OLA TCG Season 2: everything we learned building alongside our community

This Friday, OLA TCG Season 2 begins.

And probably the most important part of this new season isn't just what we're adding, but everything we changed after watching our community play Season 1.

From the beginning, we treated our first season as a test. We had hypotheses about how rankings should work, how the AI would behave, and how easy it would be to understand the different strategies within the game.

Some worked.

Others didn't.

And that's exactly why we build this way: we launch, watch how the community plays, listen to feedback, and build again.

Season 2 is the result of that process.

The first big change: a new ranking system

During Season 1, we decided to rank players using win rate.

The logic seemed pretty simple: if you won a higher percentage of your matches, you should rank higher.

For that to work, we assumed the AI difficulty would be balanced enough to create fair competition.

But as the season progressed, we realized it wasn't.

And an even bigger problem appeared:

The system was incentivizing some players to stop playing.

If someone achieved a very high win rate, continuing to play meant risking that percentage and potentially losing their position.

We had created exactly the opposite behavior of what we want for OLA TCG.

We don't want someone to achieve a great win rate and then be afraid to play.

We want people experimenting with decks, testing strategies, competing, and coming back the next day.

Season 2: we're competing for points

Taking some ideas that members of our community had already shared with us before launch and combining them with everything we observed during Season 1, we decided to completely change the system.

Starting with Season 2, rankings will be based on Season Points.

Winning a match gives you considerably more points than losing one.

Skill and strategy still need to matter the most.

But there's one fundamental difference:

Losing gives you points too.

Because participation has value.

We want to eliminate the incentive of "I'd better stop playing so I don't lose my position."

But this change immediately created another problem:

What happens if someone decides to play 500 matches in one day?

Rewarding consistency without encouraging farming

To prevent the leaderboard from simply becoming a competition over who has the most hours available to play, Season 2 introduces a daily points curve.

Your first matches of the day generate the most points.

Then, progressively, each additional match becomes worth a little less.

You can play as much as you want.

Eventually, playing dozens and dozens of additional matches simply stops being an efficient strategy for climbing the leaderboard.

And the next day, the curve resets.

Rewarding skill + consistency, not farming.

We'd rather have someone come back every day than play 500 matches in one afternoon and disappear for the rest of the season.

Will it work exactly as we imagine?

We hope so.

But we're sure we'll discover new things and we'll probably need to keep balancing it.

That's part of the process too.

The second big lesson: we needed to explain our own game better

The other major Season 2 change isn't really about the rules themselves, but how we communicate those rules inside the game.

OLA TCG has a faction system that affects how points are calculated during each matchup.

There's a lot of strategy in the system, but during Season 1 we realized we were asking too much from the player.

There was important information you had to remember or figure out on your own.

If a mechanic is important to making a decision, the game should help you understand it at the exact moment you need it.

The faction wheel is now always available

During matches, you'll be able to check the faction wheel to quickly understand how the factions facing each other interact.

Less memorizing. More strategy.

We want this information to be available at the exact moment you're making a decision, so you can better understand why one card might be stronger than another depending on the matchup.

Now we explain what happened to your points

We've also added a new layer of information at the end of each round and each match.

You'll now see a points summary explaining what happened and how the final result was calculated.

It might seem like a small change, but we believe it can make a huge difference in how people learn the game.

We're still not where we want to be.

Ideally, understanding all of this should feel completely natural without requiring too much explanation.

But this is an important step in that direction, and we'll be watching closely to see how the community responds during Season 2.

There's also a new Booster Pack 👀

Season 2 couldn't arrive with system changes alone.

We've also got new content.

During this season, we're launching a new limited-time Booster Pack featuring new cards starring members of our own community.

The pack will only be available for a limited period.

So while it's live:

Open packs. Because once it's gone, it's gone.

In OLA TCG, we don't ask you to spend to progress. We ask you to save.

And this connects to one of the ideas that excites us most about everything we're building around OLA TCG.

To open Booster Packs, you need to have your OLA Reactor active.

How do you activate it?

By saving.

You deposit USDC into your Reactor and, while maintaining your savings, unlock progression within the game.

That money is still yours.

You're not buying cards.

You're not paying to open a Booster Pack.

You're not spending money to progress.

You're saving.

And you can withdraw those funds whenever you want.

It's our way of flipping a mechanic that has worked in exactly the opposite direction for years.

Games have taught us that if we want to progress faster, we need to spend more.

We want to experiment with a different idea:

What if a game encouraged you to save instead of spend?

We want to build a card game where progression doesn't mean spending more money, but building the habit of saving.

Season 2 starts now

Season 1 was our first big test.

We got some things wrong, validated others, and above all, learned a lot by watching our community play.

Now Season 2 begins.

And we'll probably discover another ten problems we don't even know exist today.

That's exactly what we want.

Play. Test strategies. Break everything you can. And tell us what you'd change.

See you in OLA TCG Season 2. 🎴