So around turn 3-4 this opponent ditched and stopped playing, letting rope burn end their turns.
Is it:
a) a player that has given up and switched to Netflix?
b) a blizzard bot that is designated to let me win since I’ve dropped too far below the plateau I’m supposed to be at due to a loss streak?
c) a player bot that somehow prevents the game from ending and not recognizing the player has left the match, not moved their mouse nor hit keys on their kb?
Replay: https hsreplay net / replay / NtgBSoKBdnwHQksdLgNYGZ
Match Turns total: 22 turns each so 44 over all -Stopped playing top of turn 4 his turn
Match duration: 33 minutes (how long was a Bliz server process tied up for because of this?)
(80-90% percent of match is rope burns by us both)
Player name and Btag available upon request for those that have a legitimate entitlement to it.
OMG! He finally conceded and left the match after 33 Minutes
Sometimes their PC just crashed; it may not give a disconnect command to the server; normally when you hit “Quit” the server knows but a sudden hardware/software disruption keeps the server in the dark.
Sometimes they get mad and just leave the game entirely (I imagine them abandoning their deck entirely).
Maybe they play on a phone on a bus and they saw the love of their life.
For 33 minutes? other than ditch and not return, they can’t reload and rejoin match in 33 minutes? Aside from the fact that your assertion Blizzard servers are unable to determine if a player has left a match and not returned, in under 33 minutes…
Bots don’t usually rope but I suspect some of them probably do. Thing is with bots and roping is that the entire idea of bots is to get the most amount of games in as possible to farm. Roping is kind of antithetical to this idea.
At the same time roping to get your opponent to concede has been a strategy since the beginning of the game. Even if roping increases your WR by 5%, that’s 5% higher than it was before and some people who are .500 players (50/50 WR) will do anything they can to increase their winrate including being scumbags and roping people every turn. No coin in hand, spent mana, rope every turn.
It needs to be a punishable offense but I don’t think it’s ever going to be. Only thing you can do is rope back if you have the patience or just play your turns and try not to tilt. Honestly when I see people roping back to back I just log off and play something else. It completely ruins my experience.
I can understand the whole “stopping to think about your next move” aspect of roping, I can understand someone’s battery dying halfway through the fight, what I don’t understand is people taking the full 2 minutes on the mulligan before the fight even starts. The only rational thought I can think of for mulligan hesitation outside of a connection issue is that my opponent is livestreaming and talking to the camera about how bad their starting hand is
If a player bot is roping, that’s almost certainly due to it having encountered a situation where it doesn’t understand how to move forward or a crash (the bot software, the script or the client).
Good old DOES NOT COMPUTE. To be fair an actual player’s brain would freeze upon seeing dormant minions they don’t recognize. Every match I play with signature corridor sleeper everyone always stops to read what it even does.
To some (many?) people, winning is the majority reason to play a game. Self-explanatory.
A subset of those “play to win” players may decide to be “extra” about it and play competitively. Even if it’s a game that not everyone plays to win in the first place. Tryharders.
A subset of those, may stoop to “gray area” tactics like psycho-social manipulation or “technically it’s not cheating as long as X criteria isn’t met” type of shenanigans. This is where roping on mulligan can come into play. They’re abusing the “benefit of the doubt” (as you said, they MIGHT be streamers just bemoaning their lot in life) to try and tilt you before the match even starts. They might even get you to concede out of sheer frustration! To them, “a win’s a win” as long as they don’t risk getting banned for whatever stunt they’re pulling.
Of course, you also have dirty cheaters. But we’re talking about legitimate players, not undesirable gutter trash.
Point is, I’ve seen it happen many, many times in real life competitions. Especially if money’s involved, no matter how little. Pool, for example. You’re only allotted one time out per rack, so if your team mate sees you line up for a shot you shouldn’t take they could “cough” (obvious) or perhaps start cleaning their break stick with the BLUE cloth instead of the RED (not-so-obvious unless repeatedly observed).
But hey, they didn’t SAY anything! They’re just clearing their throat! They’re cleaning their stick! (and it’s not like you might not make a worse call - but you certainly didn’t make the initial bad one, now did ya?)
Just tab out to something else after you’ve made your decision, and wait until you hear the “it’s your turn” sound effect. Even if you’re going coin. Because there’s a very high chance they’ll rope their 1st turn as well. In for a penny, right?
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