Although I have been playing @SteemMonsters since I got a starter pack at SF3 and have faced lots of apparently automated accounts I have not looked into how they operate.
Here is an example in 
They started around the same time as me and have fought nearly 17,000 times. I have clocked up 1441 by doing daily quests a few times per week. I do not play every day.
Although they have ranked much higher before they seem to have settled into the Silver leagues as I assume it is easier to win there. Previously this would not have been worth playing too often as you can only do one challenge per day to win cards. So is it more about DEC (Dark Energy Crystals) now? I looked on Steem Engine, but there is nothing there. They may be using a Tron wallet to sell what they get. I guess with that many battles they could be turning over several thousand tokens per day, which could be a nice income.
Looking at their Steem wallet they are only making a few Steem per week from selling cards. They have a few hundred Steem sitting there that I guess they will sell some time. Their last posts are a load of Drug Wars battles 3 months ago.
Via the SM Discord I can see they are holding a fair few cards.
Now, this is just one example and there are lots of others. I guess there is a nice income to be made from this if you sell the DEC. I am curious about what sort of automation is behind this. Has someone built a toolkit that lots of them use? It is all just transactions on the blockchain and those can be generated by code. It would need some 'intelligence' to assess what the other player is likely to. They could quickly review my last few battles whereas I will only see their most recent unless I open another tab to check up on them. You only have 2 minutes to select your cards, so I have not been doing that. Using all that time would slow them down a bit.
There must be a lot of bot vs bot battles going on. Is there any way to prevent this? There would have to be changes to the game to enforce some sort of human interaction.
Does anyone have further insight into what goes on behind the scenes? I am still likely to keep playing the game manually for fun and a little profit via buying votes for DEC. I do not plan to set up my own bot. I am unlikely to get much higher than Gold unless I start spending a lot more on cards and I am more interested in powering up. Are others still just enjoying the game?
I have yet to play in any tournaments. I have not really looked into it, but I assume I need to find one at a convenient time for me.
BTW Whilst writing this post I have been listening to the wonderful cello music of Zoe Keating.
The geeky guitarist and facilitator of the 10K Minnows Project.
- I'll buy guitar picks for Steem
- Get a Wirex Debit Card to spend your crypto.
- Get some passive income with Mannabase
- Get paid to search at Presearch
- Battle for cards on Steem Monsters
- I have Steem accounts to give away to worthy people!