SPS Governance Proposal - Solutions to Minimize Bot Farms
Community Proposal #4
To address the issue of bot farms in Splinterlands, I propose implementing a minimum Card Power (CP) requirement in the Wild mode needed to participate. However, this requirement can only be achieved through ownership or received delegation, not by renting. Players and bots can still use card rentals, but they must own or have received delegation for the minimum CP required. In addition, the cards must have the status “playable”.
In my opinion (@bronko), either playing the game yourself or owning something should be necessary to earn rewards. It is unfair for players and Investors, to mine SPS/rewards completely automatically without any ownership involvement.
Here are the proposed CP requirements for each league in the Wild mode:
Bronze: 20,000 CP
Silver: 50,000 CP
Gold: 120,000 CP
Diamond: 250,000 CP
Champion: 400,000 CP
The CP of soulbound cards does not count towards these requirements unless they have been unlocked. This proposal only applies to the Wild mode and will not affect new players.
By implementing these minimum CP requirements, we can discourage bot farms from exploiting the game and ensure that players are actively participating or have invested in their collection. This solution aims to maintain fairness and integrity within Splinterlands while minimizing the impact on genuine players and investors.
This proposal is not intended to delay any important updates, therefore Splinterlands can allocate the necessary work at their discretion as they see fit. Additionally, Splinterlands can modify the numbers if potential for improvement is identified.
Wait, if a card is delegated to the account, then it counts towards the CP Requirements, but if the card is rented in, then it won't count towards the CP Requirements ?
Did I get it right ?
Shouldn't be a problem for me personally, but just would like to know how it works :D
yes exactly. since delegated cards in most cases come from yourself or from friends who have a lot of cards. this proposal is not intended to create any hurdles for legitimate players and investors. but aims to eliminate pests who invest nothing at all, neither time nor money, and permanently extract without any significant risk. or force huge botfarms that own cards to massively reduce their farm, currently they farm e.g. bronze silver chests, with decks that cost around 4 dollars, for comparison a silver cl core deck costs 420 dollars.
or another comparison from a farm i checked, which owns cards for about 2000 dollars but runs 1000 accounts with them. after the change this farm could only run 60 bronze accounts (calculated on the basis of the cp)
I especially like this part
That's almost 20x less accounts leeching. WoW! 😍
Ok nice, that's really cool.
I just delegate cards myself to one of my real life friends, so I'm glad I can keep supporting him with my cards.
And wow, from 1000 accounts to 60. ✋✋ Let's get this proposal through :)
I guess I could vote if this was just for bronze and silver where most of the vote farms are supposed to be located right?
But it seems to kinda defeat the purpose of renting and one of the goals of land was to take cards out of circulation and make renting more "expensive"...
As it stands I'll probably vote NO.
I do like the idea of soulbound cards not counting towards the CP.
why does it defeat the purpose of renting? this change is only for wild. and the cp is set so low that it's not even a cl core set for the league. with the massive rating inflation going down, people will need stronger decks again, and as a result rent more. look at modern for example. with what people are renting in bronze, they would easily destroy all the gold bots in wild^^ because it's just ridiculous what's going on in wild. i mean just look at some random accounts outside the leaderboards area. you'll cry that they even got out of bronze 3 with the crap they farm the chests with......
If the proposal said only bronze and silver I would vote yes.
Can you give 3 usernames to check out in gold that you think don't belong there?
I have a few cards for rent so I'll easily vote on proposals that could potentially increase rental costs, if I feel the proposal goes the other way even If I agree with the general idea I'm less inclined to do so.
Feel free to DM me in discord instead of replying here.
yes, I prefer to write to you privately, I don't want to mention any names publicly here. because some people have slipped into this situation through no fault of their own and can't help it that they are where they are now. bud they know themselves that this is massively damaging us and want this problem fixed..
Let's gooooooooo! ;-) :-P
I'd vote for this twice if I could.
I think this is a good compromise. People have strong opinions on both sides of the bots issue. I believe this works because it doesn't ban bots in wild if they have a respectable amount of owned assets in the game, but at the same time it stops people with little to no investment from taking massive rewards each season by volume (ie thousands of accounts with no assets).
I don't think its a perfect solution, but I do think that its a nice compromise. I also think it will end the ongoing frustration that people have with bots for the most part, so it will help us move on.
I urge both sides of the issue to realize this is a reasonable compromise and recognize we can put this multi-year bickering to bed. Fighting for a pure solution that just goes fully one way or the other would tear apart the game, so I hope people understand and recognize the good that this passing will do.
My suggestion is that if we do this... this is where it ends. I'd rather not waste dev resources on trying to make this happen to turn around and ban bots afterwards. This is a fairly significant ask from the dev team imo.
I agree completely. I hope if this passes that everyone will feel more comfortable with the future on this topic.
I don't agree with using CP. Matt said it's not a good metric and it's going to be removed
It will probably hurt card rentals because it excludes rentals from the CP requirement. I think the rental systems in SPL is one of it's strengths and we shouldn't take steps to make it less effective
It's a band-aid solution that doesn't solve the underlying issue. Fundamentally the problem is that large numbers of low-value accounts out-earn fewer, high-value accounts. In other words, horizontal expansion (number of accounts) is better than vertical expansion (upgrading collection).
