SIF Coverage: The Chance Encounter

I was just wondering what to write for today until, out of pure chance, I stumbled upon this completely mythical encounter whilst playing SIF. I have heard of this occurrence before but, never had I been drawn in a lobby of 3 other bots! Keep in mind, this meant I had to wait a whole 30 seconds with no player joining before subsequently having all 3 slots filled with bots.

For those of you less well-versed with SIF, the bot is an computer generated opponent during SIF's PvP event, Score Match. You can identify them from their "Adjective" + Student-suffix as well as their inability to shut up in the lobby. Other than that, they're known to notoriously mess with your game often scoring rather insanely high scores. They're very useful when it comes to filling in that last slot before the lobby timer runs out. In return, this ensures players needn't wait too long before starting a match.

But, to be pitted against a whole lobby full of them now, that's a rare occurrence indeed. How or why it happens is still unclear but, one good theory is that your matchmaking rank (MMR) is far too high till suitable players can't be found. Such wasn't the case for me as I was neither on a winning streak nor sporting a team full or URs.

For all their notoriety, you might be wondering, how did it go? Now, before I proceed to the results, allow me to show you the final score beforehand. Not only was it a Full Combo S Score, it was a new personal record for me too. I was in good shape going into the results then right?

Nope! Beat right down to third place with the other 2 bots scoring a good 10,000 points than me. Ah, good ol' bots. You can always count on them to crush your ego and confidence. On the bright side, I managed to join a proper lobby the next round and obtained glorious victory! 

Such is the beauty of Score Match, it's inherently imbalanced but, as such it somehow balances itself out too. There are times where you get a 4th place finish despite a personal best and times where you get 1st place despite making more mistakes than you should. In the long run, I'm convinced it balances itself out. 

That's been all for today, thanks so much once again for reading. Until next time, have a great day!