What people are missing in the comments is that you can choose to play a bot match if that’s what you want. But you CAN’T sign up to play against people and guarantee that that’s what you’ll be doing. And they are not transparent about it.
Except when you have players that conciously don’t want to play competetive. Playing a single match that doesn’t have any impact on any stats / doesn’t judge you is different than playing a competetive match that is twice as long, and has tryhards that will flame you for playing your favourite character, when it’s not 100% optimal. Also, some people get into the competetive side of games way too deep, up to a detriment. Notebooks with pages of ranking points gained or lost, getting frustrated on losses, even resenting the friends you play with for their skill in a game. Shotcallers that get too deep into it, etc. When you have 3hrs to game a week, you don’t want it to be filled with any of that, you want to play like 15 games / rounds and be done with it.
So, that’s how ranked play works and only has humans. Problem is, ranked is awful right now. Even in the lowest ranks matches tend to be hopelessly lopsided. I’m not clear on why but it may be streamers and whatnot creating new accounts to stomp on low ranked people.
It’s in quick match where they are inserting bots, and there aren’t ranks to use.
Would making a rule that new players must play an AI for the first few randomized number of games? That way they could have a chance to gauge the players ability before matching.
Most games do this, you can’t play ranked matches until you’ve played non-competitive ones for a while first, and then you play placement matches where your ELO is allowed to move much farther per game so you dont stay buried in low ranks if you dont belong.
Ranked games tend to be thrown off by high skill players in low ranks, and it tends to even out once you get to the top ranks as the skill gap thins.
Well its obviously player retention, but it could be that if they did put them with other low ranks, they mostly would have a bad time and most would quit. Another thought is that the exceptionally low ranked group is very small, and there isn’t actually enough of them to allow quick enough queue times without filling out games with bots.
The problem is that every game has a losing team, and the players are supposed to feel bad no matter how well they performed. “Defeat” or “Loss” messages, sad music, sinking stats, public match record showing off your failure; there’s punishment baked into this model of game.
Trying to keep players by throwing them easy wins is an insult. You’re the game developer that created this “winner/loser” model to begin with. Now you’re trying to make me feel better with this bullshit? You’re the one that caused the pain to begin with.
It’s absolutely a cheap way to give you an easy win. If I get SVP but lose in overtime, it’s absolutely an insult to throw me into a bot match for ‘practice’
lol let me be clear, I’d be upset if I get thrown in too and I’ve been on losing streaks as well where I just couldn’t get it going for one reason or another.
I guess it does make sense from their perspective for player retention? But I agree with your guys sentiment overall, I would have hoped they’d not opt people with a certain number of hours into this.
i swear pokémon duel would do the opposite of this. you’d get on a win streak and then suddenly a player with a very generic name and the EXACT counters to your deck fucken SWEEPS your ass with seemingly psychic precision. you could even trick it by switching to a deck with no synergy and just playing like a psycho whenever you got ~5 wins in a row.
i miss that game so much. taken before it’s time o7
Pokemon TCGP feels the same honestly, I get two wins then suddenly it’s a Mewtwo Gardevoir combo. I also can’t tell if people who pay for premium are more likely to get better cards because they get more chances or if the server sees that they pay for premium and reward them, but I run into so many people that have multiple Mewtwo Ex cards and I can’t even manage to find one in all the packs I’ve opened.
That’s unsurprising, I don’t bother with multiplayer games at all because always getting stomped so bad you don’t even learn how to fucking play isn’t worth the time. One assumes they have to come up with some sort of strategy to keep players like me on a pvp only game.
Rocket league is the only online competitive game worth it anymore for me at least. I stopped for a few years and saw people complain on forums about bots and toxicity but when I came back it was exactly how I left it, and that was before epic bought it.
I do miss the abusive loot chests since I was an adult and like gambling on them but I understand why they needed to go.
One assumes part of the goal there was to give players the dopamine boost of thinking they’re beating someone. Not saying it’s not an underhanded tactic but I can see and understand the motive and, as far as shitty things in the online gaming world go, this one’s probably the most benign.
It’s really fucked up when you think about it since qp matches are any skill against any skill. So if you get a diamond ranked dps on the opposite team and your team is mostly bronze you’re screwed. Then you only have to lose one more match to get put into the bot matches. That seems super unfair.
QP still puts you with similar skill level players. It just doesn’t show you the algorithm like competitive. You won’t be put with a diamond if you are bronze and vice-versa.
