Thanks! I agree completely, on one hand I feel like they may not "want" us to earn as many rewards as splitting wild / modern might allow, but on the other hand, maybe they'd be okay with it since it brings value to wild and they seem to have a "as long as you have the cards, we're okay with it!" mentality.
As for the rental market, it's impossible to say but I'm of the opinion that bots will be profitable even without ghost cards and if that's the case, we're destined to get higher card and rental prices as it's basically what's called an "arbitrage" opportunity. The game pays out this much, it costs that much to rent / set up a bot, you profit the difference.
So more and more bots will be created as it's just "printing money" for them until card and rental prices close the gap. With a new set of reward cards about to come out, they will undoubtedly start off "expensive" and then get much cheaper like the current reward cards.
This means in the short term, bots will be extremely profitable and I'm expecting a bit of a "bot explosion" which will pump prices but as the new reward cards tank in price it may get tougher later on and no longer be worth it, causing rental prices to come back down.
The biggest threat to my prediction is If the new ranked reward system pays out less for bots than we expect.
This could happen because so much of the SP and FP is rewarded for winning now and ECR plays such a big role, instead of just needing to complete your daily quest and hit a certain rating for end of season rewards, you need to have a good win rate as well as the cards that allow you to accomplish that every day.
It's possible players earn more in the new system but most bots actually earn less than they do now and if that's the case, bot farms could shut down instead of ramp up which means liquidating what assets they do have and falling prices.
I don't think that will happen, especially not with a fresh batch of reward cards, but it's always good to be aware of alternate scenarios when investing and what could go wrong.
Even in the negative bot farm scenario you painted, it would still be good for the player base and overall economy. I'm bot-friendly, but see bot farms as exploitative given how much value they extract from the economy which is never put back in.
It feels difficult to fully wrap my head around the new rewards system given its complexity. A lot of speculation about ECR and optimal amount of games played to capitalize.
Regardless, I'm excited and will enjoy the ride wherever it takes us.
On another note, have you considered streaming or creating video content? Would you send me a message on Discord globalwarming and we can start a conversation. I think you've got a lot of great insights/knowledge to share... time permitting of course.
Yeah, I think that's where getting rid of ghost cards will make a difference. In order to extract that value, they at least have to buy cards or rent them from real people who do have them, shutting down the infinite value generator.
With Discord you need the full ID, for me its mondroid#0429, feel free to add me or msg me.