Splinterlands will try to implement anti-bot measures in Modern format.

in #spsproposal2 years ago (edited)

f6897d275dfe63eacf3e01af63abb2826624f35b

Proposal

This proposal has been heavily edited to allow Splinterlands the freedom to implement anti-bot measures in Modern format. You can view Yabapmatt's proposal in the comment section but I will also copy it here:

"Instead of creating an entirely new play mode (which would be a pretty big project), what if we instead tried implementing anti-bot measures in Modern format only? This would be much, much easier to actually implement and try out and bots would still have a format with 50% of the rewards that they can participate in (Wild)." - Yabapmatt

The above proposal from Yabapmatt is the item being voted on.

Purpose

While Splinterlands is aiming to become a game in which humans and bots can compete on equal footing, it currently is not. By testing anti-bot measures in Modern format players can begin to enjoy competition against each other.

Thank you for reading this proposal. I would kindly ask you to comment below with your thoughts.

Proposal History

I have added this small history to provide clarity into how the proposal from Yabapmatt arose. Originally, I put forward the proposal:

"Splinterlands will create a temporary ranked mode with anti-bot measures. The league will be a copy of the current ranked system with the addition of anti-bot solutions. Fifty percent of the current reward pool will be used to fund rewards. At such a time when humans and bots can compete equally as per the intentions of the Splinterlands team the leagues will be merged again."

Yabapmatt responded:

"Instead of creating an entirely new play mode (which would be a pretty big project), what if we instead tried implementing anti-bot measures in Modern format only? This would be much, much easier to actually implement and try out and bots would still have a format with 50% of the rewards that they can participate in (Wild)."

I agreed to this alternative. I edited the proposal to be solely based upon his suggestion.

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I wanted to add some more information to this that may be helpful. There are third-party services that can be used to prevent bots from being able to use APIs, and they are supposedly pretty good from what I understand. So if this proposal passes, the plan would be to use one of those services in front of the battle API for modern format battles and the Splinterlands team would not be spending any resources "policing" the system or trying to identify bots and things like that.

If this initial trial is successful and we continue this on an ongoing basis, I would probably make a proposal to ask the DAO to help cover the costs of that service, but we'll cross that bridge when we get there.

This only works as long as you don't decentralize the game, as soon as you distribute the games state so others can maintain and run their own API, this won't work.

are there actual plans to decentralize the game ?

That has always been the plan all along, and this has specifically been brought up by Matt in the townhall that is specifically what he is here to build. There are many other centralized games on the market and people are free to play all those other ones, but this team, and this project, is here to build the worlds first decentralized trading card game

nice! doesn't seem easy ...

If only the Battle API is put behind a bot-detection system, what's stopping bots from submitting teams on-chain?

That works unless the bot is entirely browser-based, which mine is.

I don't think browser based bots are much of an issue. They scale horribly and aren't a huge drain on the reward pool.

Instead of creating an entirely new play mode (which would be a pretty big project), what if we instead tried implementing anti-bot measures in Modern format only? This would be much, much easier to actually implement and try out and bots would still have a format with 50% of the rewards that they can participate in (Wild).

There are more bots in Modern, so maybe the other way around? Anti-bot measures in Wild and let them bot in Modern?

In general I would agree, but in wild there are already so many cards available per battle that it will get harder and arder for humans to manage.
That's one the the reasons why I suggested this.

I can see pros and cons of both, I would rather have anti-bot measures in Wild but at this point I am okay with both.

Wild being a free-for-all makes more sense to me. Human players there can gain an edge simply by having a wider range of cards to choose from. Modern on the other hand is where the new players go, and where we really care about new user experience.

I do believe Modern having the anti-bot measures is the best option mainly because newer players will mostly be going to play Modern and having people win more in Modern would directly encourage more players to play in the long run. We don't want the "entry" mode to be the hard mode in games.

Botting already has minimal entry right now w/ all the cheap cards available to be used in Modern so once botting moves to Wild they'll need to rent a lot more cards to farm the next reward sets more effectively which in turn would get exponentially more expensive for them to do so with each new set launched which could discourage those who don't own much of the cards to still bot in Wild.

I like many of the others that have responded here, I think bots belong more in Wild than Modern. Modern to me is where the 'current' game scene is and for other TCGs it is what tournaments etc are based on. In this case I think keeping it largely human only is a good move.

The current Modern bots will have no issues moving into Wild and we will simply see a rental shift change of the types of cards they are renting out which should increase the value of Alpha/Beta etc since to my understanding bots are currently the largest body of card renters.

I do see the downside though in that those modern bots will now be taking part in the Wild SPS pool which means that in general all WILD battles will yield less SPS per battle as the total amount of SPS will be divided up into a now larger base of battles. This push however is probably good for the game however as it further incentivizes players to constantly 'reinvest' into new card sets.

less SPS per battle as the total amount of SPS will be divided up into a now larger base of battles. This push however is probably good for the game however as it further incentivizes p

I think the less SPS per battle would only apply to bots/players in the lower leagues. Most players in wild in those lower leagues are top 200 battle for EOS leaderboards and many are using owner/delegation bot accounts in there already and would have a choice to either expect a reduced pool spread throughout the season or go up a league and choose to chase bigger rewards during season over leaderboard battles. For many, it's the same names getting top positions each season anyway so I don't think they'd care too much tbh. As a wild only player I don't see modern bots as a threat at all. And I think if modern bots really want to continue in wild, they are going to struggle to get past the player bots who have a much higher owned/delegated spread of cards. Even playing my alts in bronze and silver trounce these modern bots that venture to wild chasing bigger rewards in lower leagues with just a handful of extra max league lvld cards from earlier editions.

Thats a good point. I'm not 100% sure how the SPS pool is split among leagues but assumed that an increase in battles in the lower leagues would still impact the amount of SPS available for higher leagues. If each league has its own sub-pool however than I could see higher leagues not being impacted.

Why are we all accepting this as the only way? yes, it would be more work, but a split where you can bot in both modern and wild, but split the rewards in half as the original proposal states is a much better, much more equitable. yes, we want new players to have a good experience, but you are basically pidgeon-holing them to only be able to play in modern. probably the majority of people will naturally take that path, but why force them? more work does not necessarily mean that it's the wrong way. and then all these conversations about which league to change are rendered moot. it is the right way to do it imo but we are all settling for a sub-par idea so we can get it faster. speed ain't necessarily our friend here.

Putting anti-bot measures in modern fits the ethos of the leagues: modern = latest sets, and latest rules (anti-bot). Wild = anything goes

I agree to your suggestion. How do you want me to proceed? Should I edit this pre-proposal? Should I create a new one? Or, as it does not strictly fall under the purview of the DAO, do you want to bypass any vote altogether? I appreciate your reply and am willing to proceed however you wish.

