RE: Splinterlands - the bot problem in higher leagues.
You are viewing a single comment's thread:
In my opinion, during the months and now years after this post, things didn't improve at all. Too many aspects of the game developed into the wrong direction:
As important new players are without any doubt, the foundation of the game are these users which support the game since many years or even the beginning.
As soon as you completely depend on new players while at the same time devaluing old assets (beginning with the 'war' against alpha cards) and discouraging and losing long term players and supporters you cut your own roots, and will definitely fail sooner or later!
Furthermore, it's just naive to expect players which are seeing the value of their old cards decrease to buy new cards ever again (these new cards - with better and better abilities to create short term demand - will be old soon enough and then just another chunk of assets losing value). Sooner or later also potential new players will be aware of that mechanism and stay away.
Splinterlands has completely left its path to care about the value of the player's assets and instead creates a huge inflation of more and more cards, titles, assets and in-game 'currencies'.
Apart from devaluing old assets the biggest problem is that the game itself has become way to complex and complicated to attract these new players the team would like to join!
Simplicity should be the key! Chess and Go are brilliant examples of games with a minimum of rules which still lead to a maximum of complex game play full of deep ideas. It's NOT the number of rules, abilities and different cards which a player has to memorize ("Wild" nowadays is nearly unplayable for human players due to the vast number of selectable cards) what makes a game complex and fun!
In my opinion, the ranking system benefits players who play MUCH (and even buying energy) instead of players who play WELL! In additon, in my opinion it was way better to earn more rating points when beating strong opponents and less when beating weaker opponents (similar like an ELO system) than the flat 20 points gain per win system now.
Not only in the ranking system money wins over skills. Also when it is about which players are entitled to design their own cards, only whales with deep pockets get rewarded for buying countless of assets, but never players for an outstanding performance in the game itself.
Finally, bots and battle helpers should simply be completely forbidden, and if nothing helps I would be in favour of KYC. That might be against one aspect of WEB3 games but is simply necessary for the survival of the game. Then there would still be a card market and other traits which would differentiate Splinterlands from WEB2 games.
Last but not least, in my eyes it's just disastrous for the game to let players pay (enormous amounts) to unbind cards which they have already earned before by playing.
Thank you for your witness vote!
Have a !BEER on me!
To Opt-Out of my witness beer program just comment STOP below
View or trade
BEER.Hey @jaki01, here is a little bit of
BEERfrom @isnochys for you. Enjoy it!We love your support by voting @detlev.witness on HIVE .
I agree. If you compare with Splinterlands, opening prep in chess are your cards. The rest are skill and talent. :)
... and the importance of opening preparation below international master level is overestimated. As long as you follow sound opening principles you can do rather well. Since many years (since I am not joining official tournaments anymore) I am not doing any serious opening preparations anymore and still easily keep a level between 2300 and 2400 rating in lichess.org.
As I was just criticizing Splinterlands, next let's look at HIVE:
Deutsch:
Meine Kritikpunkte sind unter anderem:
Der größte Teil aller Upvotes erfolgt automatisiert (via Autovotes oder dem blinden Folgen von Voting-Trails), d. h. die meisten User machen sich gar nicht die Mühe, manuell nach guten Posts zu suchen, sie tatsächlich zu lesen, bewerten und gegebenenfalls zu kuratieren. Dazu kommt, dass die Kuratierungsbelohnung innerhalb des siebentägigen Vote-Fenster abnimmt, was automatisiertes Voten gegenüber langsamerem, manuellem weiter begünstigt. Posts, die älter als zwei Tage sind, werden in aller Regel kaum noch beachtet. Das gesamte Vote-System ist also eher auf Schnelllebigkeit, denn die Förderung von 'Quality-Content' ausgelegt.
Neue User - sofern sie nicht zufällig mit einem HIVE-Wal befreundet sind oder von einem Trail-Leader entdeckt und für votenswert befunden wurden - haben es auf HIVE extrem schwer, Fuß zu fassen. Die etablierten User voten sich vor allem gegenseitig, ohne auf die Qualität der von ihnen begünstigten Texte zu achten (Zirkelvoting: "Hilfst du mir, helfe ich dir!"). Insbesondere auch das zumeist automatisierte Voten verhindert, dass die Posts von Neulingen beachtet werden.
Die HIVE-"Reputation" ist ein schlechter Witz, da sie mit der Qualität der Texte eines Users nicht das Geringste zu tun hat, sondern sich ausschließlich aus den bisher erzielten Rewards eines Users ergibt (gerade Accounts mit der höchsten Reputation - die ich eher als "Gier-Quotienten" bezeichnen würde - sind die übelsten Zirkelvoter, die der Planet je zu Gesicht bekam). :-)
HIVE ist entgegen der es verklärenden Legende keinesfalls wirklich dezentralisiert. Die über die mit Abstand höchste (meist auf mehrere Accounts verteilte) "HIVE-Power" verfügenden User erlangten diese hauptsächlich durch Early-Mining und Nutzung von Bidbots.
