Day 3 and 4 on Steem Monsters (Splinterlands)

What's up Steemers! I wanted to get my day 3 blog in before I crashed for the night but I ran out of Steam Power so it's a day 3 and 4 combo blog this morning. Let's go!

I am going to share some of my thoughts as a new player in their first week and they may not all be agreeable to the community. As part of a blog though, you continue to write about your thoughts and perspective as you go.

The initial investment to be competitive is definitely more than I initially thought. This is also combined with the fact that some of the more lucrative cards to be competitive have to be either purchased on the market or won as a daily reward. These factors immediately gives long time players an edge over new players who may not want to unload hundreds of dollars into a online game right away, and that's ok. Sure, you can play casually every day in the bronze league and complete the single daily quest and eventually earn enough rewards to move up. That's the long way and I don't know many folks with the attention span to do so.

Tournaments, revisited. There are no tournaments that I would consider new player friendly. Even the bronze tier tournaments new players will found themselves struggling to beat players who have played for longer or invested more money to purchase enough packs to level their cards to the level cap of the bronze tier. I would love to see some tournament design that is more new player friendly than what is currently being offered. Either by limiting account age, collection value, league ranking, etc. Nothing leaves a poor taste in a new player's mouth than hopping into a bronze tier tournament and getting paired against a champion tier player first round. Even in all my years of Magic playing I didn't run into Pro Tour caliber players at the local Friday Night Magic events.

Daily quests, I mean quest. You get to complete a single daily quest for rewards based on your league level. Having to complete that daily quest could require an hour or two time investment depending on how good your splinter team is for that daily quest. It's a daily quest, it shouldn't take more than 30mins to complete. Even as I write this I am also trying to complete my daily Life Splinter quest (my worst after rerolling from Death.) It needs to come down from 5 wins to 3 wins, tops. It's something to encourage me come back and keep me playing every day, it shouldn't feel like a chore I need to complete in order to hopefully get the cards I need.

The community is amazing. You got a lot of folks who are not only social and willing to help improve new players, they are also generous. The Steem Monsters Discord server is extremely active and you can always find someone to answer any question one might have ranging from gameplay to crypto transactions. New players who aren't leveraging Discord will find themselves missing a huge value add to the game. I just wish the game had more easy reference tutorials and strategy discussions on wikis, the game site itself, or here on steemit. https://discord.gg/CAFJRjY

Blockchain games are fantastic. Steem Monsters is one of the few on the market that you can hop in with your credit card initially without requiring some type of crypto currency. This is also a barrier for those who are new to blockchain technology. There are so many hurdles you have to take to get your first crypto currency. I would think it be advisable to all game developers on blockchain to provide some sort of tutorials on how to get started. Crypto is new to many of us, and it can be intimidating to those who don't have a lot of disposable income to gamble with. The flipside bonus to this is that if you don't like the game or find yourself losing interest, you can sell off your cards and play something else!

It may not seem like it, but I am still enjoying the game. I think it's a great spin on trading card games, the artwork is fantastic, and the game has a lot of potential. I wouldn't still be writing about it if I wasn't a fan! Perhaps in a few months my views on some of these topics might change but I believe it's important to note them down because if I feel this as a new player, then others do as well who are dipping their toes into the game and the genre itself.

If you actually made it this far, kudos! Feel free to leave a comment about my thoughts and let's spark some discussion about the game! Thanks for reading!

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