There's solutions to this that don't add arbitrary rules or hurt the rental market.
Yes? Let's hear a few...
I agree that this is the underlying reason why people bot:
I believe that one solution would be to adjust the distribution of rewards so that people with higher rating, or in higher leagues, are more rewarded. (Even more than now.)
Owning more assets means you have more cards and have them on a higher level. This gives you more options in battles and more powerful cards, and should allow you to rise higher in rating and leagues.
Sylar, you're making it really hard for me to even respond to your ..... anymore, so I'll just leave it.
And next time just try a different account so your motives aren't immediately obvious.
I brought up 3 valid concerns.
Why would I use a different account? I have nothing to hide and have been open about what I'm doing.
Please keep your personal feud out of this and respond to the points I brought up.
we have already discussed the proposal in the discord and i think everyone has seen that you only want to protect your botfarm.
good night sylar
Again you're trying to make it personal instead of talking about the arguments.
That someone is the CEO. And what he said makes your proposal redundant. Once CP is removed in the future, it completely negates this proposal.
Why is it unlikely? It makes sense that the rental market will suffer if we add a CP requirement that excludes rentals.
You are attacking this game with a cheating program. It's called play to earn not cheat to earn. It is a natural reaction to be disgusted and angry at a criminal trying to act like a normal person ignoring the very unethical behavior they are engaged in.
I like this solution a lot, but I think you should lower the CP requirements.
I'd be okay with e.g. Bronze - 15k CP , Silver 30k CP, ...
thank you for your thoughts, but 15000 cp are not even cl core set lvl 1 cards 😬
I delegate 40k CP to one of my alt accounts, that plays in silver. It's mostly Bronze with a lot of GF. I don't think there should be a need to have a whole set to be able to participate.
Also one thing that came to my mind: You can't just say this change won't affect new players, because atm even Alpha/Beta Cards are quite affordable. I'm mostly talking about Commons and Rares, which are in most cases the cheapest Rarities and the first go to for new players.
yes you play in wild silver 1 and it's still relatively early days in season, so you'll even reach the gold rating this season with lvl 1-2 summoners and 40k cp. and you want to keep that? i beg you vasupi. think about it again. maybe you realize yourself that it is a good example that the numbers are well chosen. love you
But I do own those cards. I bought them or opened them. I have 2 Alt accounts, is that too much? I don't consider myself a botfarm, yet the proposal would hurt me.
My Alts won't move up to Gold because of SPS staking requirements.
Last point - Playing in Silver and above with Bronze level cards was never hard before ranked split into 2 modes. Skill is all you needed to accomplish that. (or just Alric + Oshannus)
what is going on in wild is rating-inflation and not skill my dear Vasupi. why do accounts in modern bronze often have stronger decks than wild silver/gold accounts. although wild actually offers more cards (should be harder), less cards are used there. because the botfarms let tens of thousands of garbage accounts farm there and you are already half a king if you have 5 cards on the right level^^
in the end, even if you play a league lower, you will benefit because you won't have to share your rewards with so many botfarm accounts. i would never harm you. ;)
Like discussed with @bronko before the proposal was launched, I would rather say 500k for Champion. It is a game of cards in the end, and the game needs the cards to survive. The game can do fine without the many tokens, but not without the cards.
Yes, renting will take a hit in the end, but will encourage more sales.
yes i know, i would also like to increase the numbers. because the higher, the more you restrict the bot farms. but that would also increase the hurdles for the players and that's why i chose the numbers as low as possible. so that we achieve a relatively large effect without harming the players. a further suggestion about bots, which in the end harms the players, is not appropriate i think. I hope you can forgive me 👨❤️👨
I am in favor of this. Since the beginning, owning assets has been at the forefront and has always been what Splinterlands has told us matters in the long run. If you want to win crypto, you should own assets.
The T.O.S. agreement is not a substitute for your own personal ethical responsibility to not do harm to others.
Botting is cheating, scamming and stealing. If any of you players see/hear someone say that, "It's not against the T.O.S. so it's OK for me to bot" understand, that is a backwards criminal logic argument, ethics (personal responsibility to not harm others) are senior to morals (rules, laws, codes of conduct). They are trying to avoid personal responsibility and place it on someone/something else.
The prisons are full of people using criminal logic justifications of why it is OK to do wrong things to other people. The end of that road is dark.
This is the first proposal which could bring together the different groups pro and con botting. I really like it.
I formyself have invested to mainly be able to play brawls with my guild. In between I do not have time to play a lot beside the one or other fun match in modern.
I love that my cards can play in between and dont sit idle. I could rent them out, but rhen I am missing them for the brawls.
At the same time I see the pest of bot farms leeching with minimum invest.
This proposal is a step in the right direction. If later on someone has a better idea it still can be changed, but this helps now.
My small bot farm has always owned every card they play, this is a very good compromise and I'm excited to see it go through.
