Hello there! @saydie here, playing Splinterlands everyday!
Once again, @thepeoplesguild has come up with another interesting topic for this week's #tpgChallenge, asking the community for ideas to provide new and existing players with a better and immersive gaming experience so that they will stay to play the game. So for those that want to share their thoughts, you can check this post for instructions. Anyways, here are some of my ideas that I think could make for a new player experience.
Easier Options for Account Creation
Before any people that gets onboarded to Splinterlands could start to play the game, the first thing they need to do was to make an account and login to the game and while the process of registration and login to Splinterlands is easy to follow, it will not hurt to make it easier by having a means of linking it with their X or google account specially if we want to onboard web2 people to the game.
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Move the Spellbook to Silver League
The purchase of Spellbook early to the game can makes a paywall for any new players that will come the game that might sour their experience but at the same time, it was also a means of revenue for Splinterlands and this were also linked in the creation of their Hive account so I do not want to remove them. My suggestion here is to separate Hive account creation from spellbook. Instead, we move spellbook requirement to Silver league as a sort of League lock which requires the return of partial league cap up to Bronze League.
 | Dear Battle Mage, In order to advance to Silver League, you need to purchase the Summoner's Spellbook. |
Link Hive account on Avatar Creation
On the other hand, we should have a avatar creation page where we can customize our battle mage and to finish it of is to when we add the username which also serves as our Hive wallet address. Having to create and customize an avatar makes for a more immersive player experience as well as can make them emotionally attached since they created the avatar.
As it was not tied to the spellbook purchase, it can be done as early as the player login to the game. I know it will require Splinterlands to burn Hive in the process but this will make it possible for any new players to interact with the various aspects of the game without the initial paywall to make it more like a traditional free to play experience.
Introduce Campaign Mode
Splinterlands has a very reached lore and is just going to further expand in the future so it will be nice if we can utilize it by introducing players to a PvE type experience with a bit of storytelling where new players can also learn the fundamentals. Unlike ranked battles, players can see not only the ruleset and mana cap but also the opponent's lineup and they will just need a make a proper counter and winning the battle could allow them to win glint or merits rather than SPS to avoid SPS inflation. This also means that they can use ghost cards to match the level of their opponent so that new players can get a taste of different level of cards and their abilities.
Missions/Quest
Missions/Quest are a staple feature on many games so I think I do not need to explain why it's necessary to NPE. What I will tell is how I do implement it. My idea is divided into leagues where the higher the league makes for a higher difficulty but with better rewards. That said, to reduce exploit, players can only do missions based on their league and once they advanced, they can no longer complete that quest even if they try to de-rank league, much similar to the league advancement chest.
| League | Mission | Requirement | Reward |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bronze | Play at least 5 battle. | Novice-Bronce Cannot be completed when player reached Silver | 50 Glint |
| Silver | Use Flying units 10x. | Silver Cannot be completed when player reached Gold | 500 Glint |
| Gold | Win a battle without losing a unit on Noxious Fumes ruleset. | Gold Cannot be completed when player reached Diamond | 2000 Glint |
In the example, I only included Glint as a reward for convenience sake but rewards for this mission can be more flexible like giving soulbound skins and cards to dec and SPS.
Guild Prefix Title
Having a guild builds for a mini community in Splinterlands where players can engage with other players through in game chat without going to discord or any social platforms. At the same time, this can be a place where old players can give advice to new players while pursuing a common goal. Among the current play modes, Guild brawls currently has better player retention as even players that have stopped playing either due to the removal of leagues or the need for a wild pass to play in wild, still plays in brawls. Now to make it more competitive, we can introduce prefix titles which can only be obtained by being the top 5 guilds (Can be more) with the most win on each tier which would reset after every time brawl ends. This may even result for old players that stopped playing ranked to play again due to the added bonus.
| Tier | Prefix Title | Ranked Bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Warwick | 2% |
| 2 | Strongsword | 5% |
| 3 | Towershed | 8% |
| 4 | Crusher | 10% |
| 5 | Gladiator | 12% |
Closing
The following were just suggestions that I came off to have a better player experience which can hopefully help to make new players to stay. I have no clue whether it was feasible or what amount of dev work would it require to implement this changes.
Thanks for reading and see you at the next post.
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All the image that I edited here belongs to Splinterlands and Soulkeep.
Card abilities and rulesets from Splintercards.
All the battle links provided comes from my personal accounts and from the scholar account that I am using from Balthazar Guild.
Thank you for reading my post. If you're interested to play Splinterlands, you can join by clicking the images below and follow me on Twitter and 3Speak for timely Splinterlands updates.
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