I’ve noticed an increase in bots in vs AI games in recent weeks and none of them are getting banned. The entire team reports them but they still continue to join games, sometimes days or weeks later. They all have the exact same behaviours:
They don’t use abilities and just auto attack.
When they die they sit in the base for about 30 seconds before playing again.
They attack move down the same lane without retreating until they die
They all follow the same adjective:animal naming convention like ZanyDruid, BouncyBear, WildWolf etc.
Rinse/repeat all game.
The moment the game starts they’ll just hit the gate and die to the towers. Over and over and over. I’ve seen bots die 20-30 times in a game with virtually no damage done. My friends and I have reported them every time we encounter them but nothing seems to happen. Found one today that was account level 109.
My kids just queued into 3 separate games and all three of them had a bot doing this.
Anyone else encountering these bots?
They do the same in B5 so no diffrence. But I would not call them bots tho. I would just call them exstemly bad players that has no clue what they are doing.
These aren’t bad players. These are bots. Their behaviour is completely predictable and repetitive down to the pathing and collision detection/avoidance used when rallying their move commands.
AI matches are probably the best place to start, and its likely the early generations of the learning ai would a-move repetitively as that is probably more likely to win then simply staying at the hall of of the storms.
I mean I don’t know how well an AI would work in hots with so many heroes, however, it did work in starcraft 2, google made a bot called alphastar that managed to beat a few pro players and is still I believe floating in around EU masters.
Like Frogsaron said 99.999% of the time there is no secret neural network or skynet trying to ruin your game, it’s a child or a very bad player who barely knows how to play the game.
Want better allies go out of AI into SL and get into a reasonable rank. Behavior like that is weeded out pretty quickly in SL and only occurs in Bronze 5.
Calling very bad and inactive players ‘bots’ is just beating a dead horse.
Humans sit in the spawn doing nothing. Humans sit in lane doing nothing but half-assedly AA’ing a minion and chatting on Discord. No need for a bot.
if there is actually a dramatic spike in bad players then I wouldn’t say its that far fetched to say someones trying to do a learning algorithm or simply has a lot of accounts running at the same time to greif games, I don’t think hots has a high enough growing playerbase to explain any notable increase in this happening, however thats assuming that there is a notable increase.
These aren’t bad players, please stop saying that. It’s often Lunara (though I saw my first Kael). They run as far forward as the nearest enemy and attack. If the nearest enemy is a minion wave, they will attack that wave. Otherwise they run right up to the towers and get insta-gibbed. They do this multiple times in under a few minutes.
Bot behavior is off the charts, and blizz needs to do something soon
Honestly I would find it very hard to judge between a very bad player or a bot.
If you really think they are botting there is a report catagory for exactly that issue, use it. Posting about botting on the forums won’t fix this issue, if it is indeed a problem.
Just had a game with 3 bots doing exactly this, with exactly the kind of names you described. They’re everywhere. I’ve had at least one in 7/8 games today. I Report them every time. They’re not real players.
I dont think the Valla in my game was a bot. But just somone who had already given up cause of team comp. So he would run into forts and die everytime he respawned for like 9 times before he went afk in base.
These aren’t bad players. Let me tell you why I think so:
The behavior is consistent. New players will try something different from time to time.
The movement is very straight. Always a straight line.
No response in chat at any time. Not a GLHF. No GG. Nothing when you ask for support.
The portrait is always the default portrait.
They never use their talents. NEVER. A new player would mash that Q talent.
The answer isn’t "If you don’t like bots, play PvP. " Some of use want to improve our game before we get into a match and get harrassed for not being familiar with our gameplay. And YOU don’t want us noobs messing up your record!
Blizz is in trouble. Their public image has been in decline for decades and the last few months have been the worst for them. I am sure they are scrambling to fix more important issues (like how to convince people they aren’t a bunch of sexist pricks). And HOTS is not a property they are doing much with (come to think of it, what are they working on anyway? It sure isn’t WoW, a new Diablo or Overwatch.) It would just be nice if something was done about the bots. I had three bots in a game today (and one player who was not a bot, but just drove their lane without working towards the goal at all) and it was unplayable. If it continues, I find something else. It’s that simple.
So just like ~50% of low MMR QM players (and a good chunk of AI players) ever since 2015.
Nothing to do with bots.
Including the part where they just run back into lane and die repeatedly.
Hell, when I joined, I was one of those useless players. I did not even pick talents until I had played about 100 games. Far as I know, I am not an AI (yet…)
How is that possible? I was for sure (on bad days still can be) one of those players who got caught out, but I didn’t miss putting in talents as your portrait would light up with “pick talent.”
Oh, you might be, it’s the twist to the new Matrix movie!
