Sandbagging, the new normal?

I don't comment much on here, but this is something that got under my skin a bit. I've worked to increase my GP for my guild, now I feel I'm a bit hosed in this event because of it.
So my question is, are the reward benefits from a new game strategy if you started a new account better to only boost important toons and leave the rest ungeared/unleveled, or to help your guild gp by building your roster out?

Between this and the ships (granted, we have 1 square for ships in this Grand Arena...)but 3x as many for characters, though my GP is almost an even 50/50 between characters and ships, while my first opponent doesn't even have a 7* Capital Ship, so I should get an easy 1 square win, but likely to lose the other 3. Some issues stand out...

But, hey, finding the bright side, at least we get rewards. The brighter side would be to run this simultaneously with TW, so we get both rewards amongst both semi-flawed systems.

So you’re accusing a player of “sandbagging” for GA by not leveling a bunch of toons BEFORE the GA mode was even announced? While I’m sure they won’t be leveling those toons now, except the KOTOR ones that will be needed for something, it’s hardly “sandbagging” that they didn’t level toons from several months ago. We haven’t even started the first official GA yet. The formula will get tweaked.... getting the game mode up and running was more important. Let’s quit acting like the matchmaking formula will never be adjusted. The TW formula goes far beyond GP and they are aware that GP isn’t the best comparison.

Wow, someone unlocked both Pao and a time machine almost two years ago!

I agree. I feel that this new Grand Arena mode completely goes against what the developers have always stated was a prime tenet for this game: build a deep roster. I'm getting matched against all-gold sith/Traya and jedi/Revan teams, simply because I've been playing a long while. Now, if I could, I'd go back in and de-level every toon I don't use back to level 1, because all that leveling is giving me an unfair disadvantage, because I aim for a deep bench, not a top heavy bench.

I used to, at the very least, put every new toon to gear IV, level 32. No longer. That method, while helpful to the guild, is totally hamstringing me in Grand Arena. I'm glad I was lazy on the last 2 months of marquees.

Really, the number of level 1 characters on one's account should be a cause for segregation.

No, to "Sandbag" means to deliberately perform at a lower level than you can. These players have been "not leveling" those characters for years - this is not something they did in response to GA. Players who are removing mods from a chunk of their roster are actively sandbagging.

These players chose not to spend resources to artificially inflate their GP. Instead, all their resources went into upper tier characters that provided them with value in various aspects of the game. Since this is a game of resource management, the decisions those players have made are giving them a competitive advantage in this aspect of the game.

I've got a friend who started playing over a year later than me. His GP is about 1.7M below me, but in TBs, Arena, and Heroic Sith he is almost as competitive as I am. His roster doesn't have any of those "fluff" toons leveled or geared because those would have slowed down his actual development as a player.

He didn't sandbag - he just hasn't had the gear or credits to "waste." He's an awesome player with laser focus, and now he's being rewarded for that. Perhaps your opponents are the same way.

Who the hell cares. I get stuff either way.

Sorry OP, you're way off on this one. Over half of those toons shown are marquee characters that came out in the last half a year or so. Of the remaining 10, 7 of them are absolutely terrible characters and two are decent only as pilots.

Why, exactly, should this person feel obligated to take resources away from the characters they use to bring these guys up again?

It's not sandbagging, it's resource management. A bunch of G8 level 85 toons are worthless except for TB deployments. You help your guild, and yourself, a lot more by having a few strong teams than a ton of GP inflating ones.

Any time there is a new mod, some are ready and some are not. But now all know what they have to do if they want to do well in GA; field 10-14 PvP quality squads. If your GP is high but you don’t have enough squads, then you know what you have to do.