Let's fix TW Sandbagging....
Let's face it, there is a lot of intentional and unintentional sandbagging in TW. Currently the rules are that the number of defensive teams is based on the guild with the fewest members. While C...
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No it’s not sandbagging, there is an algorithm which match makes on quality of roster so it ‘should’ be balanced. But there is limited matches in certain brackets and it avoids re-matches so it’s not perfect. They did not reveal specifics at the time to prevent exploitation. If you are on a lose streak you have an easy match up, if you are on a win streak you get a punch up battle. And as I pointed out main discrepancy on the difference in sign up is activity. If there are players signing up they factor into the “sign up quality” if they do nothing or little then you will be punished for their inactivity by facing a more challenging guild without their help.
It is sandbagging, definitely. What happened to my guild quite a lot of times: After loosing 2 TWs, instead of getting an easier opponent, we meet a top level guild with up to 590mio gp, where only around 35 signed up and they beat the s..t out of us. Happened several times. This is what has to be adressed. Same guild where almost everybody participates 100% in Naboo raid, but only 35 in TW? It is sandbagging.
Maybe your guild should reflect the strategy you are using if a guild with 15 less players can beat the shxt out of you? How are you guild at off meta counters, do they invest in fleet sufficiently to go against well rounded rosters. At the end of the day these are optional sign up modes. You can not blame people for having a life. If you don’t see how you “actually” lost and blame it on a conspiracy theory then how will you improve.
Also these guilds are non mandatory for TW as not signing up does not disadvantage the guild or cost rewards, you are not considered in MM it has no effect. Whereas if you do not hit the raid often and your guild is missing their target, without good reason most will kick because it hurts every other player. Same guilds which do not have TW as mandatory will expect guildies to be comparable to at least the low/medium effort of the raid bot and full deploy minimally to TB.
Alright, and what strategy would you propose to our guild, when me meet an "easy" oppenent like the one discribed above? They got all the latest squads, which we can't have. Sorry, but your arguments are nothing but finding excuses for exploits which are definitely happening and need to be addressed. The highest reward tier in TW is now 4 (or 5?) years old. THIS needs to changed to a up-to-date level.
First have a minimum participation 200 banners defence and similar on offence. Anyone under this has way too much left on the bench.
Then structure defence according to match up, hard work for a TW officer but if your TW officer believes in sandbagging it’s over before it starts as everyone needs to show up believing it’s worth the effort. I have seen this when I was an officer in a previous guild, our TW officer claimed it sandbagging and disappeared for the duration so hardly anyone showed up. We lost due to activity, our opposition barely made it through our defences but was top late to rally the guild.
Morgoth had a good suggestion. If you have 50 teams with limited counter or just one good counter and they only have 35 players put them all down with similar teams requiring the same counter to exhaust there options and eek out their GL’s on teams that don’t really need it.
Datacrons limit counters so you should be going for appropriate datacrons on def and off. The first 3 zones should all have high level datacrons.
Have the guild comfortable with off-meta counters and knowledgeable on all counter's for typical defences. Some of my guilds had discord tabs for go to counters to help players stretch their rosters and clear walls quickly and efficiently.
Some times it works to have dummy walls up front, fairly strong but not as strong as the zones behind. A guild who ‘thinks’ you are weaker may try to go through both sides and get stuck.
Focus down one side so you get to the back wall as it’s worth more points and TW zones are usually front heavy.
If you get stuck in a wall… experiment so you figure out something that works next time. If you see gaps raise it to the guild to see if anyone wants to work investing into their plans. For example ships is a a weak spot for a lot of 300M guilds. But if some players focus on learning off meta counters or unlocking more Levi’s then it can boost holds or speed up clearing zones.
Invest in TW omicrons that are impactful. Fulcrum can rip apart starkiller walls even with its current datacron. Geo’s and Sep can be annoying back walls with their omicron and a decent datacron.
I am not opposed to them looking at the matchup algorithm again, as I agree more often than not the match up is wonky, but in a 580M guild with optional participation we have just as many when we are out matched as we out match. We have a healthy win rate because we have been successful against some bigger guilds. That is why I strongly oppose it being sandbagging.
I have been in 300M guilds pushing for 50 members for droid brains it is painful. More so I know the issue to recruit and get 50 active members who are available every TW. Since there are other ways to earn droid brains, I would rather go for activity over forcing everyone to sign up any day. The larger guilds will certainly not alter this until there’s better reward tiers to chase at least above the 380M.
Its not sandbagging. Sandbagging would require a guild to manipulate the ranking to face weaker ranked opponents. Really only way for a guild to negatively impact their ranking in TW would be to purposely lose matches to lower their ranking overtime, which isn't what is being described in the OP. The OP describes Higher Tier guilds getting matched up against each other and one guild gaining an advantage by bringing less to the fight.
That's exactly what I was also talking about also. My guild is in highest tier. Felt 75% of all matches we encounter only guilds with a very much higher total GM-level but few active players. Intentional or not - I d'ont care, cause the result is the same and so both is sandbagging to me. And it seems like since we stopped trying to force our members to signup we seem to get easier opponents. And since we do this on purpose by now, I can only tell you: We are performing sandbagging! It doesn't feel right, because it's a misuse of bad game design. WE WANT HIGHER REWARD TIERS! Hear us, CG_Meathead ?
You would be sandbagging if you ordered players who are wanting to play to not participate to purposefully tilt the match making.
Thats not what you are describing. You basically are asking freeloaders or busy players not to be counted in the matchmaking if they are not going to play to improve your matchmaking to just count active players. This is fair for your guild as they are the players turning up.
It does not tilt matchmaking beneficially all the time. We had just 38/50 players last match and we got spanked by a guild with more players signed up. How is that sandbagging? Because they used the strategy I described before of depleting our counters delaying us through walls with a solid defence. They won on activity by having more active players.
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