So my question isn’t about bg, but why do people sandbag in arena? I haven’t sandbagged in arena since I had 5 max 4 star champs. Are they not skilled enough to beat champs who have maybe 5-10k more health and maybe 700 more attack than their champs?
This is why it confuses me on why it’s even used as an argument to sandbagging in bg. The difference here is when you sandbag you’re adding on 300% health and attack, some combo of nodes that make the fights much harder than a wack arena fight lol
People sandbag in the Arena to ensure the best possible chance to keep the Streak going whenever they're trying to get to the Infinite. Could they beat Champs higher? Depends, really. Many can. With Arena AI, it's risky. However, what's more frustrating is starting the Streak over. With BGs, you're fighting actual Players in a somewhat live game mode. Not fighting the AI.
So my question isn’t about bg, but why do people sandbag in arena? I haven’t sandbagged in arena since I had 5 max 4 star champs. Are they not skilled enough to beat champs who have maybe 5-10k more health and maybe 700 more attack than their champs?
This is why it confuses me on why it’s even used as an argument to sandbagging in bg. The difference here is when you sandbag you’re adding on 300% health and attack, some combo of nodes that make the fights much harder than a wack arena fight lol
You're competing with everyone that doesn't have to resort to such scrubbery, if you had to sandbag to plat and can't keep up when they fix matchmaking it's probably because you don't belong in the higher tiers.
I dont get why sandbagging in battlegrounds is not okay. There are not rules against it. I am very far from the most skilled player, but I do spend many hours each day (+5) to improve my account and I spend 100s of usd on this game every month.
This is how I approach the game and make up for lack of skills. Spending money (and time) to keep up. Why is this not legit? Why should this be taken away from me? I dont get it…
BTW. I am not high in tiers despite sandbagging. Only just made it to Plat.
Because this isn't arena playing bots this is other real people n u are getting a upper hand are u dizzy or what.
Well this is my approach to getting the rewards. Others are more skilled and they use another approach. Each to his own. Why interfere? Sandbagging has been a thing in arena since forever.
Add on: the last 12 matches I have lost, so I really dont see why people are SO MUCH in disadvantsge when I sandbag 🤨
If you've lost 12 in a row while Sandbagging it sounds like you don't understand how to play the game mode at all. Tht being said, you're in Platinum now where your pool of competition is a little thinner so it's harder to find another person whose deck rating will be as low as yours .. cuz you're sandbagging.
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.
The purpose of the game mode should be to pair similar level accounts and players What you are doing is pairing yourself against someone you have a very significant roster advantage over to give yourself an advantage sizeable enough to easily climb the ladder and get rewards you would not be able to achieve otherwise
What this does is give you rewards you don’t deserve and perhaps more importantly, punishes a lesser player and denies them a fair opportunity to earn rewards
It should be taken away because you are not fairly earning these rewards. You are gaming the system to bully lesser rosters to make up for your inadequacies.
To paraphrase the great Alan Shore - “ I hated bullies on the playground when I was six, I tolerate them no better on a mobile video game in my thirties ”
Why does someone who can't beat someone with half a deck of 2* champs deserve to be rewarded? If you can't win you don't deserved to be given the rewards we're all fighting for.
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.
You're violating the spirit of competition that the game mode is meant to convey. You're esentially bullying smaller accounts instead of competing with accounts that are similar to yours. This is not a way to improve the "lack of skills" you say you posess.
The purpose of the game mode should be to pair similar level accounts and players What you are doing is pairing yourself against someone you have a very significant roster advantage over to give yourself an advantage sizeable enough to easily climb the ladder and get rewards you would not be able to achieve otherwise
What this does is give you rewards you don’t deserve and perhaps more importantly, punishes a lesser player and denies them a fair opportunity to earn rewards
It should be taken away because you are not fairly earning these rewards. You are gaming the system to bully lesser rosters to make up for your inadequacies.
To paraphrase the great Alan Shore - “ I hated bullies on the playground when I was six, I tolerate them no better on a mobile video game in my thirties ”
Why does someone who can't beat someone with half a deck of 2* champs deserve to be rewarded? If you can't win you don't deserved to be given the rewards we're all fighting for.
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.
Most people are mad at BOTH Kabam for not fixing this good enough the first time AND the players exploiting the poor matchmaking engine.
You're violating the spirit of competition that the game mode is meant to convey. You're esentially bullying smaller accounts instead of competing with accounts that are similar to yours. This is not a way to improve the "lack of skills" you say you posess.
Then separate people into Leagues and reward people properly
Personally, I feel one way to help mitigate this problem is to start limiting the rarity of champs able to be used based on progression level. So for Cav and above, they would be limited to 5* champs and higher, just like with story content. As for Uncollected and below, they would potentially be able to use any of their champs regardless of rarity. I know people could still load their deck with lower level/rank 5*s, but this could at least help to make the problem somewhat less significant.
You're violating the spirit of competition that the game mode is meant to convey. You're esentially bullying smaller accounts instead of competing with accounts that are similar to yours.
I call BS on the "spirit of competition". If the spirit was to only fight accounts at your level there would multiple difficulties or people would have started at different tiers. Because Kabam started everyone at Bronze 3, the spirit of the competition is to win as many matches as possible. If smaller accounts want to compete for the same rewards as Paragons, they should expect to get match up with them.
