As rumors spread during the recent holidays, concerns have emerged that Marvel Rivals may be assigning players who are on losing streaks to matches against bots. While it’s common to encounter bots in several competitive titles, players often mischaracterize real opponents as bots when things don’t go well in their games.
However, a lengthy post on Reddit from a user named ciaranxy meticulously detailed findings from a week of testing, supporting the claim that losing players are indeed placed in bot matches.
Findings from the Post
- Bots are found only in Quickplay mode, not Competitive.
- Players with back-to-back losses have a high chance of being assigned to a bot lobby for Quickplay.
- In bot lobbies, a composition of humans and bots is used: 4 human teammates plus 2 bots against 6 bots.
- Leaving a bot lobby incurs penalties.
- All bots are set at Account Level 1 with restricted access.
“Invisible Woman Hidden OP New Tech Discovered” from r/marvelrivals - This highlights community challenges with varying levels of competition.
Curiosity arose given the guidelines outlined above. Experiencing peculiar player behaviors online fueled questions about whether NetEase was indeed placing players in bot-heavy environments. To validate this, I decided to engage in a few matches myself, scrutinizing the behavior of my teammates and opponents.
After suffering through multiple defeats—notably, my efforts as Spider-Man were panned by teammates—I observed that after three consecutive losses, the makeup of my matches entirely shifted. For the first time, there were no console players in the enemy ranks, names seemed generic, and I encountered bots showing unusual proficiency for their apparent experience levels.
This situation invites important implications regarding Marvel Rivals and its integrity as a competitive platform. Concerns dwell over whether it’d mislead users by inflating win rates artificially, potentially distorting players’ perceptions of their skills.
To further clarify, PC Gamer is currently reaching out to NetEase for comment and plans to update this article if additional information is available.
