Bots are a big topic on people's minds in splinterlands and every play to earn game will face them.
Let's first look at things in the beginning of Splinterlands as a case study. It's important to consider perspective before you jump to one side of the fence.
What good were bots?
Bots allowed for players to find a match more quickly
Running bots required accounts to have cards (Proof of Stake)
Selling cards, or proof of stake, fuels the development of a game
Are bots bad?
Many will say yes because they deplete the rewards pool. But, even if you had a nonintrusive way to eliminate bots and your rewards are high enough, then humans will simply replace bots.
If play is more profitable than renting, then people have incentive to automate their play.
In the days of old, a game's success was built off selling a copy of it or an upgrade. But, ownership of digital assets and their interaction has become easier and more accepted. Thus, we are arriving at more play to earn games.
Some gamers of old feel that this ownership is just a way for game makers to be greedy. On the contrary, there is a demand for immersion into the virtual and there is a new demand to be met. To ignore this is, well, bad business on the game makers side.
When you consider a game's success it satisfies these conditions
Does it fill it's most base purpose, is it pleasurable or fun?
If it supports ownership:
Did the game allow you to spend very little for the entertainment you got, pay for itself, or actually make you money?
Side Note: If you approach a play to earn game with the intent on making money with a substantial amount, you're really not just playing around. To me that sounds more like business.
Well if you're gonna play splinterlands to it's full potential you'll need to buy cards. However you see the game, why don't you save the most on splinterlands card purchases in the industry by using cardauctionz
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P.S. One day it may be impossible to tell if you're playing a human or a robot in a live game of chess. Then what are we gonna do?
As always, I will never give financial advice, I will only be expressing my opinion. Thanks for reading!
Some probable effects of a bot ban would be:
#1 A crash in the card rental market followed by a crash on the prices of cards on the secondary market.
#2 A collapse in Splinterlands rankings in daily active user charts like Dappradar.
How big of a crash depends on how big the ratio of bots to players.
requiring owned cards to receive full rewards in tournaments. Otherwise nerf the rewards and split between other winning card owners as a bonus. Watch how fast that card market comes to life if you require owned cards and cp for tournaments, and you then reward players who invest in ecosystem more, as aggy and yabamatt have stated as their previous goal.
Agreed 100% and ironically they will either get banned, or run the rewards into nothing and move on, whichever comes first. The path of least resistance would be make new reward set only drop in wild league gold+ and modern diamond+ chests. Lower league chests would receive the botted set closer to end of print run, this adds value to ecosystem because new players rewards, while not worth a lot, can be acquired cheap by new players from the botted supply, allows new players to combine these cards for reduced prices as they cycle. Bots still can make their roi, new players come in understanding prices will be low till the set moves on, and have incentive to get to the next set drops in higher league. Honestly adding higher amounts of the same chest drops, is a joke, that does not force people to centralize their CP and stop multi accounting.
Honestly, one disconnect I have with the community and Splinterlands team is, Sept or Oct of 2021 they nerfed new player rewards in bronze and adjusted the dec earning formula to cube your CP instead of square scaling rewards up for the highest leagues. When they did this, they said "it was done because they want to incentivize and compensate those who buy cards and invest in the ecosystem for the long term." At the time many people didn't like this message, they heard, all we care about is whales. But the team presented the solution to botted rewards, as adjusting the incentives towards owning cards.
Today, tournaments, which I believe will be the most prestigious and highest paying events in Splinterlands, should in the future represent the finest in skill, wisdom, and experience among the splinterlands player base. Lets keep a logical train of thought here. Ranked battle rewards must be focused towards people who invest in the ecosystem, Forsakensushi agrees with @aggroed and @yabapmatt you are 100% on target with this goal. Dec rewards are worth less in the ecosystem in general utility than sps, allowing governance of the game, and in much less possible total supply so definitely more scarce. So the higher utility and value currency SPS, paid out in the most prestigious and competitive events in the Splinterlands Ecosystem(tournaments), has no bearing on if the player owns a single card. I can go rent a set of cards, invest nothing in Splinterlands, rent the CP, and obtain access to the most lucrative reward pools in same manner as those who have fully invested in the ecosystem. If either of you can explain how that makes sense, I would truly welcome an explanation. I seek understanding and mutual growth. I love Splinterlands!
I have been reading your comments and they are excellent responses. Most people complaining about bots are no different from various political activists asking for socialism, regulation and welfare. If they got what they ask for, we will end up at a worse place than we started and we might even have to give up on many fundamental values like decentralization to get to that place. I have been following @aggroed for a long time and I can say that his heart is at the right place when it comes to personal values. He had made many wonderful articles in the past.