I would edit the pre-proposal - that's basically what the pre-proposal period is for, getting feedback and making updates before the real vote begins. Also, thank you for submitting this, it seems like it has some very real support and will be great to see how the community feels about this idea.

I've updated the pre-proposal. Thank you for giving the community such a strong tool to voice their concerns and effect change. If you want me to update the pre-proposal any further please let me know. When I went to submit this proposal I was warned that I was opening myself up for a lot of hate. Actually I haven't experienced anything but valid criticism, serious discussion, and a lot of community support. I'd like to thank everyone in this ecosystem for their kindness and for their votes, whether for or against. Awesome to see a community like this!

I agree so much with that, this is not the proposal i voted for with all my accounts, totally different beast i can not agree with at all :-(

No, that's exactly what this "pre-proposal" stage is for. It's to get feedback and make changes before the proposal goes to an official vote. If someone makes changes at the last minute then the proposal will fail in the official vote (assuming the community doesn't like it). I think people are putting too much weight on the pre-proposal votes.

i think that would be a hard pain for the people who support the proposal but own old decks. that would probably bring the biggest supporters of this proposal to no!

Yes, I still own all these old cards like Prince Rennyn, Valnamore etc. (all GF) and would like to use them against human opponents, but to have something which is at least better than nothing I would still vote in favour of this new version of the proposal.

I wont change my vote, but I must admit this is a hard pill to swallow

this is a much better idea than doing nothing. i would love a full anti bot game though. thats the gamer mentality. no bots, no helpers.

would it be possible to allow the player to choose who they play? Humans only, or they don't care and play anyone? Let the market decide. If no one wants to play bots then the bots will have to wait for matches. If people don't care who they play then no change.

That sounds much more reasonable than having three or four leagues!

cool! either or

I think this proposal will be passed because most of the mavs or big names in SL plays in wild because because they have all the resources haha nice one. This is not bias proposal

Quite a change in the proposal Matt, i fully supported the idea thinking 1/3th less rewards would be acceptable but as all bots and many OG's will go Wild, looks like it more be of a 2/3th reduction, that's a bit hard to start off you know.

I didn't make the proposal, I just made a suggestion to make the proposal actually feasible and the author decided to take it. It's up to the community if they want to pass it or not, and if people like the original version better then anyone is free to propose that.

You are fine with Bots why ''try'' to get rid of them lmao

#yabapmatt What if...bot would be implemented into game. BUT, bot learns from your own (human) gaming history. So, you play more and better, more you can use bot when you ain't got time to play. And there should be certain number of bot rounds per day. Good or bad idea?

Dude you are using bots for so long!. A long time ago i thought you are the best SL-player and i was happy to win 1 or 2 out of 10 against you (beta card times). It was a big disappoinment to find out you were not but your bot is! At that time perhaps 10% of accounts used a bot but even then you were one of them. So please cry less!

Haha, i was a top 3 player for long time without bot and i look in a way forward to having a non-bot league to play again, i also upvoted the pre-proposal for that reason. It's only when other bots came on the scene and occupied the whole top 10, that i started making and using a bot. All my playing knowledge is into that bot, that's why it's the best bot out there 😜
I am not crying, I am just warning Matt that the changed proposal is maybe a bit too drastic for all the O.G.'s still there because of the bot service, they might leave when they see better returns else where and if that happens, we will all cry because market will collapse with selling pressure. Splinterlands' main sale income also still comes from these guys. I cross fingers land might then still be a good option for them to park their cards and gain passive income.

Hey Bubke thanks for the reply and to be fair i get your point! Lets hope all goes well.

We already out when Aggy said stupid shit pre OCT 2022

Don't know if you'll read this but what about novice and bronze leagues for bots? We likely wont always have players in there for human battles. That would be challenging.

I think the goal of this proposal is to give you the latitude to handle it how you think would be best. So your solution to this proposal would be acceptable to me.

@theukm can you please reply to @yabapmatt if you are ok with his solution? Also if you are, then I think you can add an "edit" to your proposal referencing Yabapmatt's comments and that's an acceptable solution if we vote for this.

It feels like we are moving forward. Thanks to both @theukm and @yabapmatt for their efforts.

don't you think we would lose the biggest supporters of the proposal? because they are almost all people with old big decks!

I think getting something done is the purpose. If Matt is willing to add any new features to prevent paying out SPS to bots from any form of play then its worth trying. Only until we try things can we then later adjust.

So whether it starts in Modern or in Wild, whether its the old league or the new league, at the end of the day its a start.

The goal is to try to find space where humans can compete and play against other humans. Once we find out how to do that, then it can be applied anywhere in any format. The DAO can then decide what makes sense in terms of what is the right mix of SPS to human vs human and human/bot modes.

I hope we can move forward and quit worrying about it being perfect. We will learn what works and what doesn't, which by itself will be a HUGE improvement and a big step for the future of the game.

i mean all the bots from modern would switch over to wild the wild players are trapped in wild. which would mean that all of a sudden the wild reward pool would be sucked in by a lot more people. and as we know when it comes to reward cuts the approval is gone very quickly. i understand that this would be better for the team to implement. but it would dramatically increase the risk in my opinion that the proposal would be rejected.
and if the proposal is then rejected we have achieved nothing!

would switch over to wild the wild players are trapped in wild. which would mean that all of a sudden the wild reward pool would be sucked in by a lot more people. and as we know when it comes to reward cuts the approval is gone very quickly. i understand that this would be better for the team to implement. but it would dramatically increase the risk in my opinion that the proposal would be rejected.
and if the proposal is then rejected we have achieved nothing!

I think people need to consider something with regards to potential reward cuts in Wild as a result of this proposal. Most modern bots wont get high enough to siphon significant rewards not without fighting over limited supplies of pre modern rentals. In my experience in Wild bronze, silver and gold, most bots in there are player owned/delegated with a much bigger deck spread. If modern bots want to compete with that, they are going to need to rent a bucketload more cards (at what expense?) or do what most player owned bots do and actually own the cards to be financially competetive with reward return (which is a good thing and a thing most anti-botters like myself do not have grievance with or in the least willing to accept this concession for botting as it botting with intention to re-invest into the games economy). Renting 100 cards in Wild for a silver deck for example is going to hopefully put the siphoners out of business while the modern botters with aims for growth, ownership and re-investment would eventually come out the winners with every card purchase they tick off on their ownership lists. Not to mention when land staking drops, the available card pop for wild would drop even more as whales who currently rent out significant amounts of cards remove their high end PP rentals to place on land.

we will see. I hope it doesn't. As long as we have a human to human league... AND a human and bot league, then we will get a lot of great information that will help the game.

