Q&A: Sandbagging Response

Replies

  • What player would want to degrade themselves by staying in a guild that treats you like trash by asking you not to join TW?

    To such guilds, you're basically cattle for raid tickets, nothing more. I rather be in a guild that provides me with lesser rewards and keep me engaged than one that belittles you. This is a game, not a chore / work. If you don't treat this like a game, why else do it at all?

    PS. Yes, Youtubers can treat this like work, by all means, but in order to create engaging content, they gotta love what they do in the first place or that vibe will just not work.
  • TheJEFFtm wrote: »
    Obi1_son wrote: »
    Nikoms565 wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    Sandbagging is not losing to a stronger opponent. Sandbagging is an intentional act to try and force a favorable match.

    What you are talking about is an issue with matchmaking that should be addressed.

    What he was asking for is information to look at a guild to see if they did this intentionally.

    These are 2 different things.

    Disagree here. His response clearly indicates he doesn't think intentionally sandbagging is possible. We know that it is. And we know that it's not always intentional.

    Just to be clear - by definition, there is no such thing as "unintentional sandbagging". If it's unintentional (i.e. players are busy IRL so choose not to sign up, people forgot to sign up, people have left the guild, etc.) that's not sandbagging.

    I only make that differentiation because I think guilds are shorthanded unintentionally much more often than they are sandbagging. Think about it. If you were in a 200+ million GP guild and you were asked/forced to sit out of TW and not got any rewards, how long would you stay in that guild?

    Bingo!!!!

    But it does happen, and it makes sense.
    (Assume a perfect world here, where you are in a uniform guild of 50 players at 5M GP each for 250M GP)

    You sit out 10 players in rotation every TW for 200M active GP and 20 defensive slots.

    You get matched against a guild with 200M active GP (if they are a full 50, that means they have an average GP of only 4M - you can bring roster bloat into it all you want, but by the time you are hitting 5M GP, your roster bloat isn’t going to be much more than 500K), leaving you at least another 500k (or the equivalent of 4 fully relic 7 teams to 5 g12+ teams or some combination there of) PER PLAYER of high end teams.

    Your team is the one setting the ‘pace’, as the number of available slots is based on your guild only having to set and defeat the ‘normal’ 4 squads and 1 fleet per player (but each player has 500K or better worth of quality toons to do so with). This makes it extremely more likely that you (as a guild) are going to get high efficiency first round wins, and lowers the opposing guilds chance to do so - it doesn’t matter if the other guild has ‘more meta’ teams if they are overall weaker from squad to squad and don’t get to bring them all to bear because of the size of the battlefield.

    But why do this?
    Sitting out 10 players means you still get to participate in 8 out 10 TW.
    (And this does presume a 100% Win rate here, but really, the worst case scenario is that you draw another sandbagging guild - which the math is against, because there are a whole lot more 200M guilds than 250M guilds - so you have to play a mirror match, it seems a pretty fair gamble)

    Winning 5 out of 10 at near equivalent GP and you take home 15 Zeta Mats and 20 Omegas.
    Winning 10 of 10 TW’s (that any given player participates in 8 of 10 of) and you take home 24 zeta mats and 32 Omegas in the same time frame.

    Fake news. No guild purposely sits out 10 players each tw. No one wants to just forfeit rewards like that.

  • TheJEFFtm wrote: »
    Obi1_son wrote: »
    Nikoms565 wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Kyno wrote: »
    Sandbagging is not losing to a stronger opponent. Sandbagging is an intentional act to try and force a favorable match.

    What you are talking about is an issue with matchmaking that should be addressed.

    What he was asking for is information to look at a guild to see if they did this intentionally.

    These are 2 different things.

    Disagree here. His response clearly indicates he doesn't think intentionally sandbagging is possible. We know that it is. And we know that it's not always intentional.

    Just to be clear - by definition, there is no such thing as "unintentional sandbagging". If it's unintentional (i.e. players are busy IRL so choose not to sign up, people forgot to sign up, people have left the guild, etc.) that's not sandbagging.

    I only make that differentiation because I think guilds are shorthanded unintentionally much more often than they are sandbagging. Think about it. If you were in a 200+ million GP guild and you were asked/forced to sit out of TW and not got any rewards, how long would you stay in that guild?

    Bingo!!!!



    Winning 5 out of 10 at near equivalent GP and you take home 15 Zeta Mats and 20 Omegas.

    Winning 10 of 10 TW’s (that any given player participates in 8 of 10 of) and you take home 24 zeta mats and 32 Omegas in the same time frame.

    You forgot winning 10 our of 10 with everyone signed up where you take home 30 zetas and 40 omegas which is the best of all.

