How Much Have You Earned In Splinterlands?

Yes, of course. I understand all the challenges involved with these issues and how easy it would be to navigate around any proposed or suggested "solutions", that may be advocated for by any particular individual or group of players with the technology available to everyone these days. I also understand that any proposed changes would come at a different cost and/or interfere with or affect certain aspects of the game, or the ideas of decentralisation and freedom of choice to heavily invested players. So yes, there are no "easy" solutions.

My statement (or idea if you prefer) isn't necessarily about restricting or punishing the best players (even if it may be perceived that way), only because they are the best players per se. It's also not personal against anyone either. I don't have a problem if someone wins a large amount of tournaments on a regular basis, if they are genuinely the best or most skilled player in a particular tournament, or in the game overall. I am strongly in favour of skill being rewarded appropriately...after all, I was once a regular tournament player in a different game, other than SL. I can definitely say that I have a good understanding of the ideas and concepts of tournament play, and the entire purpose of them - which is partly why I have a slight problem with the current structure of them within the SL eco-system.

I'm am mostly concerned that it has both a perceptually negative effect on current/prospective new players entering the game and the general economy as a whole. It is however a much bigger issue when it comes to tournament play in particular, as it is open to abuse and/or manipulation in various ways, which can really skew the rewards spread based more on the amount of opportunities (or tournament lives) some players have, rather than it being purely based on skill itself. I guess some people will argue that it's not actually abuse or manipulation, which is a long conversation in itself.

As far as the bots are concerned, I don't have a problem with their existence within SL, as they can also serve a specific purpose and can actually be helpful to the game in many ways. That issue is obviously more problematic because of the exploitation and abuse of rewards, with the use of extremely weak decks to farm the eco-system for an in-proportionate amount of rewards based on their initial outlay.

As you are aware, due to my personal situation I don't play atm so I use them myself (bots) for quite a few of my bronze and silver level decks (with some exceptions where real people play them too - especially my main account palikari123...yes @maxi01 is a real person that plays that account). I don't go out of my way to hide it...I just don't advertise it in the general SL server, as it's something that is not really looked upon favourably because of the overall perception out there, by the general player base and is a conversation that is preferred not to be advertised in the server as a general rule. So here I am telling everyone right now, out in the open. Doesn't get more open that the blockchain, right?

Thanks for your response @byzantinist.

the prevalence of so many shit decks

Thanks for your reply Dave, but this^🤣

Very poetic and hilarious at the same time, I must say.

I do hope that the new changes coming into effect, largely address most of these issues, and go a long way towards making things more equitable for all level of play.