Evidence mounts that Marvel Rivals stealthily places losing players in bot matches, and I know because I'm the loser

I just want a chill class shooter with good movement tech and larger team player numbers

Not a competitive 6v6 hero shooter where everybody moves the same, except for that one ability on cooldown right now

I wasn't going to play a hero shooter anyway, but fuck this. I just want to go back to arena shooters, server browsers and no stat tracking.

oldUnreal is a thing.
I too yearn for the Quake 3 days.
- There's a super tiny but somewhat active Quake 3 VR community. It's awesome.
- You can still rocket jump in Destiny2 arena pvp, well grenade, but same feel. Fun way to be Death from Above if you are a more punchy character than the floaty kind.
They also seem to be following CCP censorship rules. Yay.

Edit: What are the downvotes for, its objectively correct.

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/marvel-rivals-chinese-censorship-controversy
- What? No zombies or lgbtq relationships?
They haven't gone away. Plenty of Quake 3 Arena servers still up and running. If not Quake 3 Arena, then Xonotic is still pretty active with more modern visuals and pretty good graphics.
- I was always more a ut2k4 guy. I need to spend a weekend tracking down and installing the linux binary for that game. But even then the most active servers just play the same few maps. I could play some FaceClassic, but not for hours on end.
  
  I'm also working on fixing an old gamepad I use to use for these games. Unlike ones that use cherry based switches, this one just uses those small, tactile switches with crazy small travel distance.

Being punished for leaving bot matches is the only issue I'd have with this.

The article says that you do indeed get punished for leaving.
You don't know if it's a bot match as far as I understood
- there are ways to tell.
  
  namely steam rolling the opponents. or the enemy team not showing up in your recently played with list.

What people are missing in the comments is that you can choose to play a bot match if that's what you want. But you CAN'T sign up to play against people and guarantee that that's what you'll be doing. And they are not transparent about it.

That and also penalizing you for disconnecting from Bot matches is wild
If you queue competitve you're guaranteed human players. And no Crossplay. Not the best solution, but yea...
But why? What's the motive behind not just queuing low ranking players with each other?
- So, that's how ranked play works and only has humans. Problem is, ranked is awful right now. Even in the lowest ranks matches tend to be hopelessly lopsided. I'm not clear on why but it may be streamers and whatnot creating new accounts to stomp on low ranked people.
  
  It's in quick match where they are inserting bots, and there aren't ranks to use.

Is this problem? Think it make sense and way to learn more mechanics of game.

I'm conflicted with this. But it's a problem because the game is not clear about it and you can't choose, the game just put 4 people + 2 bots against 6 bots.

I "tried" to get a bot match yesterday after getting 2 loses in a row, playing with things that I normally don't play and not caring too much with the objective. Took 5 loses in a row to get 1 bot match.

For a person to get a lot of bot matches they need a lot of loses, at that point the person is probably better playing against bot to improve a little bit. But I think the game should suggest to the player to do that instead of forcing and hiding that they are playing against bots.
- Obfuscation. Corporate figures telling or giving people the option will hurt their feelings so they'll stop playing. A player who quits is no longer a tier two type with the potential to spend money, so they'll only do this if it becomes a PR nightmare that affects their bottom line.
- Exactly, with Ch5 Fortnite vastly increased bots. Until that was confirmed I was confused as to how I got so much better within a week of the chapter starting. I averaged 2-4 kills in ch4 and in ch5s01 I averaged 10+. I stopped playing BR because of this. Bot heavy lobbies aren’t fun.
- It feels like assuming a lot of positive intent to guess that the match against bots is so that people can learn rather than trying to feed them a dopamine hit so they don't get discouraged and fuck off, but maybe I'm a cynic.
If I sign up for a match expecting to play against players and get matched with bots I would be upset.

Like most games have options like vs bots or vs players. I think it's a bit ridiculous to not have even that basic control over your game experience. Regardless if you just get crushed.
- Statistically, people are more upset when they get crushed by other humans.
It’s a problem if you think you’re learning techniques for killing humans but in reality you’re learning tricks to kill AI. There is already a bot match option if people want to learn with no pressure.
It gives people a false sense of being good even if that day was simply not their day. Bot match alone is fine, and it's relaxing in a way, but hiding the fact that they're not fighting against real players is manipulative.
I think I would actually try the game out if you could purposefully select to play against bots.
- Then try it, because you can do exactly that.

It's rather common Knowledge that NetEase does this exact thing in Narala: Bladepoint, so yeah, not surprising, at all.

I also vaguely remember this being a thing in Pokemon: Unite, not sure if that's also a NetEase game.

Pokémon Unite does it sometimes after lose streaks. But not always! It's common in casual modes but much less common in ranked.
- I'm having way more bot games in unite than I ever did (picked up the game again this week after a year off).
- It never happens in ranked in Rivals.

Last time I played Fortnite it was also like this. It was bots + other weak players like you. It felt quite okay, early in the match you got some easy bot kills and later you had some challenge dealing with actual players of your skill level.

With ch05 bots have increased a lot.
- Last time I really played a lot of Fortnite, I played with someone who was really good, and we'd get #1 in roughly half our matches. Even after 20+ games, it felt like we still got lobbies half full of bots

Hell I'm okay with that. I don't play with any of you people anyway

i swear pokémon duel would do the opposite of this. you’d get on a win streak and then suddenly a player with a very generic name and the EXACT counters to your deck fucken SWEEPS your ass with seemingly psychic precision. you could even trick it by switching to a deck with no synergy and just playing like a psycho whenever you got ~5 wins in a row.

i miss that game so much. taken before it’s time o7

Pokemon TCGP feels the same honestly, I get two wins then suddenly it's a Mewtwo Gardevoir combo. I also can't tell if people who pay for premium are more likely to get better cards because they get more chances or if the server sees that they pay for premium and reward them, but I run into so many people that have multiple Mewtwo Ex cards and I can't even manage to find one in all the packs I've opened.

Makes sense why the game feels soo easy, And i like it this way.

I prefer this over SBMM but at what point does it just become dead gaming theory?
- True tbh

This feels like a bandaid on a gunshot wound.

The problem is that every game has a losing team, and the players are supposed to feel bad no matter how well they performed. "Defeat" or "Loss" messages, sad music, sinking stats, public match record showing off your failure; there's punishment baked into this model of game.

Trying to keep players by throwing them easy wins is an insult. You're the game developer that created this "winner/loser" model to begin with. Now you're trying to make me feel better with this bullshit? You're the one that caused the pain to begin with.

I figured it was to get some practice rather than a morale boost.

Like the article says, it does mess with stats but it is only for Quick Play rather than ranked though.
- It's absolutely a cheap way to give you an easy win. If I get SVP but lose in overtime, it's absolutely an insult to throw me into a bot match for 'practice'

I heard Sue Storm's ass is great and modeled after a model with a great ass

play stupid games win stupid prizes

Quite literally in this case

PCGamer running FUD ads for ActiBlizz, nothing new. Move along.

It's really fucked up when you think about it since qp matches are any skill against any skill. So if you get a diamond ranked dps on the opposite team and your team is mostly bronze you're screwed. Then you only have to lose one more match to get put into the bot matches. That seems super unfair.

QP still puts you with similar skill level players. It just doesn't show you the algorithm like competitive. You won't be put with a diamond if you are bronze and vice-versa.
- This isn't true. I've been put against Diamonds and GMs and I'm gold 3. You can look at people's rank in the history tab even for enemy teams.

the goal of this ... is to lie to us—to insult our intelligence by trying to pass off an obviously phony product as legitimate