It’s a problem if you think you’re learning techniques for killing humans but in reality you’re learning tricks to kill AI. There is already a bot match option if people want to learn with no pressure.
If I sign up for a match expecting to play against players and get matched with bots I would be upset.
Like most games have options like vs bots or vs players. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to not have even that basic control over your game experience. Regardless if you just get crushed.
Agreed, however I don’t get the point? Are we at a point where we accept the devs know better than us on how we enjoy the game?
If I keep getting absolutely crushed I will go play bots to learn the game before returning to PvP. I would rather not have the devs decideling what they think I want or should be playing.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, all sorts of things in game design are done just because of weird quirks of our psychology, and this is one of them. I’m definitely not the only person who’s heard of people quitting a competitive game because the player base is “too sweaty”. Handing people a win like this from time to time reminds them of what the game can be like at its best. And to be clear, I’m not explicitly in favor of this technique of putting people against bots when you queue to face humans, but I get how we arrived here.
Has a game ever asked you if you wanted to drop down to easy mode when you died too many times? How many times have you said yes? Because given that prompt, basically no one takes up the offer, and they’re more likely to just stop playing because the game is too hard.
That’s great for stats but I don’t like when companies hide these details from me or other players, I guess I’m not their impressionable demographic anymore though since overwatch 1 was replaced by overwatch 2: currency management simulator and I checked out from games with a store+game model.
I’m not in their demographic either, but the reason they do this is because it’s measurably more likely to get players to stick around. People would rather win against bots than lose to other people.
I’m conflicted with this. But it’s a problem because the game is not clear about it and you can’t choose, the game just put 4 people + 2 bots against 6 bots.
I “tried” to get a bot match yesterday after getting 2 loses in a row, playing with things that I normally don’t play and not caring too much with the objective. Took 5 loses in a row to get 1 bot match.
For a person to get a lot of bot matches they need a lot of loses, at that point the person is probably better playing against bot to improve a little bit. But I think the game should suggest to the player to do that instead of forcing and hiding that they are playing against bots.
Obfuscation. Corporate figures telling or giving people the option will hurt their feelings so they’ll stop playing. A player who quits is no longer a tier two type with the potential to spend money, so they’ll only do this if it becomes a PR nightmare that affects their bottom line.
Yep, they don’t care if the player is improving, they just want people to not tilt and quit the game.
And I don’t think this will be a PR nightmare, played a lot of the game, mostly quick matches and got 1 bot match, not only some people will not get a bot match easily but some people will not even notice.
I don’t feel it’ll go anywhere either. Flip side is always whether people are having fun. People having fun rarely complain meaningfully. Meaaaning money still flows.
Exactly, with Ch5 Fortnite vastly increased bots. Until that was confirmed I was confused as to how I got so much better within a week of the chapter starting. I averaged 2-4 kills in ch4 and in ch5s01 I averaged 10+. I stopped playing BR because of this. Bot heavy lobbies aren’t fun.
It feels like assuming a lot of positive intent to guess that the match against bots is so that people can learn rather than trying to feed them a dopamine hit so they don’t get discouraged and fuck off, but maybe I’m a cynic.
That is 100% what it is, if it were about learning they wouldn’t be obfuscating bot matches. Pretending the bots are players is just a stealthy player retention trick.
It gives people a false sense of being good even if that day was simply not their day. Bot match alone is fine, and it’s relaxing in a way, but hiding the fact that they’re not fighting against real players is manipulative.
They haven’t gone away. Plenty of Quake 3 Arena servers still up and running. If not Quake 3 Arena, then Xonotic is still pretty active with more modern visuals and pretty good graphics.
I was always more a ut2k4 guy. I need to spend a weekend tracking down and installing the linux binary for that game. But even then the most active servers just play the same few maps. I could play some FaceClassic, but not for hours on end.
I’m also working on fixing an old gamepad I use to use for these games. Unlike ones that use cherry based switches, this one just uses those small, tactile switches with crazy small travel distance.
I need to spend a weekend tracking down and installing the linux binary for that game.
It came on disc. As for patches, there were Linux-specific patches. When I tried some years ago, the game worked after deleting / remaining some shipped libraries and replacing them with system ones. Though today, Wine might be a better choice. I think the Windows version supports OpenGL as well so there’s no need for DXVK.
You can still rocket jump in Destiny2 arena pvp, well grenade, but same feel. Fun way to be Death from Above if you are a more punchy character than the floaty kind.
Quest 3 is amazing, and 3S is super affordable. Both are well worth it. The only drawback is that you have to suck Zuck’s dick to get them. But eh, it’s tiny.
