I've seen the no bots thing many, many times before the update and have seen it work properly many times since the update. I can't answer your why questions, as I have no inside knowledge.
Now the bots are back. Thanks anyway!
Play vs. Bots now uses the Pro rating system, which is used for fair games. If you want to play bots under the Casual system, you still can by creating a table with the casual system and inviting a bot.
Hmm... so the bad news that now I have to actually play out the game when I want to test a feature.
Why? Can't you resign games any more?
The other bad news is that I lose 30 points even for a win:
I'm pretty sure this shouldn't be possible unless someone at Goko has been messing with their TS parameters. And they'd have to be pretty insane parameter at that. Is this just a bug?
I thought you were the one who created a rating predictor for Goko's rating system, so you should be able to check.
(Well, more or less, since the bots' ratings change rapidly...)
If you played Serf Bot, it's quite likely that you'd lose points for a win due to an increased uncertainty; against other bots, it's less likely but not impossible if you have very low uncertainty.
Edit: I forgot, Goko was "perverting" the rating system to "hide" any point losses after a win. So have they just returned to unmodified TrueSkill now, or have they also changed their TrueSkill parameters for the worse?
(There's really more important things for them to do, like removing the pro rating inflations due to the recent adventure games bug. Or finally getting rid of the lobbies...
)