Geht es um die Auswahl der "Top-Witnesse" oder die Unterstützung von HIVE-Proposals, führt kein Weg an ihnen vorbei. Sähest du dir das Witness-Ranking von 2016 an, erkenntest du einen Großteil derselben Namen, die auch heute noch in den Toprängen festgewachsen zu sein scheinen und sich überdies meist gegenseitig unterstützen - nicht gerade Ausdruck einer lebendigen Demokratie oder gar Dezentralität. :)
Ich investiere schon deshalb nicht ernsthaft in HIVE, weil ich kein Bedürfnis verspüre, mittels der damit verbundenen Wertsteigerung des Coins diese Wale noch reicher zu machen. :)
Downvotes sind zweifellos wichtig und nötig, um Spam und Plagiarismus bekämpfen zu können, werden aber doch immer wieder (oft auch automatisiert, ohne die Texte der Opfer überhaupt zu lesen) zwecks Ruhigstellung missliebiger Diskussionsteilnehmer verwendet. Hier ein Beispiel unter vielen.
Es wurde bisher auf HIVE nicht ernsthaft versucht, etwas gegen diese aufgrund von Meinungsverschiedenheiten oder persönlicher Abneigung vergebenen Downvotes zu unternehmen (das wäre - neben anderen Ansätzen - z. B. mittels eines Accounts möglich, der mit Hilfe von von zahlreichen Usern delegierter HIVE-Power aus persönlichen Gründen getätigte Downvotes neutralisiert).
HIVE hat keinen MAX-Supply wie z. B. König Bitcoin, was (zusätzlich zu den bereits erwähnten Problemen) meine Erwartungen hinsichtlich einer zukünftig zu erwartenden Wertsteigerung erheblich dämpft.
Trotz dieser Kritik hat HIVE durchaus auch Pluspunkte aufzuweisen:
Ich persönlich schreibe schlicht für mich selbst (siehe auch HIVE-Pluspunkt Nummer Eins), einfach dann, wenn mir danach ist und ich glaube, etwas zu berichten zu haben. Sollten andere User meine Posts goutieren oder mittels Kommentaren mit mir in Interaktion treten, ist das schön und gut, wenn nicht aber auch kein Problem. Mit dieser Einstellung lässt es sich für mich hier einigermaßen gut aushalten. :)
English:
My criticisms include, among others:
The majority of all upvotes are automated (via autovotes or blindly following voting trails), meaning most users don't even bother to manually search for good posts, actually read them, evaluate them, or curate them. Additionally, curation rewards decrease within the seven-day voting window, which further favors automated voting over slower, manual curation. Posts older than two days are generally ignored. The entire voting system is designed more for speed than for promoting quality content.
New users — unless they happen to be friends with a HIVE whale or are discovered and deemed "vote-worthy" by a trail leader — have an extremely hard time gaining traction on HIVE. Established users mostly vote for each other, paying little attention to the quality of the content they support (circular voting: "You scratch my back, I’ll scratch yours!"). Automated voting, in particular, prevents newcomers' posts from being noticed.
HIVE's "reputation" system is a bad joke because it has nothing to do with the quality of a user's content — it's solely based on the rewards they have earned so far (ironically, accounts with the highest reputation — which I would rather call a "greed score" — are often the worst offenders when it comes to circular voting). :-)
Contrary to the glorified myth, HIVE is not truly decentralized. The users with by far the highest (often distributed across multiple accounts) "HIVE Power" gained it primarily through early mining and the use of bidbots.
When it comes to selecting "top witnesses" or supporting HIVE proposals, there’s no way around them. If you look at the witness rankings from 2016 onward, you’ll see many of the same names still entrenched in the top spots today, often supporting each other — hardly a sign of a vibrant democracy or true decentralization. :)
This is one reason I don't seriously invest in HIVE — I have no desire to enrich these whales further by contributing to the coin's appreciation.
Downvotes are undoubtedly important and necessary to combat spam and plagiarism, but they are also frequently used (often automatically, without even reading the target's posts) to silence unpopular discussion participants. Here is one example among many.
So far, the HIVE community has not made any serious effort to address downvotes issued due to disagreements or personal grudges (one possible solution — among others — could be an account that neutralizes such downvotes using HIVE Power delegated by many users).
Unlike Bitcoin, HIVE has no max supply, which (along with the aforementioned issues) significantly dampens my expectations for future price appreciation.
Despite these criticisms, HIVE does have some positives:
HIVE enables the permanent, censorship-resistant storage of valuable content (e.g., personal accounts, ideas, and thoughts) on a blockchain.
HIVE offers the potential to earn money through writing.
Technologically, HIVE is quite mature (fast, feeless transactions, the ability to send HIVE to a username instead of a cryptic string of numbers).
There are indeed interesting, thought-provoking writers in this microcosm.
Personally, I write simply for myself (see HIVE's first positive point), whenever I feel like it and believe I have something worth sharing. If other users enjoy my posts or engage with me via comments, that’s great — if not, no problem either. With this mindset, I can tolerate the platform reasonably well. :)