I hear you. Honestly I don't think things have changed. I think it's always been this way. Early on the bots were welcomed because with only a few thousand players the only way to ensure there was a game cued up when you wanted to play was if there were lots of bots.
Then in the ramp up last summer, way more bots came in than people. And what's about to happen next is again about to be way more bots than people and the devs are fine with it.
I've spent all day today trying to work out different scenarios for what's could happen next for Splinterlands and I've tied myself in knots trying to figure it out. There are so many complexities.
What I'm leaning toward right now as the most likely near term trend is a continuation of last summers rally. There are a lot of signs it's already starting. Todays sign ups dropped a bit from yesterday but they were still far higher than normal. The common rewards cards that last week had over 50k copies for sale now have in some cases under 20k on the market. DEC has taken a leg up. The APR for staking SPS over doubled which means tons of SPS is on its way to the validator node presale.
Now I'm just trying to figure out if the rally does happen, what are the possibilities for it to keep running, and what are they for it to crash hard. Bots are high on both lists right now. Their drain is undeniable but they could also quite quickly push this game into millions of active accounts all renting cards, spiking prices, and bringing in the FOMO buyers who could fund the bot drain for several months.
If they can do it long enough for land to come out and soak up a bunch of inventory in the middle of a rally, cards could 10x from here and SPS could see $5.
That's all pretty exciting. At some point though, the bot reckoning is coming.
Hey mate, I read your initial post 3 days ago and have been back everyday since in the hope to see someone saying your logic is flawed or that its not true blah blah blah. Reason being the scenario you brought up is very compelling and I had hope someone much smarter then me will come and dispel it.
What you presented is actually quite frightening as the bots technically do not need to own any cards and still make money just via renting. In the end, it will be a case of bots overwhelming humans and human interest waning and all the asset values drop drastically.
Was thinking of putting a decent sum of money into the game to restart playing, but might hold back given what you have describe.
Don't let me talk you out of it.
In fact, I'm actually ramping up my buying right now.
I still believe most of what I said but I've spent days trying to poke holes in everything I wrote there and I have found a few weak points.
I mentioned this in the post but I think the most likely move from here is another rally. Before I thought it would be short lived but now I'm not so sure it won't get crazy and be meaningful to asset holders. Not financial advice.
I'm heading off to bed now but if you have questions I can try to answer them tomorrow.
Thanks for the taking the time to reply me.
No matter how I try to decipher it, it feels like the new reward system is trying to encourage grinding to get your rewards. And yes yes, ECR will play a factor, but still need to devote a decent amount of time to it. This could discourage the casual players who do not want to spend 2 hrs daily to play.
I am waiting for some other things to kick off before I cash out and drop the money here, but with so many cheap options in the crypto space, just need to figure out what goes where.
This mightbe true. Now bots need to invest some to gain rewards and we have a spike.
I just don't think it is sustainable in the long run.
More bots, and not enough new players are joining.
This is in my opinion the big change that will hurt in the long term.
I hope you are right and i am wrong, the changes might attract new people and create some FOMO :)