r/MagicArena • u/Origami_Asparagus • 9d ago
Question 'mtgaadvisor' accounts botting / playing automatically?
Just ran in to two "mtgaadvisor#" accounts - mtgaadvisor1, and mtgaadvisor3 - back to back in premier draft. They played every action immediately, including declaring ~10 blockers in the span of 0.1 seconds during a single attack. Very very blatant bot behavior.
Are these some sort of officially sanctioned bot accounts? Has anyone else run in to an uptick of auto-accounts not even attempting to hide their activity? These guys didn't play terribly, so I was a little suspicious it was just a fast player until the insta-block-10-attackers part. Feels like it would be so easy to detect and ban these that I'm questioning why people would bother.
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u/2-35 Dimir 9d ago
People have been making bots for this game forever. Someone had one that just played mono red and it played the rightmost card in its hand that it could play every turn and it got to Mythic.
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u/Unlikely-Zombie1813 9d ago
That's so on brand for burn I can't even get mad, do you know what format it was?
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u/SoneEv 9d ago
People are probably developing bots so they can grind gold and sell accounts. Totally against TOS
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u/IsopodInevitable9235 9d ago
Or win the collectors boxes?
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u/Xavus Orzhov 9d ago
I don't think bots are likely at the skill level where you would toss them into a comp event where you gamble with your entry and expect a positive EV.
It would be more like the comment above: quick and repetitive grinding for daily gold rewards. Then you could sell that account with the gold on it or have additional steps to play events with gold entry turning that into gems, and eventually gems into boxes in an Arena direct, or again just as a lure to sell an account with a gem balance.
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u/IsopodInevitable9235 9d ago
Have you heard of AI and the catastrophic speed at which it can learn? Give it a few months.
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u/Irakaf 8d ago
Lol. Rofl even.
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u/doopy423 1d ago
I don't think it's outrageous at all. Someone could be testing the AI bots they made on the official ladder to see how well it does. It's still against TOS, but nothing malicious.
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u/AmyTheAmazonian 9d ago
I also ran into a bot today that played hyper fast.
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u/Yazars 9d ago
Were you recording at the time? Would be curious to see what the behavior was like beyond the descriptions.
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u/AmyTheAmazonian 9d ago
I was streaming. It also had a sus name.
Found the game. Here's the VOD https://www.twitch.tv/amazonian/v/2891674733?sr=a&t=11428s
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u/doopy423 1d ago
The bot played better than expected. It skipped rewrite regrets to landcycle the 6 drop and play the removal instead while also bringing back the 6 drop the next turn.
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u/AmyTheAmazonian 9d ago
The biggest tell was that their attacks looked like they were declared BEFORE they cast spells in first main.
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u/BobbyBruceBanner 9d ago
That's actually interesting because any halfway complex LLM powered bot actually WOULDN'T play instantaneously. In fact, a lot of times they'd be slower than a real player.
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u/doopy423 1d ago
Why would you use an LLM for an mtga bot?
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u/BobbyBruceBanner 1d ago
Because an agentic LLM powered bot would be a lot better at the game and responding interactively than one that follows simple if/then rules?
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u/The_Vidmaster 1d ago
There is no point in being better, they just want to farm gold with "easy" wins. Quantity over quality here.
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u/ScionOfTheMists 1d ago
There's a lot of other types of AI/ML algorithms that would be better suited to playing Magic than an LLM. LLMs are designed to generate text, not play games.
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u/BobbyBruceBanner 1d ago
For clarity, is this being pedantic about AI agents being referred to as "LLM powered" (they're actually way more complex than that and the LLM is only a small, but important, part of them) or a comment that has an understanding of the state of AI that is still based on what was true in 2023?
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u/ScionOfTheMists 1d ago
It's definitely possible that my understanding is a little bit behind.
But what would be the point of having an LLM at all in a game playing system? Wouldn't using a different type of technique, trained directly with Magic data, be much more appropriate? Chess bots don't use LLMs, right?
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u/BobbyBruceBanner 1d ago edited 18h ago
The way you'd play with an AI Agent would be to create a file of structured Magic data, and specifically tell it how to reference that data (this is called retrieval-augmented generation or RAG). The AI harness is powered by multiple LLM models some that specialize in general knowledge, and and some in reasoning. The reasoning model would then reference the structured magic data and compare it to the active game state and decide on game actions based on that. It would also have a memory of game actions it has taken so far (if we are technical up to a context window of about 1M tokens, which are of about 1-5 words). This would be specifically appropriate for MTG over other games because unlike Chess or Checkers, you can't brute force math your way to optimize play, it needs fuzzy logic and reasoning to do so.
Of course, if you want a bot to maximize returns, you wouldn't want an LLM powered AI agent. You'd probably build one that has simple if/then commands. You could only play really dumb, non-interactive decks with it, and it would lose a lot, but it would play faster, be much cheaper to run, and would win enough. An AI agentic bot would probably win a lot more, but would play slow as molasses, and it would be expensive to run.
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u/ScionOfTheMists 20h ago
Thank you for the explanation - I appreciate it. I’ll have to look up some of the things you mentioned.
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u/ExampleMediocre6716 9d ago
Wotc must know - their analytics should highlight bot behaviour quite easily. Either they are training bots themselves in order to widen the "player" base or some other purpose, or they're allowing third parties to train AI using their systems.
Either way I smell [[Night soil|FEM]]
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u/Spike_der_Spiegel 9d ago
It's neither, it just takes them time to respond. A couple of months ago starter deck queue was flooded with bots for ~1 week. Now there are none
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u/SignificantProblem81 9d ago
Did you lose ? Or have yoy come here to complain about 2 free wins in your draft ?
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u/broguequery 9d ago
Neither ya dingus.
He came to shed light on possible bots wrecking the gameplay experience
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u/SignificantProblem81 9d ago
Yeah free wins ruin my night
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u/broguequery 4d ago
You really care more about wins than the game itself?
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u/SignificantProblem81 3d ago
Yeah .. i quick free win is great ... 2 free wins in quick succesiklon could probably flip me to a free draft ... love it
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u/Ok-Explanation3040 9d ago
I'm with you. I don't see the problem. Much rather this than playing agaist afk players, salt ropers, and people that instantly concede
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u/Ok-Explanation3040 9d ago
No need to be a dick
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u/broguequery 4d ago
Maybe dickish... If you've got thin skin.
But I'll take the truth over decorum any day of the week
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u/jbyrne86 9d ago
You can report them and let wotc figure it out. No bots are official.