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These are good bots, yes that's right
Now this is some information I wasn't aware of before I started streaming splinterlands last week. They added a liquidity bot feature you can toggle on and off. I know many of you are aware of my history talking about bots, and this is actually a suggestion I have had for a loooong time. Having it be a toggle? Even better! At first I thought "oh no there are bots in frontier, fuck it's over" then I realized these bots DO NOT eat SPS from the pool and actually just provide matchmaking liquidity. Quite the relief to say the least. The real question is "why did this never happen earlier?" and honestly a lot of the answers are sortof less than good. We all know various people on the team where caught botting en mass before the mass layoffs that occurred (these bots actually taking SPS from the pool) and in an opaque way. They could've done this THE WHOLE TIME, and they didn't because they wanted to give most of the SPS pool to botlords and not actual gamers. Botlords that they likely pitchedd the game to as an opportunity to do exactly what they were doing and cared more about their money than developing the game in a competitive fashion. This is definitely a better late than never scenario, but I still welcome it.
Why this matters, Why it's a good thing
Match liquidity matters, and was always the reason they gave for letting bots run rampant winning against each other and leeching the game until it got to the point we are at. It also drove away all of the web2 gaming people like drabs, CustomeTv, and various others. Many got tired of watching bot lords take all the rewards and not competitive players/collections. Liquidity bots made by the company that DON'T Take rewards from the pool should've always been a part of Splinterland. And sadly they always could've been. At least they are here now, and they are in fact a good thing. Low que ranks and matchmaking modes at least have the possibility to play against SOMETHING. Big improvement over what it was in the past.
How to enable/disable these liquidity bots. Why?
The toggle for turning the bots on and off is in settings. Some of you may ask "why would you ever want to disable liquidity bots" and I do actually have a valid reason for that. They have a fuller collection in early ranks in frontier and also always perform "perfect" lineups with said full set of cards. Where if you are trying to grind up your frontier collection to compete it can make it very hard to do so compared to playing against other humans who make human errors and have incomplete collections.
Talking Tidbits: Why not do this for every mode?
Why not do this for each mode and remove non-official bots completely? I guess the existing reason is they pitched this game as an investment vehicle and there are a few folks who would be mad if they decided to get rid of unofficial bots completely. They sortof pitched the game as an Esport knowing they also pitched it as a passive income botting opportunity to others (someone had to be the liquidity ":bag holders" and it ended up being a lot of regular gamers in the space, honestly kindof despicable). Anywho, at least now we have actual liquidity bots that don't fuck over the real playerbase. Currently there is no reason to ban all non-official bots in place for liquidity bots. They offer no real benefit to the ecosystem now that match liquidity is solved. Well no benefits greater than the harm they do to the modes they are allowed to run rampant in. The good being "a small group of people make money" the bad being "that money is leeched from every actual gamer".
Thanks for reading everyone. I know it wasn't the most positive take on it. A bit more of a "better late than never" sortof take, but it does beg the question of "why didn't they always do this?" and we all know the answer to that don't we? A random person who comments on this post will receive 1 SBI and be notified in the comments of their gift. Have a lovely week everyone. See you folks in Splinterlands. Let me know what you think in the comments, I know this is a nuanced issue and a lot of people have very strong opinions about it. Let's discuss.