    This argument that people are cheating / sandbagging to get 8 wins out of 10 because it's better than 5 of 10 is based on a fallacy where those arguing the point conveniently leave out the optimal and most common situation which is where everyone participates and every gets rewards for a win.... this most common scenario JUST HAPPENS TO BE BETTER REWARDS THAN THE METHOD PEOPLE ARE ACCUSING OTHERS OF TRYING TO CHEAT BY SANDBAGGING TO REACH.

    I want 30 zetas and 40 omegas for 10 wars and if I lose a war I will accept getting less... i will not volunteer to get less just because someone thinks (without proof) it makes things easier for those registered.
    anyone tries to force me to sit out so that others can get a win will need a new guild before their rewards arrive.

    That said... tw is optional and we normally have anywhere from 30 to 40 sign up in our 50 man 200m gp plus guild and we usually win.

    Sometimes people have a life and cant play they should sit out if they cant play.

    The alternative is counting gp for people not registered for the war which is 10x worse that the current matchmaking system (registered gp only) and will lead to huge blowouts and people being kicked from guilds to not count the gp when tw starts.
  • @BobcatSkywalker @Obi1_son

    Sorry guys, I edited my original post and just reposted seeing you have quoted it - it was only partially written when I put it up (I fumble thumbed the post button when 110 pounds of Rotty decide to play lap dog).
    Not discounting your points (in fact I agree that nobody intentionally sits out 10, and I also think that far and away the larger percentage of accused sandbagging is really just people living their lives and not joining every game mode every time), just making you aware that you were replying to an ‘unfinished thought’. Thanks
  • Krashxxxx
    226 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    In a post long ago there was some info about match making that was posted. It stated that TW match making was based #1 on the active GP, #2 the roster/GP of the strongest active guild member. After that it was pretty open to "best match available". The truth is , most guilds are bad at placing defences or coordinating attacks or both. GP is a factor but in a more or less even match, better strategy will win 99% of the time.
    On a few rare occasions you will meet a guild that is both stronger and more organized than yours. In those cases, you will lose. But if you are well organized and understand basic strategy you will win more wars than you lose, because most people simply don't know what they are doing. My guild beats stronger guilds regularly because we work together to follow a simple strategy that has worked for more than 2 years.
  • JDK82
    151 posts Member
    I think the "real" - so to say intentional sandbagging happens mostly in 200+ mil guilds.

    Because you cant tell me that in such guilds, there will be 10 players who have a busy rl life and forget to sign up for tw or extra missing it because they dont have time. Lol mostly in such guilds you find players who log in the game multiple times a day regardless of their rl schedule.

    Those sandbagging guilds do a rotation.
    Mostly leaving out around 8 players.
    Now its simple math:
    You miss one tw = missing 2 zetas.
    Than you play and win 6 tws = gaining 18 zetas
    If the same guild would play each of those tws with full members and would loose each one it's just 14 zetas.
    Even if they win 3 (9 zetas) and loose 4 (8 zetas) they just net 1 more, but would have a worth record as an guild and those 3 wins are no guarantee.

    I think those guilds go for, sure wins, easy wins, less stress in planning and fighting (besides planning the rotation from the members who sit out).

    That being said I cant anyway understand why there are guilds who sandbag.
    In my guild we enjoy planning, fighting and taking on tougher opponents or sandbaggers. There is no more pleasure in this game than beating such guilds.
    Also we win 8-9tws out of 10 with no sandbagging and this nets us, looking at the math above, way more zetas than doing any rotation and leaving out players.

    I might want to add an general opinion from me:

    Matchmaking (at least in guilds above 200mil) should be determined upon overall guild gp and not logged in gp.
    The statement that some players have busy llfes and cant play tw doesn't work for me and guilds can work around that.
    In my guild we do have an away zone where such players (1 or 2 each tw) can set their strong teams on defence, allowing other players who have more time to keep more squads for attacking.
    So it's just an question how you organise yourself in the guild...

    Punishing organised and tw focused guilds with allowing possible sandbagging, if now intentional or out of other reasons, shouldn't be rewarded or make tws more difficult for guilds who play them with full members...
  • JDK82
    151 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    I would like to give one example where we faced a much stronger guild and had to play 21 territories (meaning they played with 42 and we missed 2 players (just had 49 in the guild and 1 didnt join)

    qn5x0uwp7m8p.jpg

    The outcome:

    keq25y82acj3.jpg

    In probably 4 out of 5 tws we would have lost this one, because we got heavily outmatched and then the even the best strategy would in the best case get you close in score and that's it.

    Another option of making sandbagging less attractive would be to keep the 25 squads/territory mandatory regardless of how many join.


  • https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/182579/territory-war-matchmaker#latest

    Have a scroll through this. On the last page I found an example of 48 vs 35 or 36. I looked for about 5 seconds.

    That should be enough proof for you, but go ahead and comb the whole of it for more if you really need it.

