Many players are finding that it is getting harder and harder to rank up in Splinterlands and hit the leagues your collection/account could previously hit. In this article, we'll take a look at some of the reasons why this may be happening and offer some tips on how to overcome these challenges.

It's a doozy, so buckle up and let's get to it!

Ratings Inflation

The biggest culprit behind the increasing difficulty is a concept called "Rating Inflation" - but in this case, the difficulty is because of "Rating Deflation."

Let me dive into why.

One of the most important metrics in Splinterlands is Rating.

Rating impacts your earnings both from RShares earned toward chests as well as Token earnings from the Reward pools of SPS (previously DEC). Rating also directly impacts your abilities to progress through the leagues (which can also cap your earnings if stuck in lower levels of a league like Gold III vs. Gold I).

The Splinterlands Rating system has a built-in inflation mechanic to ensure that players can progress and grow their ratings when they get a win. You gain more ratings when you beat a player whose rating is drastically higher than you and you gain less rating when you beat a player lower rated than you. This same concept applies to losses - losing against a lower-rated player costs you more rating than losing to a higher-rated player when compared to your current rating.

The nature of these mechanics essentially makes it so that the more battles that happen (whether instigated by individual players or multiple) the more "ratings inflation" exists. Or in other words... when more battles are happening it is also comparably easier to grow your rating.

Over the past few months, Splinterlands has implemented several changes that have drastically decreased that ratings inflation. In my opinion, these changes were good and ultimately make the game better and align incentives in a good direction, but a consequence of them is that it is now more difficult to rank up than you previously could with the same collection.

Let's dive into the changes that were implemented and how much they impacted available battles to gain ratings from.

Change #1: Ranked Rewards Updates (The Starter Card Update)

Relevant Articles/Announcements: 1, 2, 3

On May 22nd 2022, Splinterlands launched a major overhaul of the Ranked Rewards system that included a change to how "starter cards" would be handled in ranked battles.

Under the old system, any card could be used in a ranked battle, whether a "starter card" or an Owned, Ranked or Delegated card, and earnings would remain the same. This meant that it was possible to "farm" low-level ranked battles using only starter cards to rewards and made it very easy for bot farms to extract value from the game.

The new system aimed to address this by making it so that each "starter card" used in a ranked battle will REDUCE the reward shares earned. So, for example, if you use all 100% starter cards in your team, you will not earn ANY rewards for that battle.

The change had an immediate and positive effect, reducing the amount of value being extracted by bot farms. They either shut down or drastically reduced the number of accounts played because they needed to consolidate assets into fewer accounts or rent cards from other players.

A consequence of this, however, is that it also immediately reduced the number of battles played, and thus the available rating inflation to progress in the game.

Here's a chart showing the impact on daily battles seen as a result of the change:

You can see that the number of battles drops sharply in the days after the change, from an average of 8.8 million to 4.6 million—nearly a 50 percent decrease.

This large drop was immediately felt by Splinterlands players, as the number of available battles to "farm" for rating points decreased drastically.

So, while I fully believe this was a great change for the game, the impact made the results a player could expect from their assets in previous seasons incomparable to what you could expect in future seasons.

Change #2: The 50% ECR Drop Acceleration

Relevant Articles/Announcements: 1

On July 21st, 2022, Splinterlands made a change to the ECR formula, where if you battle and your ECR is below 50% at the start of the battle, you lose 5% of your current ECR rather than the typical 1%. In effect, this means that you're drastically punished on your ability to earn in Splinterlands if you battle more than about 50 battles per day on average.

That throttle on gameplay, again, had an immediate and noticeable effect on the number of battles being played:

You can see that the number of battles decreases sharply on the days following the change, from an average of 5.5 million to 2.25 million initially recovering to 3.6 million in the weeks after. Even after recovering this is still approximately a 35% decrease and a 60% decrease from even just 2 months earlier.

Before this change, players and bot farms alike had a strong incentive to play as many battles as they could to maximize their rating. Rating's impact on earnings is Cubed, so growing it even a bit can have a drastic impact on your earnings in total.

After this change, that incentive is still there, but it's weaker. So, players and bot farms are playing fewer battles overall which means there's again less rating inflation for everyone

Change #3: Implementation of Modern/Wild and the Splitting of Battles

Relevant Articles/Announcements: 1

On July 14th, 2022, Splinterlands launched the split league formats introducing the "Modern League". This was a change many were and still are excited for as it provides a great way to ensure that newer players have a place to play on a more even playing field compared to early adopters as cards in Modern are restricted to only the two most recently released editions.

In terms of the impact on the difficulty of rising in the leagues, however, this has had a similar effect to the other two changes.

Since each league has its own ratings, your progress in one doesn't affect your standings in another. With ECR being one pool per account instead of separate per league, players must choose which to play in if they want to reap the most rewards. Although the introduction of the Modern league didn't decrease total daily battles, because available battles were now effectively split across two leagues instead of just one, it did halve opportunities to increase rating.

This effect is like an 80% decrease in available battles compared to even 2 months prior.

With these three changes coming in such quick succession, it's no wonder players are finding the game more difficult.

Up-Coming Change #4: Low-Level Cards Ranked Rewards Earnings Changes

Relevant Articles/Announcements: 1, 2

Splinterlands is proposing a change to the ranked rewards system that would take into account the level of cards used compared to the league you're playing in. This proposal will be voted on by staked SPS holders.

Currently, if you use level 1 cards in a Champion league battle, you get the same rewards as if you use level 6 cards. This proposal would change that so that the lower your card's level is in comparison to the league you're playing in, the lower your rewards will be.

Although this change does improve players' long-term motivation to combine cards and level them up, it will probably also lead players to put more of their assets into fewer accounts and thus decrease the size of the daily battle pool.

I think this change is worthwhile and for the good of the game, but you should expect that it will also cause the game to get increasingly difficult yet again.

Compounding Effects of All Changes

So what does all this mean? It means that Splinterlands has become more difficult, and will likely continue to become more difficult in terms of rising through the ranks.

This is not a bad thing, however. These changes have been made with the long-term goal of making sure that the game remains sustainable and rewarding.

If you're feeling the pain of not sitting in the leagues you used to, I recommend a few things:

1. Treat the ease of rising through the leagues previously as a gift and be grateful for it.
2. Reset your expectations for how your current assets perform based on how they're working now, rather than how they worked a few months ago.
3. Keep striving to improve your collection and your skillset to reclaim your rightful place in the upper echelons of the Splinterlands universe!

Thanks for reading. I hope this helps to give some context and clarity around the recent changes and their effect on the difficulty of ranked play.

Good luck out there, battle mages!

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