This is not nearly high enough as it would only stop one of my bots and it's pretty close so i'll probably just give it an extra gold foil rare or something to get it over the requirement and my farm will still be operational muahahahhaha.
that's a good thing, isn't it? it should only affect the pests and not legitimate players or investors.
i mean, in the discord discussion you complained that it would hurt players, and now you're saying it's not high enough. even though the numbers haven't changed. if you end up in the middle then i'm happy. 😘
Might be thinking of someone else, I never said anything about hurting players, I called it a half measure :)
https://peakmonsters.com/@philip-do/cards this guy has $64,195 in chaos legion COMMON reward cards, the ones that are like 1 cent lol. I just think he can outfit a lot of his farm and by pass this low requirement.
If somehow CL reward cards didn't count for the requirement that would hurt the bots badly!
This does nothing to stop the largest bot farm. The largest bot farm has a holding account with over 45 million Collection Power just ready to be delegated at any time.
Let's stop fooling ourselves here. Vote this down and get an outright ban on bots. All bots do is make it tougher to understand where the team is at from a marketing perspective and it makes the game a mining operation.
There are people who want to keep the bots going out of self-interest hiding behind "decentralization", when this ecosystem is clearly not fully decentralized as-is.
Why tip-toe around the issue?
how many accounts does this farm currently operate? and how many could it operate after the change?
this is about a deletion of the farms that do not have cards and a massive reduction of the botfarm accounts of the farms that have cards. simply showing an account and how many cp the account has is quite misleading and unfortunately does not help here!
They have over 50k accounts, they win trade, and cycle through accounts. With this holding account alone, they could support 2,372 accounts. You might think, "Well that's great we're minimizing harm!" However, that's still a lot of accounts engaged in activities that deteriorate the ecosystem.
Just ban it outright. What are we so afraid of?
The game that's so great that nobody wants to play it.
so you see it's a huge reduction and a huge win for our ecosystem. i think you should know that i would also like to ban all bots. but since this is unfortunately not within reach, it doesn't help us if we continue to let ourselves be robbed just because we are waiting for a dream that will probably never come true
It can absolutely come true. Of course, we know that the modern mechanic to stopping bots is not foolproof. So this proposal could use some alterations, it needs more teeth.
If you want to reduce the harm further and make sure that the mining operations come to a complete halt (just to make sure that there are no workarounds on a ban), why not add an amendment to the proposal or a separate proposal that removes CP from Chaos Legion Rewards cards? We're going beyond soulbound here, we're talking all Chaos Legion Rewards cards. They lose their Collection Power altogether. This creates the system block that is necessary on top of a bot block.
Is the issue about the concern that bot farm operators may find workarounds to still be able to infiltrate?
Or is it just a few people who want to protect their mining operations?
Sooo close to the mark, but still doesn't go far enough for me. Land will ensure most players currently using owned assets to bot will shut down and migrate to land so that addresses player ownership we want in the system.
How can we roll back anti-bot measures if we allow ownership botting? How can we have this and address with perma soulbound cards, ECR restrictions and Card lvl restrictions? All of which we can move to have rolled back for players once bots are gone.
Want to play 100 battles in a day in Wild and even push form it back in modern and hit that 25th chest? Get rid of bots.
Want to know what it feels like to earn a card a be able to trade it or put it on land for no extra fee again? Get rid of bots.
Want to be able to play higher leagues again without card level penalty because your a skilled player? Get rid of bots.
Want to earn decent SPS again in Wild? Get rid of bots.
Then we also address NPE and PE nerfs that cost us thousands of players previously. I dont care how badly the rental market suffers as a result of losing bots, the gains from earnings, NPE and people coming back to bot free SPL opens up much more opportunity and will far outway once we get back to fully organic growth.
For me this proposal is a good compromise and well thought out in a sense and even closest I've seen to reasonable compromise but still a no for me because it fails to think bigger picture and also places us in that confusion state about setting a hard line for outside gaming looking in.
If any of the above gets you thinking, then a NO must be the way and we push for the total bot ban everyone has been speaking of for months or even years to this point. Vote yes would see a total bot ban kicked so far down the road and make it hard to overturn, we may miss the opportunity to capitilise a bot free Splinterlands in the next WEB3 gaming boom.
I thank you, Nyte, for your time and thoughts.
I think it's no secret that I am also a strong opponent of bots.
As a dedicated gamer, botting goes against the principles of gaming for me.
And of course, I have already pondered all your thoughts countless times. That's why I struggled for some time to even tell anyone about this solution. Even after discussing it with many people and making calculations, I still wrestled with whether or not to actually publish this, because if we could really get a bot ban, I would essentially be throwing them a lifeline.
Ultimately, I had to admit that my desires are not achievable.
For example, it was always easy to say: "Yes, if land comes, people can just go there with their assets." But is this really the reality?
Do asset owners even have suitable land plots for their cards?
I think it should become clear how easily these arguments we've been throwing around can be seen as mere points to win a discussion.
Or infinite energy - a nice wish, but it would be dismantled in any serious discussion within 5 minutes.
Or do you think people would allow infinite energy that is not 100% bot secure? And we know that no bot protection in the world is 100% secure.
and your other 3 points could also be implemented with this solution!
So do we want to continue being robbed while waiting for a dream that will likely never come true?