    It took you 5 seconds to look through 13 pages? Can you see how I might think you are exaggerating just a touch here?
    But you're right, I'm not going to look through the whole thing. I still don't see anything convincing in there. Mostly people claiming unfair matchups because they ran a bot. But the bot only compares total guild stats, it doesn't know now many players are registered for the TW. That's a big discrepancy.

    I assume this is your big "smoking gun" post you are referring to: https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/comment/1882433#Comment_1882433
    Player claims that their guild had 43 players join but could only field 18 squads per territory. That means the opposing guild Chisinau had between 36-37 players registered out of a total of 49 possible. The difference in registered players was 6-7. I will say that's a larger difference than I expected to see.
    Let's assume the TW registered GP was equal (somewhere in the 90-99.9M bracket, let's assume 95M). Let's assume these players have 30% unusable GP in their rosters due to low-level characters, but the remainder is concentrated in 100k GP squads of 5. Finally, let's assume all players in both guilds contribute equally to the squad needs of the guild on both defense and offense. What can we conclude?
    • Each guild must field 180 squads on defense, and must defeat 180 squads on offense, for 360 total squads.
    • Player guild had an average of (70%*95M/43=) 1.5M usable GP per player registered in the TW.
    • Each participant in player guild could field 15 viable fighting squads of 100k each.
    • Each participant in player guild must field 8-9 squads total (360/43=8.4).
    • Each participant in player guild has at least 6 extra squads for cleanup duties, if necessary, for a total of 258 extras.
    • Between 12 to 13 players in Chisinau did not register for the TW.
    • Chinisau has an average of (70%*95M/36=) 1.8M GP per player registered in the TW.
    • Each participant in Chinisau could field 18 viable fighting squads of 100k each.
    • Each participant in Chinisau must field 10 squads total (360/36=10).
    • Each participant in Chinisau has at least 8 extra squads for cleanup duties, if necessary, for a total of 288 extras.
    Okay, so both guilds should be able to meet the fielding requirements and should have plenty of backup power for cleanup. Chinisau has a more squads available for cleanup. Does this even matter?
    Obviously this is a simplified scenario. How much of a player's roster is actually "usable" in TW anyway? Depends on the squads the opposition puts on defense, really. Not all viable squads are 100k GP, and not all 100k GP squads are viable. And what about mods? On and on.
    Geez, enough with the word soup.

    So here you go: you are right. Yeah, that example appears to identify a situation where one guild had at most 7 fewer players signed up for TW. That this is intentional or somehow inherently unfair is not clear at all. I wonder how large the registered player difference can be and still get matched by the algorithm. Is it a 100% match on GP? It's possible; they won't tell us.

    The reality is that "fair" matchmaking has many complicated dimensions and they are always changing as the game evolves. I've written about this before. I pointed it out here, in this forum, during TW beta testing that raw GP matching was insufficient for matchmaking. Devs acknowledged the point and said there was more to it, but is there really? I don't know. Trying to capture this elusive concept of "fair" in an algorithm may not be worth the effort, in the end there will always be someone claiming it was unfair because the other guy was better. That's life, accept it, this is just a game.

    Enough yammering on about this. You are right, the number of registered players in each guild can differ by more than 1 or 2. Maybe as many as 7!
    @EventineElessedil - my goodness you were on a roll last night.

    No, I was not claiming it took me 5 seconds to go through 13 pages. I said I found evidence of what you have been denying is possible in 5 seconds, solely looking at the 13th page.

    Specifically, I mean this post and follow up:
    kem5wwd4zzz1.png

    So that’s 46 signed up facing 35 or 36. A difference of at least 10.

    I’ll await your skewed interpretation of this and pithy remarks, because it looks unlikely you’ll apologise and admit you were wrong.
  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    TheRHOMBUS wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Obi1_son wrote: »
    sorry for my lack of knowledge, but can someone briefly explain how sandbagging works? It seems likes it’s not possible for it to give you an advantage, but I would assume I just don’t know how it works.

    To me it just seems that the matchmaking system just does a not-so-great job at taking into account the varying rosters across the board.

    A group of 40 players, with 5.5M GP (mostly relic'd) takes on a guild of 50 players, mostly 4.4M (barely relic'd), both are 220M guilds...
    Who do you think wins easily?

    My money would be on the guild with 50 players

    Chances are they will have more meta toons/teams

    Well, then you would be wrong. Because the guild with 40 players has 40 of each meta team with all the appropriate zetas and most at g13. The guild with 50 will have maybe 30-35 of most of the meta teams, without all the zetas, and with worse gear levels.

    Why doesn’t the guild with 50 have 40+?

    The guild with 50 participants has an average GP of 80% of the average GP of their 40 competitors. Less developed rosters often (not always) have fewer geared META teams/characters. But yes, at 4.4 million in theory you could have each and every META team g12+.