I hope it passes and I hope people can see the bigger picture.

i hope that even if the proposal will fail due to this change. that the team in the future takes into account that a large part of the community wants a bot free zone!

Sad life you have Dave.. They said botting is allowed for many years and even OG players do it :D

Matt or Aggy can play White Hats all they want they used 10.000 Bot Farm to get some matches early on + more sketchy stuff but hey am probably rude

Is the team switching from bot agnostic to leaning toward anti bot? People made decisions based on the previous stance. The market wants bots and trying to remove them will either lead to it going underground or players leaving I feel.

First, this is a vote for the DAO to decide and not the team. The DAO controls the SPS distribution.

Regarding what the market wants, I would disagree. The price of the SPS, cards, DEC, etc have all been going down ever since the bots entered the game in force and started dominating the gameplay.

But you can have your own opinion of course. I personally feel the exact opposite as you stated.

In full support of this. As a bot user myself i think theres something special about having the options to play actual people, organically. Lately, I've been challenging friends like crazy so theres a part of me that wants to see this succeed. fingers crossed!

Maybe we can have a setting for players to choose to only play humans?

I'm happy, whichever way it goes, For all i care, give human players less reward percentages. All i want is a 90% chance to vs a human on the other side. We had yabapmatt on our splinterlands 101 show and seeing his facial expressions of him choosing a team and nearly running out of time confirmed to me that human v human should be cherished just as much as bots, because lets be real automation is so convenient and cuts times down on many operations which is awesome as well. I'ts all about choices and for me this feels like a huge step forward.

Love your work Gio. I love taking on humans and only want that experience rather than grinding 15 battles just to find one. It makes the playing field even. Some days you feel like you could take on Ueyuey your that switched on like pro smashing your oppoents. Other days your not up to best and make selection errors and get beaten by a friend with half a deck and they get the rush of toppling a giant playing 2 leagues above them. It's the human experience that makes the game fun. It's the human experience that makes the game!

Could'nt have said it better myself. Thanks, as always, articulating it in ways that makes so much sense to me.

Voting No.
There is no way to reliably and accurately check for bots. Any measures taken can be quickly and easily avoided, for example checking for tokens would be bypassed by having users pay a fee monthly and send an message encrypted so that only the bot service can read it.

And so you know Captia will NOT stop bots in any meaningful way.

In short there is nothing that can be done to prevent bots without a fundamental change in how the game operates. The focus should be on how to make sure that no account can drain significantly more than they spend.

I agree with the weaknesses you've noted. If a bot service is determined to bypass the rules, some will find ways as long as the economy creates the incentive. But I think that if there is a line in the sand, some current bot users will respect it.

However, I do want to challenge you on your closing concept here though:

The focus should be on how to make sure that no account can drain significantly more than they spend.

First of all, this is not how economies work anywhere. Splinterlands has a fairly complex economy and there are many different ways to participate. In real economies, people tend to specialize in offering services in some area (ie employment) and consuming in other areas. Then supply and demand should help balance out the supply of various inputs - labour/time, skill, capital, innovation, etc. All of these have some value in an economy and allowing people to participate in the ways that they can add some efficiency makes sense.

But if we create the scenario that "NO ONE" is able to get more out than they put in, then the entire project literally becomes a money pit, not an economy. There is no return on time, skill or efforts. Which maybe is fine if we just want a fun game, but then we might as well eliminate the reward pool, let asset prices adjust downwards, and make fun more affordable for everyone.

Aggy can explain the money pit scenario but you have to be an Alpha guy and keep botting to keep up

Exactly this even if they managed to identify every single bot then the issue is just humans looking at battle helper data and manually entering battles like a bot. Unless there is some way to stop all of this this just improve things for bots that stay hidden or humans who manually use automated tools.

I am voting no too for various reasons, but there is one way to stop bots, KYC. that would be hard to circumvent. and at best people could only run one bot per proven identity

I disagree, that's like arguing we shouldn't treat people in hospitals because death is inevitable.

Anti Bot measures are always a race between botters and game developers. But the harder you make it, the less widespread their usage gets. Its a big difference whether someone with 4 weeks of programming experience can build a bot for the game or whether it requires years of experience to figure it out.

I like this. I will vote for it.

I think its awesome that you don't put a timeline or put specific conditions on HOW to achieve this.

I fully support splitting the rewards in half for the regular league and half to an attempt to make a human only league for ranked play.

NOTE: to those who want a proposal on this topic to be perfect, I would say to be honest with yourselves. There's too many moving parts, too many unknowns, and too many opinions on the matter to please everyone. So starting with something is better than just keeping things as they are and letting people continue to leave the game out of frustration. This proposal if passed, will offer those that care about human competition a thing called "HOPE".

Thanks very much! Your support is much appreciated.

I think if possible there should be three types of ranked matches/modes:

  • human versus human only
  • mixed mode (everybody - humans, bots, aliens, cats, ..., - could join) :-)
  • bots only (also the pure machine contest could be interesting if separated from human competition; similar like in chess)

Bot vs bot could be interesting... Similar to watching Stockfish vs AlphaZero and their unique strategies. I imagine the game needs more complexity to reach anywhere near those levels though. Maybe after spells and more rulesets are introduced! Thanks for your comment.

This is the first proposal I bothered to log in to up vote on peakd. It's not perfect but the team needs to acknowledge that the latest gen. of bots have an advantage over anyone who isn't an autistic algebra professor. If everyone bots out their account for higher returns or because they get frustrated playing bots then why even have a game? Maybe a new league and cutting 50% out of the ranked pool is a bit too far but it's pretty clear the vast majority of the humans playing the game want a way to play and earn against other humans.

i vote for it. if you give people the choice to play by themselves or a bot. why shouldn't people also have the choice if they want to play against bots or against humans....

actually I think you can leave the ranking list where you earn money so, just let everyone with his bot pick up his money there daily. and makes for the people a mode where they have fun and get things where on bots have no interest. but since we seem to wait in vain for the perfect solution and always have only excuses this is not perfect that is not perfect to then do nothing for years. I will vote for any proposal that does anything at all. so that finally comes movement in the matter!

Thank you. I think giving choice to the players is at the very heart of this proposal.

I changed my vote from no to yes after giving it some thought. Originally, I thought the wording was just a little too vague, even if it's mentioned that this was done intentionally.

After reading some of the comments and more of the text below the proposal, I decided to vote yes at this stage to start a conversation. I would need a more detailed proposal to vote yes at the next stage.

The pessimist in me thinks that if there were a human league, botting would just morph into something more like a battle helper. In fact, little birdies whisper that this is already how players in the top guilds operate. Not with Xbot, but with private ones. It's worth exploring what options there might be, though.

