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.
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.
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.
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.
Is this problem? Think it make sense and way to learn more mechanics of game.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.