**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
The new end date will be May 1st.
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With BGs, you're fighting actual Players in a somewhat live game mode. Not fighting the AI.
In a competition where 2 people compete and 1 person wins, you should win 50% of the time. If you win more, you need to face tougher competition. If you lose more, you need to face weaker competition. The problem with the Matchmaking system now is that Kabam is trying to force that 50% Win Rate on the players instead of letting it happen naturally. If you are losing 12 matches in a row, you don't belong at the Tier you are at, full stop. You are competing at a level that you should have no business making it to. So congratulations to you, you gamed the system. The reality is the playerbase really isn't screaming at players to stop sandbagging, we're screaming at Kabam to fix the system so that it doesn't make sense to do it.
What so many refuse to accept is that this is a competition and everyone, regardless of account size, was put in the same group. The goal of the competition is to rise through the ranks as quickly as possible to gain the best rewards. If someone can win more matches more quickly sandbagging then fighting 15k+ accounts every match then it doesn't make any sense to use a full deck.
Don't be mad at the sandbaggers, be mad at Kabam for the terrible matchmaking and for putting everyone in Bronze3 to start.
First of all, this fits with the standard definition of sandbagging, which is generally to use trickery or deceit to pretend to be worse than you are at something to attract weaker competition, so that you can use superior strength to easily beat them. You are using low rank champions in your deck to make your overall deck appear weaker than it is, while trying to ensure you never actually have to use those weaker champions in actual combat.
So why is this wrong? And why is it not considered wrong in the arena? It comes down to one critical difference between BG and the arena. In BG, there's another player on the other side of the match. In the arena, there isn't.
When you fight the computer, the primary question is whether the player behavior is reasonably within the rules of the game relative to the rewards they can earn. Sandbagging in the arena isn't considered a harmful enough behavior in the arena, particularly because it only generally impacts a few fights and the arena is considered a grinding environment. The impact is small enough to overlook.
In Battlegroups, every tactic you use is being inflicted upon another player in real time. The primary consideration is not whether *you* are operating within a reasonable realm of reward-earning. The primary consideration is whether those tactics would be reasonable to inflict upon another player. And to return to the definition of sandbagging, which is not just dictionary-pandering but actually accurately describes the intent of deck sandbagging in BGs, you are trying to deceive the match system into pairing you with players whose decks will be much weaker than the actual champions you're likely to be using in match fights to give you easy wins. This means another human being will be matching against you and facing virtually impossible odds to win.
That's why it is wrong. You're beating up on another player by manipulating the match system to give you hopelessly unfair chances to beat them. When you beat an arena team with a sandbag configuration, the player that team was drawn from has no idea this has happened. Their gameplay experience is not in any noticeable way diminished. No one quits playing arena because someone else sandbagged their matches. You aren't inflicting pain. In Battlegroups, you are.
People can debate the definite of "fair" and "legal" all they want, but at the end of the day, this is why it is unethical, and this is why it is harmful to the game as a whole, and why the game should take steps to either prohibit it, or remove the benefits from doing it. For every person saying "this is how I win" there's several other players saying "why bother with this bulls---?" That's untenable.
Now, I make a *huge* distinction between using 6s mixed with 2s (this is the extreme case, but just for illustration purposes) and someone who uses a deck with all 5/50s. Someone who uses a deck with all 5/50s is (hopefully) matching against other players with decks of all 5/50s. They are not attempting to try to use overwhelmingly powerful champs against hopelessly outclassed decks. But someone using a deck with 6s and 2s is hoping that the mechanics of the random draw system causes them to end up with at least four 6s out of seven champs and use them against someone with a bunch of 4s and 5s, hoping to get two very easy wins and never have to use the 2s. This is essentially trying to use the draw mechanics to use 6s against 4s for easy wins, and that's completely wrong.
Full disclosure: I've been experimenting with lower decks myself, in particular 5/50 decks, after seeing the difference in matches between my main and my alts. I don't consider a deck whose entire composition is even rarity and rank to be unfair. However, that's my personal opinion, and I know there are those that disagree. Actually, it turns out that very quickly you run into a swarm of people making manipulated decks of 6s and 2s, and it becomes a disadvantage to have all 4s because you're quickly outclassed. The people mixing high/low have a huge advantage, and are rising up faster, and thus making up a higher percentage of the competitors of that deck strength above Silver.
Then no matter the rights/wrongs of this the situation has been massively increased this season due to the risk/reward factor of Marks. Making them so valuable vs energy almost forced people to do whatever to secure a victory.
I'm of the latter perspective, at least in the Victory tracks. In Gladiator, I think everything goes so it is fine if deck strength is ignored and win/loss/rating style matching prevails. But in the Victory track, the game heavily incentivizes progression and significantly penalizes stagnation, and there I think allowing players to opt out of high deck competition isn't unreasonable, so long as it is done reasonably fairly.
What I would do is measure deck strength by the strongest champion in the deck, measured say by CR rating. So if you put a single CR100 champion in your deck, it is a CR100 deck even if it is full of 2* champs. If you put a single CR120 champ in there, it is now a CR120 deck. If you choose to use a single 6* R3, you have to face people using 6* R3s. You can't artificially lower your apparent deck strength by trying to average that out with 2* champs. If you want to face lower decks, you are not allowed to use *any* higher strength champs.
