Marvel Snap players have bot paranoia (and they might be right)

If you’ve spent time playing the new hit the mobile card game marvel snap, you probably wondered if the person on the other side of the virtual board was human or not. And you are not alone. The game doesn’t make it clear when you’re playing against a real person, and as a result, players are now paranoid that most of their opponents are actually bots, and also cheating.

Earlier this week I convinced a friend to take Marvel’s New Beauty and bots were the first thing that came to mind. How did he go 15 games without a single loss? The answer is that until you reach rank 10, marvel snap seems to pit you exclusively against AI-controlled opponents who can delicately take you through the game’s learning curve. But even after that, the game still seems to rely heavily on bots up to rank 30, especially s ‘he can’t pit you against a human of similar skill within a reasonable amount of time.

The game’s subreddit is Lots of people to try to understand whether the Spidey or Nick Fury avatar on the other side is controlled by a living human or not. “I’ve played over 100 games and seriously won all but 2”, someone complained yesterday. “I can’t help but feel like I’m facing bots given the way they play and how they have base names.” There are dozens of other posts like this.

Some gamers think having a conventional superhero name like Bruce Banner is a dead giveaway. Others are convinced that it was actually just real-life nerds who picked up the handles early on, and the real bots are the ones in disguise with unusual names and unconventional spellings. “Some are also stupidly spelled as ‘braedyyn’ (exaggeration)”, wrote someone who has been playing since beta. “I think superhero names are real people who came in early with their unique and thematic puns/names.”

To further probe the metaphysical character of their opponents, players will use frequent emoticons to try to elicit a seemingly spontaneous reaction. Or they will interrogate unusual movements for possible signs of bot-hood. Some players think bots make obvious mistakes, and that seems to be true at lower ranks. As you move up the ranks, however, the bots seem to get so good that a few players are convinced they openly cheat.

Read more: 20 tips I wish I had known before playing Marvel Snap, the best new card game of 2022

For months, veteran players accused bots to react to their movements on the fly, either countering plays in the right lane at the right time or going through corners entirely to avoid triggering the traps of their human opponents. A player done their business a month agodetailing how a bot just played Apocalypse on Death’s Domain on the exact same turn where Armor was revealed preventing him from dying.

“I just have to know how to play against them and assume that they will counter you” wrote a player more recently in response to an “Omniscient Bot” meme. “Cards like Professor X just don’t work against cheating bots.” Players are convinced that bots can not only see their hands and what is being played, but also know the outcome of random events like terrain changes and RNG draws in advance.

Although developer Second Dinner did not reveal the true nature of marvel snap robots, the players determined some telltale signs to recognize them. Agent Carter, a player with thousands of matches under his belt, has set up a entire excel spreadsheet trying to expose their behavior and coming up with strategies to beat them even when they cheat.

Besides not responding with emotes or callouts, bots don’t seem to use cosmetics obtained from the season pass and always default to the starting purple art for card backs. And when it comes to trying to beat them, Agent Carter speculates based on his data that bots tend to try to use as much energy per turn as possible, and are more likely to leave the tableau fill in the cards only to reserve room for their strongest trick. six graduates.

Data miners have even claimed that the bots have different “profiles” when it comes to capture and takedown. Some are more fickle while others are more aggressive, though most bots tend to only engage once they’ve won at least two lanes. Players can try to take advantage of this by tricking bots into breaking, especially since bots tend not to retreat even when their chances of winning drastically drop.

While Agent Carter plans to keep updating his research and Second Dinner will no doubt fix bots from time to time, it’s clear that players’ bot paranoia isn’t all in their heads, even if some of the mind games are. The marvel snap bot armies are very real and, at higher ranks, extremely difficult. So if you’re still on a 100-game winning streak, enjoy it while it lasts.