  • @EventineElessedil Everything you've said in this thread was just plain wrong. It's possible to have a difference of even more than 10 players between matched-up guilds. My guild has been on both sides of this multiple times. It's a lot more common than you think. There were times when we had like 49 people sign up and faced guilds of 38-39; and times where we had 35-37 signed up and faced guilds of 49-50 registered players (that was a pretty long time ago but the enemy guild sent us screenshots of this because we were curious and asked). MM simply goes by reigstered GP so the difference in registered players could potentially be even greater. Just because you have not experienced/seen something before, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.
  • You only talk about the question of the number of players active in a TW but a sandbagging guild could be the result of the sandbagging of each player.

    Remember how players sandbagged GA by only developping 80 to 100 toons.
    The new GAC matchmaking has stopped that but the TW matchmaking is still using full roster GP. so if all members were GA sandbaggers, you just have no chance against them.

    Hopefully i didnt meet such an optimized guild but basically if you just compare the average GP of TOP 80 roster of each member of two guild, you will know the winner of the TW.
  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    @Kazeb

    I don't agree, that optimizing your roster to perform better is sandbagging, and it's certainly not the type of sandbagging, that CG_Cyanides addresses.
  • leef
    13458 posts Member
    I wish people would just stop arguing about unintentional and intentional sandbagging, the end result is the same regardless. The sollution (fixing matchmaking) is also the same for intentional ánd unintentional sandbagging.
    As for the dev inquiring about sandbagging, they're the ones with all the data. Just check all the matches between guilds that have a 3 or more player difference in participation and check if the guild with less players signed up wins more often. Should be easy enough, they could even check different GP regions and/or participant differences, check the w/l ratio of guilds with full participation etc. etc. to see if there's anything there.
    Speaking for my guild only, our w/l ratio with full participation is lower than our w/l ratio without full participation. This could be a coincidence ofcourse.
    Even if guilds with a lower number of participants win more often it doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with matchmaking. It could also be caused by something simple like guilds that sign up with less players have less players that actually don't participate eventhough they did sign up which would hurt the chances of their guild winning.
    I'm no data analyst, but i'm sure someone who gets paid to do that job can figure it out.
    Save water, drink champagne!
  • StarSon
    7411 posts Member
    TheRHOMBUS wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Obi1_son wrote: »
    sorry for my lack of knowledge, but can someone briefly explain how sandbagging works? It seems likes it’s not possible for it to give you an advantage, but I would assume I just don’t know how it works.

    To me it just seems that the matchmaking system just does a not-so-great job at taking into account the varying rosters across the board.

    A group of 40 players, with 5.5M GP (mostly relic'd) takes on a guild of 50 players, mostly 4.4M (barely relic'd), both are 220M guilds...
    Who do you think wins easily?

    My money would be on the guild with 50 players

    Chances are they will have more meta toons/teams

    Well, then you would be wrong. Because the guild with 40 players has 40 of each meta team with all the appropriate zetas and most at g13. The guild with 50 will have maybe 30-35 of most of the meta teams, without all the zetas, and with worse gear levels.

    Why doesn’t the guild with 50 have 40+?

    Because it doesn't fit his narrative.

    He has to assume the group with 40 has all 40 g13 and the group with 50 have only 30 g13 meta teams.

    In reality either group can have 20, 30, 40, or 50 g13 meta teams and the difference in gp can be completely on the bottom ends of the rosters or even in ships.

    The only thing we do know for sure is both guilds have roughly the same active gp

    It's got nothing to do with "my narrative." Sure, they might have that many, but in my experience they don't.

    Here are two examples (one from August and one from September). In the first one, we got sandbagged and lost, in the second we sandbagged and won.

    Also, this first one, the character numbers were close enough to not matter, so I didn't include them in the screenshot.
    oryswbyhc582.png

    This one the Revans and Malaks were a big difference, so I included those. The rest of the characters DSR tracks were not significantly different.
    cjr2ocb9l3vc.png

    And these are just two examples from a single guild's matches. For us, anecdotally, 95% of our matches are sandbagged in one direction or the other. I can provide many more matchup screenshots if you want.
  • leef wrote: »
    I wish people would just stop arguing about unintentional and intentional sandbagging, the end result is the same regardless. The sollution (fixing matchmaking) is also the same for intentional ánd unintentional sandbagging.
    As for the dev inquiring about sandbagging, they're the ones with all the data. Just check all the matches between guilds that have a 3 or more player difference in participation and check if the guild with less players signed up wins more often. Should be easy enough, they could even check different GP regions and/or participant differences, check the w/l ratio of guilds with full participation etc. etc. to see if there's anything there.
    Speaking for my guild only, our w/l ratio with full participation is lower than our w/l ratio without full participation. This could be a coincidence ofcourse.
    Even if guilds with a lower number of participants win more often it doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with matchmaking. It could also be caused by something simple like guilds that sign up with less players have less players that actually don't participate eventhough they did sign up which would hurt the chances of their guild winning.
    I'm no data analyst, but i'm sure someone who gets paid to do that job can figure it out.

