The bot problem in Splinterlands

Hello.

First of all: if you don't like long texts or listening to the truth, this is not for you. Stop here.

Sorry for my bad English. It's not my native language. Will try my best.

People nowadays want to live in their fantasy worlds, but I don't know why. Maybe reality is too scary or they are so selfish to accept the world exists before them.

When I played my first videogame, back in 1986, I was so excited. It was an Atari and I thought to myself: I can control what is on tv! In those days, the games were bots playing against humans. The human being behind the control of the bots was adjusting, to his taste, the challenging level of the bots. Guess almost no games in that time had an end. It was a loop of increasing difficulty.

Years later, games began to have a story behind them, and so, they had a beginning and a final stage. The bot difficulties were still there. If you played Battletoads on 8-bit Nintendo, you will remember that was almost impossible to finish the game. Other games you could finish with no difficulties, mainly within future generations of consoles.

With the PC era and internet connection, games began to do the magic of putting two human beings, distant miles away, to play the same game: against each other, or against bots. The gaming experience was complete. I could face bots or humans. I had a choice.

In the early 2000s, an event hurt my pride as a human. The world chess champion, Gary Kasparov, was defeated by a machine called Deep Blue. No one imagined a human could be defeated by a machine in a game like chess (with almost infinite possibilities) when intelligence, cunning, and prediction were stats that no one imagined a machine could defeat humans. It happened 20 years ago.

With games and internet development, online games moved from LAN gaming centers to the comfort of home. The increase in competition and the amount of money being spent generated the first big problem faced by gamers: the use of bots and cheaters by some players, giving them many advantages and frustrating other people's experiences.

I dealt with every aspect of this problem, as a gamer who wants to be as competitive as possible.
As a poor guy, I had to download a cracked game to play online. That was not legal. I was a kid and wanted to play on my old pc. It was the only solution I had at that time. Floppy disks with a game to play against bots or cracked software to play against humans.

As the game industry was losing lots of money due to cracked software, they spent a lot of time and money to prevent this. And it succeeds. I thought that was impossible, but try to play an online AAA competitive multiplayer game without having so many problems today. You´ll give easily. With every time online check verification, it's almost impossible and the effort necessary is not worth the time spent.

This was a problem that affected only the game companies, not the legit players who bought the software. To avoid losing money, the companies did their best to solve the issue. But a second problem came as strong as the first one: the use of bots and cheats on games that required skill or time dedication.

On the other hand, this problem affected mainly the players who bought the game and want to have fun. The companies already sold their game, so they did not care much about botting or cheating, mainly because it required more money invested to fight against it. Lots of sites appeared in Google's search selling cheats without any countermeasures taken by the game industry.

I experienced that in many games. I was seeing guys seeing behind the walls, killing with one shot from everywhere. These were the obvious cheaters, the easiest to detect. But there were guys disguising, the hardest to identify.

One day, I was so tired and frustrated with a cheater ruining my gaming experience and laughing at me, saying cheaters did not exist, that I was crying and a bad player, that I decided to buy one cheater to see how it worked and if the anti-cheat measures adopted by the developer were effective.

I installed the software and configured the aimbot, wallhack, and everything. Played carefully for one week without any ban or complaints from other players. Result: Uninstalled the game and never played it again. I decided not to spend my time living an illusion, playing against humans assisted by bots.

The game companies do not invest 1% in anti-cheats of what they invest in anti-piracy. There are some exceptions, but are few. Today, with some money, I play Flight Simulator through Steam, because there is no competition in this simulator. Just play for fun.

Splinterlands is an online competitive game. I am 100% sure that in its inception the game did not have bots in mind. Even because it takes time to develop a really good bot that can defeat an experienced and skilled player. It took five years, but it's happening.

Do you remember when I mentioned the loss of Gary Kasparov to Deep Blue? Chess is a game much more complex than Splinterlands. Months ago was getting impossible to play bronze or silver due to the limitations (possibilities) of the levels and the development of bots. Some seasons ago, bots were on top of bronze leagues with no reticence.

