Cooldowns and Conflicts - Deterrents for bots and card swapping

...neither bots nor card swapping are technically wrong or against any rules. The system allows it, and in fact there is no good, feasible way to prevent such a thing in a decentralized fasion. That said, we realize that it's creating a negative experience for many players so we're making some changes to help address the issues.

~ Steem Monsters

Of course Steem Monsters must have known there would be monsters among us who would "game" the system with bots and account swaps. That's a no-brainer.

And they could have built a mechanism to deter and maybe prevent some of this from happening. But that would have delayed the launch, frankly. And there was no way of knowing for certain what kind of impact there would really be on the market until it was beta tested.

Don't know if you've noticed, but we're in testing now. And we now know what the impact is. And now they've got a solution.

Cool Downs

• If a card is on the market it will no longer be usable in ranked battle.

• If a card is gifted or sold on the market then it must have a period of 7 days where it does not get played in ranked battles.

These changes will ONLY affect the RANKED SEASON play where booster packs are earned from leveling up to a new league. It will not affect practice, challenges, and tournaments, where prizes operate differently.

Conflicts

Not-so-automatic anymore. The way the gameplay is currently set up, it benefits bots more than humans, as one team can be picked to play for dozens of matches in a row per season and it's playout will be automated per game design.

To discourage automated play, the game will soon be set up so that each player will:

• Get to see who their opponent is before selecting a team
• A different set of randomly assigned conflict parameters you and your opponent must use in order to put together a team on the spot
• You'll be able to see the last 5 teams they have been playing with

Matchmaking Adjusted Again

I keep getting paired up with max decks, and I'm at a level 3 with my cards! I have no chance of winning!

I don't even try to play the ranks anymore. I'm just in it for the daily quests. That's the only thing I can do

I have to level down my rank by 1,000 points before I can start winning again. And it's only daily quests at that. So it's a bit frustrating...

They should pick on someone their own size!

It is, of course, no surprise that Matt and Aggy have responded to the loud cries of their Monster fans with regard to matchmaking algorithms. This last season, the Max Deckers have swallowed everyone else whole, while 10,000 point differences seem to make no difference in a match-up.

So that's been changed. Now, you can only play against other monsters in your league. We all knew this would be taken care of, it was just a matter of getting it done. And now it's done. So make sure you give feedback to Matt and Aggy on how things are going.

Not like we need to tell you that. :D

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