Note This is a very old blog draft, all the way from 2019 when you could still download Fortnite on your iPad (which you can again but it’s a bit harder and you need to live in EU). But the point still stands I need to publish something. Enjoy, or not :-)
I recently tried Fortnite for the first time, thinking I would check out what the fuzz was about. So I install it on the iPad and get started. Knowing roughly how to play it, I can’t even find a weapon in the first round and get hosed by obvious AI players (henchmen). No worries, I try again… and I go on to beat the crap out everyone the two next rounds, Victory Royale, numero uno, #1. Damn I’m good.. or am I?
I do think I’m above the average gamer but this seems a bit suspicious. Maybe they have some matchmaking and my hideous performance in the first match put me in the lowest bracket?
Or… Maybe the other players were not players but really bad bots? A quick googling confirms that indeed, Epic added bots last autumn (editors note, autumn of 2019).
And there does not seem to be any obvious way to identify them, except that people seem to agree that they are quite bad.
So turns out I am not really good at this game?… sad trombone
I spent some time thinking about this, and I read an article discussing it. Turns out not everybody was happy with this silent introduction of bots. Making people think they are better than they are to make them enjoy the game more does seem, wrong on some level.
Or is it? What is the goal from playing games? I guess most people are not looking to become full time pro-gamers but rather just want to have some fun.
Is it wrong to let them enjoy it? Not everyone enjoys loosing. I recall playing StarCraft 2, where the matchmaking was good and made sure you lost roughly half the time by matching you against better players every time you improved. And that was not always fun. Because when you’re perfectly matched it might well be that you play five games in a row and loose all of them. It was one of the reasons I did not play ladder SC2 but just fooled around in coop and other stuff.
But if we accept that developers cheat a bit to allow us to enjoy the game more. What is “a bit”. I am not sure there are any easy answers, it all depends.
How hard do we want our games to be? I guess the most fun part if you believe you win by a close margin.
And then again, Fortnite was not the first game to do this. Mariokart might have been one of the earlier ones to do it. It really skews the game to give worse players a chance. When you’re in the lead or close to it, you will just pick up bad items. While if you’re at the back you get all the good suff. And in single player the computer automatically adapted to your speed.
Asphalt 9 (at least on iPad) is also a obvious example of this, try playing a single player map with a massively over-powered car (compared to what is the recommended level on that course). Now watch how every computer keeps up/stays ahead until ~70% of the course is done. Then falls behind massively on the last 20% to make sure you win if you “should” win (based on the points in your car).
To conclude, I’ll just say I don’t know what is the right way. If the developers made it too obvious that they are letting you win, most people would not think that to be fun. But on the other hand, people like winning more than loosing.