    The only reason I make the distinction is that the solution (better matchmaking) needs to be fair and not "punitive" against the smaller guild or guild with less participants than normal. In other words, it shouldn't "presume" sandbagging.

    But I do agree - better matchmaking is the goal and the solution to addresses either "variant" of sandbagging.
    In game name: Lucas Gregory FORMER PLAYER - - - -"Whale blah grump poooop." - Ouchie

    In game guild: TNR Uprising
    I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
    *This space left intentionally blank*
  • Waqui
    8802 posts Member
    Nikoms565 wrote: »
    leef wrote: »
    I wish people would just stop arguing about unintentional and intentional sandbagging, the end result is the same regardless. The sollution (fixing matchmaking) is also the same for intentional ánd unintentional sandbagging.
    As for the dev inquiring about sandbagging, they're the ones with all the data. Just check all the matches between guilds that have a 3 or more player difference in participation and check if the guild with less players signed up wins more often. Should be easy enough, they could even check different GP regions and/or participant differences, check the w/l ratio of guilds with full participation etc. etc. to see if there's anything there.
    Speaking for my guild only, our w/l ratio with full participation is lower than our w/l ratio without full participation. This could be a coincidence ofcourse.
    Even if guilds with a lower number of participants win more often it doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with matchmaking. It could also be caused by something simple like guilds that sign up with less players have less players that actually don't participate eventhough they did sign up which would hurt the chances of their guild winning.
    I'm no data analyst, but i'm sure someone who gets paid to do that job can figure it out.

    The only reason I make the distinction is that the solution (better matchmaking) needs to be fair and not "punitive" against the smaller guild or guild with less participants than normal. In other words, it shouldn't "presume" sandbagging.

    The solution will not be punitive to anyone, if all matches are even (50/50 chance to win when considering the active rosters) disregarding how many players enter on either side.

  • maraexibil
    197 posts Member
    edited December 2019

    It's got nothing to do with "my narrative." Sure, they might have that many, but in in my experience they don't.

    Here are two examples (one from August and one from September). In the first one, we got sandbagged and lost, in the second we sandbagged and won.

    Your guild asks its weakest members to sit out on a TW and miss rewards because the leadership expects to be matched with a fluffier guild? What if the gambit doesn't pay off and you get matched with an equally lean guild?

    Even if 10 member disparities exist in TW MM, they should occur much more infrequently than 0-4 member disparities. Rare enough that it would be quite foolish to bet on it every TW.

    If a guild is organized enough to run such a complicated and risky rotation scheme, one would think they'd be organized enough to win without asking players to sit out on a TW.

    1) Guilds with leadership that require players to sit out on TWs on rotation are nonexistent or rare.
    2) Even if they do, it does not violate existing rules.
    3) Even if you classify that as cheating (I don't think it is), the only way to prove it happened is by accessing private internal communication of the accused guilds.
    4) If you lose to a leaner guild on TW, it is more likely that you were bested by your opponent than them running an elaborate rotation scheme.

    I think the devs can always improve on MM algorithms, but they also shouldn't waste effort chasing phantom menaces.
    Post edited by maraexibil on
  • Waqui wrote: »
    Nikoms565 wrote: »
    leef wrote: »
    I wish people would just stop arguing about unintentional and intentional sandbagging, the end result is the same regardless. The sollution (fixing matchmaking) is also the same for intentional ánd unintentional sandbagging.
    As for the dev inquiring about sandbagging, they're the ones with all the data. Just check all the matches between guilds that have a 3 or more player difference in participation and check if the guild with less players signed up wins more often. Should be easy enough, they could even check different GP regions and/or participant differences, check the w/l ratio of guilds with full participation etc. etc. to see if there's anything there.
    Speaking for my guild only, our w/l ratio with full participation is lower than our w/l ratio without full participation. This could be a coincidence ofcourse.
    Even if guilds with a lower number of participants win more often it doesn't necessarily mean there's a problem with matchmaking. It could also be caused by something simple like guilds that sign up with less players have less players that actually don't participate eventhough they did sign up which would hurt the chances of their guild winning.
    I'm no data analyst, but i'm sure someone who gets paid to do that job can figure it out.

    The only reason I make the distinction is that the solution (better matchmaking) needs to be fair and not "punitive" against the smaller guild or guild with less participants than normal. In other words, it shouldn't "presume" sandbagging.

    The solution will not be punitive to anyone, if all matches are even (50/50 chance to win when considering the active rosters) disregarding how many players enter on either side.

    100% agree that that should be the goal. Of course, the devil is in the details. As with all matchmaking, finding an algorithm that actually makes even matchups is the issue
    In game name: Lucas Gregory FORMER PLAYER - - - -"Whale blah grump poooop." - Ouchie

    In game guild: TNR Uprising
    I beat the REAL T7 Yoda (not the nerfed one) and did so before mods were there to help
    *This space left intentionally blank*
  • StarSon
    7411 posts Member
    maraexibil wrote: »

    It's got nothing to do with "my narrative." Sure, they might have that many, but in

    Here are two examples (one from August and one from September). In the first one, we got sandbagged and lost, in the second we sandbagged and won.