Very smart Bronk. A bird in the hand is worth 2 in the bush.
This is a good compromise and I hope people on both sides of this issue understand it. Voting "no" and holding out for better opens up the possibility that things get worse for the "no voter". Why risk that, if you think about it?
Thanks for the reply. I know where you stand on the issue.
The reality is if this proposal passes:
We most likely never get back unlimited ECR ( which limits our gameplay) due to it being potenatially exploited. - Granted I'll give you that. But unlimited ECR was a thing once and players loved it.
If you believe the other 3 options are possible with this. I'll give you that too.
My rebut to this is what if SPL wont go for these roll backs citing botting and risks of unwinding due to botting being a thing?
And now I'll challenge these questions and thoughts:
What will stop bots/owners from just migrating CP around to different accounts with ease? I could literally fire up 50 bots tomorrow for bronze 1 tomorrow via ownership. That of which I dont want to do but could theoretically if we continue to keep botting around. If CP restrictions are the only thing stopping me I can easily produce 20k CP and rotate it through the accounts knowing they will remain playable. What measure is in place that will stop me from this exploit? Will land be enough? Maybe maybe not, it's an unknown really until 2.0. For a farmer/extractor who cares not for the impacts of the change or land?
The additional of this proposal adds yet another layer on complication to an already complicated system because now not only do we have card lvl league restrictions and SPS restrictions, we would now have CP restrictions on top for those of us who may want to rent to play competitvely at higher level. Would this not be detractor for genuine players who maybe below CP threshold and rent the remining? From an outsider looking in there become now 3 things I need to ensure to play this game effectively. Shall we introduce a 4th measure if this fails to stop bot farms? And if this is considered the 'final' solution:
How will this impact things like competitive gaming to the outside world? Potential future players, investors, sponsors? I know this is more of an unknown but what we should be able to agree on is outside perception in gaming of botting on any level is not favourable.
I still believed we had the community on board with a total bot ban post land. Many whales had stated once they had a place to ultilize all their assets (land) they would be more favourable to end botting once and for all.
We may never eliminate bots totally, but a hard line stance will place all future bot extractor types with the mindset that if they get flagged/caught, they lose potentially everything.
I'm not trying to debate the merits of your proposal. I think it is a good one. I'm just thinking post land it's time we all put our money where our mouth is and go for jugular! And was not expecting this from you of all people so kudos on your willing effort to find a compromise and arguably the most decent one to date.
How easily can we move for a total bot ban after SPL has gone to the trouble of coding this all in if it turns out in furute we once again find ourselves at a bot related impass? We must rip the bandaid or we contiue to hedge our bets on what negative impacts bots will have in future. So far, bots have won every battle we have thrown at them, with the exception of banning Modern which HAS seena huge positive impact. And is why I will not budge on my stance.
Should this prove to be the winning formula, I'll happily put my hand up and say ok. But should we not see any vast imporvement to the amount of bots extractors in wild, I expect everyone to be prepared to go for the jugular.
Hey, this wouldn't be an exploit because you are allowed to earn automatically if you own the cards, and how you distribute your cards is up to you. Or do we want to punish people who own/buy more cards than they need for one account? And tomorrow, you could have 50 bronze accounts with the CP limit. Currently, you could feed over 1000 bronze and silver accounts and add unlimited accounts without ownership, which would then feed your cheap $4 accounts with victories. This massive reduction in accounts will consequently decrease rating inflation. You can see what happens without rating inflation in Modern, where someone who only fills their account with CP won't get out of Bronze 3. Players can still play on rent-only mode without ownership in modern. And I don't know if you missed it, but there was a vote a few days ago to ban bots after the land release, and that vote failed. Your text was very long, so I hope I addressed the most important points^^
I was going to chip in , but @nytehawker said it all. We have to grow a pair of balls and end botting. Period.
If it is not obvious to all of you right now, botters and bot developers have SPS and will vote down any anti-bot proposal. This is the #1 thing that Yabamatt did to doom the DAO from functioning properly before it got created by being very bot tolerant.
All in the name of "true asset ownership" yet I can't block bots from renting my cards and my card inventory is an open book to all of the bot developers out there. If this is "true asset ownership" then why do I not have control over those 2 things?
Can you see what is in my car or is in my house? In this game where does transparency end and the individual's right to privacy and control of their own assets begin?
Why can a bot developer see my whole card inventory? Even social media websites have permission settings. If I own a house in the real world I am allowed to make sure the person renting it will not use it for illegal purposes using a 3rd party background check but here in Splinterlands I have no such right, bot's can rent my cards to destroy and exploit the game.
In the DAO's current early stage form, Matt's history of bot tolerant policy has somewhat doomed it. Stop worshipping someone that has a higher IQ than you and start valuing fair human game play. Just because someone is smarter than you does not mean they are balanced and experienced in all things ethical and moral.