I'm someone who uses botting services to auto-battle for me sometimes but does think it would be cool if there were a way to ensure that only real people were playing in certain circumstances.

It will morph into battle-helpers. Don't kid yourself. It might sound nice, it might give you a cozy feeling of "finally we'll do something about bots", but since we can't enforce anti-battle helper measures and financial incentives are there to use them, there will be a lot of undetected activity going on. And then the question is: how good are these solutions if you can't enforce them?

Enforcement is not the point. The point is to get the ball rolling and the conversation started. A human taking the time to manually submit battles, even with the aid of a battle helper is exponentially better than automated bots doing everything with no human involvement whatsoever.
I still believe creative team building trumps bot 'winrate' stats.

Did you ever use a battle-helper? If yes, how was your experience when changing the proposed matchups?

Then people would start running a bot locally that picks the teams based on the suggestions from the battle helper.

I'd argue that battle-helpers are the lesser evil compared to fully automated bots. Because then time and capital become the limiting factor, people will need to play themselves. Now the limiting factor is only capital.

Yeah, I think overall, you're right. In Champion, I think the top players who already dominate the leaderboards and tournaments would still find ways to cheat if they can. If the API-blocking technology mentioned in the updated proposal could block any sort of battle helpers, even private ones, now that would be pretty interesting.

I think they should've tested that technology out in tournaments before ranked battles, but first we have to see if the proposal passes, I suppose.

!PIZZA

"Temporary" ranked mode with no concrete suggestions is an instant NO from me. Stop being lazy and forcing the team to invent anti-bot measures and come up with them yourself. This is a huge waste of resources right now. I'm more than happy to support such a thing with well thought out solutions.

Thanks for the comment. I was unsure as to how specific proposals should be. If technical expertise is a requirement then surely the amount of proposal writers would be very limited as I and surely most others are in no position to provide technical specifications to software developers. I don't expect anyone to invent anti-bot measures but to use already existing ones.

While I'm unsure where I will vote, I actually think that this proposal did a great job by presenting exactly one concrete suggestion:

Splinterlands will create a temporary ranked mode with anti-bot measures. The league will be a copy of the current ranked system with the addition of anti-bot solutions. Fifty percent of the current reward pool will be used to fund rewards. At such a time when humans and bots can compete equally as per the intentions of the Splinterlands team the leagues will be merged again:

This proposal is clear, concrete, and fully within the capacity of the DAO to decide where it wants to allocate SPS:

  • "bots-allowed league" and
  • "no-bots-allowed league."

While it presented some suggestions, they are clearly just suggestions, and not part of the proposal. This avoids muddying the waters by defining the anti-bot measures as a part of the vote.

That is really the only way the SPS DAO can use their powers to address this. The DAO doesn't have control over implementation, and doesn't have the data that Splinterlands has as the game developer. Further, the DAO doesn't need to split itself on whether they want captchas, bot tokens or API restrictions, and can simply decide:

Do we want to split SPS rewards again into more leagues, if it means we try to eliminate botting in some of them?

That suggestion is not a solution per my complaint. How do you enforce it? This is the biggest hurdle the team needs to devote resources towards. My complaint remains unanswered.

i honestly find it heartbreaking how people who just plan to keep using their bots and are not at all interested in playing themselves are afraid that not all bots in the other rankings will get caught. this empathy and concern for other people touches me deeply 😁

Bots in Splinterlands offer several advantages, especially for new players. Firstly, they help to balance the game, allowing novice players to compete on an equal footing with more experienced players, even without access to rare cards or powerful decks. This makes the game more fair and accessible to all players, regardless of their dedication or financial resources.
Additionally, bots add an extra layer of unpredictability and excitement to matches, providing a more challenging and enjoyable gaming experience. New players can learn from bots by observing different strategies and unique decks, which can help them improve their skills and refine their own strategies.
Finally, bots can help keep the community engaged and interested in the game, offering new opportunities for gameplay and keeping the gaming experience fresh and exciting. This is especially important for new players, who may be drawn to the game by its vibrant and constantly evolving community.
In summary, bots in Splinterlands are beneficial for new players, making the game more fair, challenging, and engaging. They offer an opportunity to compete on an equal footing with more experienced players, learn from different strategies and decks, and engage with a vibrant and constantly evolving community.

Do you seriously believe in what you said? How exactly do bots make the game more fair for new users?

This proposal should fail, it's tantamount to "bots bad, I hate bots, make them stop" but provides no details in how that should be done. I think proposals should not be amorphous hand waving of changes without details.

I'm a manual player, a serious one at that (i have a ton of manual notes for what line-ups work for which rulesets, for which league) and even then I would never vote for this.

What's going to happen is we are going to have sore losers accusing people of being bots when they actually aren't. Just like what happened to those Japanese players a while back.

haha I remember that kira accusing someone, I forgot his name hahaha thats funny

I'm all for anything encouraging people to play the game. I'm skeptical how many of the people with "influential" votes will support this but miracles do happen.

Thank you. I think the proposal works in favour of even the largest SPS holders. They having a significant stake in the game. They want the game to grow so their networth grows. They know that attracting real human competition will grow the game more than if it remains a battleground for developers. Their bots earning less SPS per battle is a small price to pay for their assets appreciating in value due to significant demand from humans who actually wish to compete.

I think a lot of these people are really short-sighted (no offence). A lot of them mostly care about their short-term gains and since they view the game solely as an investment, they are not really interested in anyone ruining their gamified defi empire.

I also consider the game mostly as an investment, but I fear this investment won't be reliable long term if the game doesn't become more attractive again for new, real human players.

I hope we have enough people like you. 😉

100% old players playing in wild using bots will approve it. Thats they decide to implement it in modern, so their babies will not be affected hahaha

I would support your idea.

I take the opportuniy to add one anti bot idea here (again):

How would a bot/tool handle it if each player could only use (let's say) 10 randomly selected percent of their cards per match and then had to spontaneously form the best possible team from these available cards?
Would the software still be superior? It would not be able to use databases (it would not even know which cards would be available to the opponent, so it would also find it difficult to carry out a simulation) ...
Of course, randomness would then play a much bigger role, but good players would still form much better teams on average from the randomly selected cards than weaker players.
And investing in many cards would still be worthwhile insofar as 10 % of a large card collection means absolutely still significantly more available cards per match than 10 % of a smaller collection.
I would exclude the summoners from the card reduction to keep RNG low enough.

This idea might not be suitable for lower leagues where many players don't own huge card collections.
But in higher leagues (and with all card editions counting) I think that could be interesting.

Yes, there might be some flaws in this version of the concept, but I guess the idea in general might offer some food for thoughts ...

