TW Sandbagging...needs to be regulated..

Replies

  • Gonzolo wrote: »
    You’re also forgetting about alliances who could easily shuffle players around for mutual advantage.

    this
  • Ikky2win wrote: »
    There is a difference between sandbagging and a few people sitting out because of real life or because they don’t like tw. I feel like they need to implement penalties based on your gp and how many people participate.

    I understand a guild only bringing 46/50. That to me is not sandbagging. The guild could be down a few people and have alts in the guild while they try to recruit. They could have a couple people on vacation and a couple people who don’t like TW. Lots of reasons to be done 1-4 people. More than that though and I do think it’s sandbagging. Bringing 40 people instead of 50 just to get an easier opponent should somehow be penalized, like making it so you get one less zeta for a win.

    It was 38...I couldn't agree with you more and needs to be addressed, which is why we wanted to bring this up.
  • kello_511
    1648 posts Member
    The simple solution is to add additional GP tiers above 120.
    If there was a 200 GP tier and a 220 tier for example, there would be less incentive to drop below them.
  • jonnydeathstar
    106 posts Member
    edited May 2019
    The discussion of this 'problem' (which, I'm not sure that it is) should be more about the problems of using GP as a metric to balance players and guilds. GP is fundamentally flawed as it doesn't scale well with the actual power level of the characters.

    Look at Farmboy Luke and Commander Luke. Max GP is 23364 vs 27129. But is Farmboy Luke really worth ~75% 86% of CLS? I don't think so.

    As for the issue of bringing less than your whole guild into a TW - participation has to be optional, simply because carrying people who don't or won't play is 100x worse than playing a top guild who is 'sand bagging' as the OP puts it (although I don't 100% agree with that interpretation, and welcome the better competition at lower levels). 26 players in a mid-level guild who all want to play is a way better gaming experience than 50/50 and 24 ppl just don't show up.

    Edited because I did the actual math in my comparison above
  • kello_511
    1648 posts Member
    The discussion of this 'problem' (which, I'm not sure that it is) should be more about the problems of using GP as a metric to balance players and guilds. GP is fundamentally flawed as it doesn't scale well with the actual power level of the characters.

    Look at Farmboy Luke and Commander Luke. Max GP is 23364 vs 27129. But is Farmboy Luke really worth ~75% 86% of CLS? I don't think so.

    As for the issue of bringing less than your whole guild into a TW - participation has to be optional, simply because carrying people who don't or won't play is 100x worse than playing a top guild who is 'sand bagging' as the OP puts it (although I don't 100% agree with that interpretation, and welcome the better competition at lower levels). 26 players in a mid-level guild who all want to play is a way better gaming experience than 50/50 and 24 ppl just don't show up.

    Edited because I did the actual math in my comparison above

    But are you suggesting that Your guild has 50 maxed farmboy luke’s?

    Or is your example suggesting that your guild has 50 mid-gear farmboy luke’s Inflating your GP while the opposing guild has none?

    Most players have similar roster bloat if they have been around for awhile. And TW has been around long enough that a guild who is playing it competitively has had a chance to reduce the impact of bloat (if you stopped gearing worthless toons 6 months ago and focused on strong pvp toons instead, then an increasingly larger portion of your GP is “usable”).
  • kello_511
    1648 posts Member
    edited May 2019
    Intrapidoo wrote: »
    Would be an easy fix. Punish guilds that leave people out by having to fill defense based on the guild with the higher number of participants. So for example usual opponent of my guild leaves out 8-10 people so we fill on average with 21 teams at 162mil gp and go up against 180-185mil gp guilds.

    We join with 50 members so make them fill defense with 25/territory. That would even out their obvious cheating. OR give some balls to the people in charge because they have none whatsoever, and let the person who actually have the courage to ban entire guilds and not an **** of either 1 of the most popular guilds where gamechangers, beta testers, developers are.

    It would be hard to call this a punishable offense since:

    a) there is nothing saying that they can’t do it
    b) you have no way of knowing why members aren’t joining (despite your strong suspicion)

    That’s why the option of creating additional tiers makes the most sense, so that these guilds don’t have any incentive to drop GP.

    If you are in a 160M guild, do you really care if TI and TI battle it out at 260M for better rewards?

    Probably not - what you want is for the 180M guild to have incentive to stay up there and battle each other for slightly scaled rewards instead right?

