I'm glad this post was brought to my attention. There's a lot of stuff I've seen before here, but quite a bit of new stuff, too. I had not heard of the Mayweather situation.

I'd have to read over it half a dozen times to go through a point by point response, neither of which I'm particularly inclined to do, although I would enjoy further discussion on the topic.

The Ponzi section in particular struck a chord for me, as I've never really disputed it has a lot of qualifiers, but a point that sticks in my head is the fact that these cards have a value beyond monetary as long as the game is running, or another app that uses them is still out there.

Other than that, you hit on some very concerning points. I hope however bleak things are there's still a future here.

For context, I got here about 2 weeks before battles began. I've seen all the changes, some of which hit me like a ton of bricks, making me think I might just be finished with it, while others made up for whatever bugged me and more. I was mad as hell to find out affiliate rewards were going to stop being paid in Hive, and I wasn't thrilled when they stopped giving out DEC for SP delegations, but it wasn't a deal breaker or anything.

I used to despise bots, feeling they gave an unfair advantage to game play, without really thinking much about the economic impact. I mean, hell, it's just an experimental card game. But, then, I noticed I wasn't waiting endlessly to get matched up with an opponent anymore. Then I realized bots challenge me in ways humans had not, and inspired me to experiment with strategies I hadn't thought of before that contrast. Finally, I started using a bot service to supplement my activity when I needed to step away.

For a while, I ran a tiny bot farm of 2 accounts while playing my main, before handing it off, too, for the end of the last bull run. Not I use one only on my main account and play it incrementally... usually binging every other day or so.

I say all that to say this. I appreciate the bot service so I don't have to feel married to the game to get my dailies in, but I would like to see the game reach some kind of equilibrium that would allow me to keep my status without needing a bot to stand in for me. I guess I mean I'm not opposed to bots, so much as bot farms, and I wouldn't mind those if they didn't bring the host of problems that have been kicked around here for years.

I don't have answers. I doubt I'm even fully aware of what the real questions are, but I'm hopeful things will get sorted out. Despite its apparently numerous issues, this is still a revolutionary experiment, that I'm hopeful will have tremendous impacts down the line.