I've thought that would be a cool ruleset, if nothing else. When I look at my deck available for battles these days, there are almost too many cards. It might really stir things up if we were randomly dealt hands from our decks, at least for some battles here and there, if not all the time.

... there are almost too many cards.

Exactly! Easy for a bot, but more and more difficult for a human to select the optimal teams.

I'm seriously considering delegating some of my cards out to another account and seeing if having fewer options will make it easier to pick a team. I am not even sure which of my cards are the most powerful anymore. It was so much easier years ago when all we needed to win was Prince Rennyn. haha.

!PIZZA

I suppose the idea we are working towards is adding rulesets and game states that are very hard to code solutions for. I'm not sure how difficult that is or if it is even possible but I like your thinking! Even a flawed concept is a great start to build upon.

It is an interesting idea, however I believe with the current rulesets it will be only few cards in many battles.
F.E. when you can use only Odd (or Even cards) 50% of your collection are already out of the race, when you in addition have a ruleset like Magic Only or Range Only how many cards will stay if you can use only 10% ?
I guess in most situations with this rulesets you won't be able to fill the 6 positions.
Also when neutrals are excluded you will have just a few cards, you have approximately 80 cards of every element, so 10% means arround 8 cards for 6 positions, really not a big choice.
So I think when this suggestion should go live their should be a minimum of available cards, I think that for 6 positions it should be at least 10 cards available, so that you can choise at least a bit and not just decide about the position of the cards as you have only 6 (or even less) cards available.
In the modern format this problem will even increase.

At the end the game needs complexity in gameplay.

Maybe, but "complexity" doesn't mean in my opinion to have to choose as human between 1000 possible card options within 2 minutes. :-)
If "complexity" would get implemented in a way that makes humans more successful than now compared to bots I was in favour of it.

add another round into it.

Switch some positions. Stuff like that.

"+1 attack for goblins" "Mech cards get additional +3 life".

Stuff like that.

I agree with another full set it becomes super shit to draft. I would really like season drafts.

Like let the bots play and you can send your own deck into the battle for the season based on winrates or stuff like that.

send 3 decks, cost 15k dec and this is also the reward pool. Sustainable and fun.

After participating in Mav's Chat yesterday whilst waiting for the update, there was actually was a conversation regarding bots, and who actually remains as real players, according to the chat there are very few. That's a shame. I would love to see more people getting back into this, especially the OG's, lead by example. Team Philippines is in support of this.

MangoMayhem by DamienWolf.png

Thank you for the support Team Philippines! I want to see real players get back into this game too.

I agree with this measure. I can only wonder how many players have been lost due to not wanting to play against bots. I love this game but sadly I am now just a renter. It was hard for me to stay passionate given the current climate. I know that we can figure this out so that we can become a common name in the ESPORTS world.

We have to move on this old "topic" and i will definetly vote for it. I already suggested different ideas in the discord and will keep on doing it when the proposal passes and we finally see if spl is willing to do something against a future possible AI battle network

voting yes for now.

I like this as an amalgamation of concepts discussed over the last year. Thanks for formalizing this. Even if the implementation takes time and is not perfect/complete at the start, they can build on it and continue incorporating anti-bot measures.
And for people griping that you haven't been prescriptive enough...that's the whole damn point. Give the team latitude to make decisions and take some of the easiest concepts to build out and attack those first.

Exactly this! I don't think the implementation will be perfect initially and I also don't believe all bots can be stopped. I want to start by picking the low hanging fruit to make Splinterlands a more enjoyable experience for the average gamer and this proposal is the first step. Thanks for the comment.

I support this! I am going to reblog this for you too!

https://leofinance.io/threads/@namelessnameless/re-namelessnameless-nbbnrhxg
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people ( namelessnameless ) sharing the post on LeoThreads,LikeTu,dBuzz.

I was enthusiastic about the pre-proposal and upvoted it with all my accounts but the proposal has changed dramatically now, that's sad. As mentioned in a lot of comments, rewards in Wild will be too little because all bots will be there, humans still allowed and many og's want to be there because they have the old strong cards, it's too big of a change in rewards, it doesn't look like i will upvote this but maybe also not downvote, i will take my time.

Another thing is that i would LOVE to play again and have fun in a 100% human league like good old times but then again, i would just run my bot on the bot-league, the check on my account would be impossible to implement. Also, it is IMPOSSIBLE to check on the use of tools (speaking as a DEV here)

But i tell you, and that's why i upvoted the pre-proposal, there MUST be a human-only league, only don't agree with your changed proposal

Thanks for your comment. I think we both have the same goal: an area for humans to enjoy competing. I view this proposal as a first step towards this goal. It has if nothing else shown the team that the sentiment for fair competition amongst players is high.

I edited to accomodate Matt's proposal because I didn't believe my own could achieve a 66% consensus. I know it was not ideal and I'm sorry to you and to anyone who preferred the original version. I respect your right to up/downvote as you wish and I thank you for upvoting my original proposal.

As far as tools go, I think there is only one real solution: The game must become more complex to make such tools harder to code. Some tools store battle histories in a database. I imagine as more rulesets are added the data for specific mana/ruleset/color combinations becomes sparse. Some tools run simulations, I have no idea how to hinder those beyond adding more depth to the game which might happen once spells/items are introduced.

I've played against you (your tools?) a couple of times in brawls. Not recently though, maybe you're a tier above my guild now. I got stomped both times but hope I'll have a chance for revenge once Rebellion is released and Untamed is rotated from Modern (Damn you Almo Cambio I always lose against you!).

I still adhere to my opinion that this game is for people, and bots have no place in brawl!

Definitely support this even though I am using a bot most of the time I will vote YES for this one. Generally I would want to see a variation of this where all API based ranked battles are only available for a set of community approved bot IPs to isolate out bot farms, which I think are the main issue here. But even if it means that I cannot use my bot any longer I think this is a price I'm willing to pay for making this game more exciting again.

Assuming wild format:

Randomly disallow certain cards to be played the same way they do now with Splinters in ranked. Start out with tanks to keep it simple and test it.
Examople: Match says water or fire splinters only but Baakjira and Grum are disallowed for this match.

Randomly disallow a Beta, Untamed or Dice card to be played as a fighter and turn it into a summoner for that match with the buffs/nerfs applicable dependent on the card level and match level.
Example: I am playing in a gold tournament. For this match it has some kind of crazy world symbol or Praetoria holiday symbol letting me know that a beta/untamed/dice card will be useable as a summoner. Match is earth and death splinters only - it shows Boogeyman and Epona as useable summoners but disallowed as fighters.
I only have a level 6 boogeyman so it will grant rust and slow but if this were a Diamond match and I had him at max level it would also have demoralize. I only have a level 2 Epona so I can go with her for Divine shield and strengthen.

