i just want to tell that the game is not fun inn the depths of legend the game feel like it is overpopulated with bots ??? where are the players ?
can you match me with peoples or am i playing alone in the dark ?
please change all your system because this is riduculous i want real peoples in front of me .
i refuse to play versus bots so i concede all games verus bots !!! because i don’t want to play versus bots ! this system is bad !
I want to play against real players as well. This is a competitive CCG. While there are no differences normally between a real player and a bot in their playing, it still feels bad. I’d certainly prefer a longer wait time if it means facing a real player.
Honestly and genuinely asking.
How do you recognize a bot playing against you ?
Even when starting at the bottom of a ladder, I play against “bad” or “dumb” players, but there’s never a recurring pattern in how they play.
click on your friends list and see where it shows your recently played against folk and currently playing against area at the top. Bots dont appear in them. (also why you cant “add” them).
Ive checked every opponent on my climb thru standard this month and I have yet to encounter a bot. Currently at an all time high rank of Platinum 10 this season using totem shaman deck + Titan. Still no bots as of today. If you are experiencing many bots at higher ranks perhaps it could be that not many human players are (both) A: Reaching the ranks you are, and B: Trying to start a match at the times you are. It is in HS’s best interests to be sure there is someone for these high ranks players to play against so if there are fewer and fewer people reaching that point and fewer and fewer trying to start matches at all times, then bor need to be there to make sure you dont abandon the game.
If it took over 3 hours to match with another human player would you have left your phone just animating the spinning slot machine animation that whole time? Would you continue to do so every time? If that were the alternative to having bots to spar against, which would you pick? Also, quitting the game entirely is what they want to be off the table of options for you, so what do you think they would do?
That’s the point, really. We want to compete against someone and not some thing.
I am skeptical that without bots we’d be seeing 3 hour wait times anywhere on the ladder. The game isn’t that desolate yet.
Edit: Oh, I forgot. Congratulations on reaching P10, man!
That’s why you’re in the “depths” of legend.
Thanks!
I was being hyperbolic there, but even if the wait time was a guaranteed 3 mins… thats more than long enough to deter a good many people from even attempting again. Perhaps not for some “ride-or-die-hards-for-tomorrow-land-of-the-lost” players we see here regularly. lol. But enough to make the problem worse progressively Im sure. You lose a dozen people today, tomorrow the wait time goes up maybe half a percent and you lose another dozen or two, and so on and so on ever increasing the problem.
Maybe the bots aren’t difficult for you, but I know they are for me when I encounter them. So you might complain that you are paired with worse players than the bots you used to face. So even if you want to play against someone that isnt necessarily going to satiate you either. If the bots are too easy for you then I suggest you implement your own handicap on yourself to make the game more of a challenge. Use only 1 copy of a card in your deck, use only commons in your deck, use only one expansion for your entire deck, play blindfolded, play drunk, I dont suggest this but you can even play left handed! Again I dont suggest that. Play responsibly.
I beleive this only applies to “blizzard” bots, player bots have regular accounts.
But outside the blizzard bots I still have no idea how people are recognising them.
oh they went for face once, bot!!!
if people are losing to bots its not that the bots is playing badly.
I have some complex thoughts on the bot situation.
First off, I am very confident that most Hearthstone players are happier playing a bot than waiting longer. I don’t think it’s particularly close either, like 70-30 or something or maybe even more lopsided. The reason I’m so confident is because I’m not thinking of the typical player in the way that most of you probably are.
To be clear, I’m not trying to be derogatory here, but statically speaking the average gamer is soooo much more… casual? Here’s two statistics:
Conclusion: in 2020 the average Hearthstone player played for 47 days. I don’t mean 47 days spread out, I mean that the last day that they played Hearthstone that year was about a month and a half from the first day they played that year.
This forum is not even close to representative of the typical Hearthstone player. Most of you are more than 8 times as invested as normal.
So in all likelihood the average Hearthstone player hasn’t even figured out that BlizzBots are bots yet. They just enjoy an easy win and are none the wiser.
That said, the real issue is: is it even right for a game to target design changes for the majority of its players? And my answer is: absolutely not.
As a contrast to Hearthstone design choices, I’d like to bring up another game I’ve particularly enjoyed, Path of Exile. It’s a F2P “Diablo Clone” ARPG with a steep learning curve that’s about a decade old now, but still receiving new content regularly. And at one point its developer created an infographic with a statistic similar to the “47 days” I just computed for Hearthstone; in Path of Exile, a game with ten acts of main story and a significant “endgame” progression system — I’ve always spent the vast majority of my PoE time post-story — the average player makes it just past an Act 1 boss. But not the final boss of Act 1, the halfway through the Act boss. He’s called Brutus. If you make it to see the final Act 1 boss on your screen, congratulations, you’re officially better than average.
Being aware of this statistic, the developers of Path of Exile, GGG, then went on to… dedicate an incredible amount of effort to their endgame mapping system that only a tiny fraction of its players reach, while mostly leaving Act 1 as is. And the result is that it still has a healthy playerbase and the community is generally very happy with the game.
I’m not saying that the new user experience has zero importance, but it’s all too easy for a game developer to get tunnel vision, focusing too heavily on the experience of new players at the expense of the diehard fan experience. If your business model is the forever game and you want to have players enjoy your game for years, then you need to reward the players who play your game for years. This is the core lesson which GGG learned and which many game developers fail to learn.
