The Rise of Powered Up Bots

Being up to this point a Silver League player I (like many other players) am sent back to the Bronze level at the beginning of a new season. This reset is something every player is used with.

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What is maybe not expected (and I personally was not used with it) is to be faced against some specific strong cards at lower leagues, especially when it comes to bot accounts.

Mylor, Mushroom Seer and Mycelia, really?!

I already wrote about the situation involving bots as you can find here. But this time the number of bot accounts using legendary and stronger cards, even at lower leagues, has definitely called my attention to what may be the beginning of a tendency:

Powered up buffed bot accounts.

While it is quite common to witness gold foil, leveled up cards run by bots in the Silver and upper leagues in order to maximize earnings, things used to be lighter in the lower leagues according to my experience, to the point of these bot accounts being truly predictable.

Nonetheless, it should be no surprise by now (and players tend to be aware of it) that some cards, like Djinn Oshannus for example, have since long become a bot favorite . But add to it the recent appearance of other legendaries such as Mycelia and Spirit Hoarder and the honorable mention of some strong epic cards such as Axemaster, and we start to realize that things may have changed.

Since I got myself being surprised more often than usual against these bot accounts and since the increase of the player base is certainly a matter of interest for the whole community, I decided to carry on a bit of a experiment:

try a bunch of battles using only starter cards at the Bronze league and avoid using other owned or rented cards, assuming this would be the way a typical beginner would proceed.

My doubt was:

How well can new players and newcomers perform against these bot accounts at lower levels such as the Bronze league?

Sadly enough, I tell you right away that my progress was poor to the point of losing my temper sometimes. Being used to utilizing other cards aside from the ghost ones only and being used to certain outcomes according to some specific choices, when it comes to leveled up cards, I found myself having some unexpected defeats which really made me angry.

Besides, another truly annoying thing has maybe something to do with the current game setting for the Bronze league battles: most of the battles seem to range between 12 and 22 Mana cap.

And this alone proved to be really frustrating from the beginner point of view I assume I was embodying, since it meant extremely repetitive, annoying battles, many times resulting in infuriating defeats decided by details to which most of these bots seemed to be truly optimized.

Naturally, even though it may a pain in the neck sometimes, they can be overcome. However, using only the starter cards proved to be a much tougher and challenging task when facing these recently powered up bot accounts at lower leagues.

Finally, last but not least, this sort of experiment carried on out of curiosity made me also think over the new ranked rewards system.

Since the use of starter cards is from now on going to compromise the "reward shares" earned by win, it is plausible to assume that bot users are not only going to avoid this decrease per win but also may very well be going to use stronger cards in order to maximize their rewards and reward chests. And this, I'm afraid, as I've seen others comment before, may increase this phenomenon of powered up bots. And you, what do you think about it?

Although not being an enthusiast of it, I don't really consider the possibility of running bots in the game a bad thing in its entirety. But exploits should certainly be properly addressed and I think the proposed changes go in the right direction concerning that matter. Yet, we'll have to wait to see what changes these updates actually bring to the dynamics of the game.

As a conclusion to this post, there is one thing I believe that should be brought up:

It is a great moment for new players to join Splinterlands!

From now on the purchase of the Spellbook also brings Credits to be used by new players, either for renting or buying cards, which, by the way, are totally accessible in terms of cost to everyone, be it in the form of single purchased cards, be it in the form of card packs acquisitions. Add to it what is expected to be a more satisfying rewards system and the scenario given is of a moment in which it can be truly rewarding to be a part of this game.

For those who made this far and are not yet part of this great community, you can join and start earning through my invitation. With the use of this referral link, after the purchase of the Spellbook, I'll send some DEC and also delegate some good cards to you, so you won't have problems beating bots for good, even the bulky ones.

My special thanks to @drunksamurai, @gregory-f, @kojiri, @moeknows, @azircon, @casimirio, @slobberchops, @captainquack22, @jongolson, @stefano.massari and @prasiatko, who kindly have supported posts of mine around here. Cya!