I don't believe it is currently profitable to create a new bot farm. Botfarms happened because you could pay $10 and then win 25 to 50 cents per game in bronze with starter cards. And if you rented a llamakron, you could get it back even quicker. Bot farms were into profit within a week and then it was all free money after that.
Today it would take a few years to make that $10 back and there's a chance you never can because for all they know, bots could be made illegal 6 months from now. People with the skills to build a bot farm have better opportunities with less risk. Those who own the accounts already and have already built bot farms in the past don't even find it worth it to keep them going anymore.
I think the value of this idea is more about encouraging pack buying and new player integration than it is about deterring bot farms. But I don't think that should be forced. So I guess I'm against nulling the null option.
I voted for it though because I want to have the conversation.
No bot farms anymore? I am so glad to hear that. Let's make sure it stays that way. My proposal will help.
No one is forced to pay let's say 14$ for the Spell-book and a Rebellion pack. If this amount is one's life savings I would say: Play some other game like ... hm why not chess. There are boards for less than 10$ on amazon.com
There are a few still in operation (although 90% have shut down already as evidenced by the reduction from 500k daily actives to 50k today) but no new ones are opening up. Your proposal is supposed to deter new ones but since new ones haven't opened up in over 2 years, it seems like your proposal is to help with a problem that doesn't exist.
And what is anyone going to do by opening up one rebellion pack? That's not even fun, and it will be a deterrent once they realize that one pack isn't even close to enough to field a team (play the game). I'd rather we do what Matt has been talking about. Buy a spellbook and get $3 to instantly rent a whole modern deck in one click. The player should be able to come in and instantly be able to play the game, not need to figure out what it means that they now have 5 cards they bought but can't field a usable team with.
And if it's more than 1 pack, well, now we're talking about a lot more than the $14 you came up with to rebut me.
As I said, I leave the details of the implementation to MATT, CLAYBOYN, the community and also you IMNO as part of the community of course. (14$ was just a silly example so you understand, but it seems it failed 😒). All of you can decide afterwards how the onboarding will be implemented and look in detail.
I just want the price of the Spell-book to increase and compensate with Rebellion packs. Because I want quality onboarding not quantity onboarding. And I also want fairness towards player who bought the book years ago already.
Imno also explains well what I said in my other post above, the botfarms that were created by the thousands were done when it was taking 7 days to get back the 10$ on the account from rewards cards dumping. After that they were positive until they tanked the market.
Then they left for the most part, and their accounts are still sold as of today to people that run bots in wild and invest in them, but in way less quantities as it currently take months not only to get ROI, but to stop loosing money on them. Yes, a new bot activated today is a 90% loss for 6 months minimum, that should tell you they are not so detrimental to the economy.
If anything i'd LOWER the price of a spellbook to 2-3$ as it serves zero purpose at 10$ currently with so many cheap accounts flying around for the people in the know to use.
I personnaly would lower it to 2 or 3$ as even at that price no bot farm could take advantage of the price and there is better out there for them. It will also make sure there are more real players entry because low price = more entry.
Don't know where you got your theory where high price in a shit market = more customers but it's factually wrong.
Apart from that, i'd obviously monitor the market price, and readjust the price of the spellbook accordingly and dynamically.
If we were with crazy price once again the price should go higher and higher and be calculated over the SPS price, as the rewards cards are now locked and cannot enter in that calculation.
But for now, 10$ is too much, more than that is suicidal.