I'm a very new player here, i started less than 4 months ago, i'm new in the crypto space and this is my first earn to play game, thus take my opinion with a grain of salt.
The bot issue was one of the first that i considered before entering splinterlands. I totally bought the narrative that, considered pros and cons, bots aren't detrimental to the economy of the game, and i still believe they are not.
Nonetheless, i believe that you have a good argument when pointing out that humans time is worth less because of bot's competion, but my friend, this is a world class problem and wont be solved with prohibition. I doubt even it could be solved with the "bot mode on" button, at least it wont if there will be incentives on having a bot running on a "bot mode off", however the "it's not a bug, it's a feature" motto seems very appealing to me.
I also believe that the shark you mentioned are very real and splinterlands haven't faced them yet, but i'm confident that the bot issue will be seen with less disgust when in the very near future they will be more or less everywhere.
That said, i disagree with your data interpretation, i personally know 6 more proper humans who plays this game and i'm sure 3 of them doesn't stake sps.
One of them change everything in credits, another one change sps for dec in order to have more sps airdropped and the third one is just too lazy. All 3 of them are extremely new players so it's not a representative data set but i don't count them as bots.
Last but not least, let's assume your data interpretation is correct, let's cut the numbers even more to 50k proper humans, how many were they 1 year ago? and 2 years ago? As you said the gameplay is fun and profound, the new set works properly even if the CL cards seems overpowered to me and we all still have to see a proper marketing campaign.
Anyway TYVM for pointing out the problem in this deep way, u gave me the opportunity to rearrange my toughts in a more tidy manner.
Hello, Thanks so much for commenting! it means a lot for this article to inform a new player and have you articulate your thoughts and participate in this discussion.
The issue here isn't Human vs Bot. The issue is bot v bot, as there are bot farms designed to "eat" other bot farms and essentially farm dec for little to no effort or investment. And in turn farming VOTING POWER for Splinterlands itself. As a bot beating a bot can happen 100 percent of the time if you are the programmer for both bots and run your massive "farms" at the same time to feed from each other. I even suggest open source botting in this post (I'm not anti bot I'm anti depreciation of player time being valued for everyone), to at least be able to monitor it and not have bots vs. bots. Or if so have it be in another pool perhaps.. who knows.
The data is variable, it only suggests that potentially as many as 6/7 people, but likely 2/3s of people are bots. Quite frankly if the transaction were investigated with a fine tooth comb you or I could BOTH be optimistically interpreting it... or not. The issue is the opacity of it, botting will always be present. Which as you pointed out is a part of the world we can't get past. Developers can choose to embrace bots or push back against them, but either way they need to at least inform the newer players of botting as an element of the game. Of course there are more humans than many years ago in alpha, it was in alpha. No one is saying that there aren't human players. There was a time the "real player base" didn't even hit quadruple digits, it's way more now. But should we act like bots are people and inflate the numbers? also no. I agree with you on many of your points, and appreciate the comment immensely.
We will see what happens and what the player base decides. Submit your feedback at feedback.splinterlands.com Which Splinter would you like for your delegation?
thx for the answer, now i get your point more clearly.
i checked the feedbacks about bots and they are more or less all the same and pretty old, i wonder why i cannot see your proposition right there.
To have a opensource bot mode on/off seems feasable and very good looking from a marketing point of view.
Nonetheless, i still have some doubts about:
do you see a differentiation in the matchmaking to have only bot vs bot and human vs human? that would be bad for the waiting time
do you also see some kind of rewards debuff for the "bot mode on"? that would be an incentive for running a bot in the "bot mode off", and will start an already lost tech war against bot developpers
IMHO, without the aforementioned two features, the open source "bot mode" won't be effective, and with them could even be detrimental to the game ecosystem.
OFC those are just my opinions and i'm totally open to make up my mind with the help of your toughts.
About the delegation, whatever you prefer my friend, even none, i'm much more interested in your point of view. If from that can come out a good proposal i will take any effort in order to support it, because i totally agree with you when you say that a transparent and clear policy about this issue is a must have for Splinterlands and any new p2e.
You wouldn't need to separate players, just have bots running at a constant but when they encounter another bot they receive a "null" response. Again, this is about the transparency at least, quite frankly it's not an awesome situation as a whole. I don't act like i have all the answers, but I do think the community should submit what they would do to change the situation or allow for more transparency. Thanks again for the comment. Read more about the proposal at feedback.splinterlands.com (615). The coder could take a percentage if he so chose, and I imagine there would be a formulated incentive for having bot mode on (or some sort of added benefit).
The alternative would be to crack down on bots that don't submit their coding open source, I mean. It's a full on bot endorsement, you just have to submit it to the library and potentially make money off your coding (or submit it to the library but have it be private to all but developer eyes perhaps).
The issue with bots is no one has really come to a fully fledged middle of the road solution, open source botting has the potential to be that solution. With community suggestions like yours. The BOTTERS CODERS would need to see if it appeals to them and speak up for this to work also. They could be making royalties on the innumerable robots using their code if they chose (at a percentage they would set). This financial cost potentially would serve as a determent for many using (or stealing) a coder's code to run a bot and using it 100s of thousands of times potentially.
At the very least it offers transparency, the financial reward would likely be a percentage increase (to be calculated) if the bot won versus a player. As they would ONLY be fighting players, but then this starts to become an active effort to combat bots. Players would try to make bots that "beat the system". Not the previously open-minded attitude allowing all bots. I appreciate the discussion. And the opportunity to lay out my thoughts and develop these ideas as a community and get everyone thinking. Even before you mentioned it incentivization is present in the article for the coder, but it is interesting to think that the botter should be compensated. The botter gets compensated in HIGHER PER WIN VALUE FOR ALL INCLUDING PLAYERS, but thinking about it like that feels weird. They lose their passive earning on innumerable bots, and would likely proponent for a passive staking earning for "bot mode on". Everyone needs to discuss issue as a community and at least make new players aware that anyone in ranked COULD be a bot with little to no regulation. I don't envy the developers position, there aren't easy solutions and likely none that make everyone 100 percent happy of the more difficult ones.
Cheers!!BEER !PIZZA and enjoy your delegation. The proposition is 615.