Being punished for leaving bot matches is the only issue I’d have with this.
The article says that you do indeed get punished for leaving.
The only other game I know of that penalizes you simlarly is Rocket League, they penalize you for leaving casual matches.
I just don’t understand the logic. They take Win-Loss records way too seriously.
If there are other human players in the match, leaving sucks for them, so in that regards I get it.
If all the other players are bots… who cares? Penalizing for hurting bot-feelings is silly.
It’s nothing to do with W/L it’s because it fucks your team mates (and essentially everyone else, who now are devoid of a proper match) in RL. One of the many reasons I never stuck by RL was other players. People would so frequently just trash talk you when you’re learning and then fuck off out of the match, leaving you to get rolled by two players. These players would frequently be worse too. At least if you get rolled with a full team, you’ll probably learn something.
RL and games with low team player counts I 100% understand it for. It’s a punishment for selfish players. In a match with bots less so but I guess if you’re doing bad enough to be matched with bots they probably want to to stay and learn to play.
The Rocket League community united around the idea that forcing everyone to watch every single replay makes them more tilted, so that’s what they’re going to do. The toxicity of that community is off the charts, up there with the worst like League of Legends. The part that drives me nuts is that League of Legends has bad game design that is partially responsible for the toxicity; what is Rocket League’s excuse?
I never saw toxicity at the community scale before Rocket League. Before that it was always individual, even in games like Rust, EVE Online, World of Tanks… Rocket League is special somehow.
Its called gamesmanship. Its your choice to be irritated by goal replays. The only time toxicity is truly bad is if they stop playing to do it, otherwise game on. You can always turn chat off anyways.
Nah I choose to play other games entirely. My money is better spent in games that don’t encourage shitheads to be shitheads.
You found a competitive multiplayer game without trash talk and gamesmanship? Do tell?
Damn, I only ever played Rocket League with IRL friends. Sucks to hear.
Agreed. I was surprised at how bad it was, which was a bummer for two reasons. Firstly, it was a pretty enjoyable game at times especially with mates. Secondly, there were plenty of players that went out of their way to counter it and be decent but sadly they were the minority.
Marvel Snap serves up poorly hidden bot matches and penalizes you for leaving as well. For example, they “reset” the ranked ladder every month, but retain their hidden mmr, and people with a really high mmr are MORE likely to face bots, because the system is designed to align your rank with their MMR, but if you leave the match, you forfeit what is essentially an ante used to determine your rank. But everyone gets some bots, and the amount varies based on several things, basically all of them manipulative to the player and their rank system.
Ive only been punished for leaving ranked matches lately, I dont think they do anything if you leave casual matches. Ive done it multiple times lately, I use them as practice sometimes or if I night need to leave suddenly.
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…
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).
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.
One assumes they have to come up with some sort of strategy to keep players like me on a pvp only game.
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.
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.
This has been me for a while now.
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.
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.
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
play stupid games win stupid prizes
Quite literally in this case
Standard mobile practice from a mobile publisher
PCGamer running FUD ads for ActiBlizz, nothing new. Move along.
I heard Sue Storm’s ass is great and modeled after a model with a great ass
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.
the goal of this … is to lie to us—to insult our intelligence by trying to pass off an obviously phony product as legitimate