Stand up for what is right. Botting is wrong, it is very wrong.
the blockchain is public...all your transactions, all your cards, all your coins...your wallet contents, your game assets...all these exist on a public ledger...
and wrong? 'very wrong'? as in morally wrong? ethically wrong? or just you don't like it 'wrong'? Exploits might be...but botting is allowed within the ToS...so if it's allowed, and not illegal, then how is it 'very wrong'?
and the solution is simple...just disable API access to the 'ongoing matches' endpoint during battles. pretty sure there's a light switch that can just shut that shit down
The Terms of Service agreement is not a substitute for your own personal ethically responsibility to not do wrong things to other people. Your argument is a backwards criminal logic argument.
The ToS is not your Daddy/Mommy (by the word "your" I mean everyone playing this game).
Morals are not senior to ethics. Morals - The rules, codes of conduct and laws of a society or group come from ethics.
It is funny that even dictionary dot com gets this wrong and defines it backwards and defines ethics as morals. I'm wondering if this has something to do with the woke movement or for the purposes of internet brevity.
When I was young and forced to study everything in very large books of dictionaries and encyclopedias it was clear morals are derived from ethics.
Ethics is a much larger subject - the study of right and wrong. A law or rule can be unjust, oppressive or outdated and so it is unethical or unnecessary to follow or enforce it.
There are tons of movies, books, tv shows and stories explaining this.
Just because there is no law against it does not make it not an evil act or what most people would characterize or describe as a criminal act.
I can walk down the street right now in the morning and stomp a frog I see on the sidewalk flat because there is no law against it but what does that make me? There was no reason for me to do that.
Splinterlands is not obligated to write an encyclopedia of every single way you can possibly cheat and exploit the game and if they didn't think of the one way you found to cheat the game "then it is OK."
That is not how ethics and personal responsibility works.
Everything you said ^ right there was an attempt to lie to yourself and others in order to justify doing wrong things to others.
The blockchain being public is not an excuse or valid reason for unethical behavior.
You got the solution already, Just ban bots same as modern
if it were that simple 😒
Well as It has be done in modern, can be done in wild, bots are only Harming the economy, they give no benefits... we are where we are mainly thanks to them and the dumb choices trying to give them penality but punishing real players
ok thanks
the numbers are specially calculated so that it only hurts the bots that don't own anything, and the bot farms that massively exploit the system. who simply make over 20 decks out of e.g. a silver deck and then farm silver 1 with decks that are worth maybe 20 dollars. all other legitimate players and investors can only win. i think the decision should not be difficult!
I would get behind this if it wasn't for the rental clause. Bot farms renting cards is the only thing keeping the rental market going and, to be frank, it's mostly just bots and humans using battle helpers playing this game anyway.
no, unfortunately that's wrong. if that were the case, wild cards should have gone up in rent when bots were banned in modern. but that's not the case. the opposite has happened, rents have even gone down further. that's because of the rating inflation caused by bot farms, so they hardly need cards to play anymore, so they rent much less. while in modern, players rent in bronze 2-1, decks for about 1000 dollars. in wild, bots now rent decks in bronze 1 that aren't even worth 4 dollars. if they still rent at all
New players have no problems with bots, because bots play very weak and predictable in bronze and silver as far as I heard.
Everybody loves AI but the bad bots. Why this hate against bots? The reason bots are profitable is, because they play 50 games each day. So let them and enjoy your 90% win rate against them. Splinterlands is about fun not about money making.
I only have a main account with tons of assets an inactive secondary account and a third for testing purposes, but I will vote pro bot farms. They are not bad for the game. I appreciate the work some people put into them.
The solution by the way to reduce bots, for everybody who wants that, is to change the gameplay often and enhance it with variety. That is work! But introducing some CP is easy and, yes, too simple.
That is just my humble opinion for this complex topic.
i mean mister botfarm gives you a heart. do you realize what's wrong here or? 😂
Make your 2nd reply to me public! I can't see it here. Ok. Bots are a problem.
And what about my argument to change the gameplay from time to time and make it more human friendly? I must admit I feel like a bot myself, when I play this game. Heartstone doesn't have a bot problem, as sidenote to the game designers.
do you see that we developers have the resources to change the gameplay regularly?
the third rule, for example, was supposed to curb bots, the bot developers: yes, that's a great idea. what happened? bots even benefited from it.
how does this prevent the pure extraction of thousands of accounts that have nothing at all, where the system automatically calculates whether there is a difference between earning and rent and then simply activates the corresponding accounts. so they practically run our reward pool like bitcoin mining, only with less power and at our expense... without investment and without significant risk.
how does it prevent bot farmers from simply activating thousands of dead accounts to feed their inferior accounts with wins?
->1 Don't get me wrong, everything that has been developed is really great, except the gameplay, that is still the same, since the beginning. It is time to shift the development towards gameplay. More development resources towards Battles 2.0 after Land has been released, please.
->2 Try harder! The more one feels like a human while playing, the more difficult it is for the bot developers. A new ruleset should do the job? That is a joke! 😄 Still feel like a bot while playing.
->3 Spellbook for 150$ but already packs included and other cool assets? Then you have your ownership!
->4 see ->3
and because all this is not so, we should continue to watch how we are robbed ? double punishment for us then :(
well i thank you for your opinion and your time.
i actually thought this was an easy choice.
yes for legitimate players/investors
and no for extractors/botfarms 😕
yes for legitimate players/investors
and no for extractors/botfarms 😕
In THAT we agree. 🙂
This reads like a decent countermeasure for bot farms, although I can see this negatively impacting some scholars who are playing for an income.
