Splinterlands | A Look at Avatars & Exemplars...
Splinterlands Avatars
Avatars are basically a way in Splinterlands to personalize your Profile Image. Everyone gets some basic options and can create one similar in a way how characters that you play with in RPG games are created. There are different races, you can choose the gender along with hair, eyes, outfits,... with more options being added in the future.
It is also possible to buy premium and more exclusive cosmetics using Glints in the new Avatar Shop, and there are also some potions which are craftable (I assume on land) and tradable to allow players to reset things or change race.
Splinterlands Exemplars
Once you have your avatar, you can craft a custom card where you choose your element with all your stats and abilities. Everyone gets 20 points to start off whith, and you can get more points by spending Glints to level up.
What instantly came to mind was to make an Exemplar with extreme high speed, which is impossible to hit.
From what I can see there are 200 Levels which would cost 81 Million Glints to reach which would give 219 skill point in total.
From what I understand, this card will not be able to be used in Ranked Play but it will likely get use case either in specific tournaments and the Brawls.
Why Avatars & Exemplars ??
Basically, the main purpose for Avatars and mainly the Exemplars is to give more use-case for Glints and give Whales some more toys to play with and burn resources on.
It's also nice to have cosmetic things that people who are interested in that (and there are many in the gaming world) can use to personalize their profile.
The Splinterlands Yet Adding More Stuff Pattern...
While many always think it's nice to have more new things in Splinterlands, I personally see it as a very worrisome problem of just always more and more stuff being added while the fundamental core issues of the game continue to be neglected.
It's the same pattern over and over again where a problem is solved by creating a new asset which over time just creates more problems.
Packs & Reward Cards were created and printed at the start as rewards, Dard Energy Crystals were invented afterwards as a way to print monetary rewards out of thin air. As that got overprinted and lost it's peg, Splintershards (SPS) was printed out of thin air replacing collection value which moved all the value from cards to support SPS. With the low supply and high print, the SPS price quickly started to go down so Vouchers were created to support the price of SPS. As Voucher prices started to go down as they also here needed to invet new utility, Exclusive Voucher Reward Cards were printed to keep the value of vouchers up. Land was sold as a pre-sale with promises of Potions & Items which came along with new assets like Totems, Grain, and a whole bunch of other assets. Runis were sold during the NFT hype, Brawls were introduced with Merits & Gladius Cards to help burn some DEC. Licences were sold to run nodes, Glints was invested as a way to reward players in a way where they are able to buy chest that mainly contain soulbound cards. There are Alchemy Potions, Legendary Potions. Black Foil cards were introduced to give some kind of jackpot prize and to have something for collectors. All this not even talking about Battle Wagons, Power Cores, Titles, Fortune Tickes, Wild Battle Pass, Foundations Cards, Energy, SPT, ... and now there are the Avatars & Exemplars.
I would say that all of this mostly gives some things to do for existing players while driving some like me away as it's too much, and it makes the barrier of entry for new players just bigger and bigger. All while every new things that is created needs to be supported in the future which puts exponential weight on the entire ecosystem.
The fundamental issues that are not solved and should instead get priority are the Ridiculous Time Requirements, Extreme Pay2Win, Unaffordable Costs, Devaluating Assests, Extreme Complexity, Power Creep, Investor Unfriendly, ...
I still think all effort should go to creating a New Game Mode that is Pay2Play where everyone is on a level playing field (See: How This Could Fix Everything), or some kind of weekly tournament that is easy to enter for everyone and fun. Now it's just adding more stuff, while the potential of the actual card game is not being reached.
My Avatar & Exemplar Strategy!
I'm just going to leave them for what they are. At the moment I'm only playing my Brawls and using the glints that I earn from running a bot in Wild to buy some chests hoping to get something good. I'm at 360k staked SPS aiming for 500k, still hoping that one day Splinterlands will become the fun game that I still hope it could be.
Conclusion!
While the Avatars & Exemplars don't do any direct harm and give existing players who are interesting something new to play with, the pattern of just adding more and more stuff in the game instead of fixing some of the fundamental issues remains in place. So this is an update that personally doesn't warm me up and I will just leave it for what it is.