    Your guild asks its weakest members to sit out on a TW and miss rewards because the leadership expects to be matched with a fluffier guild? What if the gambit doesn't pay off and you get matched with an equally lean guild?

    Even if 10 member disparities exist in TW MM, they should occur much more infrequently than 0-4 member disparities. Rare enough that it would be quite foolish to bet on it every TW.

    If a guild is organized enough to run such a complicated and risky rotation scheme, one would think they'd be organized enough to win without asking players to sit out on a TW.

    I think the devs can always improve on MM algorithms, but they also shouldn't waste effort chasing phantom menaces.

    No. If you see my above comments, I do not differentiate between forcing people to sit out and people just not joining.

    We ask only that if you join, you set your assigned defense and participate on offense. Because we know going in light will benefit us, we do not try very hard to get everyone to sign up.
  • StarSon wrote: »
    maraexibil wrote: »

    It's got nothing to do with "my narrative." Sure, they might have that many, but in

    Here are two examples (one from August and one from September). In the first one, we got sandbagged and lost, in the second we sandbagged and won.

    Your guild asks its weakest members to sit out on a TW and miss rewards because the leadership expects to be matched with a fluffier guild? What if the gambit doesn't pay off and you get matched with an equally lean guild?

    Even if 10 member disparities exist in TW MM, they should occur much more infrequently than 0-4 member disparities. Rare enough that it would be quite foolish to bet on it every TW.

    If a guild is organized enough to run such a complicated and risky rotation scheme, one would think they'd be organized enough to win without asking players to sit out on a TW.

    I think the devs can always improve on MM algorithms, but they also shouldn't waste effort chasing phantom menaces.

    No. If you see my above comments, I do not differentiate between forcing people to sit out and people just not joining.

    We ask only that if you join, you set your assigned defense and participate on offense. Because we know going in light will benefit us, we do not try very hard to get everyone to sign up.

    Then it's NOT sandbagging. Many of us have responsibilities in real life and can not participate during the attack and defense phase.

    If you call missing a TW "sandbagging", then every guild with signups less than the total number of members is "sandbagging." That's nearly every casual, semi-casual, active guild out there.

    I don't remember if my guild ever had a 100% signup for TW.
  • StarSon
    7411 posts Member
    maraexibil wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    maraexibil wrote: »

    It's got nothing to do with "my narrative." Sure, they might have that many, but in

    Here are two examples (one from August and one from September). In the first one, we got sandbagged and lost, in the second we sandbagged and won.

    Your guild asks its weakest members to sit out on a TW and miss rewards because the leadership expects to be matched with a fluffier guild? What if the gambit doesn't pay off and you get matched with an equally lean guild?

    Even if 10 member disparities exist in TW MM, they should occur much more infrequently than 0-4 member disparities. Rare enough that it would be quite foolish to bet on it every TW.

    If a guild is organized enough to run such a complicated and risky rotation scheme, one would think they'd be organized enough to win without asking players to sit out on a TW.

    I think the devs can always improve on MM algorithms, but they also shouldn't waste effort chasing phantom menaces.

    No. If you see my above comments, I do not differentiate between forcing people to sit out and people just not joining.

    We ask only that if you join, you set your assigned defense and participate on offense. Because we know going in light will benefit us, we do not try very hard to get everyone to sign up.

    Then it's NOT sandbagging. Many of us have responsibilities in real life and can not participate during the attack and defense phase.

    If you call missing a TW "sandbagging", then every guild with signups less than the total number of members is "sandbagging." That's nearly every casual, semi-casual, active guild out there.

    I don't remember if my guild ever had a 100% signup for TW.

    Whether you do it on purpose or not, the end result is the same. This is why I use the term regardless. Not sure why everyone gets so hung up on the terminology, when the issue is not whether a guild does it on purpose, but that the system works that way to begin with.
  • BobcatSkywalker
    2194 posts Member
    edited December 2019
    StarSon wrote: »
    TheRHOMBUS wrote: »
    StarSon wrote: »
    Obi1_son wrote: »
    sorry for my lack of knowledge, but can someone briefly explain how sandbagging works? It seems likes it’s not possible for it to give you an advantage, but I would assume I just don’t know how it works.

    To me it just seems that the matchmaking system just does a not-so-great job at taking into account the varying rosters across the board.

    A group of 40 players, with 5.5M GP (mostly relic'd) takes on a guild of 50 players, mostly 4.4M (barely relic'd), both are 220M guilds...
    Who do you think wins easily?