This one actually came from bronko. I think it's an interesting approach. Curious to see how it plays out.
how should this have a negative effect on scholars? it even has a positive effect if they play in wild at all. because the pool is then fuller. scholars usually have cards in their possession or delegated and both count towards the minimum cp ;)
ah it is for wild only... then this is fine. i guess i got confused and thought this applied to both formats. can't have bots just playing with only soulbound cards!
I think it would make more sense for the CP to restrict players from going down to lower Leagues. For example, having at least 20,000 CP prevents you from going down to Bronze once you reached Silver.
I think the biggest problem with CP is that it allows multiples to be counted, if the algorithm was designed to only count the highest version of the card BCX it would be more manageable to calculate and it would go much farther into actually calculating how good a deck is.
this is not really a problem. as the empty accounts disappear and the bot farms with ownership have to massively downsize their farms, the rating inflation is reduced, so the battles become harder again. if someone fills the cp only with pelacor, he would still have to borrow or buy battle-ready cards to fight. for example, if 50k accounts now fill their accounts with pelacor for bronze only, they would have to pump about 1.5 million dollars into the market, and in the end they still wouldn't have any fightable cards and could only play in bronze. for a worst case scenario, it still sounds very good to me^^
Overall it still has to calculate 50k pelacors vs 1 pelacor, and it's much healthier for the ecosystem if the CP calculates the highest bcx of a card once, rather than the player renting or buying 50,000 of the lowest cp/$ card to cheese the system.
I think the switch from card power to SPS staking is already doing a better job towards these ends than reinstating card power would do.
an example. his deck costs 22 dollars he plays silver 1 almost goldrating. a silver cl core set actually costs 440 dollars. he plays without SPS, for example, because he doesn't care. He simply makes 20 decks out of what 1 silver cl core set actually costs. 20x 1 SPS boost = 20x SPS boost? And who suffers in the end? The player/investor who plays his account legitimately and levels the cards. Because if I would play with a real CL silver deck in silver, I would earn much less than him with his 20 accounts. even though his 20 decks together cost as much as my one deck. Since he doesn't need a minimum cp, he can simply bypass the SPS and even ends up with more sps boost, since the mass of accounts he can create without cp limit simply makes up for it. What they do hurts our rewards, our cards and our SPS.
therefore i think that cp requirement and reward regulation through sps staking, together are much stronger than both alone separately!
This is fuzzy logic.
No.. that's not how it works. Applying a 1x multi. to a $400 account or 1x multi. to 20 $20 accounts is effectively the same. The multipliers don't add up
What are you trying to compare? A bot in wild vs human in modern? I just checked this account and it earned 25 SPS in the past month, and 15 SB cards. I don't know what the ROI is but it's not amazing. In fact, if you look at SPS earnings alone, this account hasn't earned back the $10 spellbook cost after 2 YEARS of running. The perception that bot farms have amazing ROI is just false.
Not true, as explained above. If this was the case, it would be a major design flaw
just stop lying, this account has existed since october 2021 that has earned the 10 dollars back in 2021. and you compare a 20 dollar account with a 400 dollar account. just stop with your bullshit calculate that 20x and then against a real silver account with 1x sps boost. please go fool someone else. nobody really falls for your shit anymore
If you want to claim that I'm lying, provide evidence. Until then you're just a mad, jealous troll.
you provide the proof yourself, boy. you turn a 400 dollar account into 20 accounts. and then try to show a calculation of a 20 dollar account against a 400 dollar account. even though it's obvious that you have to count 400 dollars 1 account against 400 dollars your 20 accounts..... which in your case would be 500 sps and 300 cards. which of course is a lot that no normal silver account would earn in wild. but you're even comparing that to modern now, oddly enough, because you assume wild is only owned by bot farms? but even in modern you wouldn't earn anywhere near that much. 1k dollar accounts in silver modern with 10x sps boost earn about the same. but a 400 dollar account without sps wouldn't even come close to earning that in modern.i would even go so far as to say that no normal account, in any league, can earn that much if it has no sps. i mean, it's pretty obvious that you're exploiting the system...
i mean you know you're exploiting the system. you wouldn't run more accounts than necessary. by now everyone knows what a greedy vulture you are. so buzz off...
The burden of proof is on the person making the accusation.
You have no idea what you're talking about, and you don't have the technical skills to gather data.
Bot farms have been nerfed again and again to the point that most of them left, and tanked the card & rental markets. Why did they leave if what they're doing is so profitable?
Greedy vulture? This comes from the guy who used BH hundreds of times, while also advocating against it? The guy who was a toxic troll in the XBOT discord for months and got kicked out?
Get some help bronko. You're not doing well.
i don't know if you are just stupid. there is nothing to prove, you said yourself what you earn in a month with 1/20 of the 20 accounts and that without sps. or do you need proof that 20×25 really results in 500 sps? 🤣
a full account would never earn that without sps.
if you didn't have the lvl 1 penalty in there. it would be even more obvious how you exploit the sps system!!!
and you kicked me out? i would know that though 😂
This account does rent SPS. It just doesn't have any right now.
