Schrödinger's Bots - They Are Both A Problem And Not A Problem
Hello everyone! In this post, I'll talk about some of the recent changes and how they relate to bots. I'll mostly focus on the changes and how the team is dealing (or not) with bots, but I'll still share my view on bots.
I think my view on bots is what's shared by most players. I think it's perfectly fine to have a bot play your own account, especially if, for some reason, you can't or don't want to play the games yourself. I don't like when one person has 100s, 1000s, or even 10000s of accounts run by bots. But, where do we draw the line? Are 10 accounts fine? 50 too much? Are 10000 people running one bot each different from one person running 10000 bots? It's not easy to answer these questions. I also think we want to limit tournaments to real players only.
Whether we like bots or not, they exist and are part of the game. A better discussion is how should the team view bots and how should they address them. My first critique is that the team has said multiple times that bots are part of the game and they are not going to do anything to try to stop the bots. However, several changes have been made with the goal of fighting the bots. What's even worse is that many of those changes, didn't do anything to bots, some of them actually hurt real players over bots.
My first suggestion is that the team needs to take a stance on bots, instead of being in a Schrödinger's bots state where they say they aren't a problem but keep making changes that try to combat them and instead hurt the players. Either outright say bots are a problem and you'll do everything you can to stop them, short of banning, or just say they are not a problem and stop trying to fix that "not a problem".
I think the team has implemented several good changes. However, there are 2 recent changes that I'm not happy about and I believe they will hurt the game, potentially a lot, in the long run.
Change 1
For me, this is wrong on many levels. Under the old system, the rewards of a win with 100% ECR are the same as the rewards of 2 wins with 50% ECR. There is no difference for DEC and RP won in these scenarios and there's no difference in ECR spent. The only real difference is rating won/lost. Since rating doesn't depend on ECR and due to win streak bonus, the more matches you play the more likely you are to having a higher rating. The only other difference is that having a higher ECR makes each win more valuable and each loss a bigger loss. So, a higher ECR means more variance.
My biggest problem with this change is that it doesn't solve any problem, except maybe bots climbing the rankings faster than humans at the start of the season. On the other hand, it punishes players who want to push for a certain rating, mainly at the end of a season, players who know they won't be able to play for a few days, so they want to run down ECR, and players who happen to have a lot of free time and want to play their favorite game. This change is encouraging players to play less.
On top of that, the "about 70 battles in a day to reach" is not accurate at all. That might be true on a single day if you play all the matches in a row. However, if you instead have 5 gaming sections in a day with a few breaks, the number goes down. And if you play 50-60 games every day, you'll easily go below 50% ECR, without ever touching the 70 games per day.
I don't believe this will hurt many players. But it will certainly hurt some and bots will be unaffected, after they are adjusted to never go below 50% ECR.
Change 2
Changing Minimum Card Rental Time to 2 Days
To me, this one is even worse. I have only ever rented for 1 day, with very few exceptions. When I found a cheap Alric to rent, after the release of Chaos Legion, I kept it rented, and sometimes, when I place bids on Peakmonsters and forget to cancel. Basically, 1 card, which I don't rent anymore with the Modern/Wild split, and the rest were by mistake. This is the most efficient way to rent. Unless you find a card for cheap that you use all the time, or you don't want to bother going to the rental market every day, there was no reason to do it any different. And, even if you want to rent for a longer time, you still need to check if the owner didn't cancel. The best way to do this is with season rentals and the team is already working on that! For tournaments, you also only need to rent for 1 day.
Putting restrictions on the market is never a good idea. It hurts both the owners and the players. Why do I have to pay for 2 days if I only want to use the cards for 1 day? I will be renting fewer cards because of this. For owners it's the same. Some people might be willing to rent a few of their cards, especially if they're not playing for 1 or 2 days, but they want to have them back and ready to play after that. If the minimum is 2 days, they might not put them on the market.
Once more, the reason for this doesn't even make sense, especially when you consider the ECR change. It's already a terrible idea to run your ECR below 50%. Why is it necessary to also put another restriction? What scares me, even more, is that they are considering increasing the minimum time. I honestly believe that this could be the worst decision the team has made, at least during the time I've been playing, almost 1 year.
Change 3 (potential change)
Modifying reward share calculation to take in affect the level of cards used per league
This is only a potential change but it also scares me. Having higher level cards is already an advantage. If I'm able to win despite 1 or 2 level 1 cards, why should I be punished for that? Not to mention that many of the level 1 cards played are ghost cards which already bring a pretty big penalty. Let's not forget that, not all higher level cards are strictly better. On some rule sets, usually on reverse speed but it can also happen on a few others, a lower level card can be better, not only because it reverses the order based on the level but also based on speed. Players might keep certain cards on a lower level on purpose, just to use them on reverse speed.
Do you want to know how to make higher level cards better? Allow players to select the level they want to use. Let's say I have a level 5 Radiated Brute. If I was able to choose which level I was using, between 1 and 5, it would make it more versatile and there would be no downside in leveling up the card. I could still choose a lower level on reverse speed and have a better card for most games, using as a level 5.
Conclusion
I know this post focused more on the negative, but I love this game and I want to see it become even better. I've been loving the game and most changes, it's just these last few ones that I don't like. I've given praise in the past but I also won't shy away from constructive criticism. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think.
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Thanks for sharing! - @mango-juice
Awesome post!