    My money would be on the guild with 50 players

    Chances are they will have more meta toons/teams

    Well, then you would be wrong. Because the guild with 40 players has 40 of each meta team with all the appropriate zetas and most at g13. The guild with 50 will have maybe 30-35 of most of the meta teams, without all the zetas, and with worse gear levels.

    Why doesn’t the guild with 50 have 40+?

    Because it doesn't fit his narrative.

    He has to assume the group with 40 has all 40 g13 and the group with 50 have only 30 g13 meta teams.

    In reality either group can have 20, 30, 40, or 50 g13 meta teams and the difference in gp can be completely on the bottom ends of the rosters or even in ships.

    The only thing we do know for sure is both guilds have roughly the same active gp

    It's got nothing to do with "my narrative." Sure, they might have that many, but in my experience they don't.

    Here are two examples (one from August and one from September). In the first one, we got sandbagged and lost, in the second we sandbagged and won.

    Also, this first one, the character numbers were close enough to not matter, so I didn't include them in the screenshot.
    oryswbyhc582.png

    This one the Revans and Malaks were a big difference, so I included those. The rest of the characters DSR tracks were not significantly different.
    cjr2ocb9l3vc.png

    And these are just two examples from a single guild's matches. For us, anecdotally, 95% of our matches are sandbagged in one direction or the other. I can provide many more matchup screenshots if you want.

    You can provide all the screen shots you want they won't prove anything other than your using a discord bot.

    44 vs 48 revans as evidence of sandbagging? Lol that's just ridiculous

    @JDK82 for your pic...

    Seriously your evidence if sandbagging was where both guilds full cleared and the difference in score was just 50 points between the two guilds that less than 0.01% of the total score. 18880 vs 18833

    So let's try describing that scenario with and without the word sandbagging to see how this works.

    A ) the match was extremely close and could have gone either way but one guild narrowly won a hard fought and fun matchup.

    B ) one guild sandbagged to beat another guild.

    B can be applied as an excuse for a win or loss in every war based on your use of it.

    If the devs can make matchmaking between guilds so close it comes down to less than 50 points I think that matchmaking is very good regardless of if you use the word sandbag or not.

    That's a fact. ^^^^^^ indisputable.

    All this sandbagged rhetoric is ridiculous we have like 35 sign up for tw in a 200m plus gp guild if we had to fight other 200m plus gp guilds with 50/50 players we would get crushed every war because we would be down by 15 players and like 50 to 80 million gp. That's not making better matches it's making matchmaking way more imbalanced and if you cant see it then I'm sorry.

    Were a day 1 guild half the guild gets 600 and that's it... ya some people have 4.8m gp but they are bored and dont have time to play tw.

    Plus all 5his cheating or sandbagging for what zetas lol wow. I find it amusing that so many people think so many other guilds actually go through the trouble to sit players out intentionally just to sandbag to get 1 or 2 extra zeta parts over a 2 and a half month period. If you even make this argument it shows a low level understanding for the game zetas dont even matter. I have 400 plus zeta parts and counting. I purposely dont use them because it makes GAC much harder. Any semicompetitive player that's knowledgable knows that zetas were once important but now they are just adding "fluff stats" to your roster that most day 1 account dont need anymore. My point is cheaters aren't going to cheat by getting favorable matchups just to get zeta rewards they dont need and that will make their future matchups less favorable to them. This is just counterintuitive.

    I have almost 200k in zeta currency I can buy 100 more from the shop at anytime but why I have 400 in inventory ready to go with no one to put them on. Theres no reason to go through all the effort to sandbag forcing people to sit out so the guild can average 1 or 2 extra zeta parts every few MONTHS.
  • @EventineElessedil Everything you've said in this thread was just plain wrong. It's possible to have a difference of even more than 10 players between matched-up guilds. My guild has been on both sides of this multiple times. It's a lot more common than you think. There were times when we had like 49 people sign up and faced guilds of 38-39; and times where we had 35-37 signed up and faced guilds of 49-50 registered players (that was a pretty long time ago but the enemy guild sent us screenshots of this because we were curious and asked). MM simply goes by reigstered GP so the difference in registered players could potentially be even greater. Just because you have not experienced/seen something before, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

    Everything? Shirley you jest.
  • I think the question was perhaps not phrased as well as it could be, as it does imply intention to the mismatches.

    The following might have been more effective:
    "The community has noticed that TW matches with a large delta in active guild members are very noncompetitive and have only grown more so as GP scales while the map size remains static.

    With only n*5 spots available on defense (where n is the smaller guild size), a 40-person guild that has an average GP of 5 million has a massive advantage over a 50-person guild with an average GP of 4 million, as their top 160 squads and 40 fleets will be significantly more developed.

    Has any thought been put into either a) limiting match-ups to guilds with near-identical active players or b) expanding the map size so that n is the size of the larger guild (or larger)?"
  • BeralCator wrote: »
    I think the question was perhaps not phrased as well as it could be, as it does imply intention to the mismatches.

