There has been a lot of discussion about bots. Not just lately, but ongoing. We proposed and passed "no bot modern" because of player sentiment based on a DAO vote which helped to create a human vs human league. But can we do better.... and should we?
One of the proposed solutions I and others have been advocating for is the formation of a THIRD FORMAT. This third league would get a share of the reward pool, and would be a "bot free league" that would use all cards from the "Wild" format. There are a few naming conventions that have been suggested for this fabled third league, but for purposes of this discussion I will refer to it as "legacy" (definition: something that is part of your history, or that remains from an earlier time). "Wild" would then be truly "wild" as its name suggests, a free for all battleground where bots, battle helpers, or any other forms of automation are allowed!
The obvious answer is to allow for a format that uses the older cards that is a human vs human league! This would allow players who have accumulated older cards to have a place where they could face human competition and still enjoy a piece of the SPS reward pool. In allowing a large share of SPS to be earned by human players it puts more value on older cards since right now the SPS rewards are virtually non existent in wild because the bots there are numerous and drain it rapidly. Wild is a ratings inflation paradise where accounts with low level cards can face each other and win trade into higher positions than they should be able to achieve. Accounts that should be in silver at best are able to climb to gold or diamond since you don't have to own "good" cards to compete in current wild, you just need to face underpowered accounts with artificially high ratings. It would also add more legitimacy to the game as an e-sport since there would be another human vs human league where you could actually USE the older cards.
This would add value to all of the "good" older cards by extension! Now they would be important in order to win since competition would be fierce, and the win trade bots would no longer exist! Just look at modern. You can't compete at higher levels without having a good deck. You will either need to own or rent the key meta cards if you want a share of the rewards associated with the legacy format. We are always looking for ways to add or retain value in older cards so that people are confident that their investment won't automatically drop 50%+ upon rotation, and having a league where those cards can still earn something is a great way to encourage buying and holding cards from the newest sets as well!
I personally feel that Legacy would offer even more rewards than modern, even if it had a slightly smaller SPS pool! Since the cost of entry is higher (Yodin and Kitty are expensive), less people would play in Legacy, which would mean the reward pool would be split amongst fewer players, making each battle more rewarding. While this could cause match liquidity issues, I feel like that problem would solve itself as more players enter the format as they see the rewards are higher. This would eventually create an equilibrium between modern and legacy where players bounce back and forth between the formats depending on which was paying higher rewards. Modern paying more? Players will use more of their limited energy on modern. Legacy paying more? People will switch to legacy. If we really wanted to encourage more cross format play, we could reduce energy refill costs, which would allow more people to buy energy to play more games. This in itself would burn more DEC helping us achieve the SPS flywheel since if the amount of SPS you earn in a match is greater than the cost of energy, we would be incentivised to buy energy! Right now I don't feel that's the case since energy cost (in higher leagues at least) is greater than the value of the SPS rewards we receive. This in conjunction with the removal of SPS from reward chests (upcoming) could change that!
This is a hot topic of discussion. Why reward bots at all? Aren't they just a drain on the ecosystem? An army of extractors who return nothing and take everything?
The answer, to me, isn't as black and white as it would appear.
There are many investors who put a LOT of money into the game, but may not have time to actually play. You may say "that's a them problem", but they are still buying cards, packs, and other resources and contributing to the ecosystem. Obviously this excludes bot farms who exist to purely extract, but at least they would have to invest into renting / buying SPS to move up the leaderboard since the rewards scale based on staked SPS. While the "investor players'' could just put all their assets on land, they may want to accumulate reward cards for the occasional times they do get to play, or just to have a complete collection. Since you can't just buy Soulbound cards right now, the only way the passive "investor player" would be able to acquire them is through automation.
Another problem with completely eliminating the reward pool for bots is that it would encourage them to try and bleed back into modern, or the newly created legacy. If we take EVERYTHING from them, they will try and backdoor to extract again. Cutting the reward pool for them already hurts their profits, and I'm sure they may vote against this if it comes to a proposal since it's against their best interests. IF the rewards were literally zero, they would act maliciously since there is a sunken cost they would try and recuperate and this isn't referring to sunken cost fallacy, this is a true loss of investment and earnings on their part.
Just think about Xbot / Archmage who run on receiving a portion of the SPS earned in battles. Those are public bots who will already take an earnings hit in the creation of a 3rd format. Imagine the private bots that exist who are presently "following the rules" but who are largely undetectable. Do you think they would just abide by the rules if it represented a total loss of their revenue? Giving Wild bot league SOMETHING is a concession to the fact that bots exist, and “investor players” exist.
Eliminating bots completely will also completely crash the rental market and may have other effects like the mass selloff of assets from the "investor players" and farms who now have no use for cards. Some may see this as a good thing, but overall the economy would suffer, and we would lose many of the big investors who are busy making money at their actual jobs and have no time to play, but want to interact with the ecosystem on more than a "land only" basis.
I propose that the reward pool be split as follows:
These numbers can be discussed, but I feel like based on there being less players who would opt to play in Legacy over Modern that the rewards would still end up equal to modern (or more) because of the higher cost of entry. We also want to encourage modern play as much as possible, so the highest rewards should still fall into the newest set, which will eventually rotate into Legacy anyways. While the 30% may seem small, without the bots draining the pool I feel like the rewards will actually increase exponentially and will be more than enough to both raise the value of the "good" older cards that would be competitive in that format, as well as encourage renting them.
Some people have advocated for a 3rd format called "Vintage". A format that is legal for all "non modern" cards to be played. Currently that would mean Untamed, Beta, Alpha, and their respective promos and subsets. I don’t feel this format is necessary and prefer Legacy for a few reasons:
While legacy doesn't create a scenario where there is a format for "only non modern cards" to increase / stabilize the prices of older cards, I feel it puts the value on the cards that are PLAYABLE in older formats. The cream of the crop. As I've said so many times before: Good cards are good and will see play, and bad cards are bad and won't. There is no need to create formats where “bad” older cards would still be valued for the fringe play they may see in a format designed just to help retain their values. We are fortunate to have land where "bad" cards can be retired to turn their swords to ploughshares and be laid to rest forevermore. Besides, in time the dreaded Chaos Legion set will leave modern and fall into vintage anyways, and the once coveted ABU cards that this format exists to protect will fall to the wayside under the oppressive power of the Chaos Legion cards. So vintage would be a temporary reprieve, at best, while Legacy would be a permanent solution.
Again: Good cards are good, bad cards are bad, and the market will dictate prices without the need of artificial formats created to temporarily preserve the prices of older cards.
I hope you have enjoyed reading my opinions on the creation of a 3rd league: Legacy, and how it would help bring Splinterlands to even greater heights.
I feel it would be beneficial since it would create a human vs human league for older cards, add value and desirability to (playable) rotated cards, and encourage purchase of the newest sets since there would be confidence that they could still earn post rotation. While it doesn’t outright eliminate bots, it offers a concession to “player investors”, and a place where bots can still play without dipping too deeply into human rewards.
Thank you for reading and I would appreciate any comments or feedback. Perhaps we could push for a stake weighted pre-proposal from Clayboyn if there is enough interest.
See you around Praetoria!
Psilence
You can join my live streams every Thursday at 9pm EST @ twitch.tv/thepsilence and see my videos on YouTube (one of which will be about this topic!) @ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCON3AOPVQNf-3Hx7N8PkzrQ
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