Flip a coin - winner gets to use a random totem which may or may not apply to the match. For example +1 melee or +1 magic. I'm not 100% on this one as it just replaces skill with RNG but it is an idea to consider if both players know it is coming.

Imagine there was companies like XBOT, Splintermate and Archmage openly advertising as cheating programs to beat other players in Chess tournaments. They would be all over the news as criminal enterprises and the lawsuits would fly so why are they not treated the same way for this game? Nobody wants to pony up the money to sue them or send them a "cease and desist?" Yes I am aware that would leave private bots and bots in other countries. There are other solutions for those.

If you look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cheating_in_chess a general rule of thumb when people get really creative in cheating to avoid rules is bottom line - "The players shall take no action that will bring the game of chess into disrepute."
These bots are hurting the reputation of Splinterlands so something has to be done.

I wish that this proposal wasn't so bogged down by the middle suggestions section. I'm not sure which direction I'll vote (it looks like it'll pass pre-proposal either way, frankly) but that vote will solely be informed by the initial paragraph that contains the actual proposal.

Personally, I'm against splitting the pool further. That and the potential clutter of twice as many queues are the main ideas that put me off of this. I feel the splitting of humans and bots is a fine idea, and at risk of clocking myself I'd probably participate in both for different reasons. The messy layer of implementation is really the issue though, and that's pretty obviously why this level of resources has not been devoted to the issue yet.

(This section will not influence my vote)
Unfortunately, as much as I dislike the suggestions section, I don't have much to contribute myself. -1 Captcha, -1 team analysis, +1 good faith (I know it may not count for much to some, but I would personally respect). Token checking seems very basic and functional, but then that leaves private bots untouched. I'd say that's the real challenge here.

Appreciate the effort put into the proposal, but I personally am very distracted by the suggestions put forth. If the ideal is to be vague to give the team more to work with, I'd sooner vote on a bare bones proposal with no such distractions.

Thanks OP for sharing what's real for you and putting change into action! That's the coolest thing about this community imo.

Thanks for the kind words and fair criticism. I can definitely improve upon things next time! This proposal system is one of the greatest things I've seen in terms of giving players a voice.

Development resources should be focused on the game's roadmap.

maybe the mistake is that no new game mode without bots is on the roadmap? 😇

What's the difference between one person who has 100 accounts or 100 people if everyone is invested in the game? Why does everyone say that bots are bad and that their owners are pulling resources out of the game? Why does no one say that most of the owners of weak accounts dream of recouping their small investments, which means withdrawal of funds from the game!

are you still in the year 1980? hardly anyone talks about the bots pulling resources out of the game. it's about the bots destroying the game by taking the fun out of the players. all measures in the past to reduce the damage of the bots. has massively destroyed the fun of the game. or do i have to mention for example that a game is mega shit for a gamer which you can only play 30 minutes a day?

but this is a core problem. some like you no longer see that the game is first and foremost a game and that the ecosystem is only a part of the game....

I am on both sides. I like playing and I like doing automation. I don't care if I play with a bot or a human, it all depends on the cards and experience. Bots are dumb right now. Here bots from Lamba were mega cool, they were interesting to play with!

sorry but you really seem to come from a country before our time or? the current bots are better than most players. the modern champion leaderboard are almost only bots....

This is a bad idea. Splinterlands has already put in place alot of anti bot measures.... look what happened... rental market died overnight. period. it's still dead. You will have thousands of alt accounts selling untamed and chaos cards or you will have everyone in wild and a few people in modern fighting it out. Ok so this is going to happen... let bots have there space and humans have there space. IMO a good player will always beat a bot... We are time poor... bots are cool and bring alot of money to the game... Think about it.

the anti bot measures you mention were really bot protection measures. if they hadn't been introduced, the bots would have killed the system long ago. so they took these measures so that they wouldn't have to ban the bots. and they preferred to harm players and new players. the main thing was to protect the bots....

Yes I see your point. There are so many points of view on this. For me I noticed that bot accounts running on starter cards had to buy cards or transfer cards in to earn rewards, which is good for card values going up. Then there were the ranking changes which literally killed rental incomes immediately. I think as a new player, renting cards is really cheap rn, buying cards is fairly unchanged, with the exception of chaos packs being burnt.. But yeah alot of bots were taking and giving nothing which was bad. But yeah I guess bots are fairly protected. My main concern rn is that there's all these extra cards on bot accounts and if they get repurposed they will generally go to either of two places... rental market and sales market.... rental income will be hurt which is bad and card values will go down, which is kind of good if you want to buy but bad if you want your investment to increase. But... then again there will be some players who might take those bot account cards and level up on their main account, which would make cards more rare. It's a bit of a roll of the dice really... like who really knows what will happen? I think it's cool that people can see who can create the better bot and who can beat the bot. But yeah I dunno man, the more I think about it the more my brain hurts...

splinterlands is first and foremost a game. the ecosystem is only one part of the game. yes a very important one. but you have to look at it this way a game without an ecosystem can still be fun and inspire millions of people. but the ecosystem without a game is useless, it can slow down the dying because the investors still try to rob each other, but it will die eventually. because the ecosystem without a game is just a bubble in the end

Yeah your right, we need the game to be good and want people to sign up and play. If the game is popular our assets will hold there value.

Thanks for your reply. The elegant tokenomics of Splinterlands already provide a solution for this. If bots are removed from modern, the SPS per match will increase dramatically at all ranks. This will incentivise players to rent/buy modern cards and drive value to people who put their time into the game. Simultaneously the stronger Wild cards will likely see an increase in sale and rental price as, unlike Chaos Legion, there are not enough BCX for all bot accounts to have them.

Ok, excellent another great point of view. If playing by hand was actually worth peoples time then yeah that is a great incentive. So yeah I see how this could work.

Even if we could say for certain there were no bots, some people are still just going to lose a lot of battles. I wonder what they'd blame it on if they couldn't use bots as a scapegoat. 🤣

I did vote for the proposal, though. I'm interested to see where it can go and how successful they might be in disabling bots. I'm skeptical that it'll be truly effective, but I'm curious to see either way.

If bots are an issue, we have to ask our selves why players would decide to use bots instead of actually play the game? It all depends how many bots we have and how many real players we have, but I'm assuming there are a ton of bots otherwise we would not be talking about this issue. This tells me that given the current state a lot of players currently would rather use bots than play the game. Maybe the answer is to find out why that is and try to address the underlying issues. Is it that the game takes too much time or people feel that the the fun and amount of rewards earned from playing is not worth the amount of time it takes? Or is it just that people try to get an edge by using a bot. Keep in mind that any anti-bot measures could drive away a large portion of the game that is currently using bots. I always thought the plan was to make it so that bots don't have an advantage over humans not try to stop them.

