Splinterlands Update: No More Bots in Modern Ranked - 1 Week After

Hello there.

Last week I posted about my initial thoughts and experience on the modern ranked, after the change of banning bots. This time, I will be giving an update on this topic after a week of its implementation, as well as after the End of Season reset.

Even a few days after the implementation of the change, the SPS earnings per win was still consistently high. As I played in the 1k bronze rating, I started facing a lot of Llama, Krons, Yodin, max level teams, as well as full Gold Foil teams. I can win a few battles, but I started losing a lot more. Last week I said that I might try to go for the leaderboard, but from this experience, I don't think my card collection is enough to do it.

With about 12 hours left until the end of the season, and having 25 energy available, I decided to advance to Silver Modern. There were multiple reasons for this decision. One, is that I am still at 1k rating, so there is no way I was getting into the Bronze leaderboard. Two, by advancing I will be in a higher bronze rating at the start of the next season. Higher rating means I can get higher rewards and RP sooner. Three, I think I still want to get Silver season chests to get higher chances of better rewards.

Initially the climb is really fast. I was facing opponents a lot higher than I was and I was getting 25+ to 30+ rating per win. I had a few win streaks and I got a max of +72 to my rating. There was an obvious rating gap, and it was evident from my climb. I stopped my climb as soon as I reached 1500+ rating. Going to Silver 1 means that I go to 1150 rating after the season reset, which is above Bronze. If I get a good amount of season chests this season, I might do a similar strategy near the EOS.

After the season reset, I decided to wait a few more hours until I got almost max energy before playing. Because of how fast I reached my rating before EOS, I wasn't able to fully consume my energy. I also didn't want to play in Wild, where optimized bots abound, and lower SPS per win await.

Which leads my update to now. Even after waiting to play, the difficulty of my battles is already similar to the ones I experienced in the 1k rating battles, just before the EOS. I was at 850 rating, and I am facing a lot of GF Yodins, Llama, Krons, GF Mylors, a lot of GF teams, and almost all opponents have max level teams. I am winning 1 battle, but end up losing 2-4 after. After going under 800 rating, I got a good streak and ended up in 800+.

I was expecting to get stuck in 1k+ rating like before, but not at 800. Since I am still Silver 3 in Wild, I am getting Silver chests for both Season and Daily quests. It is actually difficult to earn these chests with my bronze rating and RP. I can earn 1-2 silver chests with my 24 energy, which isn't that good. It might be too early to tell, but I am considering if I should go full bronze for next season.

In my battles I usually notice a good amount of different players. But I did encounter an interesting group of players named TLOxxx. I think I fought TLO132 and another TLOxxx. I got suspicious that this might be a bot farm, and checked in the SPL discord. There were a few players that already raised this and hopefully will be checked by the team.

Since the implementation of the bot change, I haven't really seen any anti-bot feature added for the game, like captchas. I'm assuming they implemented API access changes which were suggested by other people before. If the TLOxxx are indeed bots, then they have found a way to work around the current security implemented. This might be the start of the ongoing battle against bots that a lot of games face.

While reading the discord, I came upon a few interesting posts. Some players are facing Llamas, Krons, and Yodins in Novice. It would appear that since the amount of SPS per win in Bronze is really high, a lot of whales have been creating new accounts to play there. The amount of staked SPS needed to get x12 bonuses are less than 5k, which is just chump change to most whales. One of the SPLTV streamers I watched, Aftersound, has a bronze account, and a Diamond account. He was sharing how playing in bronze is really fun. I agree with him that it is fun, but I think his bronze account is one of those that have the GF teams.

Some people in the discord were even sharing that they created a new account, started playing in bronze, and have been continuously buying extra energy. Since bronze energy are so cheap, whales have no problem buying a full refresh, and earn 1-2 SPS per win with their GF teams. Because of this, some people even brought up how multi accounts are similar to bot farms. While the sheer number of account difference is already enough to debunk this, manual players can't play a lot of accounts in a day.

Some people were also saying that the current rewards in bronze should be reduced because it is too high. I personally think this is wrong. We are just now seeing how much of our rewards the bots farms were taking from the actual players. The amount of rewards received increased for all tiers overall. We also want to entice new players with these high rewards. I think it would eventually normalize with time. As more players come to bronze, the rewards will get lower, and some might move up to higher leagues. As more players get higher SPS staked, they can move up to Silver. Let these changes develop first before changing it prematurely.

Land 1.5 is also coming up soon. It is very likely that these GF teams get sold for profit, or placed in land when it comes. Once Rebellion arrives and Untamed and Dice rotate out, the meta will also shift and all these OP cards will no longer be a problem.

In the end, there are still a lot of things lined up to be released and I'm just happy with how things are going. I'm earning more, and the battles are difficult but fun. I might need to tweak some of my strategies, but that's to be expected when things are new.

That is it for my update on my experience on the Removal of Bots from Modern post. For my next post, I'll probably highlight some of the meta teams that are really strong in Bronze. Don't hesitate to let me know what you think, and if have suggestions for improvement.

And as always, these are Not Financial Advice, and Do Your Own Research.

If you want to start playing Splinterlands, you can use my link:
Splinterlands Referral Link