I want to know the name of the account im playing against...
To whoever may concern...
Last 27th of January @jabapmatt announced that the team is planning to remove the opponent name during ranked combat in an attempt to fight bots from exploiting auto surrendering.
My personal take on it
Opponent adaptation is an absolute fundamental of the meta-game of any card game.
I am totally against removing the name of my opponent, to me that is like trying to kill flies with a howitzer and it could have profound repercussions. Essentially, I believe there are other ways to penalise auto surrendering bots without incurring in dumbing down the game. Let's not forget that every card game has this aspect of adapting to opponent.
This game is advertised as a dapp or "decentralised app", which is like virtue signalling for transparency. Now, how transparent is blocking opponents names? How decentralised is having a central server temporarily obfuscating opponent names?
First you removed the battle data from HIVE blockchain and now this .. seriously guys you can do better than that. (I understood the technical reasons behind the decoupling of HIVE blockchain but I just don't see this).
Again, here are other ways to penalise win trading, examples:
Account A surrenders to Account B if this happens more than 3 times you ban both accounts (more than 3 times in a timespan of 1 month)
if one account is surrendered to more than the typical deviation it should get blocked (you can detect that statistically)
Just because the official UI says little about your opponent does not mean the info should not be exploited.
PD: free information will always be exploited better by smarter or better organised individuals/groups, you cannot change that. Now ask yourself this, you really want to combat free information?
Thanks for reading.
Cheers,
lightproject
I think you're missing the point of being able to look up exactly what cards your opponent has since if you know their name it gives a distinct advantage to those with more options. This way it allows people with less cards at their disposal to win using strategy instead. I understand what you're saying about the surrendering though since that part is different.
You are trying to use decentralization to make a point but both your suggestions of banning a user seem even more of a centralized option in my opinion.
As a splinterlands player I also prefer to see the name of my opponents and the cards they played but I also trust the team a lot and I would be willing to try something new if it can improve the game, I guess it can be rolled back anyway if it doesn't work.