There's nothing to prove? You called me a liar, dumbass. That's what you have to prove.
You're right I didn't fully ban you. I'll take care of that now, thanks for the reminder.
are you scared now that i'll join your discord and everyone will see what a liar you are 😂 never mind i'm not wasting my time with you anymore you've exposed yourself long time ago, anyone with more than 2 brain cells knows what you are!
Lil bro is trying to "expose" me with information that I shared myself publicly multiple times.
Are you really that dense?
this forum is supposed to be for debating proposals, not slinging insults at people like you are 5 years old. This is a really bad look but I'm going to come out and say that you don't care probably. Please restrain yourself and act like a adult.
Yes, and in 2021 crypto was in a much better state and SPL was completely different from where it is now. With reward cards not being SB and bots allowed in modern they were able to pay for the 20 spellbooks and get ROI rather quickly. Since the drop in crypto and the changes to rewards and bots only allowed in wild, I would agree that a bot account getting its ROI is easily 2 years.
I use to play in gold and would rent the remaining cp to push into diamond on a few occasions, this to me was the most enjoyable time in SPL. After the CP/SPS change my rating per win plummeted and since then ive had to drop to silver, getting 40 EOS silver chests and 4+ daily chests are better than 10 EOS gold and maybe 1 daily imo.
I feel that the current bot measures have done enough to curb bot farms of the past, and creating new ones aren't profitable enough to bother with.
This account really barely earns anything. On top of having no SPS so reward multiplier = 1, it also uses level 1 cards, which are penalized in silver, so also multiply their rewards by ~0.5.
was wondering why the sps boost starts with 1 since it was introduced. it should start with zero.
lets say he wins 12 battles a day and recieves 0.01 sps each win.
thats 43.8 sps or 0.876 usd per year. (with sps at 2 cents)
that makes a roi for his cards (22usd card-value) of roughly 4%.
thats only for the battle sps, not the chests.
but i think he wont get many chest. no focus chests, cos u need 6000rp for ur first silver i think. maybe he will get 4-5 eos chests with this setup.
then u also have to deduct the costs for proxy servers, bot sevice and other stuff. for my farm with 1200 bots that is around 460 usd per month, or 0.38 usd per account and month. (4.6 usd per account and year)
just to put it into perspective - there are not much earnings left, if any.
propably he even runs at a loss and speculates to make a profit with soulbond cards later which is kinda uncertain.
anyway, i like this proposal and will vote for it.
if this gets implemented it will likely reduce the mass bot farms and will give a much better playing expirience for human players.
it might crash the rental market but will increase demand and prices for cards that are overprinted like cl.
I don't like using CP for this. Furthermore, this allows people with lots of cards like me to go into private deals with botfarms and we will both potentially earn more if this proposal actually stops other bots, thus essentially negating the point of this proposal again...
What I would much prefer to see is botters being required to OWN SPS per account they have. I see many bots renting SPS from me via xbot and although I earn a lot from it, it means most bots do NOT earn their current SPS and simply rent. Requiring botters to own SPS will either
If this is passed, it would also be good to allow new players (as in new spellbook purchases) to forego this requirement for 100 days, basically allowing them to build up an SPS holding from the free 100 SPS delegation (if the current proposal passes).
I think a fair requirement is 100 SPS owned per account minimum to start earning rewards, regardless of their SPS delegations, a new player should be able to earn 1 SPS per day on average right? I'm actually not sure...
And in the future if we have 30 million players we can reduce this requirement (since there won't be enough SPS to go around), but these are good problems to have!
i'm a bit surprised about this. because you suggested that i include the delegation there...
and the model with sps i have done several counter calculations. the result is a much worse ratio between effectiveness/and side effects on legitimate players and investors. so not really effective!!
apart from the fact that i don't think many whales would get involved in such dubious deals. let's do the math. you could feed 1070 bronze accounts with your cards. but with your proposed sps option you could feed 98140 accounts.
to achieve a similarly effective result, you would have to go so high with the sps requirements that the hurdles for players would be far too high and the game would very likely not survive this.
I agree, but the best long-term solution is not allowing bots to use rebellion cards, otherwise, in 2 weeks, they will gather enough data to be unbeatable as they are now in modern (battle helpers). Compare the number of battles in modern x wild today. Nobody wants to keep loosing to "battle helpers". If we deny bots form collecting data, modern will be a viable option again.
I think people underestimate the influence of limiting bot farming capabilities (further).
Yes, having staked SPS instead of power was a very good first step. But the more we are limiting bots, rewards will increase for real players. And that's what matter for many new potential players.
If I were on the bringe to start playing SL, but seeing there are literally hundred thousands of bots who are decreasing my potential earnings, I would not play it and spend my money and time elsewhere.
Limiting earnings for bots = increasing earnings for real players = increasing the likelyhood of new players starting the game and bringing new money into the wheel.
Upvoted.
And btw. this proposal shows again that voting power should IMO not be determined by staked SPS - cause whales are in most cases those who are having hundreds if not thousands bots active. Instead, voting power should be 1 for each KYC-verified account.
