Territory Wars Matchmaking Manipulation

tbh, this doesn't seem like a problem to me.

This is a case of players shooting themselves in the foot because they are OCD about winning. If I was in a guild that wanted me to not play and not get rewards so most everyone else could get better rewards, I'd be gone from that guild. I prefer playing in a guild where people like all of their members to participate and earn rewards.

I feel the same way about those that deliberately sacrifice their defense so they can be assured of a tie. Playing to lose is both not fun and not rewarding.

Rewards for losing are not that much less than rewards for winning. This is one of the great things about Territory Wars. It is a lot more about fun and comradery than maxing every corner of the game.

With all due respect... no NHL team would have a problem with being allowed to compete at the AHL level, and smoking their way to the championship.

Except, yes they would. Hockey players thrive on challenge, and want to be in the highest league. No self-respecting major league team (hockey or otherwise) would be proud of winning at the semi-pro or minor-league level. This is the issue in my mind. It's about sportsmanship, and about honor, win or lose.

The rewards skew this issue. And the fact that an additional Zeta/Omega is guaranteed to the big guilds that do this is obviously too much of a temptation for some. Sportsmanship, fair play, camaraderie between guilds... I don't see any of that here. I see "haves" stomping on "have-nots".

Though that may be in CG/EAs plan all along. It is, after all, how this game works.

Sandbagging at it's finest!
Let's say guild A at 151m GP has dropped their roster down to 46, to eek into the lower bracket at 139GP (3m GP avg). Meanwhile guild B is participating at 50 with a overall 125m GP (2.5m GP avg).
You may say it's all fair since, guild A has less members, but what does that 500k GP difference really mean? It's about 5 fully modded/geared G12 teams in translation. We'll call it 4 to take fleet gains into account
So lets say each 2.5m GP player is worth 8 good teams to put forward in TW, that puts a 3m GP player at 12 teams.

• Guild A has 552 available teams for offense (8) and defense (4 per player/territory).
  
• Guild B has 400 available teams for offense (5) and defense (3 per player/territory).
  

Not exactly an even fight.
Things would be slightly more even if A was forced to fill 25 defense slots instead of 23 per territory, to make up the difference in GP even though they have fewer members. Competing at 23 is basically rewarding them. But the bigger problem is a 14m GP difference is friggen huge! The match-making needs to take in a much smaller GP difference (say 1-2m ideally) to keep things fair.
* For the purposes of clarity, I haven't considered fleet, but it doesn't change the story much since fleets are typically bound by the number available in game.

Also, here is a very important fact that I feel needs to be made explicit: a GoH ground squad that has 100k power is not just 25% more powerful than an 80k power team. More often, the 100k power team has been crafted much more meticulously, has been modded much more heavily for speed and other important stats, has insane perks from multiple zetas, and has the TM advantage against every team after the first. That 100k team, on defense, is often worth multiple 80k teams... sometimes more than 5.

My point is, a 150M power guild is not 20% more powerful than a 125M guild. The disparity between the two is quite a bit more than that. How much more? Who knows. The math isn't straightforward. How much depends on the mods, squad synergy, zetas, and countless other factors. But straight GP obfuscates just how lopsided these matchups can be.

@TwiggleBerry gets it - and if sandbagging on defense bothers you as much or more than broken matchmaking (either inadvertent or intentional), your sense of fairness is off kilter. Should the lower guild have to lay down and take their beating as appropriate so big brother can get their extra zeta? I think not. Sometimes a tie is a win and moral victories are important.

"TwiggleBerry;c-1418582" wrote:
Sandbagging at it's finest!
Let's say guild A at 151m GP has dropped their roster down to 46, to eek into the lower bracket at 139GP (3m GP avg). Meanwhile guild B is participating at 50 with a overall 125m GP (2.5m GP avg).
You may say it's all fair since, guild A has less members, but what does that 500k GP difference really mean? It's about 5 fully modded/geared G12 teams in translation. We'll call it 4 to take fleet gains into account
So lets say each 2.5m GP player is worth 8 good teams to put forward in TW, that puts a 3m GP player at 12 teams.

• Guild A has 552 available teams for offense (8) and defense (4 per player/territory).
  
• Guild B has 400 available teams for offense (5) and defense (3 per player/territory).
  

Not exactly an even fight.
Things would be slightly more even if A was forced to fill 25 defense slots instead of 23 per territory, to make up the difference in GP even though they have fewer members. Competing at 23 is basically rewarding them. But the bigger problem is a 14m GP difference is friggen huge! The match-making needs to take in a much smaller GP difference (say 1-2m ideally) to keep things fair.
* For the purposes of clarity, I haven't considered fleet, but it doesn't change the story much since fleets are typically bound by the number available in game.

Well said Sir.

"DaGhost141;c-1418532" wrote:
I don’t see this as an issue either. If guild members are dumb enough to sit out and miss rewards then that’s their problem. The real issue is the ties and people just throwing in weak teams to get the points and ensuring ties as previously stated in above comments. The devs mentioned they were working on this but as far as I know there has been no word on how they plan to resolve this issue. Hopefully before next month they can come up with a tiebreaker.

Did you not ask for the exact same as what i have suggested here in an earlier post?
Yet here you state "I don't see this as an issue either."
https://forums.galaxy-of-heroes.starwars.ea.com/discussion/149842/territory-war-preview-phase-discussion#latest

DaGhost141
32 posts Member
December 16, 2017 7:55PM
As an officer of a guild, I am starting to notice a few players sometimes miss joining the war because they got busy or simply forgot. While I realize the intent of the Preview phase is meant to make sure only active members join, I think the war should just take the guild as a whole. I think if there are inactive players in the guild, it should be left to the officers to decide if they need to kick that player. By removing the Preview phase, it makes one less thing the officers have to remind the guild about and it gives you as a player one less thing to remember to do. I’m curious how the rest of the community feels about the Territory War Preview phase and if you guys think this is something that should be changed.

Maybe a couple members went on vacation. Are vacations allowed, or is that "sandbagging" in your mind? I frankly don't believe for a second that anybody is intentionally sitting players to gain some imaginary advantage over the opposition.

As I pointed out long ago before the TW Beta was even finished, the highly simplistic GP-matching algorithm has inherent flaws. It can be made better with more complex algorithms, but there comes a point where "fair" cannot be decided just by the numbers.

Newsflash: competition in any venue is not exactly fair. One team will always have a numerical advantage over the other. In most cases, the team with the advantage wins. In other cases, the underdog makes better use of their assets and pulls out the upset victory. This is why we actually have the competition instead of just comparing statistics to decide the winner.

I agree that the current matchmaking algorithm is too simple and can cause an insurmountable mismatch between guild strength. It could and should be better. But nobody is manipulating the system to drop down the reward tree so they can then earn better rewards than the opposing guild.

If my guild made me sit out so everyone else could earn 1 extra zeta while I got nothing, I would find a new guild.

Just take the loss and move on.

People in these forums that do not see TW minipulation as an exploit are those useing the exploit and are protecting their intrest.