While the whole "reduce bot farms"-initiative might be of value, I don't think that the current proposals really get to the point. I myself play wild because I find it more interesting to have a wider range of cards and apply a variety of strategies - but I have silver-level cards, and I'm not playing for money but for fun. I bought several sought out wild cards, as well for the brawls. In order to get at least some of the soulbounds and rewards, I recently had to buy more SPS again, for the third time, and I'm getting tired of having to do so. When I don't have time to play, I use a bot to do it for me. This as context.
Until now, I really haven't seen a proposal that could solve the bot farm problem without crippling the "just for fun" players. Everything that was done since I started took the fun out of the game step by step, at least for me. I took many breaks from playing because it became so hard to play without spending (and yes, in the direction the game is taking it's spending and not investing) a lot of money, and more money every time. I finally did so to build a deck and it's a lot more fun now, but it was expensive - if I was a new player, I'd never do that. And I guess a lot newbies see it that way, since there aren't many :-D
It is already a very hard game for newbies. Every pay wall and CP wall and whatever wall implemented will make it hard for new players. I don't think that creating an elite playground for older players is the solution, either. In my eyes, the strenght of Splinterlands is the diversity in the cards existing, and the many strategies that are possible when being able to use all the cards. Recently, the changes made seem to be made mainly to correct negative effects of changes previously made - the Meta Inc. principle, just pump out a new update, and if there's a bug, fix that bug with a new update that will have more bugs that will be fixed and so on - but never re-evaluate, never roll back.
So, my suggestion is - re-evaluate the changes made, see what worked out and what didn't, what helped against botfarms and what pushed them. It's not a bad thing to take a step back if something isn't working out, and it's usually better than just pressing forward with brute force.