For 2 years since I have been involved in Splinterlands, all I have heard is that the team is agnostic to bots and that they only want to ensure bots don't give any advantage. They are against bot farms since they take away too much value but for a bot account that invests in cards apparently it was fine. Why would the team suddenly decide to change this approach. Some people may have planned around those statements, so we need to be careful.

I will just add my 2 cents here. I am voting No, the reason is that I have splinterlands assets, i.e. cards, and I like playing occasionally, but we all have other lives, and life gets busy, and I feel that my cards that are unrented are not utilising value without a bot. So I use a bot, for the times I am not playing.

I don't understand what the problem with bots are? they provide liquidity, they aren't as good as human players, and they improve the stats for splinterlands on a number of levels (i.e. number of battles, unique accounts etc.)

Splinterlands already has tournaments and brawls where bots aren't particularly prevalent. Lets put the anti-bot measures in those formats not the ranked play.

I am ok with people running bot farms are restricted, but a single bot on a single account, shouldn't be an issue. Perhaps limit one account per IP or something like that is reasonable, but that won't work for me because we have multiple family members on the same IP address.

it's not just about the ecosystem, splinterlands is primarily a game. and playing online games permanently against bots sucks enormously as a gamer. if the game is no longer worth playing, then at some point it's no longer worth investing in the game. because a game that no one wants to play anymore is effectively garbage.

and also the individual bots that are not bot farms are changing the ecosystem.one example rare cards are losing value because bots are not playing them and people are only buying/renting what the bot uses frequently.....

I don't see why playing against bots is such a bad thing? if it was the same bot and it was predictable yes.. gets boring, but I don't find the play at the moment particularly predictable.

well there is a completely different feeling. when you know that there is someone sitting on the other side of the internet watching the fight and cheering with you when it is a close fight etc.

I think we should understand that the real PVP of this game is in Clan Battles and Tournaments.
Splintelands in classic battle mode in my competition is the PVE part of this game so there is no harm to the "thrill" of the game, but not everyone has time to play these daily battles, however they manage to play the tournaments and clan battles, if you have time, that's okay, but people who like the game but don't have as much time as you do.
If you focus on the Tournament and Clan Battle mode to cover this internal emotion gap, and switch to using a bot for the PVE part, you will see that they are our allies, and do not harm the gameplay on the contrary.

Your bot will be completely useable in Wild format. This change is only going to affect Modern.

I really don't see how people can vote "No" to this based on the argument "I sometimes can't play, and I use my bot in those cases, so I'm voting no."

You can STILL use your bot with this proposal.

I only have modern cards though? so that would put me at a disadvantage in wild

Well not sure here.
I use one, but sometimes I turn it off and I play manually (and I play manually brawl and tournaments almost all the time) because I like the game, but sometimes I must use it because I don't have time to play manually ... and if I don't play I'm losing possible profits.
Imho the problem is not the bot used by a single player who usually owns cards, with staked SPS and so on, but the bot farms that drain the pools with K accounts and zero owned asset. These farms make $$$ every season and they aren't part of SL economy except for rentals.

Your bot will be completely useable in Wild format. This change is only going to affect Modern. You can still earn SPS when you don't have time to play by having it play Wild format.

Again, you will STILL be able to use your bot with this proposal.

These are only my 2 cents, but from my point of view problem here is not if I could or couldn't use it.
My point is that is fine with me if I battle vs people that have an assistant but they also have Ks $ of SL cards and assets. But it sucks if I battle vs people that run tons of linked accounts only to get + sell rewards and they don't own 1$ of SL assets. These are parasites, not players.
If the team is ready to tackle the problem from this perspective is a big YEEEEES, otherwise the real problem will still persist and this proposal is just getting angry many players that really invested in the game.

Finally a decent proposal, without something against bots the
economy is gonna smash to a wall

I think that I like this in principle. Probably a good idea to play real games instead of fighting bots, so I'm voting yes. It seems like the proposal is generally lacking in specifics. I do appreciate the comment from @yabapmatt about the potential role of third party services. Here's hoping it helps.

Ranked league formats should only differ by what sets are eligible for play. If you want to start taking actions against automation, start with brawls and tournaments.

Something to think about with Anti-bot measures. ( @yabamatt )

Possible Problem --> Without bots it may be hard for the game to find a player with similar rank to fight.

Suggested Solution -->

  • Give the games match making service 10-20 seconds to find a match.
  • If no match is found, continue with a fight similar to a brawl
  • Issue a fight ruleset
  • Allow a team to be entered.
  • put the fight in a queue for when a proper opponent can be found.
  • Allow notifications and viewing of Queued fights that take place at a later time.

This seems like a really smart solution. It solves an important issue and phases itself out as player liquidity grows. As a tangent it's curious how I never used the word "liquidity" before I became interested in Crypto but now I seem to find so many uses for it. Thanks for your comment and the potential solution to a big problem!

I suggest we just turn Wild into the league with anti-bot measures instead of creating 2 new leagues. It's just temporary.

Adding another modern and wild leagues will split the player base so much. 2 moderns and 2 wild... the queue would be insanely long for one of those. They might not even get matches at all. Goodluck on higher leagues esp Diamond and Champ.

Also who will manage the anti-bot measures? I don't think the team has capacity to do this.

It's funny how this has been an ongoing problem for years and now that it's affecting the top two leagues, it's time to do something serious about it. I don't disagree that something needs to be done, but I'm not a fan of using 50% of the entire reward pool to support this. The lower leagues have taken the brunt of every nerf so far and are barely earning anything as-is. Giving up 50% of that is massive.

As far as suggestions go...

First, good faith means nothing and there are people in this community that have already proven that.

Second, just because an account holds an Archmage or Xbot token doesn't mean they're using it all the time, if at all.

Third, checking for people playing bot teams? Seriously?

Fourth, not only have bots proven their ability to bypass captcha, players with less than stellar internet connections will suffer if this is implemented. Personally (and I know I'm not the only one), I always have problems with captcha. Sometimes I can never get it to work and sometimes it takes 15 tries. Flees due to captcha fails is going to be an issue.

Finally, here are some things I suggested 6 months ago. What about locking out the battle API and only allowing access to whitelisted 3rd parties? Companies offering bot services could be charged a hefty fee for access which would make the service cost prohibitive unless they implemented or raised their own fees. A lower earnings incentive should lower the number of people willing to use the service and the people that continue to use the service will offset the lower number of users with higher fees.

Eliminating back door access for anyone to submit scripts directly to the API may not be perfect, but it'd definitely put a dent in things and we wouldn't have to mess with the reward pools to do it. Alternatively, a -50 to -75% penalty to rShares for people scripting the API on the back end could be another solution and also help to lessen their affect on the reward pools.