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Thanks for the compliment!
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Personally I wouldn't allow bots in any p2e game, period. (Yes, I know why they were allowed in the first place)
In hindsight last summer might have been the best time to ban them, instead of printing ridiculous amounts of assets, based on an inflated bot playerbase.
I think people DO understand that getting rid of bots will cause hyperinflation, crash the ecosystem and will make splinterlands look disgusting from a marketing perspective. The bigger the bubble the louder the bang.
Luckily there is a mechanic to dispose of excess Pelacor Bandits...😅
Getting rid of bots will not be painless, but I guess it needs to be done in order to build a healthy game.
So I don't think they should get rid of bots but I do think they need to ban new ones going forward which would allow the game to balance itself out over time without punishing people who did a perfectly legal thing at the time they did it and without crashing the entire economy completely.
I have some ideas on how they can actually equalize out or at least lessen the drain on the economy that I'm going to write a post about soon.
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eye am in ful agreeance, in fact my concern is that bots will have devalued the Dao level of splinterlands by being able to have collected the most sps, over humans and tho collective votes of splinterlands playing humans will mean less to nothing and the bot player base aka botticis wrex a kind of dominant soulless entity will act as a centralizing force, that will allocate the entire voting power to the few people running the bot accounts and thus stripping away any sovreignty that humans could have on this platform and almost ensuring that the potential mainstream. player base that could potentially find splinterlands, either by chance or by an intentional media will be scared away from the game by an elite army of very unwelcoming pre programmed algorithms that have already fully exploited the game before they got there. This being said we don't wanto punish the humans for the presence of botticus wrex, aka making rewards like Dec no longer earn able in bronze by new player, eye loved that back when eye began to play, that eye had player command within the gaming environment, as my clicks had life, value and power, now humans clicks no longer have as much meaning or value in the lower tyrs and only can be daily quest rewards now, which are small. Eye recently invited on of my girlfriends to play splinterlands and she invested in card packs because it's just a smart thing to do as a long term investment, however, when she began to play shees kind of stuck in the lower ranks because she doesn't purchase any in game assets she is just a p2e player new at gaming and doesn't wish to put in the thousands that eye have. So in this light folks like her are being punished for the actions of bits and every new player here on in is pre punished for the actions of bits and it's devaluing the nature of our clicks and the relevence of humans at all. In my opinion crash the markets then, kill all bot accounts and then the economy will become closer to what it would realistically be, even though it may suck, the price range of some cards like golden frost giants at 600k is like bying a mansion in the form of nfts, these assets would be more accessable as a price range, if bots didn't exist, because there would simply be less overall generated rewards assets and less multi account grind while ur sleeping availability to the elite few who can run 10 to 100 accounts and rake it in. In the end my main concern is the complete devaluing of the voting process behind sps and currently it will look like bots will own the Dao unless a number of us humans can actually get our hands fairly on validator liscence or if the splinterlands creators actually FREELY HAND OUT validator liscence to verrified humans who deeply wish splinterlands success and support and will devote themselves to the game and ecosystem. This brings up my last 2 ideas and the first is a groaner for sure as the kyc tech in splinterlands is really not good, as it won't validate me or my ID, but every other exchange will, binance ect, eym Canadian maybe that's why, but every account needs to be kycd and everyone can only have a single account and u can o ly transfer assets from verrified account to verrified account and once its set in motion all accounts are locked and all assets within them are locked and can ever be accesses unless their verrified and u can only verify a single account, this would pretty much decimate the multiple account hidden asset class. of botter and would be a fair invitation for other crafty human players to have just a single account, we give 7 days for everyone to move assets to a si gle account efore the necessary kyc, just get a better kyc algorithm because most human in some areas of the world will be locked out { lot of holes in that idea}. The last idea is that every human player is given a bot at start of game and the bot is woven into the game and is gamifed and its functions can be unlocked in an rpg mechanics style, and splinterlands just embraces bots and all new players are supported by having access to this layer. those r my feels, however in the final of it all we need to find a way to save the Dao from bot level centralization through the exploitation and abuse of sps, sps is sacred and we NEED to stand behind this as a united team of humans that value our voice as vote above all else, if our voice isn't sacred then greedy self interested entities will steal and eat this dream of ours before we even have a chance to direct it.
blessings be well
Sent on phone may be typos
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just wrote this post about this topic
https://www.splintertalk.io/@eterna/the-entity-known-as-botticus-wrex-transmissions-from-the-hunab-kru
gm and thanks for your opinion
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Great read!