Last time I played Fortnite it was also like this. It was bots + other weak players like you. It felt quite okay, early in the match you got some easy bot kills and later you had some challenge dealing with actual players of your skill level.
Last time I really played a lot of Fortnite, I played with someone who was really good, and we’d get #1 in roughly half our matches. Even after 20+ games, it felt like we still got lobbies half full of bots
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What people are missing in the comments is that you can choose to play a bot match if that’s what you want. But you CAN’T sign up to play against people and guarantee that that’s what you’ll be doing. And they are not transparent about it.
That and also penalizing you for disconnecting from Bot matches is wild
If you queue competitve you’re guaranteed human players. And no Crossplay. Not the best solution, but yea…
Except when you have players that conciously don’t want to play competetive. Playing a single match that doesn’t have any impact on any stats / doesn’t judge you is different than playing a competetive match that is twice as long, and has tryhards that will flame you for playing your favourite character, when it’s not 100% optimal. Also, some people get into the competetive side of games way too deep, up to a detriment. Notebooks with pages of ranking points gained or lost, getting frustrated on losses, even resenting the friends you play with for their skill in a game. Shotcallers that get too deep into it, etc. When you have 3hrs to game a week, you don’t want it to be filled with any of that, you want to play like 15 games / rounds and be done with it.
But why? What’s the motive behind not just queuing low ranking players with each other?
So, that’s how ranked play works and only has humans. Problem is, ranked is awful right now. Even in the lowest ranks matches tend to be hopelessly lopsided. I’m not clear on why but it may be streamers and whatnot creating new accounts to stomp on low ranked people.
It’s in quick match where they are inserting bots, and there aren’t ranks to use.
Would making a rule that new players must play an AI for the first few randomized number of games? That way they could have a chance to gauge the players ability before matching.
Most games do this, you can’t play ranked matches until you’ve played non-competitive ones for a while first, and then you play placement matches where your ELO is allowed to move much farther per game so you dont stay buried in low ranks if you dont belong.
Ranked games tend to be thrown off by high skill players in low ranks, and it tends to even out once you get to the top ranks as the skill gap thins.
Maybe placement matches would help, but if they are intentionally ranking low to stomp on people, I guess they’d throw those matches.
But they wouldn’t know how many of them they would need to throw.
Well its obviously player retention, but it could be that if they did put them with other low ranks, they mostly would have a bad time and most would quit. Another thought is that the exceptionally low ranked group is very small, and there isn’t actually enough of them to allow quick enough queue times without filling out games with bots.
Standard mobile practice from a mobile publisher
This feels like a bandaid on a gunshot wound.
The problem is that every game has a losing team, and the players are supposed to feel bad no matter how well they performed. “Defeat” or “Loss” messages, sad music, sinking stats, public match record showing off your failure; there’s punishment baked into this model of game.
Trying to keep players by throwing them easy wins is an insult. You’re the game developer that created this “winner/loser” model to begin with. Now you’re trying to make me feel better with this bullshit? You’re the one that caused the pain to begin with.
I figured it was to get some practice rather than a morale boost.
Like the article says, it does mess with stats but it is only for Quick Play rather than ranked though.
It’s absolutely a cheap way to give you an easy win. If I get SVP but lose in overtime, it’s absolutely an insult to throw me into a bot match for ‘practice’
lol let me be clear, I’d be upset if I get thrown in too and I’ve been on losing streaks as well where I just couldn’t get it going for one reason or another.
I guess it does make sense from their perspective for player retention? But I agree with your guys sentiment overall, I would have hoped they’d not opt people with a certain number of hours into this.
I heard Sue Storm’s ass is great and modeled after a model with a great ass
I just want a chill class shooter with good movement tech and larger team player numbers
Not a competitive 6v6 hero shooter where everybody moves the same, except for that one ability on cooldown right now
i swear pokémon duel would do the opposite of this. you’d get on a win streak and then suddenly a player with a very generic name and the EXACT counters to your deck fucken SWEEPS your ass with seemingly psychic precision. you could even trick it by switching to a deck with no synergy and just playing like a psycho whenever you got ~5 wins in a row.
i miss that game so much. taken before it’s time o7
Pokemon TCGP feels the same honestly, I get two wins then suddenly it’s a Mewtwo Gardevoir combo. I also can’t tell if people who pay for premium are more likely to get better cards because they get more chances or if the server sees that they pay for premium and reward them, but I run into so many people that have multiple Mewtwo Ex cards and I can’t even manage to find one in all the packs I’ve opened.
