# of bots per game

[Smile`]

Is it fair to say approximately half of each game contains bot at the least?

[Jaeus]

Depends on rank and time of day, plenty of people are just quiet.
I can't tell bots by behavior right now, but I assume they just take Recommended and spend down stupidly ASAP.
Unfortunately, said behavior is also the same as bad players, so is there really a difference?

[Smile`]

Yea I've noticed bots buy in the beginning

[Jizzneyland]

I, a player, do this sometimes too, because winning streaks are awesome :>

[Jaeus]

If everyone goes aggro and greedy, then you don't winstreak as much.

[Tikigod]

Originally posted by Smile`:

Is it fair to say approximately half of each game contains bot at the least?

Much more than half.

You can tell the bots from the actual players by the behaviour on the carousel, bots always just bee-line in a straight line for the nearest pick-up no matter what.

[AlexGK]

In my experience - 5 out of 8 are bots on average.
When you get high on the ladder the ratio goes down - high ranked people seem to play more.
Bots seem to make you climb the ladder faster - I have had many games where I end up 7th and still get +ELO. And thats happened all the way to galaxy. Never had that in galaxy yet.
EDIT: Just happened on galaxy as well. Finished 7th and got +ELO, finished 8th and got 0. Finished 1st and got +20 only. Yea...

[Jaeus]

Originally posted by Tikigod:

You can tell the bots from the actual players by the behaviour on the carousel, bots always just bee-line in a straight line for the nearest pick-up no matter what.

To be fair, I'm using default courier and do my best to one-shot beeline every carousel. I don't move my courier at all and almost never type anything. If it weren't for me generally winning on the back of no-legendary builds, I'd be almost indistinguishable from a bot.

Originally posted by AlexGK:

Bots seem to make you climb the ladder faster

They don't, at all. Bots contribute basically nothing to positive ELO but you sure do go minus ELO if the lobby is mostly bots. On player dense lobbies, even going out 5th or 6th can be low or 0 ELO. On bot dense lobbies, you're going negative as soon as 5th I feel like.

And honestly, since bots and normal players often play equally poorly and equally singlemindedly, I see no reason for bots not to give decent ELO too.
There is no meaningful difference between some clown going One Trick Merlina (or Alloya, Yukimura, James, etc) and a bot doing it. They literally play the same way with no thought or finesse.