Solution To The Bot Issue On Steem-Monsters : Let's Even The Playing Field [Steem-Bounty Added]
Let's Even The Playing Field
Why Bots Are Bad
Bots give an unfair advantage to the regular / non bot user. They do this in multiple ways such as a human user can't play as long as a bot can. We need to eat / sleep and do other daily activities. A bot can play 24 / 7, this is bad for any human user when competing in a league format because the more games a user plays the higher chance a user has of attaining a higher score to win rewards.
Bots leave people feeling cheated. Imagine if you are a human player and the league ends. You're ranked 11th and top 10 places pay extra rewards. The rewards winner in 10th ends up being a bot. The rewards then go to the bot owner who spent very little time actually playing Steem-Monsters. This will make most non bot users feel cheated.
If bots aren't stopped it will stunt or at the very least stagnant the growth of Steem-Monsters. No-one is going to want to play in leagues that have all the top rewards being distributed to bots. Steem-Monsters " Gambling " and league play very closely resembles that of the Poker industry and online poker already figured out long ago that bots are bad for business. Steem-Monstersshould look towards the poker model for guidance as to not repeat the same mistakes over again that solutions have already been found for.
Bots in the Market place give an unfair advantage to those using it. These bots in the Marketplace scoop up all the cheap cards in an instant. This is unfair to the regular non bot user. The average user needs to have a chance to scoop up that cheap card that a newbie posted for 50 % under its value. Those with bots and deep pockets shouldn't be allowed to scoop up all these cards.
Solution To The Bot Problem
Pointing out an issue is easy but finding a solution sometimes isn't. Allot don't like the idea of nuking cards or accounts due to this game being on a blockchain and without doing that there are no real repercussions to anyone. So if we are not going to have repercussions then we need to find a workaround and I believe I found just that.
Leagues can have a game limit along with a time limit. Currently leagues are 2 weeks long with the option to play as many games as you like. Lets put a game limit on leagues as well. For example : We could have a league that last 2 weeks and allows a max number of 1000 games to be played. This would even out the odds a little for human and bot players. This will allow those who run bots to continue using them while not having a giant advantage over those of us who don't.
The number of games allowed to be played in a league can vary. The length of a league can also vary in this format. We could even use this format in a tournament structure. For example : A 24 hour tournament where players are allowed to play up to 100 games. Once you reach your 100 played games or the 24 hour time limit is reached your score is locked in. Bots have limited advantage in this format.
Disclaimer : This is not an attack against Steem-Monsters. I like playing the game and we are still in Beta playing an unfinished product. Issues and " bumps in the road " should be expected. The game has come a long way in such a short time and I am happy to be apart of it.
What do you think of my solution ?
Give Your thoughts on bots in the comment section.
Give Your thoughts on bots in the comment section.
@rentmoney has set 1.010 SBD bounty on this post!
Bounties are a new way you can earn rewards irrespective of you Steem Power. Go here to learn how bounties work.
Earn the bounty by commenting what you think the bounty creator wants to know from you.
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
Happy Rewards Hunting!
Congratulations to the following winner(s) of the bounty!
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
Find more bounties here and become a bounty hunter.
I don’t play the game, so I have no real opinion one way or the other. I will say the blockchain is amazing, but the bots do sometimes put a wrench into things. Why not fight fire with fire and use bots yourself? That would definitely level the playing field.
That certainly would even it for me and some others that know or can learn to set up bots but what about the new user that joins and spends $100 on the game to gamble and win rewards only to only be beaten down by bots. This will make them have a ... I feel cheated feeling. At that isn't good for anyone that has invested or wants to see SM succeed.
I tend to agree with you that bots are not great for the game. Though, this depends on the economy that @steemmonsters wants to create. As a parallel example: Wizards of the Coast have both the Freemium Magic The Gathering Arena (MTGA) game AND the regular Magic the Gather Online game (MTGO). MTGO has player-to-player card trading and MTGA does not. If you want cards to have value (and have a p2p market) then it has to be extremely difficult to free-farm valuable cards. In MTGA, it's freemium, so having players farm up cards or pay to skip farming is okay.
There are mixed models, as in, it's possible that only certain cards, generally the less powerful ones, are free-farmable but the more powerful cards are not. Steem-monsters doesn't have an obligation to preserve prices on the secondary market but people are getting better at sniffing out a borked economic model -> though it remains to be seen if that is suffient to override addictive tendancies.
To your question; massively restriciting the farming ability and limiting the number of ranked games that can be played in a time period is a good solution. You propose limiting the number of games that can be played in a day. Fair, I guess. Another way would be to sell event tickets (MTGO does this) to ranked games and these form the prize pool for the game from which the house takes their cut.