The idea is that players with very few higher ranked champs can choose to withhold them from their decks until they have time to grow their roster. If they have a good 4* roster but a thin 5* one, the game will allow them to continue to fight with 4* champs until they are ready to assemble a 5* deck, and then later a 6* deck. They won't start throwing the kitchen sink at them the moment they draw two 6* champs. *But* that protection only lasts so long as they don't use them.
Again, everyone has their opinion on what kinds of competition BGs should be allowing, but this is what I would personally do to balance participation with competition. Maybe allow deck strength to phase out from Platinum to Diamond, until you reach Gladiator where it disappears completely. But allow players to progress through the lower tiers of Victory so they don't stall out early and decide to just give up completely, which is something that is happening.
Not sandbagging, just trying to avoid the more hyper competitive elements in the game, lol. It is interesting what you will pull in matchmaking with a deck of almost entirely even PI at the four-star level.
You just keep getting worse. 😂
If you're worried about the casuals, just stagger the starting point of players each season. The entirety of the VT is just a formality for some players. Starting them in bronze only makes it harder for other players to move up. There's no need for matching to comprise of absolutely anything other than your current tier in the VT or your GC rating.
This is a competitive game mode not arena. If you want to mindlessly grind, go do arena. Instead of going out of the way to give everyone a gold star for participation, maybe people should start being realistic with their expectations.
Not when those Rewards are earned through unsavory means. Manipulating the system to provide easier Matches than Rosters and skill levels provide is not within the realm of fair play.
I don't know where people decided that the size of your Roster isn't a factor, but newer Players aren't operating Alts with all the experience of a seasoned Player. They're trusting that the system will match them according to where they're at in the game. There is no measure of skill in the game that exists totally independently from what we're working with. The entire game is designed to respond to what we're using versus what we're up against.
I'm going to be blunt here. The same thing came up with Prestige as a factor in War, and while I admit there were side effects of that system, one issue does not justify people taking things into their own hands and cheating the system. Two wrongs don't make a right.
The competition is designed to allow Players to enjoy a new aspect of the game based on their own level of involvement. They play a little, they earn a little. They play a lot, they earn a lot. That process depends on the system functioning as it's intended, and it was never an intended outcome for higher Players to take advantage of lower ones via matchmaking. That's more than just a form of protest. It's exploitation. It affects the entire system because no one ends up where they should be. It disrupts the natural flow of positions.
People can use whatever reasons they like to justify using an open door, but if access wasn't permitted to begin with, they're still trespassing.
What does a cavalier account even do with 6* stones and gems if they only have 4* champs?
Some kind of ranking, entry system is required - either byes to later Vc round based on last season performance or progression level. If there is never again Paragon player in bronze, silver or gold then part of this perceived issue is removed
When I want to mindlessly grind, I grind arena. I don't think the suggestion I make above is intended to convert battlegrounds into a mindless grind, nor do I think it does that in actual fact. In fact, if BG was switched to a purely rating match system across all tracks, I would be fine with that but it would in fact turn it into a mindless grind for me. Because the most efficient way to progress in the Victory track given the current way it is implemented would be to deliberately lose to dump rating, something that you cannot police, and then win three in a row. Alliance war does not allow for this to the same degree because there are only twelve wars in a season. Even the worst abuses in war cannot compare to what can be done in Battlegrounds when I can easily do a hundred matches in a season.
If I am allowed to choose my own deck, and the game accounts for this, provided I do this fairly, I'm incentivized to try to win. But if the game ignores deck and uses a pure rating match system, then while this encourages people to win in the Gladiator track, it encourages people to lose then win in the Victory track, because in the Victory track you aren't rewarded for wins, you are rewarded for wins in a row. Three losses followed by three wins is vastly superior to three win/loss alternating combinations. So pure rating matching would compel me to engineer losses so that I could then maximize my chances of winning multiple victories in a row. It would be illogical to anything else.
That's what makes Victory track battlegrounds a fundamentally different game mode from Gladiator track battlegrounds. The incentives and reward conditions are completely different, and the nature of the competition is also completely different.
You can't eliminate "manipulation" in the Victory track you can only decide which kind you want. If you match based on deck, I can manipulate my deck without cost. If you match based on rating, I can manipulate my rating, also essentially without cost (at least in the Victory track). And if you match based on prestige, like I see some people suggesting, then I will simply stop competing on my main, because my roster is too strong for my own good. Instead I will switch to my Cavalier alt, where I get to put the same experienced brain and same skill set into the driver's seat of an account with 9.5k prestige instead of 13.5k prestige (I tested this and immediately went six wins in a row). All of this because the Victory track is not the same kind of competition as the Gladiator track. And because I can do as many matches as I want.
When I use it in bg it absolutely looks and technically is a sandbag account through no fault of mine. I cannot be the only person with an account like this so while it might look bad to you, not everyone is deliberately flouting the "rules"