    Oh, and the first part of your idea creates the same problem: punishing guilds who are legitimately short on players. Any solution needs to be above board and not require anyone to jump to any conclusions about why players aren’t registering.
  • Rath_Tarr
    4944 posts Member
    edited May 2019
    Ikky2win wrote: »
    I understand a guild only bringing 46/50. That to me is not sandbagging. The guild could be down a few people and have alts in the guild while they try to recruit. They could have a couple people on vacation and a couple people who don’t like TW. Lots of reasons to be done 1-4 people. More than that though and I do think it’s sandbagging. Bringing 40 people instead of 50 just to get an easier opponent should somehow be penalized, like making it so you get one less zeta for a win.
    The issue with setting arbitrary limits for a problem like this is that there isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. We are around 66m GP, active but casual and generally 0-2 players short of full and our TW participation is consistently around 38-42 which I actually consider pretty good given our casual nature. We aren't sandbagging, we just don't require our members to join (though we certainly encourage them to).
  • TVF wrote: »
    We have been doing this since tw started. Ideally you have just over 120M gp then u fight vs guilds that barely have any trayas but still get 3 zeta rewards.

    It's not cheating it's called strategy, sandbagging GP is a valid strategy.

    Wow, it must be great fun to be in your guild and miss out on rewards because of sandbagging, or alternatively win without trying.

    It's fun to clear the board and have the enemy stuck on our front wall yes.

    Also your assuming people are missing out on rewards but no one misses anything they participate in there are ways around this.

    5 or 10 guys can clear a whole guild at the lower end of the top TW tier because defenses in 120 130m guilds are so poor. 10 guys with 10 good 5 man teams clears 100 battles easily. Plus some teams just can't be beat by a lesser guild like a great Revan team. TW favors top heavy guilds with a few whales and the rest just low level farmers. This is known, you guys call it sandbagging.

    It works because the whole other guild can try but if they can't clear the elite teams we win automatically. they get stuck on front lines vs our top teams. usually they won't be able to beat our elite teams since they are 50/50 with much less GP per member and we are 35/50 but our GP from our 35 is equal to their 50. Translation = they don't have super elite teams, we do...they also have more mid level junk teams.

    Sandbagging GP is a valid strategy for GA & TW. get with the program or stop complaining.
  • Intrapidoo wrote: »
    Would be an easy fix. Punish guilds that leave people out by having to fill defense based on the guild with the higher number of participants. So for example usual opponent of my guild leaves out 8-10 people so we fill on average with 21 teams at 162mil gp and go up against 180-185mil gp guilds.

    We join with 50 members so make them fill defense with 25/territory. That would even out their obvious cheating. OR give some balls to the people in charge because they have none whatsoever, and let the person who actually have the courage to ban entire guilds and not an **** of either 1 of the most popular guilds where gamechangers, beta testers, developers are.

    Rather than punish you could find guilds with the same average GP per player. This would force thise to play against similar rosters. Rather than just using overall GP. A guild of 30 with 5mg gp, is still outclassing a guild of 50 at 3mgp.

    So many wauys to fix the problem and yet the players who call out for what is obviously a strategy to exploit the system are the ones getting shafted.
  • @BobcatSkywalker Sounds like a lot of work for a zeta. And do you factor in lost tickets / lost raids or are your two guilds spending so much time coordinating the moves that you leave nothing on the table?

    I'm just amazed you found two entire guilds full of like-minded yet insecure individuals that are more interested in taking the easy path to marginally better rewards than measuring themselves against actual competition.
  • To me, the most obvious way to create the algorithm for matchmaking is to first match the number of players who joined. So, if a guild like some in here who feel the only way to win is to intentionally have members sit out, and they have 35 join, match them with a guild that also had 35 join. This will quickly solve the huge mismatch between average GP.

    35 with average GP of 3.5 million vs 35 with average GP of 3.5 million is a fair match.
    50 with average GP of 2 million vs 35 with an average GP of 3.5 million isn't.
  • Couldn’t there just be an option to deploy who you want to use when you join? Like in TB but if you don’t deploy, it auto deploys your whole roster?
  • FolsomTony wrote: »
    To me, the most obvious way to create the algorithm for matchmaking is to first match the number of players who joined. So, if a guild like some in here who feel the only way to win is to intentionally have members sit out, and they have 35 join, match them with a guild that also had 35 join. This will quickly solve the huge mismatch between average GP.

    35 with average GP of 3.5 million vs 35 with average GP of 3.5 million is a fair match.
    50 with average GP of 2 million vs 35 with an average GP of 3.5 million isn't.

    I get what you’re saying and I agree with you that average GP is a better measure than total, but you should tweak your numbers!

    The second example you give sees 100M total GP v 122.5M total GP, which is obviously unfair!

    If you said 50 with avg GP of 2.45M that’d be better.



  • My guild was just matched with a guild who only signed up 26 players. It was like Anakin slaughtering younglings.
  • I’ve brought this up before but to no avail. The casual players and those that use this tactic don’t want it fixed. That’s the first thing you need to know.

    So with that being said, what they should do is do a 2 step process in order to matchmake fairly. The first check they should do is put all the guilds into a group of those with missing players. So the first filter is all those with 48 players go together, then 47 all together etc. Then they can match by GP.

