Bots in Disguise
Marvel Rivals launched with very few issues. It has fantastic gameplay, incredibly fun characters that you don’t have to pay for or unlock, and a monetization scheme that is relatively speaking, not complete crap. I say relatively because while many aspects of it are pretty fair, I still think $26 for a skin is completely insane, but I digress.
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Marvel Rivals swelled with popularity, managed to cut into Overwatch’s player base, and really seemed to be a game that was too good to be true…well, for me at least, it kinda is.
Marvel Rivals has a pretty big problem that it tried to keep relatively secret. It has bots posing as real players in quick play, and not for a reasonable purpose, like filling lobbies. It uses them as a player retention tactic, feeding players who are on a losing streak free wins to not hurt their feelings. It’s scummy, underhanded, and frankly insulting, and it actually causes severe damage to the overall game.
The trick is, that you aren’t supposed to know about them. That’s what Net Ease is counting on. They hope that most people won’t pay attention enough to cause a fuss. Well too bad, I’m feeling fussy, so let’s talk about these bots and why they should be removed as soon as possible.
How Do I Know They Are Bots?
So how do I know they are actually bots and not just really bad players? Because I checked. The bots do imitate players to a degree, even going as far as to goof off in the spawn room before the match begins. They have semi-realistic sounding player tags and made-up gamertags if they are mimicking console players.
The thing is, Marvel Rivals allows you to go back and watch replays of entire matches, from the perspective of any player, including the enemy team. It all began because some matches started to feel very weird to me. I’d go from getting my ass handed to me to going 28 and 0, completely shutting down the enemy team.
More than that, in each of these instances, I would catch the enemy team acting weird, but weird in a very linear and repetitive way. Every Wolverine acted the same, every Groot acted the same, and most telling, is that any time Jeff the Shark used his ultimate ability in these matches, he would just move back and forth, he would never spit enemies off a cliff.
Then, I began to notice that these matches happened after every loss or two. Coincidence? Perhaps, so I checked out a few replays. Sure enough, watching from the enemy’s perspective, it became pretty obvious.
They moved rigidly, and turned corners sharply, often following each other in single file lines. Their crosshairs instantly snap to enemies when attacking, and they snap to allies when healing, even instantly turning around 180 degrees to target characters behind them.
At the same time, they also intentionally miss most of their shots, despite being locked on, usually firing just to the side of who they are targeting. Sometimes they would waste their ultimates, slamming them into the roof of a building that very obviously sat between them and their target.
Watching them play, from their own perspectives, makes it obvious. But to add to the evidence. Bots in these matches have very similar naming conventions. Usually an attempt at a real-sounding name, and never a reference to media outside of the game. If you attempt to check their profiles, they are always private, always.
Combine all of that with the fact that they only appear after a loss or two, and it’s evident that these bot matches are not only in the game, they exist purely to feed you wins, skew your statistics, and obfuscate your own gameplay performance.
Problem 1: The Secrecy
The first red flag about this practice in Marvel Rivals is the secrecy. You can actually choose to play against AI bots as a game mode. Not only that, but you can even complete challenges in this mode. So the option to CHOOSE to play against bots is always there. There is no indication that bots will appear in any capacity in Quickplay. Anyone playing quickplay 100% has the expectation they will be playing against real people.
Furthermore, the bots take pains to mimic a real player, not for gameplay purposes, but to obfuscate the fact that they are, in fact, bots, and not really bad players. From their naming conventions and fake gamertags to the goofing off in spawn. It’s a very robotic imitation that falls apart against any level of scrutiny, but the fact they are programmed that way at all feels gross.
So the question is, why does Marvel Rivals want to hide the fact that it pits you against bots when you are on a losing streak? Because it’s dirty and predatory psychological mindgames don’t work if you know they are doing it.
Players on a losing streak can feel bad and might stop playing. So the bots roll over and die for you to preserve your precious fee fees so you keep playing. It’s a player retention tactic, but a dirty underhanded one that relies on your ignorance to succeed. Ignorance is required because you can’t feel good about your performance if you know the game quite literally lets you win.
Problem 2: They Make You a Worse Player
It’s nearly impossible to actually improve at Marvel Rivals as long as bots are feeding you wins every couple of matches, and you aren’t aware it’s happening. That’s because nothing you do in those matches will be effective against other players at all. The bots in these matches do not put up a fight at all, and you can quite easily go 30 and 0 against them. Half of the time you end up spawn camping them before the match is finished.
Have you ever tried a character and thought you had found a new main only to get crushed the next couple of matches and then become a God again? I know I have. My second time trying Spider-Man I thought I had the character figured out. I was an absolute badass, zipping around, uppercutting fools and even taking Ironman out in mid-air.
