A very long time ago I made a post in similar style to yours. I identified an issue whereby you could bot, and create new accounts, and get an incredible amount of rewards for zero effort, other than moving cards around.

That introduced the card cooldown as a result of my protests and calculations as to how quickly someone could've drained the booster packs (which were rewards) from the pool, which was meant to fund tournament prize pools.

Having left splinterlands for sometime, and coming back, as a (human) player now - it feels more coherent, and I think untamed has added new "shiny" to the game, but I do feel that with time, this, too, will stagnate.

I agree that there needs to be a push for more players from outside the cryptosphere to come and start playing this game. The marketing basis and proposition on the game's homepage is 100% about it being on blockchian.

It needs to stand on its own feet as a game, and get a following on those merits. How the spells, lands, and other elements may change the balance of the game is yet to be seen, but I agree with your premise that when its more profitable to engage a bot, or cloud services to play for you, than simply the joy of playing, that's not a game - and it reflects the same principles that many have taken the steem blockchain towards - a principle of "how much value can I extract with the minimum amount of effort?"

Having said that, I would hate to think how less valuable STEEM would be as a whole without this game.