    See what they do now is go purely by GP. So it allows top players to exploit matches by dropping players facing guilds with weaker geared toons, less Zetas, and likely much worse mods.
  • TVF
    36489 posts Member
    edited May 2019
    See what they do now is go purely by GP.

    False.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • TVF wrote: »
    See what they do now is go purely by GP.

    False.

    So what does it go by then since you know so much?
  • Liath
    5140 posts Member
    TVF wrote: »
    See what they do now is go purely by GP.

    False.

    So what does it go by then since you know so much?

    They have announced before that there are a variety of factors. They aren’t going to tell us all the details of the formula because they don’t want people to use that information to game the system.
  • More granular prize tiers makes the most sense, but would also need to increase the current payouts (since you can't take stuff away from players without an uproar), which I think CG is probably reticent to do at this point.

    If people want to think better of themselves by deliberately manipulating a system for a zeta mat, and omega and a few salvage, that's their prerogative IMHO. They probably have larger RL concerns to contend with.
  • nottenst
    674 posts Member
    Liath wrote: »
    TVF wrote: »
    See what they do now is go purely by GP.

    False.

    So what does it go by then since you know so much?

    They have announced before that there are a variety of factors. They aren’t going to tell us all the details of the formula because they don’t want people to use that information to game the system.

    And it is still not working. They really need to factor the average active GP into the formula in a stronger way than it is now (if it is there at all). Also taking a look at number of Darth Malak, Darth Revan, Darth Traya, Jedi Knight Revan might be useful as well.

    Our current match:
    5 Darth Malak to 1. 32 Traya to 3. 8 Darth Revan to 1. 34 JKR to 21. Does this look like an even matchup?

    It just isn't fun to have absolutely no chance to win a match.
  • TVF
    36489 posts Member
    TVF wrote: »
    See what they do now is go purely by GP.

    False.

    So what does it go by then since you know so much?

    There's a dev thread that gives some parameters. You can find it here if you look for it. It clearly indicates "purely by GP" is false.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • StarSon
    7387 posts Member
    So, this comes up a lot, and there are some things we should keep in mind:
    1. Not all guilds do it on purpose
    2. If a guild is doing it on purpose, they are not necessarily shuffling people, they may just be fine running at 47 or 48/50 all the time
    3. Over 6 months, assuming a 100% win rate (up from about 50%), a guild that forces people to sit out in a rotation will net each of their members an extra 20 zeta mats

    Lots of people still say this doesn't work, or it doesn't do anything, or whatever. But I have been on both sides, and it 100% is a thing and it should be addressed. A month or so ago my guild was matched against a guild with 46 members, and their GP was still higher than our 50 members. GP is clearly a terrible way to find matches.

    There are lots of things they *could* do, but probably what they *should* do is compare the things that matter: number of zetas, number of g12+ characters, number of speed mods (broken out by brackets, a la DSR), and number of current top tier characters. There is currently a widely used Discord bot that will show you these numbers, and it is always very clear who will win and who will lose before the first defense is even set (assuming actual effort from both sides).
  • TVF
    36489 posts Member
    StarSon wrote: »
    There are lots of things they *could* do, but probably what they *should* do is compare the things that matter: number of zetas, number of g12+ characters, number of speed mods (broken out by brackets, a la DSR), and number of current top tier characters. There is currently a widely used Discord bot that will show you these numbers, and it is always very clear who will win and who will lose before the first defense is even set (assuming actual effort from both sides).

    You should read the dev thread.


    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • StarSon
    7387 posts Member
    TVF wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    There are lots of things they *could* do, but probably what they *should* do is compare the things that matter: number of zetas, number of g12+ characters, number of speed mods (broken out by brackets, a la DSR), and number of current top tier characters. There is currently a widely used Discord bot that will show you these numbers, and it is always very clear who will win and who will lose before the first defense is even set (assuming actual effort from both sides).

    You should read the dev thread.


    What dev thread?
  • TVF
    36489 posts Member
    It's in the dev section. It discusses some of the matchmaking parameters they use. It's been a while now and I didn't find it immediately, but you can find it with more looking.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
  • StarSon
    7387 posts Member
    TVF wrote: »
    It's in the dev section. It discusses some of the matchmaking parameters they use. It's been a while now and I didn't find it immediately, but you can find it with more looking.

    https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/162893/dev-post-matchmaking-clarification-post-3-15/p1
    As a primary consideration, matchmaking identifies the strongest characters/ships expected to be used by each participant in the Territory War and assigns a value to each roster. Then it looks for the single strongest squads and compares them to each other. Matchmaking then aggregates these criteria for the guild and finds the opponent that is most similar.

    I've (re)read it. What does it have to do with what I suggested? It is not what they state they are doing.
  • TVF
    36489 posts Member
    "Strongest characters/ships" and "Single strongest squads" sure sounds a lot like what you're asking for. They just don't go into details because, as was said earlier, they don't want people exploiting the system.
    I need a new message here. https://discord.gg/AmStGTH
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