In the next match, I tried to play the same way as before and got annihilated. That’s because my good match with the web-slinger was a bot match. The same tactics and moves were worthless against actual players.
The secrecy of the bots makes quickplay an endless cycle of never letting you improve at the game, but keeping your dopamine levels high. Each time you get discouraged, you suddenly become a pro player at whatever character you chose in that bot match. Then you get discouraged again, then the next bot match makes you think you just had a string of bad luck with crappy teammates as you nailed that MVP award with 0 zero deaths once again.
If you ever move to the competitive mode, you will have an incredibly rough uphill battle. To the extent that I know folks who have dropped the game altogether, as they found out that they weren’t nearly as good with a given character once bots were removed from the equation.
The bots also skew your entire statistics page for quick play. Your highest knockout streak is meaningless, as are your stats for any given character. The data is entirely worthless.
Problem 3: It’s Insulting
The psychology behind player retention tactics is sound, and to be fair part of a developer’s job is to protect the players, from themselves. But this method goes too far. It’s degrading, and insulting for the game to secretly let you win.
No one likes being on a losing streak, but I doubt many people want to be belittled by the game allowing them a free win against easy bots. It’s like letting a child hold a controller that isn’t plugged in and letting them pretend to play. If you aren’t a child, you would be insulted if you found out someone did that to you.
I’m expecting to play the game against other people, I don’t need, nor want the game to protect my feelings by secretly feeding me bots when I lose.
The single-player game equivalent would be picking the hardest difficulty in a game, only for the game to secretly lower it to the easiest setting if you died twice in a row (I hope I don’t give any greedy publishers any ideas here)
To add further insult. Each of these bot matches will always place two bots on your team, so it ends up being 4 humans and 2 bots against 6 bots. Why does the game do this? To further skew your performance and heighten your chances of being MVP at the end of the match. That feels so gross.
If I wanted to face bots, the option was always there. But Marvel Rivals insists that you hold mommy’s hand. And she’s oh so proud of her little champ! Look how good you are doing! Mommy is gonna hang your highlight on the fridge.
It’s just so incredibly insulting and I can’t get over it.
Problem 4: It’s a Waste of Time
Once the illusion is gone, and the veil has been lifted from your eyes, the game goes from being shady and insulting to straight-up wasting your time. Once you know about the bots and you recognize when you’re in a bot match, the game lifts the most valuable currency of all from you. Your time.
Playing against bots is incredibly unfulfilling. They are meant to make you win, so they aren’t satisfying to play against at all, and there is very little fun to be had with spawn-camping brainless bots for several minutes at a time.
Every time you lose a match or two, you know your next match is probably going to be a completely fake waste of time. Here’s the kicker, because the game wants to trick you into thinking the bots are real, it’s treated as a real match. This means you aren’t allowed to leave it, or you get penalized and can be restricted from matchmaking. That’s right, you can’t leave the bot matches without being punished by the oh-so-loving Mommy Rivals. The absurdity of it is painful to behold.
I’m an incredibly patient gamer, but I do draw the line at a game intentionally wasting my time. Feeding me free wins does exactly that.
Quick Play VS Competitive
There is a solution but it’s an imperfect one. The Competitive mode doesn’t have bots at all. But here’s the thing. The vast majority of the player base is going to stick to quick matches, and I don’t blame them.
The competitive mode is sweaty. As you rank up you’re going to encounter less variety as teams are running “meta” compositions and it has a much more hostile environment. In fact, once you rank up enough, teams get the ability to ban heroes. Is one of the popular bans your favorite hero that you bought skins for? Too bad.
A lot of people, myself included, just want to play the game and avoid that level of sweatyness. That doesn’t mean those same people want to be handed wins by bots. Think of it like this.
Maybe you wanna play a game of Chess? Just because you don’t want to play against a grandmaster doesn’t mean you want to play against someone who just lets you win to preserve your feelings, or even worse, a toddler who spends half the game chewing on the game pieces.
Just because you want to play a pick-up game of backyard football, doesn’t mean you want the entire Pittsburgh Steelers football team to run you over in full gear. But it also doesn’t mean you want to play against a squad of wacky inflatable tube men either.
It’s perfectly okay to want to play against actual players without trying to go pro, while also not playing against bots programmed to let you win. It’s not an unreasonable expectation! I’m not crazy, but this game makes me feel like I am sometimes!
The whole thing just feels dirty and gross. As unlikely as it is, I would love to see the bots removed from Quickplay entirely. I just doubt it will ever happen, not without a very large outcry from the player base at least. If the bots stay, however, I’m not sure I will, because they have largely killed my desire to play the game.
I’m more than capable of wasting my own time. I’m a pro at it actually. I don’t need Marvel Rivals to waste my time for me, by trying to baby my feelings.
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