Q&A: Sandbagging Response

"thecarterologist958;c-2024588" wrote:

"leef;c-2024562" wrote:

It's irrelevant to the discussion at hand, which is in no way insulting to guilds who don't enforce particiation.
There's no difference in terms of gameplay between facing a guild that sandbags intentionally and a guild with non-mandatory participation (assuming they signup with the same amount of players).
On top of that it's also irrelevant what you, i or anyone else thinks about guilds who intentionally sandbag since it's not against the rules. It's not like putting a halt to intentional sandbagging stops the problem either.

I never said there was a difference in gameplay, and I explicitly stated that there was no difference with regards to a fair matchmaking solution. But given the original point was them wanting to see evidence of a guild doing this to try and gain an advantage, CG's issue is with intent. Also when people are complaining about people sandbagging and saying its "Gaming the system", or even ruining the game, then I would be hesitant to paint the vast majority of the playerbase with that brush without being willing to defend the people who do it intentionally. I don't see much benefit to the idea, I don't think it's that prevalent, but I do know guilds with low signup rates are rare and don't necessarily win more often, admittedly from largely anecdotal experience. It may not solve the problem, but I hope you can at least see where I'm coming from.

I didn't interpret the dev quote in the OP as having issues with intent. Even if their only issue is intent, they don't understand the (percieved) problem which also occurs when there's no (evil) intent whatsoever.
fwiw, i'm preaching the same thing to players on the other side of the intent argument. It's irrelevant either way. To me it doesn't matter what they say, at the end of the day it's not against the rules and it's practically impossible to enforce a rule for which you have to prove intent. I personally don't like to assume/accuse the opposing guild is/of intentionally sandbagging, but i'm still at a (percieved) disadvantage when they have less players signup due to circumstances out of their controll.
I can only speak to the higher GP regions and from what i can see it works. Small side note, the signup rates aren't low. 46 participants could easily be considered (un)intentional sandbagging.
I can't be 100% sure it does work, that's why i wrote "(percieved)". I have my own biases and there are more variables that come into play than just the number of participants. Like i said earlier in this thread, the devs should be able to analyze the data and conclude with relative certainty whether it works or not. All we can do is share our experiences and make the devs aware of what we think is a problem, the rest is up to them.