In conclusion, the will of the majority is grossly overrated and the Pareto Principle is a thing. What BlizzBots represent, in part, is a failure to understand this and a developer falling into the trap of trying to cater to players who are almost certain to uninstall soon anyway, no matter what is done for them.
This is literally why you’re getting bots. The game thinks you’re terrible because your MMR is so low so it gives you bots to build your MMR back up so you can face people. You concede and it makes it worse.
You’re literally trying to dig yourself out of a hole by doing that. Stop it.
Thats actually not the worst idea tho, if you find yourself in a hole with a shovel, you can simply dig yourself a ramp by going sideways and letting the “wall” of the hole gradually collapse to give you more dirt to put beneath you. Which allows you dig higher and allow more dirt to put beneath you. Eventually you will dig yourself out of said hole.
You might die of exhaustion before you escape of course, but I’d personally hope to encounter a water pipe to break to float myself up and out quicker lol. Beware of gas pipes tho, game over then. Same for sewage pipes. lol
But no you right about the initial point. The conceding against bots as a blanket practice will surely only pit you against more bots in the long run of your gaming.
As for player owned bots, i dont see how anyone can know they are unless its the classic baku style warrior that hits hero power for 4 armor each turn and ropes every turn but can be seen highlighting the same few things on an inhumanly predictable pattern and identical speed (hovers mouse over their power, then their hand, then your portrait, then their portrait, then their power…etc). Those I can easily tell are scripted bots that a player owns for xp farming I can only assume. I imagine if enough people instantly concede to these that eventually these bots make it into the higher tiers where they have no business being.
So yeah, you that’s instantly conceding to bots, dont do that, lol. you are making the problem not just worse for yourself! Just concede against locks and druids and rogues like me. lol.
PoE is a great game! I haven’t played it in awhile – assumed it was dead. Might have to revisit.
To OP: As other have noted, your insta-concessions are hurting you. In my experience, in G5 and up there seems to be many fewer bots.
Well they made a storyline for endgame maps. Then they expanded that story. Then they got rid of that story and replaced it with a story that made an almost Undertale-esque metacommentary on the previous story. Then they replaced that story with another sequel that’s significantly less hipster. Point is, depending on when you left, mapping might now be virtually unrecognizable. It’s good though.
I have a soft spot for F2P games with obsessive devs who a decade later are still touch-up painting, reimagining, and tweaking their digital Sistine Chapels.
Honestly, I F2P Hearthstone also, and appreciate how much content and new play experience there is over time for cheapos like me.
If I’m being honest I prefer that particular type to charge for their product. Like Larian for example. But I guess they have infinity dollars now so they’ll probably lose their soul like Blizzard did soon. Still I don’t want makers of great games to remain less than filthy rich just for my own benefit. I’m okay if they make a billion and just quit and spend the rest of their lives in retirement. Well earned.
Fair point about folks getting paid for their work. Also, a modest paywall apparently can provide enough income to prevent an in-game purchase model that negatively impacts play experience, a la DCUO.
I’d wait 3 minutes if necessary, but you’re right that that’s an eternity for some gamers nowadays. I would be interested in knowing what the wait time would really be without bots. I don’t think it was a problem before except for very specific ranks (namely very low ranks (like bronze)) or very high ranks in legend.
I’m not trying to say bots are easy. I’m saying bots are virtually no worse than actual players. I have a hard enough time myself that I won’t be handicapping my matches lol.
Are you trying to say that you support having bots on ladder?
Bot decks are all the same and contain unplayable cards like chillwind yeti, loot hoarder and other artifacts no one has played in the past 6-7 years.
That’s often true, but not always. Hence, players seeing bots in high legend.
Im not saying Im for or against them. I just understand that there are a multitude of reasons they could have been justified to implement. Understanding an issue and taking a stance on an issue arent saying the same thing is all Im getting at.
And Meta decks are different from that point, how?
I use those cards, there isnt anything wrong with them. I fail to understand why anyone wouldnt use them when available?
But overall, I dont see a difference in a bunch of bots with identical decks flooding the system from human players flooding the system with their identical netdecks. The result is the same, as a human can make a bad play as much as an AI could, or the result of RNG ends up determining the outcome right away or after a long drawn out match.
Its an inelegant solution to an inelegant problem. I doubt there would be a solution that makes everyone, every party involved, happy with both the result and the cost of the solution. Compromises get made for many reasons and a lot of them can be infuriating or downright nonsense but alas, here we are. There are many tanks with machine guns mounted where the operator must make themselves vulnerable by opening the tank and exposing themselves to the elements of battle in order to use said machine gun. I see no scenario where this is an acceptable risk to take when one could easily make the controls of that gun useable within the safety of the tank. Im sure someone will come along and give me the low down on why that is and I am certain I still wont see the risk as acceptable. But I will however have an understanding of that particular issue. Perhaps it was an engineering hurdle of its time, or a cost issue, or just a flagrant disregard of the life of the gunner and no one ever questioned it at all. I dont know.
What I do know is that bots are here, and if you were a company wanting that market share of attention that is easily lost to other newer hotter apps, this wouldnt be the worst decision to make to retain those users. I dont see many people leaving the game entirely cold turkey over the existence of bots so evidently it is working as intended.