    The following might have been more effective:
    "The community has noticed that TW matches with a large delta in active guild members are very noncompetitive and have only grown more so as GP scales while the map size remains static.

    With only n*5 spots available on defense (where n is the smaller guild size), a 40-person guild that has an average GP of 5 million has a massive advantage over a 50-person guild with an average GP of 4 million, as their top 160 squads and 40 fleets will be significantly more developed.

    Has any thought been put into either a) limiting match-ups to guilds with near-identical active players or b) expanding the map size so that n is the size of the larger guild (or larger)?"

    The guild with 50 can have 50 meta malaak, 50trayas, 50 of everything,
    Guild with 40 has only 40 meta malaak, 40 trayas, 40 of everything.

    There are advantages to both sides
  • BeralCator wrote: »
    I think the question was perhaps not phrased as well as it could be, as it does imply intention to the mismatches.

    The following might have been more effective:
    "The community has noticed that TW matches with a large delta in active guild members are very noncompetitive and have only grown more so as GP scales while the map size remains static.

    With only n*5 spots available on defense (where n is the smaller guild size), a 40-person guild that has an average GP of 5 million has a massive advantage over a 50-person guild with an average GP of 4 million, as their top 160 squads and 40 fleets will be significantly more developed.

    Has any thought been put into either a) limiting match-ups to guilds with near-identical active players or b) expanding the map size so that n is the size of the larger guild (or larger)?"

    The guild with 50 can have 50 meta malaak, 50trayas, 50 of everything,
    Guild with 40 has only 40 meta malaak, 40 trayas, 40 of everything.

    There are advantages to both sides

    With the regards to the Q&A, I don’t think it matters whether it’s always an advantage or not. I don’t think it matters if it’s intentional or not. My concern is that despite numerous complaints and discussions on the topic across various outlets since TW was implemented they seem to have no clue about what’s even going on.

    If they had said they understand the potential advantage but don’t have an alternative they like better or don’t see it as a priority to work on or something like that I wouldn’t have cared. But not even understanding how an advantage could possibly be created is very concerning to me. It’s just another example of where CG seems to relate more to the casual players and doesn’t seem to understand what goes on with the more dedicated player base.
  • BeralCator wrote: »
    I think the question was perhaps not phrased as well as it could be, as it does imply intention to the mismatches.

    The following might have been more effective:
    "The community has noticed that TW matches with a large delta in active guild members are very noncompetitive and have only grown more so as GP scales while the map size remains static.

    With only n*5 spots available on defense (where n is the smaller guild size), a 40-person guild that has an average GP of 5 million has a massive advantage over a 50-person guild with an average GP of 4 million, as their top 160 squads and 40 fleets will be significantly more developed.

    Has any thought been put into either a) limiting match-ups to guilds with near-identical active players or b) expanding the map size so that n is the size of the larger guild (or larger)?"

    The guild with 50 can have 50 meta malaak, 50trayas, 50 of everything,
    Guild with 40 has only 40 meta malaak, 40 trayas, 40 of everything.

    There are advantages to both sides

    For the GP to match, the guild with 40 players will have 40 Relic 7 Malaks while the guild with 50 players will have 50 G12+3 Malaks, etc.

    In a game mode where winning on the first attempt grants additional points, there is no advantage to having more teams that are all slightly worse unless the map is so large that full clears aren't certain. Currently the map is so small that both sides inevitably get full clears, but the smaller guild gets more points because their teams are so much better.

    When TW started we had significantly less characters and ships than we do now. We used to stock the back rows with trash like Rogue One and Maul as we didn't have enough teams available for both offense and defense. Currently, the worst teams we are putting on defense are Relic KRUs or insanely fast Jango/Bossks, often with Nest or Wat Tambor.

    If you think 40v50 match-ups are a good idea (which I personally don't agree with), the map needs to be a lot bigger so that the 50-person team can actually make use of their extra squads in an attempt to offset the 40-person team's better squads.

  • Food for thought, but the map for GAC involves nearly 2x the teams per person as TW. If TW had twice as many spots on defense as it currently does, I can see 50v40 matches being a lot more balanced.
  • Xlor1
    107 posts Member
    JDK82 wrote: »
    I would like to give one example where we faced a much stronger guild and had to play 21 territories (meaning they played with 42 and we missed 2 players (just had 49 in the guild and 1 didnt join)

    qn5x0uwp7m8p.jpg

    The outcome:

    keq25y82acj3.jpg

    In probably 4 out of 5 tws we would have lost this one, because we got heavily outmatched and then the even the best strategy would in the best case get you close in score and that's it.

    Another option of making sandbagging less attractive would be to keep the 25 squads/territory mandatory regardless of how many join.


    Looks like absolutely amazing matchmaking to me. Some folk will grumble about anything.
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