Splinterlands ramblings... and a giveaway

A big apologise for the delay in this post; it should be one more week than usual, ended up with another week in delay! Kind of struggling to be active in the blockchain at this point, but life has these phases. And frankly, motivation to keep doing these giveaways is less and less.

I do love this game. But it seems everytime a Splinterlands post with some novelty comes, a good thing is coming hand to hand with a worse one. Such as the last post, where apart from learning a new reward set is being launched, we also learn that not only the unbinding of the current reward set is set to absolutely ridiculous prices, but to top it up... it increases with time AND it has a limited time window of 180 days.

The objective? Can't really tell. As usual, I hope to be completely wrong, and everyone will burn thousands of Dec. Most likely? Everyone will spend the absolute minimum to get some of the missing bcxs in their set, making the amount of completely unbound cards almost absent (if any?). I do understand the concept of scarcity, but making an entire set likely almost unobtainable for a newcomer is a big red flag for me. The so called "New Player Experience" was taunted as the absolute priority, and if I recall correctly, it was taunted more than half a year ago. My questions to the team are...

Where is it?

Are we getting ANY new players?

How many current players are we losing on a weekly basis?

I honestly would like to know some of the numbers, because everything I see is the complete opposite: increasing paywalls, ZERO onboarding focus, near absent advertising, an increasingly pissed off current player base... and bots still encouraged. I'm honestly close to the point of saying "fuck it", bot on wild league with my main account, and join the horde of players that aren't really playing!

As to the "bad attitude" and "lacking community support"... that actually needs proper communication, and a decent explanation on the though process of these changes; and I haven't been seeing any of it. Yes, we have the town hall summaries: I would like to see actions, not words. And talking about the new player experience that remains absent, and not seeing any improvements of the current player experience is not helping at all. Yes, maybe I'm just in a bad mood; judging by the comments on the last post, it seems a general feeling. Honestly, I hope to be dead wrong about how I'm seeing the current state of affairs. And these giveaways will continue for the time being; for how long, it remains to be seen.

See you on the battlefield... unless you're playing in the funnier league, that is happily filled with bots; I will stay away from there, for now.

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By the way, if you haven't joined a guild yet and you're a dedicated player, our guild Roaring Twenties is at level 10! If you're thinking about joining in, you can check the info on the guild page, or reach us on discord here to discuss membership!

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So, and who won this week's card?

Congratulations @steven-patrick! The Arachne Thug is going your way!

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For this next giveaway, the card that will be switching hands is...

The Naga Assassin!

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Rules:

No upvote, follow or resteem required. Just comment! Or even better, tag a fellow player! Winner will be randomly chosen at post payout; good luck everyone!

Still haven't joined Splinterlands? In what planet do you live in? Click the banner below and join the fun! (It has my referral link; you can go directly to the website if you don't want to use it; either way... join in! 😎 )