Lately I've been thinking about ways to increase fun with battling in Splinterlands. Things that would be easy to implement, doesn't take much dev time, does not introduce any additional complexity, long-term effects or any economic impacts. Just purely things that make people want to come back to the game, whether big or small.
Hopefully I can turn this into a topic I will revisit as I have a few ideas. But the first idea I have is for Seasonal Rulesets.
I was inspired by other video games I've played where each "season" they have, something changes. It can be a one-time thing, or it can be rotating in and out perhaps if it is popular. The key point being that it makes each season unique and something us battlers look forward to. Seasons shouldn't just go from one to other endlessly with no differences or changes!
One way I thought of could be through a new ruleset that is introduced every season and rotates out once it is done. It could be related to lore, a theme, silly, crazy, or whatever! It could even only trigger perhaps only a small % of the time but give double rewards or something (or not). I think something as simple as this, and other ideas like this, could start to make battling in Splinterlands more interesting. Maybe even encourage more people playing manually again? That would be great!
So without further ado, here are some of my ideas for rulesets and their names I thought of:
"We Come In Peace" - Humanoids only
"Call of the Wild" - Animals only
"Luscious Locks" - Monsters with hair only
"Splinter vs Splinter" - Each player is assigned a Splinter that pits one against another (ie Life vs Death)
"Team Up" - Player gets two Splinters to mix and match with (ie Fire + Death)
"Splinter vs Splinter Team Up" - Combine those two rules above (ie Water + Life vs Fire + Death)
"Lone Hero" - One attack monster limit per team (weapons training hype!)
"Got Your Back" - Must use at least one no-attack monster
"Inclusivity" - Must use one of each attack type monster + no-attack
"Micro League" - Summoners 4 mana or less and monsters 2 mana or less
"First Blood" - Monster who gets first kill gets bloodlust
"Superhero" - 1 random monster per team gets bloodlust
"Set Phasers" - 1 random monster per team gets stun
"Ouch Point 0" - All monsters get redemption
"Win Some, Lose Some" - All monsters get +1 attack but get Blind (or lose 2 speed or 2 health) or maybe all get one beneficial effect and one negative effect
"A Fowl Wind" - 1 random monster per team turns into a Furious Chicken
I could go on and on, but you get the point. Fun rulesets that would make battles occasionally interesting or off the wall. And because they rotate out per season, none will have any permanent or long-term consequences.
Do you have any ideas for a seasonal ruleset that would breathe some new life into ranked battles? Drop them in the comments below.
As always, thanks for reading!