Hey there @holoz0r, this is a great analysis that you've done. I was happy to be your "guinea pig" a lot during the testing phase of your investigations. In fact, I got the opportunity to play both the victim and the villain as part of your testing here, haha. It was a lot of fun, and gave me a very different perspective than what I started out with. I'm also even more keen than ever now to see the "card delegation" and the "guilds" features being built into the main SteemMonsters game interface, and how that will all work. I firmly believe that the social aspects of this game can really help to counteract the "pay-to-win" myth here. I am living proof that, even with very little stake in the game, you can still get to the top of the leaderboard if you have the right connections! That is where the strength of the guilds will be, especially when card delegation starts.
Any solution to the issues raised in this post should bear in mind the social aspect of the game, and the impending guild and card delegation implementations that the devs have already hinted at. I'm sure there are many here who are opposed to your bot use here, but who haven't fully thought through the ramifications of limiting them, such as with the potential for in-house (unranked or guild-only-ranked) guild battles, which would also be stymied if bots were completely restricted. And those who HODL and intend to delegate their cards out for further revenue streams might also be impacted by some of the suggested remedies in this post.
There is a lot to think about here, and I do believe that a rash decision based on emotion will not help in the long run. I like the devs suggested solution of incremental tweaks until we get the balance right, rather than blanket bans on bot accounts and a load of new half-thought-out rules.
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From a purely playability standpoint, the glass ceiling that comes into play when you hit Diamond III is a big demotivator. There's nothing fun about constantly coming up against Maxed Out decks and opponents sitting 10K+ ranking points when you have 3K at best and minimal chance of improving on that.
Once you hit Diamond III, unless you're maxed out you may as well do the daily quest each day and then switch off til the quest resets.