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...