Playing against bots in arena

I agree. What's the point of playing against a bot? In fact, just for kicks, when I see that I'm going to win, I pause 1 second before time's up (not a second earlier!) and surrender. It doesn't matter that I waste a gauntlet. What's the point of winning when your 'opponent' is revealed to have way better-trained plants but you win anyway? Boring.

It has always been clear that we are not playing live against another player, because we can pause the contest but the result is always instantly available when time runs out (if it were a live 1v1 the opponent would sometimes pause and so the result could not always appear instantly). Similarly, we can speed up our contest but still get an instant result at the end.

I have always assumed that we are usually playing against the recording of a real player's progress. There is a 'bootstrap' problem with that: there are no previous contests to use at the very start of a new arena level and so EA has to generate some scores to fall back on.

I don't think the name of the opponent is significant: it has been said on these forums that the game generates opponent names i.e. it does not reveal the real name of a human opponent.

Yeah the pause function and speed up as you mention were a tell in the beginning that you are playing against bots and previously played games.  Ones that bother me is they rapidly gain at points where not possible or by percentage of the gain by ending score. Plants impossible at times too that would be effective. Favorite is when close to the end and I am ahead my score seems to stop going up and they overtake me.  Almost always happens when I am about to win the gold in the progress event if it is going to happen.