Today, the challenge function in Splinterlands is severely limited in what it can do. We can select a league and four options for which cards are allowed. This technically allows players to play with almost the same system as we see in ranked/tournaments/brawls, but not quite (There is no option for modern).
Its well past time that we had some updates to this system. We need a challenge mode that has the following properties:
- Complete specification of league, mana, up to three rules and allowed colors.
- Complete specification of allowed cards, or at the very least an option to select which cards sets are allowed.
- Challenges that are not time-limited. We already have this tech in place for anytime tournaments.
- Ghost card challenges (everyone can play all cards)
In short, the challenge system should allow a player to specify any gameplay variation that is currently active in Splinterlands. Additional desirable functionality could be
- Option to have different available cards for both players
- Option to allow cards irrespective of their color (For example, a match could allow all Pelacor cards to be played by any splinter)
Why do we need this?
This challenge system opens up the possibility for the community to actively participate in the development of a thriving and enjoyable game. We recently saw how the practice bots introduced by the XBOT developers made a huge change to how we can play the game. Now anyone can use these bots to improve their gameplay as much as they like. This is only a small taste of what we could do with a proper challenge system.
With the functionality suggested above, the community could (based on similar tech. as the xbot practice bots uses):
- Create tutorials for new players, showcasing abilities, strategies etc.
- Create campaigns. Sequences of battles defined tracked and initiated by third party sites.
- Custom tournaments. (Practice bots can store the submitted team from a player, and match that team up against one submitted against another bot by another player in the same battle configuration. Then the bots play an actual battle against each other with these teams to determine which player won).
- Land wars: Tournaments coupled to land properties in interesting ways.
- Guild wars/Guild alliance wars.
These are only a few suggestions. We have a skilled and creative community. I expect that we would quickly see a huge variety of interesting, fun and engaging game modes. The tools for building these modes can be left to the community as long as the custom challenges are available.
Benefits
Community-created game modes have been hugely successful in video-game history (many of the largest games today were born from mods), and companies that have embraced them have made a fortune of it. I expect a massive boost to new player influx and player retention if only a few of the above suggested game modes were implemented.
If these challenges are fun, it could be an added benefit to charge a minor amount of DEC for each challenge battle. As long as it is small (small enough that any player will have easy access) most players would gladly pay it. We then gain a small, but likely steady and continuous DEC burn.
3rd party developers/custom game mode providers could impose an additional fee on top of the burned DEC in order so that they have a financial incentive to develop and host the tools to make and play the custom games.
Drawbacks
Some developer time would be needed to implement this. Some developer time to maintain the challenge mode when significant changes are made to the main game. Possibly higher server load.
Final words
I think an improved challenge system would be of great benefit and open the door to a richer, more engaging and more sustainable Splinterlands.
Please let me know your thoughts about this.
Kalkulus