The other way is to up the complexity of actually playing the game so that it's much more difficult to write a play-bot. When I tried the beta a few weeks back you made a deck and that was it. That's easy to bot. If your bot actually has to make impactful play decisions then that's much harder to bot.
The Steem-Monsters Team will be implementing a more strategic game play for season 3 so that may put a damper on bot players. It will be interesting to see where this game ends up. It has come a far way in a short period of time.
That is very true. I know a few of the people behind SteemMonsters and they are smart people.
Players will leave because of the bot problem and its going to get worse as more bots arrive from rich dolphins who just hodl cards. Steem is plagued with bots and this is a real problem yet nobody does anything about it. Bots will thrive humans will get bored of the cheating bots and leave this game. It's not rocket science
Posted using Partiko Android
Yup .... but some either don't see it or choose to ignore that fact. Its been proven time and time again. Human players don't like losing out in rewards to bots.
I see some users now who are playing battles with one card. This really Shits me and shows he/she is a bad loser. I also see people whining about card farming.. Big deal we the people backed steem monsters in funding in return for a useless steem account plus cards. How people are having a cry because we can login and send cards... Big deal if you don't like it. Announce it at the start or fix the rules. Don't whine about it because your the loser not doing it yet u battle with one card so u can battle other newbies... That really grinds my gears
Posted using Partiko Android
I don't think they are battling with one card to face newbies. I think its likely they are doing it to get to a level where its possible for them to complete their daily challenge for the free booster. The issue with all the free packs being handed out is that some spent thousands on buying Booster Packs. Now all of a sudden they are being handed out like free candy. I do agree that its within the rules to farm. Have you seen the post by the official @steemmonsters account detailing the new changes ?
Yeah but it fucks it for everyone and the other opponent. When I see this style /attempt I just think.. Why and it annoys me that I'm vsing someone with only one card. Hope they fix it so it matches them with other one card players
Posted using Partiko Android
Either way I guess I can see how it benefits the one card players with matching easier opponents and that yeah cool
Posted using Partiko Android
Daily Game limits and bot ban should be a good idea since it's a game meant to be played by humans adding bot detection when logging in would be a great idea i personally hate bots in game because it is unfair and abusive use of the game and since steemmonsters involve money i strongly stand against bots in steemmonsters
Many feel the same way as you.
Thanks for expressing your opinion on the matter.
No problem mate always like to talk about these matters
I like it, not ideal limiting the amount of games, but with multiple leagues it should be ok.
The more I think of the solution outlined the more I think its the best way to go. When tournaments come around there will be time zone conflicts. Having a tournament run for 24 hours and with a max games played allowed will solve that issue as well.
The poker industry found out long ago that bots are bad. They can ruin any gambling site.
This is the challenge of all online games with money at stake. If there is an incentive, bots will be developed and figure out how to exploit it. It requires constant development to stay ahead of bots. Steemmonsters is off to a good start. Hopefully they will put in the work to keep ahead of bots
Agreed, but there are lots that want to keep bots around ( mostly the bot users ). All we need to do is look to other gambling models and see that allowing bot use is not good. The SM game has grown fast and its amazing to watch each step of growth. Hopefully the SM team will come to the same conclusion as I have and learn from a similar modeled industry ( Poker ) and not repeat the same mistakes that have already been proven to bad for the business and gameplay itself.
I cant remember the last time time I used a bot. The bot really cheated on me that I gave up delegating to it for and upvote. Initially, I thought it was doing well, but as time goes on, my reward started diminishing and fell flat.
Anyways, it was a great experience
I don’t like bots. I don’t think they should be allowed at all. SteemMonsters should be for Humans Only!
Maybe once every 5 games before the start of battle, people answer a small annoying photo caption, just like signing into those annoying websites. lol.
I agree .... lets get rid of bots. They leave the average user with a I feel cheated feeling. No-one likes losing to bots in a game that involves winning cash rewards.
I like your idea to cap the amount of games to be played per season, but I would also add some more tactical decision making to it as well. This would ensure that bots will have a strategic disadvantage compared to human players. Bots would only gain the minimal achievable Reward for any given Team.
One example of human decision making would be as simple as just to "activate certain abilities" like heal when they are ready to use. This would also widen the spectrum on how to play Steemmonsters as well. Imagine you just could save up your "Heal" ability for the next move and it gets more powerful...something like that.
Thanks for opening the discussion this is very important for the future of Steemmonsters.
Save up your " heal " ... I like that idea.
As far as I know the founders do plan on making the game more interactive.