easily one of the most dishonest live service thing games are doing this days is filling your first few games with bots disguised as real players that just fucking let you kill them so you go "wow I'm good at this, I should keep playing." god that's so manipulative to me
like monetization is gross but that's out in the open, the bot thing is just straight up lying
Sometimes I think about how in the Gears of War days a dev openly said that if you hadn't been playing for awhile the matchmaking system would throw you a couple softball games so you'd feel good about coming back strong and be more likely to keep playing and then compare it to how many ppl got back into Fortnite over the past year and were like "WOW I got a victory royale already I guess I'm pretty good??"
We're taking baby steps towards removing gambling from gaming but there's an entire extra layer of lying and user manipulation that hasn't even been touched yet.
See this is one of the reasons i like crypt of the necrodancer so much. Even if you just played it yesterday, that game will fuck you up and tell you to get gud nerd with no remorse.
