The problem with blockchain based games - and how things could change for the better

Isn't it great? Games based on the blockchain! Every game transaction is written in the BC, there is full transparency and accountability, no cheating possible, neither from gamers nor from game developers and it is so easy to automate game routines and use bots for stupid basic tasks...

wait...

so who wins such games? Who succeeds and excels? The best gamer? And what's the economic basic of a game and its players?

So first of all - as with everything on the internet and blockchain - looking at the economic perspective it is pretty simple:
Game developers want to make money.
They make money by selling in game items, subscription fee and advertisement.
All three revenue streams usually depend on actual human beings playing the game and enjoying the time while doing so. And here the problems with blockchain games begin:
Who does really excel at blockchain games? The best players or the best bot developers?
And while I pay the utmost respect to bot developers that program those little bots look at the paragraph above... the games are not called bot wars or robo games.. game developers want to have real human beings on the platform.. bots usually do not spend money for in-game items and the advertisement partner will also not pay for bots looking at their banners...
It seems as game developers at least became aware of this problem... as far as I understand steemmonsters to a larger extent but also drugwars made major efforts to change game design and interaction with the blockchain to stop the bots. Other games are not yet at this point of action or even realization.

You say: OK, lets ban the bots that operate 24/7 full play mode, but lets allow the bots that do the stupid house keeping.
Problem is: Who defines where normal game play begins and where stupid routine work begins?
Also players view might differ I would say that whenever there is a majority of players that see some aspects of a game as stupid routine this signals actually more a poor game design and should be changed.

Take nextcolony for example - a game that I really love - but what's the point of logging in exactly every 3,5 hours to built your ships while other players just run their bot doing it with mathematical 100% precision - there is no way a human being can match this.

If you are still not convinced take the reality check:
In games like go and chess the computer now is vastly superior to any human being... and while it could be nice to challenge mr robots ingenuity its actually worse than just that.
Imagine you are playing a game of chess where you get every second round a newly minted pawn while the computer player gets every round a queen or rook... there is no possible way in the world that you can win this...

and this is exactly whats going on with blockchain based games... if every single information is written in the blockchain every action will be as visible as on a chess board. The element of scouting, fog of war, surprise or generally speaking any genius tactic or strategy is completely useless as it is visible at the very moment it happens - again of course not for the human player but for the bot or highly automated player...
.. and so the player or alliance with the biggest production base and most automated gameplay will easily dominate the game... with no chance for the little player to at least annoy the big players a little bit...

And that's actually not how this world is working.
This is a world of unknowns and surprises, a world of fog of wars, miss-assumptions, miss-calculations and mistakes...
And that's exactly what gives David a chance vs. Goliath.

So how could these problems be solved?
IMHO its quite simple:
Use the blockchain for what the blockchain is good at:
Major properties and ownership of major assets should be written in the blockchain, random number generators that calculate the outcome of battles should be derived out of the blockchain (knowing that there are people out there claiming this is still not save) but leave everything else out of the blockchain (or write it into the blockchain with one day delay).. as the likes of troupe movements, attacks, etc...

.. and for a start just forbid and fight the use of bots at all from the very beginning...

This would much more resemble the real world and give smaller players the possibility to compete with bigger players if they use some really good tactics.. which again should lead to more fun in the game and subsequently support a growing userbase.. etc..

And maybe there is someone programming a bot wars game with predefined APIs where we can watch who programmed the best bot...