Lastly, there's always KYC. It's not the perfect solution, but it would still have an impact on larger farms. A combination of increased fees for API access, penalized back door API scripting, and KYC would be a huge step in the right direction.

I'm of two different minds on this proposal.

PRO: I kinda like the idea, because it seems self-balancing and gives players choices. I really, really don't want to do captchas though. Captchas are a big annoyance unless you find a way to make them fun? Because they are NOT fun.

CON: It seems like it will rely mostly on the good faith of players, botters and botting service providers. Are there consequences to botting in the human league? How severe, and how do we prove it? Bot Utility Tokens on an account is a convenient tool you can easily use today, but there is no reason they are necessarily held on the playing account. If I ran a bot service I could simply allow a user to stake 2 tokens on any private "management" account, and run two other accounts undetected using posting keys. If bot services think they can operate discretely, then the players pool will have given up half its SPS, and still might find itself playing "secret bots" without tokens.

So I might flip flop on this.

we desperately need to implement anti bot measures for the future of the game. Without new players splinterlands will shrivel and die. New players bring new money into the game, but we can't get new players because they get beaten repeatedly by bots before they can even learn the game. Nobody wants to play a game after loosing 10 times on a row.

TO those making money with bots currently I say there will be more money to make in the future if new players are allowed to learn to play. Otherwise money will stop flowing and nobody will be making any.

veja bem, ele nao vai ter partidas, quem vai jogar com eles ? e outra coisa so se aprende jogando e perdendo acumulando experiencia e tempo de jogo ? não existe esse de o cara so nao esta ganhando por conta dos bots, ele nao ganha por que ainda nao sabe jogar.
se essa proposta ganhar, voce ainda vai continuar um jogador ruim.

The bots are the biggest problem of SL! I dont want any bot, except the game intern bots for new players to get a good feel and start in SL.
I loved playing the game more then 3 years ago. Smart people were the winners, although even back then some bot users were obvious! The fun playing the game disappeared the day i played like 25 rounds and around 20 rounds were bots (at diamond/champions). You win 5 rounds gain 40 points and then you play a round vs someone you never heared of, "playing" the game for 2 weeks and you get rekt losing 50 points. This cycle repeated itself until the moment i thought ok, well then let the bots play! I started using archmage and it does well in terms of rewards, but playing the game was the part with the most fun and i want this back if possible!

I dont care if modern or wild, there should be no bots farming rewards adding permanent asset selling pressure because these bots dont care about the game they just want to abuse the system to earn money!
Im happy to throw the archmage out of my window one day and start playing again and i think there are many players out there supporting this!
So get it on and rek all those bots!

This is a one-sided opinion! How much money did you invest in the game and how much did you take out of it? I, over the past year, have not withdrawn a penny from the game, while I invest about $2,000 a month in the game, and how much do you invest? I am interested in both the process of the game itself, as well as the automation of processes.

In my world there is no place for bots farming human players just for pure profit while damaging the game and its assets for all real players supporting the game. Also it doesnt matter how much money you invest or not, the topic and answer from people that love the game will be the same! -> Play the game or just dont but dont use bots... Thats like using aimbots in fps games. Battlefield 5 f.e. this game got unplayable because every round had 1 or more obvious cheaters ruining the fun for all on the server. For SL its the same...

SL is a different game, don't compare it to games that can't handle bots. How am I different with 10 bots from 10 people who have one account? I have a better understanding of the game and I am more invested in the game! And if you're afraid of bots - then you play badly! Have you played against bots Lamba? His bots were very cool, it was interesting to fight them. Now the bots are stupid!

You are talking like a bot farm owner. The difference is that you are destroying the new player expierence. You think this game can go on like it is in its current state forever? It's not a game atm. It's a defi yield farming platform. No new players will ever want to come and inject money into the ecosystem when all they play is bots that pick the best hands available every single time. The changes we have seen were to slow the rate of extraction and severely hurt real players and new players. You may not be extracting but alot sure as hell are and you can see it in the sell pressure of various tokens and decline of card values. The only way we will ever attract new players and money is to make the game FUN and rewarding. Bots are literally siphoning off like 75% of the reward pools, that's rewards that real people could get and WANT to reinvest into the game to keep playing something worthwhile and fun. Your argument is super short sighted. Number 1 focus should always be to get new players involved. You want your card value to go up? New players need to come in and want those cards. This holds true for sps and dec and land.

Im not afraid of bots at all. The rulesets at beta card time were way less then today. The cards were less too and i managed to be around 30th place champions league at the end of the season with a relatively small card deck. So i would say i have knowledge about how this game works! The difference between a human player and bots, depending on how good the bot is, is obvious: With so many rulesets and cards to chose from a good bot will outperform a good player anyday. There are situations were the good player does small mistakes which the bot does not. So when you do like 20 fight and 18 of them vs a bot there is little room for error. Even the best players have a bad day or do mistakes from time to time, the bot doesnt. This gets frustrating at times and MANY players were pissed about that and moved to a bot too.

It's definitely an interesting idea. I'd be curious to see how much the gameplay changes without bots in modern. I'll especially be curious to see what people who suck at the game will blame when they still lose all the time. hahaha. I think I'll go ahead and vote yes.

The reward pool would be split in 2 (besides Wild/Modern), thus nerfing the rewards per battle. Additionally, the team would have to shift time from adding new features to trying to implement anti-bot solutions, which will 100% not hit. Battle helpers will fly under any anti-bot solution.

the rewards are only reduced if more than 50% of the respective players or bots remain in the ranking. in return, the rewards in the other ranking would be higher. how long do you think it would take for more players to switch to the ranking? this way, the rewards would roughly balance out again in the end...

and this argument with the 100% not to catch is just a deception. imagine we would abolish all safety measures in the world that do not protect 100%. traffic lights gone, airbag gone, seat belt gone, police gone, etc etc

in addition, you have the problem that we constantly have to implement new things to mitigate the damage of the bots. which costs a lot of work and also makes it difficult for new players to enter each time!

who will absorb items from bots? you are going to destroy everyone's assets with headless ideas, who will be interested in an NFT game that destroyed the assets of those who were playing? When they can answer how bot assets will be incorporated into an economy without bots without destroying the economy I will be in favor until then I vote against.

this being an emotion vote, Splinterlands is an ecosystem, there are many actors involved and modes of interaction.
rethink your votes.
who turns to a game where the ecosystem is broken?
there are no counterpayments to minimize the effects of withdrawing bots or even reducing their return.

we also have the investor who bought cards for the rental of cards, this will be with a big loss if you don't think about the absorption of the cards of the bots.

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