Some seasons ago I managed to do my best season in Splinterlands, achieving 29th place in the leaderboard in the gold league. Excited, I bought some cards and managed Champion III in my first diamond full season, even without having or renting Kitty, Yodin, Llama, or other good Untamed cards.

But, as an experienced player, I noticed in the last seasons that bots moved from lower leagues to higher leagues. My win-loss ratio dropped significantly, even after upgrading my cards and renting some good ones, and I knew that it was not a fortuity. For the first time, I was losing more than winning in the game, although making good brawls and placing myself in the top 30 in some tournaments.

I was really scared when members of the community stated that we had to accept that Splinterlands had turned into an "automated service". What the hell? Why are they saying it now? That's something wrong. I will investigate by myself: I will try a bot, as I did with my old FPS game.

My search did not take too long as the hive engine has tokens of bots, and some offer a free trial period. I downloaded one, configured it, and started playing (better, letting the bot play for me).

To be short. My win-loss ratio went from 45% to 70%. Simple as that. The bot is intelligent and most of my losses are due to the lack of untamed cards (playing in Diamond modern with Chaos Legion and Riftwatchers). This was the first and only bot I tried and did not even explore all the possibilities.

The antibot proposal was not created by chance. The first symptom of a game infested by bots or cheats is the loss of players. Why I would spend my time and attention on a game that I am destined to lose? The level the bots achieved will only increase, and that is what scares me most in the proposal when the team states "Splinterlands is aiming to become a game in which** humans and bots can compete on equal footing**, it currently is not.

Humans and bots will never compete on equal footing! Period. You can't go back in time and make the bots the idiots they were 3 years ago. As the game gets more rulesets, cards, and abilities, the number of possibilities will increase exponentially, and with AI development, the bots will be stronger every day and then unbeatable.

Let's be pragmatic, as Americans like. What kind of people do you think has more potential and money to spend in the game? I would assume older people, who love card games (they played them when younger) and have some time to spend playing.

Do you really believe that a guy like that will start playing Splinterlands (that´s not a cheap game to start), lose many games in a row to bots (that's totally accepted by "the community", will continue to play the game? Do you really believe this is the right way to bring new players to the game? Do you really believe that a guy like that will try to learn what a bot is, spend 100 bucks, configure it, and have fun watching the bot play for him?

If so, that´s ok. The creators of the game are heroes who pioneered the crypto game world. The game is fun and proved it. But, in this case, I just ask the developers to advise people that they will be facing strong bots and lose many games to them.

This is a legal issue. If you announce that you will be facing other human players, but are facing computer bots, people are being deceived. Many people who play the game don't know what a bot is or even that it exists. There must be a big warning about that, or the company will be facing another court lawsuits in the future.

I played a few "play to earn" games in my life, but all of them banned bots. It's not easy, but they keep banning as they appear. Do you believe a million-dollar valued account will risk its money to use bots?

If developers accepted bots in the beginning and can't go back cause many whales use them, they did wrong at that time. If they accept bots as normal, they are in their right. We are just asking for an opportunity to play against humans and the **effort ** of the team to make it as soon as possible, with quality.

If they find it not possible to keep the game without bots, perfect. Will pack my bags and move on. They are on their right. But I say: the game will die. It has no fun to me to buy a bot to play a game to me. Games are made for humans to play. AI is making people so lazy that they did not find time to play the game they say they love. Instead of searching for new strategies, and card combinations, people now have just to search for the best bot. So simple. So lazy. So anti-human. It´s like using a robot to make sex for you. It's nonsense. Where is the fun? If it is all about money, remove the gameplay. Make a game of bots.

Yes, I may be old and outdated. But some things are the same since the beginning of time.
If you want to be treated as a butterfly, no problem, I will do so. I can buy you wings and dress you like one. But if you jump from the 20th floor of a building, don't want to believe that you will fly out of there.

Posted using Splintertalk