Yeah, it sounds crazy but since the SPS staked requirement was put in place, at the end of each season I have to lose a lot of battles to not start in the silver league the next season.
(
This is all part of my game strategy and I guess it's the game strategy of most new players who are at the bronze league level.
Why do I need to lose battles?
The reason is very simple. After carefully analyzing my assets in SPS (around 1500), the strength of my card deck, and the amount of time I've decided to play in Splinterlands, it turns out that my best league is bronze.
Therefore, at the end of each season my position in the rating must be at most Silver II. With this I guarantee that next season I will be able to play in the bronze league, since the season rating reset of silver II is 850 points.
But, this season I screwed up because the last day of the season I went fishing and completely forgot that I was already in silver I. Consequences: this is going to be a bad season for me!
This whole situation makes me realize that new players, especially those playing at the bronze league level, are at a huge disadvantage in almost every aspect of the game.
The reason for playing in the bronze league is easy to understand. At the bronze league level and with a good deck of cards accumulated in recent years, although not all of them are at the maximum level for said league, you will be able to win about 14 chests of rewards a day. Of course, this is possible in the wild format, since trying to compete in the modern format right now with the rewards that you get per battle and having the greed mode activated by players who should be playing in the higher leagues, is just stupid.
My strategy is to play the first 12 days of the season in the bronze league and then move up to the silver league for the rest of the season. This has two main objectives. The first objective is to improve the quality of the end of season chests by obtaining silver level chests. The second goal, and perhaps the most important one for me, is to battle with silver level teams, which requires a lot of skills and level upgraded cards (at least level 3).
With this strategy, I manage to earn around 180 bronze level reward chests daily and between 22 and 26 silver level chests at the end of the season.
In the contrary, if I start playing in the silver league from the beginning of the season, I only manage to win one or two chests a day. Although they are silver level chests, these rewards do not compare to the rewards that 14 chests provide even if they are bronze level. Also, if I start the season at silver level, in the end I only manage to get at most 19 or 20 chests of season rewards.
Intentionally losing battles is an art!
I love playing Splinterlands, especially since I have to continually develop battle strategies. Contradictorily, although I don't use any type of bot, one of the things that has hooked me the most about the game is the large number of bots that participate in the game. These bots create combinations of monsters and summoners that surprise me very often.
Honestly, the bots are the main reason I keep playing Splinterlands. Perhaps, since I am not focused on the economic aspect of the game, as the project still does not generate a modicum of confidence in me like investing my own money, it is what makes losing battles against bots not as dramatic or important as for the rest of community.
So when I decide to move up a league what I'm really looking for is facing better structured monster teams, not the monster teams on steroids that use 3 or 4 legendary cards to win battles for pennies.
And this is where the real fun begins. Try to climb to the top of the leagues with only your own cards, without renting entire decks of cards or SPS to get maximum points in each battle. For me, this creates a real sense of progress, without falling into the trap of renting or buying your progress. In the end these shortcuts created in splinterlands I think are the ones that lead to boredom and the need for more and more frequent changes to maintain interest in the game.
The problem is that some days I get too excited, and I end up winning a lot of battles and climbing very high in the leagues. And therefore, I must correct my enthusiasm and start losing battles intentionally so that my rating does not go up beyond Silver II.
At first, losing battles seemed pretty easy, you just click the battle button and let time pass without introducing your team of monsters. But it turns out that if you lose three battles in a row in this way, your account is suspended from playing for at least an hour. Therefore, this is not the correct way to lose battles.
The second thing I tried was to introduce random teams of monsters and see how the battles turned out. Well, the result was that I ended up getting bored because I was wasting my time and energy on something meaningless. No emotion, no interest in continuing in the game.
The last thing I've been trying is to create stricter rules for myself when creating my monster lineups. For example, that I can only use mana 5, or that I can only use magic cards with blue color on the card, etc. Just to increase the chances of losing the battle.
But despite all this, when the excitement for the game has been good, and I have to lose more than 200 rating points, everything seems to be against me and by losing the battle, you barely lose 3 or 9 rating points. I have reached the stupidity of battling between 12 and 20 times to be able to go down to silver II. And each battle means that I lose a unit of energy that takes an hour to recover.
This whole situation leads me to the next question: Shouldn't there be an option in the game that allows you to start in the lower league that best suits your game strategy?
Perhaps, it is not the case for most of the players. For now, I will continue with my game strategy, which is the best option that I have managed to develop and which allows me to continue having a high interest in continuing to play splinterlands.
I'm getting higher and higher in the rating, and maybe soon I won't have to lose so many battles at the end of the season to go down to the bronze league. But, even so, I imagine what a player who is just getting into the game would have to go through, and whose true interest is the game and not crypto speculation.
Hopefully the devs turn on some sort of option that allows you to level up and you don't have to intentionally lose battles. I'm sure this would improve gameplay engagement and allow players to reach their full potential.
Posted using Splintertalk