I wouldn't say it's that black or white, the reality has shown that giving out real rewards simply isn't sustainable as the new players that need to come in to make prices hold up have to grow exponentially. The moment the inflow stops, the economy gets into a death spiral which it has been for a while. It makes no sense at the moment to buy packs from a financial point of view as you know values will drop of a cliff once they get dumped into wild mode.

The army of bots extracting value was convenient during the crazy growth stage but are now really harming the game.

In the end, Splinterlands just needs to become more fun so players are willing to spend money aside from much profit expectation knowing they can sell the moment they move on and recover some of the expenses. The problem though is that in the last 4+ years, all focus has been on trying to fix the economy completely neglecting the actual game which aside from a ton more card inflation hasn't improved whatsoever.