It was only a week ago that I talked to Matt about the bot problem. He told me the bots were needed to ensure a smooth gameplay, as there are not enough playersthat play at every time of the day.
Living in Western Europe (GMT+1), my daytime is nighttime in the US and the other way around. And the major part of the SM players lives in the US.
At the end of the previous season, my level 1 account played against bots 38 out of 40 battles.
I admit, i wasn't happy about that, because the bots in silver are all.level 2/3 and basically unbeatable with an incomplete level 1 deck.
I did my fair share of complaining about the use of bots.
If your idea would be accepted, it is game over for me. I never thought I would actually defend the use of bots, but in this case I have to. Take the bots away, and there is hardly a human player around in the lower levels.
And what do you think the odds are that I actually win something in those tourneys, with my incomplete level 1 deck?
If you're all really that desperate to work out all the small accounts that don't have hundreds or even thousands of Dollars to level up their deck, and make SM a game for a select group of the rich and fortunate 'elite' only, stop making proposals like this and just be open and honest about it. Stop selling level 1 starter decks and make people buy a level 3 deck for $100 or more before they can enter the game.
I'm so sick of all the excuses and so called improvements which only benefit the people with a truckload of money. If the game was meant to be only for the fortunate few, it should have been made clear from the beginning. That would have been easier to accept than the fact that people were pfomised they could build their deck by playing. First it was XP that could be gained. Then free booster packs were handed out by the hundreds. When the free booster packs were taken out, you could at least earn reward cards to build your deck a bit. Next step was to limit the number of reward cards an now this...
People were promised the world, and every week, a new rule is made up to make sure the people without a truckload of money are doomed to stop playing.
Either be fair, or be brave enough to speak the truth.
Found in one of your comments above:
Okay, message received.it would have been fair if that message had been spread 6 seasons
Thank-you for your input. The bots are indeed a way to ensure battles were available when you wanted one, but I believe they should be controlled by Steem Monsters and setup with moderate teams and not one to maximize rewards.
The reason why you find yourself playing against the bots all the time is because the 'game', can't keep the new players around long enough for you to meet them.
And I have always been pro 'free to play' here on this platform. The changes I suggest are to first eliminate the bot abuse, and with cleared decks we can start to attract the players you so desire in your matches.
I would actually like to see matches based on summoner level, rather than a range of levels. I've said this from Day 1 (but it continues to fall on deaf ears)
However, as we grow the player base I'm hoping this will eventually be possible.
There was also another discussion, about having several leagues during a season, and instead of moving up to a new level where it's unlikely you can compete, you stay in that league competing for your own Top 10 placing.
Then maybe next season if you've improved your decks you might decide to move up, or just stay where you are and enjoy playing at that level.
So this is just a small piece of the puzzle, and if we don't figure out how to retain users, the game is dead anyway.
And yes, if people are here to just collect free cards, then they are here for the wrong reasons. I'd like to think we are building a community of people who enjoy playing the game, and the rewards are a bonus.
I too wasn't happy when we lost the booster rewards and lost direction on gaining XP as promised, but it is what it is.
Again thank-you for speaking out. You are not alone in your thoughts.
And if enough people complain and want to keep the status quo, as it seems you do, then I'm happy to stop lobbying for change, and will leave you to it.
But I suspect without a long term working game model, it will be 'Game Over' for me too.
I am completely with you when you say the bots should be owned by SM. Last week, I gave Matt a list of a series of +20 bots owned by the same player. I also asked him if this was a cooperation between the player and SM. Apparently not.
So I don't really understand why they don't take action against this and set up their own army of bots instead. It would definitely save them quite some reward cards...
Thanks for your more than decent reply to the above comment I wrote rather impulsively - in the heat of the moment, as you can say. My apologies for that.
Without an instream of new users, and existing users leaving, it migt be game over for everyone sooner than we had all expected.
I agree that the game as it is now, is probably not sustainable.
FYI, i also own a higher level deck. The one I was talking about in the comment is a deck I created as an experiment to see if it was still possible to grow your account without investing other money than what you pay for the starter deck.
Because I stick to my point that was one of the promises that was made when the game just went live.
I need to give it some more thought, but at first glance, the 'other pieces of the puzzle' do make sense to me
I'm not a mav, and although I sometimes follow up on the conversations going oninthe mav's house, I do not always have the time to do that.
It might have been useful if you had added a little footnote in your post about the other proposals you just mentioned in your comment. Because you only gave a small chunk of info that made it sound like it would become impossible for newcomers to survive.
And that's what we don't want. I mean, we all started with a starter deck and free cards as a reward. Once we decided we liked the game, we were prepared to invest in it.
Maybe I'm wrong, but I think people should be able to 'try before they buy'.
IMO, the pool with potential players on SteemIt is as good as drained. It is high time to set up a series of quality promo campaigns to the world 'outside' (more than enough SteemIt users with a history in professional marketing to make it an effective campaign that targets the audience that the founders want to attract).
I don't have access to stats, but my gut feeling says that the longer they wait to target the masses (and I don't mean a banner on 1 or two sites, I'm talking about a huge, professsional marketing campaign), the bigger the chance the chance that there won't be a lot of people left from the existing userbase. But that's just my two cents...
To me using the reasoning we need the bot farmers due to our player base is bollocks. SM can easily deploy their own site bots that take 0 rewards. Players will be much more accepting of site owned bots then player owned ones. Make them easy to beat so they never leave the level they were intended to help with starting games. We have to remember these reward cards are capped so allowing bots to claim oodles of them isn't good for the game. I gave a perfectly good solution to the bot problem which I will outline below.
Human Check Done By A Human
Captcha is out of the question because many believe its centralized and the devs simply don't want it. Banning is out of the question .... Nuking cards is out of the question because it goes against the this is a blockchain game crowd. So with all that in mind .....
Lets have human checks. If an account has been playing for XX hours straight then a pop up with a SM team member starting a discussion with the dedicated player starts. If they don't respond then kick them from game play. We make the XX hours high enough so The majority of human players will never be bothered with getting a pop up. Once a player gets kicked the frequency in which they get pop ups increases until its determined a human player is actually using the account.
Maybe... it might indeed be a solutjon. But some people have bots that don't run all the time. And I assume it isn't that hard to add some code that makes the bot 'sleep' for a while and then start over again.
I did notice some new bots today. One was called Noobhelper (or something like that). It was an easy-to-beat level a bot in Silver 3.
It was a welcome change for once :0)
My suggestion is just the base model of it. After implemented the next step would be ... The tables getting policed via the players sort of like they already are except we could have an official email/channel to send in the compiants. XXX amount of complaints about XXXXX account and they get monitored and if needed a pop up as well. My suggestion comes from other gaming industries tactics of fighting bots and keeping in mind that centralized solutions can't be applied.
I think it's indeed important to see how the other gaming industries deal with things. After all, they have the experience...
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