After some time using the Archmage Bot without any fees attached to them in Splinterlands, they were introduced which caused quite some upset among users including myself since the fees feel way too high.
So first off, I like to say that I'm not a dev and I have no proper grasp of what it takes to develop things and what the involved costs are. The devs also have been really friendly on their discord despite getting a lot of shit and I have really enjoyed the Splex Automated Rental service which I think has a really fair monetization done in. I also think it's fair for there to be some kind of fee attached to a service, however the way it's done by Archmage just doesn't feel right.
Archmage Rollout & Model
While I like the idea that there is a token that you need to own in your hive-engine in order to be able to use the bot while also having your account verified on discord. The tokens were rolled out during the testing stage in batches for 25$ and there are 3 different ones. First there were the Alpha of which 200 were released, then the beta of which 400 were released and afterwads the normal tokens of which now are 1629 in cuirculation.
What sucked however is that it was impossible to get them from the sale for 25$ as they instantly got scooped up by bots who likely just wanted to make a profit from them leaving the only way to buy them on the secondary market where they easily cost 100$+. While the info on the project was in a whitepaper, it seemed the only real place where to get it with not that much information outside of it. This made many buy tokens on the 2nd hand market without really knowing what they were getting into. It was similar for me hearing from some friends that were using the service and were happy about it also without knowing when the full public rollout would be and that there was going to be a fee introduced.
While it can be said that this is on the persons getting in without doing enough research, it also kind of feels everything was deliberately kept unclear with very little public communication. The model with the 3 different tokens that give a certain discount on fees now also feels kind of strange to me and make little economic sense for the users.
Current Archmage Monetization and Payment Method
So aside from having to own the token (that many paid way too much for), you now also have to set some kind of delegation to archmage so they automatically can take 35% of all the SPS you earn and this not only from matches that are played by the bot but also from the matches that you manually play. This includes SPS earned from individual battles but also SPS earned from daily and season chests and the fee % in slightly reduced for Alpha or Beta token holders.
This makes it so that everyone using the bot as a complementary service on days they can't play or just to make sure their capture rate doesn't go to 100% (which should be the main purpose of a bot like this) is getting screwed over. The fees also add up like crazy even when letting the bot just run an entire season, especially at higher leagues as 200-1000 SPS chests are not that uncommon not even talking about the 10k+ SPS chests in Champion.
While the bot produces quite good results, it also isn't really doing better compared to an experienced player and it's mostly time that is being bought bu using the bot as Splinterlands just requires way too much of that now. Having to give such a big part of the earnings that are being taken automatically just feels unfair especially since most of us really value SPS long-term and see the value go way higher.
Fair Monetization and Payment Method
I don't think that anyone is against the fact that Archmage can have a monetization model similar to how nobody really is complaining about the Splex Automated rental system and this in my view should be the reference for a fair model instead of automatically taking 35% of SPS earnings on both Automated and manual battles.
What I would be completely fine with is something like this.
This is a clear and fair system that has proven to work without any kind of need for delegation and funds automatically being paid. It also makes it able to pay in the fee a currency of choice and use a pre-paid system where the fees can automatically be taken from.
Conclusion
Right now, the monetization model of Archmage just feels like extreme greed wanting to automatically take as much earnings as possible, especially from higher-level players who also like the play manually from time-to-time. The 35% on all SPS feels like a complete rip-off and I have seen a ton of players complain and leaving which also shows in the token price which dropped to 17$. Personally, I really value my SPS for the long term, I like the play manually still and am willing to pay an invoice on archmage fees instead of delegation which also made me turn off the bot hoping the devs actually come to their senses seeing that the current price is just nowhere near worth the service that is offered by the bot. I have been playing manually again which gives similar results to the bot and will have a look at splintermate.com who offer a similar service for 1$ fixed fee each month making them 100x cheaper than Archmage now based on what I earned last month!
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