So I mostly play vs AI and the last couple months I’ve had occasional run-ins with people who are clearly using some sort of bot. They all behave in a manner more or less like the minions: They go down a lane, auto attack any enemy they come across, but don’t use any abilities and will sit under a tower attacking it until they die, and they typically feed kills like no tomorrow. These aren’t faulty AI teammates mind you, but obstentially other players, though they seem to typically be newer accounts and usually seem to be using whatever heroes are in the free rotation. I report them when I see them, but apparently reporting or blocking them doesn’t stop the game from putting me on their team again when I que up after usually managing to win the game with the help of the 1 or 2 other actual human players. Is this an isolated problem or have other people been running into them too? Is there a way to make sure I don’t get que’d up with someone who is doing this again? I wouldn’t mind a longer wait time if it means I don’t have to deal with this.
Queue with other people who find it bothersome. Find them either in chat or invite those you find in matches.
Sounds like some of them treat your game as a 1 hour AI game were you can get over 1mio exp if you end up winning after that long.
“But it doesn’t hurt anyone”
Sets a bad example and encourages others to do the same because there are no consequences. I would like some free stuff as well. Except you are more likely to end up being banned for using pings, trying to communicate with your team than breaking basic terms of service.
You can buy a account ready for stormleague on the first google site for the price of a big mac.
This is just one way people try to make money
AI is the fastest way to grind to lvl 50. So yes makes sense that there are a lot of bots. I think they need to be more aggressive against this abuse. Introduce the player judgement system from lol
(Sure this comment will get me banned for just talking that its possible. I didnt violate any rules. Doublechecked)
I used to see them in beginner AI and before difficulties were added. Practically never see them in Elite.
I was just coming on here to gripe about this. I’ve played 3 matches today and in 2, there was an attack-move-towards-core bot. Mind you, I’ve seen them before today, but they are apparently getting more numerous. I report them every time, though I doubt it does any good.
Who is the intended market for a level 50 account that has been made by botting vs AI? How would that work, as the player would have no QM MMR and rank into Bronze and a level 50 account can’t own many heroes.
I don’t doubt for a second they price is cheap for any HOTS account, I just wonder (outside of Fan) who wants an account like that?
What a nightmare, stuck for one hour in VS AI, no wonder people are botting it. Also Froggy that new avatar threw me hard, I’ll have to start calling you Warchief instead of Froggy.
Completely agree with you. Don’t they have any system to detect botting? As it stands it’s almost impossible to cheat using the game engine, why is botting so easy?
Plenty of people, especially boosters and smurfs for friends
I know one person who does it frequently and just does it for fun.
Goes on a smurf spree with a friend just for fun (Both masters)
Its fun with all the master smurfs everyone keeps complaining about, he was actually a well earned grandmaster maining adc heroes
I have a friend who makes new accounts just for fun to play in QM, but he doesn’t bot to make them or use them in SL, so it really hurts nobody.
I would believe anyone who wants to be boosted would want it, I know people once bought master accounts and/or got someone to boost them. It was always ridiculous to me that anyone would want to get a phony rank just to show off, it’s even stranger now HOTS has become such a niche game.
I know the example you give of your fiend is nothing like this and I don’t have a problem with what he’s doing.
I do have a problem with what he is doing 
and yes so many people who just want to get boosted just to get out of that one rank , then think they can manage on their own and drop hard
Oh! Well I must admit the boosting and infestation of smurfs in ranked have caused me to dislike it so much I play far less than half the HL games I once did a season. This is even lower considering a “season” in HOTS now is usually half a year!
Brace yourself, winter is comming (Toys III) The old men is saying it will be the longest winter to come
Nothing with it being easy, it’s just that the player base has grown indifferent to it, pretty much to all reporting actually because it is viewed as a waste of time and effort. I haven’t been playing so much in the last 6 months but it is kind of surprising how the e-mail notifications stopped coming completely. It wasn’t my dislike for the individuals, but actual cases where entire teams agreed someone was ruining the match on purpose.
Sort of like that wow subreddit topic where the player reported only one person for cheating/botting ever since he started playing, got notified through an in-game mail about how that person was being taken care of and that action was taken against his account, yet the following morning he sees the very same character playing again.
Back when we had two QA reps who posted on these forums, both said players under reported for anything other than Abusive Chat. So you’re probably right, I too never receive the emails anymore about people being punished for AFK and dying on purpose.
They should review the categories and types of punishment altogether.
Negative attitude, team distraction through chat and spam / warning with removal of certain privileges
Obvious gameplay sabotage, including intended or unintended afk / suspension
Automated gameplay or any other form of cheating / immediate account closure
Yet the biggest issue of all is how none of these suspensions extend to other games across the platform. Until this gets implemented, everything else is smoke and mirrors, as effective as covering boobs on wow in-game portraits of female characters with a piece of cloth or replacing them with fruit.
It might not be botting.
New players and there are some, have very little map awareness, don’t understand the objectives, can’t judge tower distances properly and don’t move out before the last minion is killed. I was like this a couple of weeks ago and my wife still dies to towers pretty often even if I tell her to move out.
Alternatively, they may be trying to get as much xp per game as possible. There is a very extensive guide out there for this but the part that is relevant is this.
- Assign roles - 3 players should be soakers and 2 should be feeders.
- If you’re a feeder:
- Keep dying to enemy towers/core/heroes/minions as frequently as possible (you can destroy a wall to get deeper into the enemy base so you can get focused by more towers at once)
- If your team’s keeps are already gone (usually at 20+ mins), you may need to help the soakers defend the occasional AI 5-man core push
- Your feeding gig is done when enemy team hits level 30. There is no point in feeding after this point, enemy kills are now worth as much XP as possible. Now you become a hunter - your job is to kill enemy heroes until the 500k exp goal is reached.
Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/7wsntg/how_to_earn_almost_14_mln_xp_per_hour_an/
I’m not saying everyone you see doing this is one of these two types of people. But it is something to keep in mind.
My girlfriend, who never really played any games before, occasionally joins me in some AI hots.
She too auto attacks heroes down a single lane then dies while auto attacking a tower.
Both bots and bad players exist. 
That’s quite funny and reminds me of when I took elderly mother into HOTS VS AI and gave her Li Li to play. She has only ever played a game like solitaire before, so navigation in a 3D environment was very hard for her.
We are on opposite coasts of the country from each other so we did this voice. She did manage to hold down Q, but would just keep walking straight ahead and into towers. We laughed ourselves silly and it’s probably the only VS AI game I’ve ever lost.
I taught a bunch of WoW guildies how to play HotS in AI last year, and one of the first comments from one of them was, “Buildings can shoot me? NOT FAIR!”