I applaud you for kicking the bots out of the game!
In the same direction, I would like to draw your attention to the trading bots of the HBC token on the SE market.
Going through the data of last Tuesday's and yesterday's (Sunday's) buyback it could be easily seen that Bot(s) and the User who already abused the glitch of the previous breadcrumbs token (HBBC) took a great advantage at both buybacks occasions against many regular players whose breadcrumbs tokens remained unsold.
Not to mention that the Bot(s) doesn't even have a registered playing account in the game what the whole "buyback" thing makes questionable, raising a question of what kind of buyback we would be talking about in that concrete case?!?
I understand that token and coin markets has its own rules, perform differently and so on. I also understand that you can't really and fully control the market itself, but I believe that there must be a solution for that too. Because, kicking the bots' ass on one side while allowing them on the other wouldn't help the game in the long run. Quite in contrary!
By observing the market in the last 10 days or so, I noticed that above mentioned two (the Bot(s) and the User-abuser) were continuously and actively playing the market and the current token (HBC) price on the SE market all the way long.
At the moment, I find this as a serious problem that affects us (the players) ALL, more or less the same way and in the same amount!
I'm sure none of us want that! And when I say "none of us," I really mean NONE - The Holybread Team in the first place, all of us players, and even not those get-rich-quick hunters - market speculators who are causing it.
Therefore, I think that current buyback system should be revised and changed.
We have already seen that every buyback has been done at cheaper and cheaper price. Regular user and player can't beat market bots either not heavy market speculators acting more or less the same way as the bots do.
Because of that, regular users and players are forced to place their bids lower and lower for eventual chance to sell at least some of their tokens during regular buyback.
Although, as we could see during last two buybacks they have been significantly outperformed by the two above described (the bot(s) and user-abuser) for quite a significant amount of new HBC tokens.
If nothing changes in this regard and the way I see it, especially at the moment when we don't have any in-game usage of the breadcrumbs as well as any other (elsewhere) token usage, and by being destined to the buybacks and buybacks only, on the market speculated by the above described, I'm afraid we might face the HBC token price falling down and coming next to zero in just a few following weeks!
For all these reasons, an idea as a possible solution crossed my mind and I would like to share it with you here. I call it...
Using current already set in place solutions and possibilities (in the game and on the SE market) I would do the following.
1) Determine fixed HBC token buyback price
Let say, 100,000 (100K) tokens for 1 STEEM or vice versa, 1 HBC token = 0.00001 Steem.
2) Players (with registered in-game accounts, not Bots and other similar speculators) would be able to send any time any amount of their HBC tokens to Holybread account.
By that they would enter the queue on the BuyBack Waiting List.
3) Every Sunday when the amount of 20% of the Prize Pool is determined, Holybread account would buybeck the tokens and send the players equivalent amount of Steem (STEEMP) in the amount and order they arrived.
4) The players whose tokens were not bought-back would remain at the top of the queue for the next week (Sunday) buyback.
5) Players in a hurry (for whatever reason) would always be able to sell their tokens on the SE market at the actual market price to some other players with some extra Steem who are not in some urgency to sell their tokens and/or willing to invest in the token that way and wait a bit longer for their buyback.
I am aware that in the current situation and game/market settings this offered solution might cause some additional unplanned extra work for Holybread Team, but I believe it would be way fairer than the current system is due to the different kind of speculators who are trying to monopolize the market and are influencing the token price at the moment.
Currently, I don't have an idea how to automate this and avoid manual labor around it, but maybe some other user/player would come up with the solution for that too.
As well, there is always a possibility to talk with SE Team and see how they can help you in this direction from their side.
However, my strong opinion still is, if we want to avoid further price drops that some change in the current buyback system certainly should be done!
Please don't take this as some criticism as it's NOT.
It's just a detection of an issue that might punch us all with bigger consequences that they could be foreseeing before, and accordingly just a constructive critique of the noticed problem with offered solution (good or not so good).
Therefore, and hoping that you would take this long comment in the most positive way as it was intended to be, I'm looking forward for the buyback improvement as well as for the all new features you are planning to implement in the game to make it great!
RE: Buyback + Bot Bans