That’s unsurprising, I don’t bother with multiplayer games at all because always getting stomped so bad you don’t even learn how to fucking play isn’t worth the time. One assumes they have to come up with some sort of strategy to keep players like me on a pvp only game.
This has been me for a while now.
Rocket league is the only online competitive game worth it anymore for me at least. I stopped for a few years and saw people complain on forums about bots and toxicity but when I came back it was exactly how I left it, and that was before epic bought it.
I do miss the abusive loot chests since I was an adult and like gambling on them but I understand why they needed to go.
And that strategy was to allow you to play against bots on purpose and with your knowledge. It has been around for as long as bots have been.
One assumes part of the goal there was to give players the dopamine boost of thinking they’re beating someone. Not saying it’s not an underhanded tactic but I can see and understand the motive and, as far as shitty things in the online gaming world go, this one’s probably the most benign.
It’s really fucked up when you think about it since qp matches are any skill against any skill. So if you get a diamond ranked dps on the opposite team and your team is mostly bronze you’re screwed. Then you only have to lose one more match to get put into the bot matches. That seems super unfair.
QP still puts you with similar skill level players. It just doesn’t show you the algorithm like competitive. You won’t be put with a diamond if you are bronze and vice-versa.
This isn’t true. I’ve been put against Diamonds and GMs and I’m gold 3. You can look at people’s rank in the history tab even for enemy teams.
PCGamer running FUD ads for ActiBlizz, nothing new. Move along.
Makes sense why the game feels soo easy, And i like it this way.
I prefer this over SBMM but at what point does it just become dead gaming theory?
True tbh
It’s rather common Knowledge that NetEase does this exact thing in Narala: Bladepoint, so yeah, not surprising, at all.
I also vaguely remember this being a thing in Pokemon: Unite, not sure if that’s also a NetEase game.
Pokémon Unite does it sometimes after lose streaks. But not always! It’s common in casual modes but much less common in ranked.
It never happens in ranked in Rivals.
I’m having way more bot games in unite than I ever did (picked up the game again this week after a year off).
Is this problem? Think it make sense and way to learn more mechanics of game.
It’s a problem if you think you’re learning techniques for killing humans but in reality you’re learning tricks to kill AI. There is already a bot match option if people want to learn with no pressure.
If I sign up for a match expecting to play against players and get matched with bots I would be upset.
Like most games have options like vs bots or vs players. I think it’s a bit ridiculous to not have even that basic control over your game experience. Regardless if you just get crushed.
Statistically, people are more upset when they get crushed by other humans.
Agreed, however I don’t get the point? Are we at a point where we accept the devs know better than us on how we enjoy the game?
If I keep getting absolutely crushed I will go play bots to learn the game before returning to PvP. I would rather not have the devs decideling what they think I want or should be playing.
If we’re being honest with ourselves, all sorts of things in game design are done just because of weird quirks of our psychology, and this is one of them. I’m definitely not the only person who’s heard of people quitting a competitive game because the player base is “too sweaty”. Handing people a win like this from time to time reminds them of what the game can be like at its best. And to be clear, I’m not explicitly in favor of this technique of putting people against bots when you queue to face humans, but I get how we arrived here.
Could be a option. Like a pop up that says “would you like to play a bot match with the same team comps? Yes/No”
Has a game ever asked you if you wanted to drop down to easy mode when you died too many times? How many times have you said yes? Because given that prompt, basically no one takes up the offer, and they’re more likely to just stop playing because the game is too hard.
That’s great for stats but I don’t like when companies hide these details from me or other players, I guess I’m not their impressionable demographic anymore though since overwatch 1 was replaced by overwatch 2: currency management simulator and I checked out from games with a store+game model.
I’m not in their demographic either, but the reason they do this is because it’s measurably more likely to get players to stick around. People would rather win against bots than lose to other people.
It’s the Skinner box casino model of gaming, get em hooked young to the dopamine reward instead of building a skill based competition.
I’m conflicted with this. But it’s a problem because the game is not clear about it and you can’t choose, the game just put 4 people + 2 bots against 6 bots.
I “tried” to get a bot match yesterday after getting 2 loses in a row, playing with things that I normally don’t play and not caring too much with the objective. Took 5 loses in a row to get 1 bot match.
For a person to get a lot of bot matches they need a lot of loses, at that point the person is probably better playing against bot to improve a little bit. But I think the game should suggest to the player to do that instead of forcing and hiding that they are playing against bots.
