RE: SPS Governance Proposal - Update Terms of Service To Prohibit Bot Use In Tourneys, & Brawls

These are my personal thoughts as a player (not as a team member).

The two proposals (“SPS Governance Proposal: Update Terms Of Service To Prohibit Use Of Battle Helpers in Modern Ranked, Tourneys, and Brawls” and “SPS Governance Proposal - Update Terms of Service To Prohibit Bot Use In Tourneys, & Brawls”) are the MOST IMPORTANT ISSUES that have come up before the Dao, even amongst all of the 39 completed and 1 active proposals.

In my opinion, these proposals are crucial to the future and survival of Splinterlands the game. Although the company started off with a bot agnostic position, over the past few years and especially the past few months, we as a community have seen the consequences of what happens when bot and battle helper use ramp up to such high levels. The reality is that while Splinterlands has always strived to ensure that bots do not have an unfair advantage over human players, it has become clear that over this entire time period the bots have maintained an advantage and that advantage has steadily grown over time.

The competitive aspect of the game disappears and skill becomes marginalized when everyone is using a bot or battle helper. Win trading within a botnet jeopardizes the integrity of the system. We have seen many human players give up and either leave the game or turn to botting (“if you can’t beat them, join them”) resulting in a cascading snowball effect.

Before I started playing Splinterlands in 2019, I spent a year playing CryptoKitties which I enjoyed. But the dominant and optimized bots in CryptoKitties pushed out the human players like me, and now I worry that I am seeing the same thing happen in Splinterlands. We’ve already seen what happens to games that become primarily bot-driven - do we want Splinterlands to follow the path of Alien Worlds?

How is Splinterlands going to attract and retain new players if the ecosystem is full of bots and most of the human players have already left? What is the player experience going to be like when you are constantly beaten down by over-optimized bots and battle helpers? How are we going to be taken seriously in the Esports community and get corporate sponsors for tournaments if botting and battle helpers are the norm in tournaments?

I do think there can be a space for bots in the Splinterlands ecosystem. At the moment it is Wild Ranked and maybe in the future there can be specific formats (botting league? bot vs human challenge?) that are specially targeted for bots. But I definitely do not think that bots and battle helpers belong in tournaments and brawls. And before the human-only Modern proposal was passed, a large number of community members agreed with that, even going so far as to informally agree to @davemccoy 's pledge to not bot tournaments and brawls.

The recently passed and implemented proposal “Splinterlands will try to implement anti-bot measures in Modern format” is a step in the right direction but by itself its impact will be very limited. It’s only a half-measure because battle helpers are not covered in the scope for Modern ranked. Furthermore, the impact of battle helpers is greatest in tournaments and brawls which are supposed to be about competition and skill.

I realize that many of the human players who have since resorted to botting or using battle helpers might now like the extra time that has freed up. But if you ever enjoyed playing the game, if you ever prefer playing against a human player, or if you want Splinterlands to grow and be able to attract new human players instead of just being a massive botting simulation, then I encourage you to vote in favor of both of these proposals. Even if you have more free time or earn higher profits from botting or using battle helpers, I hope you agree that these two proposals are what is best for the future and survivability of the game.

I am confident that the Splinterlands Dev team can identify the use of bots or battle helpers to a high degree of accuracy and that they can implement measures to significantly reduce and deter such use.