A 'Quick' Note on: Bots

As has been mentioned, a few times, in response to some of my previous posts:
There are BOTS in Splinterlands!

Generally, it seems that the comments regarding bots in SPL are- not positive. Many people ask: How is this going to get rid of bots? or they just assume that I'm anti-bot and try to tell me that 'bots are here to stay'.
Here's the thing though: I am not 'anti-bot'. I use 3 different Battles Bots to run my 23 Battling accounts. I also run DragonTools- which is a bot to manage rentals. So, no- I am not 'against bots'

OTOH- I don't ❤️ bots either. They are very good customers, for my rental business and they do a good job of playing my accounts for me- when I have other things to do. I just think they are, in general, bad for The Game.

I Believe that The Game should be FOR players and that the game and the Reward Structures should be designed around players, not bots. If people want to use bots- to play the game, that's fine-perfectly fine. I just don't think that botted accounts should have an advantage over players.

Are bots here to stay? Yes. Should Splinterlands design Earnings and Rewards in order to favor bots? No. Bots will always figure out ways to pull $$ out of the game- it is literally their one and only purpose. Make the game as 'Player Centric' as you want- bots will still be here and will still be Battling to take Earnings and Rewards away from the players.

Bots are Here to Stay

Personally, I don't believe that SPL could get rid of bots- even if they wanted to. Which, of course, side-steps the real question: Should they?
No. I don't think that SPL should even try to get rid of bots- they serve several, very important, purposes in the game and trying to filter for 'good bots' vs. 'bad bots' vs. player accounts... pointless, expensive, and ultimately- fruitless. Attempting to 'Build a Wall' will always be such- it's an essentially Socialist endeavor that will always fail. If people want bots, there will be bots. All the effort wasted trying to keep them out will always end up punishing players more than the bots.

As an example- think of all the 'walls' that have been erected to attempt to restrict bots:
CP Requirements (which have been nearly eliminated for the Modern Ladder)
Segregated Pools- by Format and/or League for both Earnings and Rewards
Earnings and Rewards Restrictions- All Earnings as well as the $$ Rewards have to be 'Claimed'. Once you figure out, those Earnings/Rewards can only be claimed once every (24, 48, 72...) hours. Even then, YOUR Earnings and Rewards can only be claimed if they break some arbitrary number- 1, 3, 5, 7... SPS.
Finally, once you are able to 'Claim' YOUR Earnings (from a P2E game) you find that YOUR SPS- is in the form of Staked SPS. Which then takes 4wks to access fully.

Have any of these 'worked'? Absolutely not. In fact, I would argue that the % of bots on the ladder has only increased with each succeeding wall that has been erected. These 'barriers' have only succeeding in driving out players while barely making a dent in the number of bots. The more rules SPL makes, the more hoops SPL makes people jump through, the more attractive bots look.

What is the Solution?

In my opinion- it's simple. Make Splinterlands more Player-Centric. Remove the 'walls', make The Game more welcoming, fun, and engaging for PLAYERS.

1. New Account 'On Ramp' to ease New Players' introduction to the game (future articles)
2. Re-work the Daily Reward structure (https://peakd.com/splinterlands/@axrho/spl-to-the-moon)
3. Adapt the Earnings and Rewards awarded to assist players who want to play and advance. (https://peakd.com/hive-13323/@axrho/spl-to-the-moon-ri0pa0)
4. Simplify the Earnings structure, while making it more 'fair'.

The current framework for awarding Earnings to accounts is convoluted, complex and opaque. Both from a player's perspective as well as a programming perspective- the whole process is hard to explain, hard to code, and not transparent.

I would suggest a simpler, easier and fairer system for Earnings: Rating x Summoner used level (BCX equivalent).
A level 2 Summoner would earn 5x as much as a level 1 and 1/5th as much as a level 4, at a given Rating. This would encourage combining/leveling Summoners, Advancing Leagues (so you could field higher level Summoners) while 'smoothing' the Earnings curve for accounts that don't field leveled teams.

Common and Epic Summoners could be 'slotted in' such that their BCX equivalent matched their Summoning capacity: L3 Epics = L4 Rares (25x Earnings) and L6 Epics = L8 Rares (115x Earnings) with the other levels matched up as well as possible (L1 Epics 2.5x Earnings?). The other consideration would be accounts that field 'Starter' or ghost Summoners- a value between 0-1 could be assigned for their Earnings Multiplier (say, 0.1), so they can earn but would earn 1/10th of what they would, if they fielded a 'real' L1 Summoner.

I can be found on Discord, usually- mostly in the DT server.
https://discord.gg/CPj4pDPXYZ
I run a (premium) Rental Management Service for SPL: Dragon Tools (https://www.dragontools.io)
I also run an SPL Hedge-Fund (ASII) that buys/rents/sells cards as well as investing in yield farming the various LPs available on HE

As always- Like, Subscribe, Comment, and Tip your Server. There will be more articles like this forthcoming!