So, today, I created a home brew deck that I wanted to try perfect. I play in Legend, and when in Legend, you get to see your opponents rank. And, for me, the only way to get better at something in this game is to play against other players in ranked.
So when I Queued up and I started to notice something. I was no longer able to see my opponents rank. They also played completely random cards that nobody runs in a deck, only used classic hearthstone card backs, just threw out cards that would clear the board when there were no minions, or buff my minions instead of theirs, like there are players that are bad, but not that bad. However, the biggest giveaway, is that when you look at you social list, where it will show you the 5 most recent players, the top spot will always show you who you are playing against if you’re in a match, then once the match ends they will show as the last opponent you played.
I’m guessing that Blizzard didn’t think this through when they made this because the bots will not be displayed as as your current opponent. Once the match is over, only the last real person you played against will be displayed as your last opponent, and it will be like the last match never happened, and the only way you can actually verify that you did in fact play against “itsnotinurhead” is by going to HSreplay and watching the replay.
The other thing I noticed is that when you keep going up against these unraked bots. The particular class you play against will have the exact same cards as the last Priest bot, or whatever class it was. Not necessarily in the same order, but the same generic list, with a bunch of random cards that don’t synergize well.
Another thing that did happen in one of the matches happen matches that I’ve never seen happen before was, The bot drew a card, played it, the animation popped up with what the card was, however, as soon as it hit the board it changed into a completely different card. No spells of any kind were used to change the card, it literally was played right off the top deck. I lsaid outload “WTF”, figured I must have missed something, went to HSreply, watched it, and nope, that’s exactly what happened.
so now I’m left thinking how I once believed the game was alive and well, however, this has changed my perspective on the health of the game. I was reviewing HSreplay, looking at the number of matches being played per deck per class in each tier, there should be way more games than are being reported. So it seems to me that bots have become a necessary evil to give the illusion that there are a sea of players at all times.