Solution Is simple, ban bots from wild
Only one point is not clear to me.
Will the CP in the wild be an additional requirement to the SPS staked requirement?
If yes I will vote yes.
I play in modern because I only want to play against real players and not against bots.
There is no web 2.0 and 3.0 game that has been successful because of bots and bots in the wild drive real players away from Splinterlands and real players are the pillars of any game!
I will be overjoyed when there is a proposal to completely liberate my favorite blockchain game from bots
For me ban completely bots and automations from Splinterlands is the only choice that really looks at the long term
It will be an additional requirement. Currently there is not consensus to run a community proposal for fully banning bots and BH, but anyone from the community can run a proposal for that if they'd like to pay for it. Otherwise, this is what we got consensus to vote on and currently it's looking undecided.
Hi @clayboyn and thanks for the reply
I will vote yes to the proposal
Doing a proposal on bots is one of the things I would like to do in the future, I need to start seeing if anyone who likes to play Splinterlands without bots like me wants to contribute and split the costs.
Have a nice day and thanks for your proposal
The title of this proposal is fairly misleading. People will just see "Solutions to Minimize Bot Farms" and vote for the proposal. I mean, who doesn't want to minimize bot farms.
But it takes effort to read into the proposal and see what it actually does: Requiring owned cp to play in wild ranked. I bet there are alot of people approving this proposal and without knowing they'd be demoted to lower leagues should the proposal pass.
The title should be something like: "Requiring owned cp for wild ranked: A Solution to Bot Farms".
if you didn't feed your botfarm accounts with level 1 cards you wouldn't be downgraded...
😘
Yes for me in theory. Have always wanted to see ownership take a bigger part in the game.
How to deploy not sure.
Bots are supported by the rental market, there should be advantages to owning rather than renting.
Disappointed to see this passing, not because I don't want action against bots in wild, but because I expect it will both hugely affect the value in the rental market, and put off new players, who we need to onboard for the game to be successful. Most people aren't going to be too thrilled to have to spend a crazy amount of money (compared with web 2) to play a game. The rental market allows people to play without buying cards, and allows those of us with these assets to earn more from them. The bot problem could easily be addressed by implementing a policy in which anyone can play the game, but if you want rewards you have to complete KYC, which I don't really understand why so many people are so against.
i don't know if you just want to draw some doomsday scenarios.
or if you didn't read the proposal properly.
rental market?
when the bots went from modern to wild the rental prices of the wild cards were destroyed, maybe you just read the other comments i don't really feel like explaining it all again with the rating inflation. 😒
the rental market will most likely even benefit from it. a bronze player in modern rents on average ten times as much as a wild silver player. in wild the accounts no longer need cards to fight because of the strong rating inflation and the whole dead accounts. Therefore, they usually have only the most necessary to circumvent the starter cards penalty. I think you just look at it, in wild silver outside the leaderboard area play almost all only with lvl 1 cards, in modern would not even manage it in bronze 2. so that all the empty accounts disappear, the rating inflation goes down, the accounts need better cards so they have to rent more. . . .
and new players? the measure is only for wild not for modern!
and apart from the fact that your solution has already been rejected, it doesn't even make sense if i put myself in your shoes. you think if the botfarms go away the rental market will die, and your solution is that these botfarms stay there and keep renting even though they get no rewards without kyc.😂
your own thoughts contradict yourself. you should think about it again^^
I feel like you've misunderstood me. To be clear, I don't think "if the botfarms go away the rental market will die." I 100% want bot farms to go away, and while it may have a short term effect on the card markets, it will generate healthy economic foundations from which the game will be able to grow more sustainably. Rather, I think that preventing ranked reward play for people who only rent will massively affect the rental market. It's basically creating a system where one has to commit to spending up to thousands of dollars if they want to get into a new game, which is a hard sell! Better to implement a mechanism by which one account per person can be ensured, then we don't need to put off so many new players. Most people aren't like me - a reckless crazy who blows $7000 on an addictive game. They might get into the game though if they can spend like $10 or $20 a month on rentals. Bots will remain with this proposal anyway as long as there is still value. They'll regroup and establish whether it is worth investing the minimum CP amount to extract rewards. If the rewards have financial value, they will remain, it's that simple. And if they don't then the game won't be P2E anymore and the team might have to charge $0.50 per pack instead of $4 in future, or maybe have an MTG style monthly battle pass.
well if you want to play without buying cards you can still play in modern. but without playing yourself and without owning cards nobody should be able to extract our system like a token mining operation ;)
above all, the cp are also set very low in wild. the cp do not even correspond to a cl core set at the respective level
This will wreck the rental market and put off new players. Not a good idea. But anti bot measures are needed. Make players who want rewards complete KYC. Let anyone play any league without rewards if they don't complete KYC.
no and no!
and your solution is something that has been rejected 😩
Fair enough, the community has spoken, and overwhelmingly supported the game eventually definitely failing to survive with a play to earn element.
This is a joke, I own cards for silver but rent to compete in diamond Amma champ... now we're back to the old bullshit was we just fixed... use your time more wisely and stop coming up with ways to ruin the game. This is the first proposal that made me think about packing up and leaving.