Obfuscation. Corporate figures telling or giving people the option will hurt their feelings so they’ll stop playing. A player who quits is no longer a tier two type with the potential to spend money, so they’ll only do this if it becomes a PR nightmare that affects their bottom line.
Yep, they don’t care if the player is improving, they just want people to not tilt and quit the game.
And I don’t think this will be a PR nightmare, played a lot of the game, mostly quick matches and got 1 bot match, not only some people will not get a bot match easily but some people will not even notice.
I don’t feel it’ll go anywhere either. Flip side is always whether people are having fun. People having fun rarely complain meaningfully. Meaaaning money still flows.
Exactly, with Ch5 Fortnite vastly increased bots. Until that was confirmed I was confused as to how I got so much better within a week of the chapter starting. I averaged 2-4 kills in ch4 and in ch5s01 I averaged 10+. I stopped playing BR because of this. Bot heavy lobbies aren’t fun.
It feels like assuming a lot of positive intent to guess that the match against bots is so that people can learn rather than trying to feed them a dopamine hit so they don’t get discouraged and fuck off, but maybe I’m a cynic.
That is 100% what it is, if it were about learning they wouldn’t be obfuscating bot matches. Pretending the bots are players is just a stealthy player retention trick.
It gives people a false sense of being good even if that day was simply not their day. Bot match alone is fine, and it’s relaxing in a way, but hiding the fact that they’re not fighting against real players is manipulative.
I think I would actually try the game out if you could purposefully select to play against bots.
Then try it, because you can do exactly that.
I wasn’t going to play a hero shooter anyway, but fuck this. I just want to go back to arena shooters, server browsers and no stat tracking.
They haven’t gone away. Plenty of Quake 3 Arena servers still up and running. If not Quake 3 Arena, then Xonotic is still pretty active with more modern visuals and pretty good graphics.
I was always more a ut2k4 guy. I need to spend a weekend tracking down and installing the linux binary for that game. But even then the most active servers just play the same few maps. I could play some FaceClassic, but not for hours on end.
I’m also working on fixing an old gamepad I use to use for these games. Unlike ones that use cherry based switches, this one just uses those small, tactile switches with crazy small travel distance.
It came on disc. As for patches, there were Linux-specific patches. When I tried some years ago, the game worked after deleting / remaining some shipped libraries and replacing them with system ones. Though today, Wine might be a better choice. I think the Windows version supports OpenGL as well so there’s no need for DXVK.
oldUnreal is a thing.
They also seem to be following CCP censorship rules. Yay.
Edit: What are the downvotes for, its objectively correct.
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/marvel-rivals-chinese-censorship-controversy
What? No zombies or lgbtq relationships?
More like no “Free Taiwan” etc. Fuck Asmongold but this gets the point across quickly… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1r16vMbQlk
You cant even type the number “1989” or “Dalai Lama” or “Winnie the Pooh”. It would be funny if it wasnt so sad.
ah
Try splitgate its basically just old school halo local multiplayer. The portals addition is great
Edit: had the name wrong
I think you mean Splitgate https://store.steampowered.com/app/677620/Splitgate/
Thats it! Super fun, fast game for sure.
has the second one come out?
Not yet!
I too yearn for the Quake 3 days.
You can still rocket jump in Destiny2 arena pvp, well grenade, but same feel. Fun way to be Death from Above if you are a more punchy character than the floaty kind.
There are launchers with the danger zone perk too
Yes, right! But ammo is precious in PvP so most use Mountaintop for the lulz
There’s a super tiny but somewhat active Quake 3 VR community. It’s awesome.
Quake 3 in VR?! That’s interesting.
Yeah, it works really well. Here’s some gameplay footage.
This looks like a blast! Makes me want a VR headset just for this lol.
Quest 3 is amazing, and 3S is super affordable. Both are well worth it. The only drawback is that you have to suck Zuck’s dick to get them. But eh, it’s tiny.
Last time I played Fortnite it was also like this. It was bots + other weak players like you. It felt quite okay, early in the match you got some easy bot kills and later you had some challenge dealing with actual players of your skill level.
With ch05 bots have increased a lot.
Last time I really played a lot of Fortnite, I played with someone who was really good, and we’d get #1 in roughly half our matches. Even after 20+ games, it felt like we still got lobbies half full of bots
With ch5 I went in the space of days from averaging 2-4 kills per match in ch4 to 10+ in ch5. So many bots