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The biggest problem is receiving nothing for playing and losing. So just play to mine "Ranked Play" as a human player, i.e. modern ranked play only. Losses don't matter, just matching the difficulty in your battle ID, so losing doesn't feel as bad, there's still a chance of getting a reward from playing.

Won't that just inspire more botting, though? Winning should be the main focus of the game, rather than just making sure you never leave your energy on full.

winning is the focus as rewards are always there for a win, but for a loss there is a chance, depending on difficulty that you still get a reward. So this lessens the sting of having to compete against much more established players, thereby improving the NPE

Winning being the main focus of the game is one of the reasons there is botting.

well this would be against modern ranked play ToS