arena (and soon barracks and shop) will be closer to what we originally intended. The updated crown costs will be as follows:
| Building Level | Old Crown Cost | New Crown Cost |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2 | 150 | 40 |
| 3 | 400 | 100 |
| 4 | 500 | 250 |
| 5 | 1000 | 400 |
| 6 | 1250 | 675 |
| 7 | 2100 | 1000 |
| 8 | 2500 | 1700 |
| 9 | 3750 | 2250 |
| 10 | 4500 | 3500 |
Fray Changes
The "frays" that are available in the guild brawls will also be updated primarily to reduce the number of gold foil only frays in the lower arena tiers. The higher arena tiers will still have more gold foil only frays (as well as just more frays in general), which we feel is appropriate for the higher level guilds, but it is clear that for the lower tiers there were too many gold foil only frays which caused a significant number of guilds to be unable to fill those spots.
There are also some other changes to the frays including some adjustments to the league level caps and allowed editions which we feel will also help more guilds to be competitive.
We hope that this change will allow more guilds to fill more fray spots and make for a better overall experience for all participants.
UI Improvements
Finally, the following list of UI improvements will be pushed out to the Splinterlands website which should help players to get a better idea of what is going on and prepare for the brawls:
- Show a count of how many active guilds are in each Brawl Tier (this is shown as a tooltip when hovering over tier stars, and as a line of info in the Brawl Settings pop up).
- On the prep stage, show a count of how many guilds have entered a particular Fray (shown as a tooltip when hovering over the Fray number).
- Show fray info tooltip when hovering over guild member names on combat & results screens.
- Show W / L / D record for guilds on ALL tab of results screen.
- Show some basic historical Brawl stats on Guild About page for previous 10 Brawl cycles (Brawls entered, Average Fray fill rate, Average Brawl Rank).
- Fix for minor display glitch on guild members list screen.
Rating Points Update for Ranked Battle Wins
Over the past few seasons some accounts in the lower leagues have been able to gain an abnormally high rating and easily claim top leaderboard positions for their league by playing very large numbers of battles especially earlier on in the season, likely via the use of an automated script or "bot".
Part of the reason this is possible is that in the current rating system the minimum rating point increase for a ranked battle win is 3 points. So these accounts are able to advance 3 points at a time no matter how far ahead of their opponent they are in rating. In order to try to address this going forward, we will be changing the minimum rating increase to 0 for Bronze and Silver league ranked battles and only when the winning player is above the maximum rating level for their league.
This change is planned to be released at the start of the next ranked play season which begins on Friday, April 30th. As always, we will keep a close eye on the change for a few seasons after it goes into effect to ensure that it is achieving the desired result and we will make any changes or adjustments if necessary.
CUB Payments Now Accepted!
Splinterlands is excited to announce that the CUB token on Binance Smart Chain is now accepted as a method of payment within the game! CUB is the token for the CubDefi project which is part of LeoFinance - a fellow Hive-based application and community for finance and investment.
Players can stake various cryptocurrencies on cubdefi.com (including DEC) and earn CUB tokens which can now be used to purchase Credits in Splinterlands which can be used to buy cards, packs, land, and more!
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.
Please note that we are prioritizing a significant number of back-end security and process changes as a result of the recent hacking incident which may push back some of the other items on the roadmap.
- Mobile App Tutorial - Q1 2021 (COMPLETED)
- iTunes Store Mobile App - Q1 2021 (COMPLETED)
- Guild Brawls (v1) - Q1 2021 (COMPLETED)
- Security Review & Updates - Q2 2021
- Guild Brawls (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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