Sounds like you want less of a game and more of an animated choose your own adventure story book.

I play games as active entertainment (e.g. my own effort contributes to the game) rather than just a pick an option and see the outcome kind of thing (e.g. passive entertainment, I don’t put effort in beyond select an option.) I see appeal to both since I grew up reading choose your own adventure books.

I find that active entertainment satisfies a different need and grows a skill, whereas passive entertainment is just like heroin - a good drip probably feels good but chasing that next high gets harder and harder and harder to reach the first height.

e.g. Sometimes you want to play sports, sometimes you just want to get high.

That’s like saying “My corporation doesn’t need anti-virus! we have smart users!”

Defense in depth is the only philosophy that makes sense in this case imo.

I get you probably don’t care at all about people who interact with your community but letting bots run free is something I really dislike. I suspect the majority of users feel the same.

Just takes one disgruntled person who is unhappy with you to flood your server without any captcha or other measures taken to prevent it. Might be still under the radar to a degree as of right now but that will not always be the case.