The reference paper goes as far as to conclude that "hardware-based bot prevention techniques such as CAPTCHA tokens will become increasingly prevalent" and never touches on how this would effect players, just bots.
This is a a mighty bold assumption that ignores human behavior... human nature is to take the path of least resistance, so given a choice between a game that uses captcha and a similar one that doesn't, one can reasonably assume the game that doesn't use captcha is going to be more popular.
As a 15+ year old paper, it's conclusion and some of it's theory has basically already been disproven.
Enough on the paper, here is my thoughts on the article:
As a fairly large investor in Splinterlands, my vote will always be no to captcha.
Captcha is a horrible, frustrating tool that bots can deal with and I'm positive it would drive more people away than it would sedate the hate of bots.
Option 1 adds too much time to a game, most people could have found an opponent, and set/submit a team before the average person is going to find the lore.
Option 2 is complex (remember that a large percentage of the existing players doesn't use English as their primary language) and what about desktop users?
Option 3... buy some physical cards so I can trade my virtual ones... really?!?!
Option 4, well... first question is, how do you determine who is a bot in the first place? Don't say, well if they play all day, they are a bot, bots can and will run on a human schedule if the game starts targeting them. Think about it this way, if you can think of a way a bot could slip past detection, it will be done.
Option 5 has lots of assumptions.
The core problem is the draining of value from the game which you outlined well, I just don't believe that captcha is going to solve it and is a huge detraction.
The Splinterlands team has done well in the past to make adjustments away from being bot friendly, and I trust them to make future changes at a controlled rate. Remember, everything they do to slow down bots effects actual players as well.
The game is going to change a lot this year, so let's see what the team can do with bots before we even think about the ugly options.
Hi phoenith. Thank you for your feedback!
I understand that captcha is ugly. I agree, let's see what the team can do. I just wanted to share my ideas with other players.
As for option 3, guild code is kind of like an addon. Having real splinterlands cards are cool in my opinion. People who like to own physical cards can get codes as a bonus.
As for option 4, bot owners can actively apply to register their accounts as registered bots to help the game. It's not that the game finds bots and registers them.
As for option 5, people are running scholarships anyway. Why not make it easier for them if it helps bring more new players? Trustless part can avoid a lot of troubles running scholarships like finding people, negotiating, reward splitting, etc.
oh, I guess you doubt that scholarships will bring more players and keep them engaged. That's fair. I don't know enough about other games with scholarships like axi.