You're violating the spirit of competition that the game mode is meant to convey. You're esentially bullying smaller accounts instead of competing with accounts that are similar to yours.
I call BS on the "spirit of competition". If the spirit was to only fight accounts at your level there would multiple difficulties or people would have started at different tiers. Because Kabam started everyone at Bronze 3, the spirit of the competition is to win as many matches as possible. If smaller accounts want to compete for the same rewards as Paragons, they should expect to get match up with them.
I agree with you. There's no reason someone with a smaller account can't whoop up on someone with a larger account. Luck, strategy and skill all play a role. And if you are going to compete for the top rewards, expect to have to play the top accounts. That's different then having someone lowering their overall deck strength on purpose in order to have an easier time climbing the ladder.
With same rewards they should either limit bgs to 2* or 3* do all players are in equal conditions or match randomly within a tier or make a leaderboard as it is for aw. In current very badly designed system sandbagging is only natural.
I dont get why sandbagging in battlegrounds is not okay. There are not rules against it. I am very far from the most skilled player, but I do spend many hours each day (+5) to improve my account and I spend 100s of usd on this game every month.
This is how I approach the game and make up for lack of skills. Spending money (and time) to keep up. Why is this not legit? Why should this be taken away from me? I dont get it…
BTW. I am not high in tiers despite sandbagging. Only just made it to Plat.
So here's my opinion on "sandbagging" in BGs. I am specifically addressing one specific deck creation behavior: placing very high rank champions in a deck with very low rank champions so that the match system matches you against players using decks composed of champions with average rating, hoping to use the random draw system to get match ups in which you will be using your high rank champions against their average rank champions for easy wins.
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.
@DNA3000 I will come Back to the same point.. deck strength so have 0 influence on match making and this was never made clear in BG launch. this was the first major issue
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.
@DNA3000 I will come Back to the same point.. deck strength so have 0 influence on match making and this was never made clear in BG launch. this was the first major issue
There seems to be two different points of view here. The first says that players should always make the highest possible strength deck they can, and thus the game should match players against other players of comparable roster (setting aside the precise mechanics of how we do this). Anything less is anti-competitive. The other perspective says the game should allow players to construct decks of whatever strength they are comfortable with, and should match players of equal deck strength. The problem is the current system of measuring "deck strength" is broken because it doesn't consider the random draw mechanics that allow players to skim their deck for the strongest champs most of the time.
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.
I only just started playing battle grounds. And despite having an all 6* rank three and four questing team, I only play battlegrounds with my very best 4* champions.
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.
The purpose of the game mode should be to pair similar level accounts and players What you are doing is pairing yourself against someone you have a very significant roster advantage over to give yourself an advantage sizeable enough to easily climb the ladder and get rewards you would not be able to achieve otherwise
What this does is give you rewards you don’t deserve and perhaps more importantly, punishes a lesser player and denies them a fair opportunity to earn rewards
It should be taken away because you are not fairly earning these rewards. You are gaming the system to bully lesser rosters to make up for your inadequacies.
To paraphrase the great Alan Shore - “ I hated bullies on the playground when I was six, I tolerate them no better on a mobile video game in my thirties ”
Why does someone who can't beat someone with half a deck of 2* champs deserve to be rewarded? If you can't win you don't deserved to be given the rewards we're all fighting for.
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.
"The cashier left the register open. It's their fault I stole that money."
@DNA3000 I will come Back to the same point.. deck strength so have 0 influence on match making and this was never made clear in BG launch. this was the first major issue
There seems to be two different points of view here. The first says that players should always make the highest possible strength deck they can, and thus the game should match players against other players of comparable roster (setting aside the precise mechanics of how we do this). Anything less is anti-competitive. The other perspective says the game should allow players to construct decks of whatever strength they are comfortable with, and should match players of equal deck strength. The problem is the current system of measuring "deck strength" is broken because it doesn't consider the random draw mechanics that allow players to skim their deck for the strongest champs most of the time.
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.
All this does is hamstring lower skill players regardless of deck strength. If it's impossible to match weaker opponents, some people will just never win. With deck strength not being weighted in matching at some point over the season the competition in each tier should get weak enough for most people to be able to move up.
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.
"The goal of the competition is to rise through the ranks as quickly as possible to gain the best rewards."
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.
The game does not penalise stagnation at any level. The real irony of this game mode is that I could stay in bronze win 50% of 1000 matches, using Marks to play and I would easily hit top 100/500 solo reward. How is this penalizing any progress (expect a few battle tokens).
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
I dont get why sandbagging in battlegrounds is not okay. There are not rules against it. I am very far from the most skilled player, but I do spend many hours each day (+5) to improve my account and I spend 100s of usd on this game every month.
This is how I approach the game and make up for lack of skills. Spending money (and time) to keep up. Why is this not legit? Why should this be taken away from me? I dont get it…
BTW. I am not high in tiers despite sandbagging. Only just made it to Plat.
This had to be without a doubt the dumbest forum past i have seen since playing this game.
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.
That's actually not true. Specifically, that Battlegrounds is a (singular) competitive game mode. BG is a game mode in the same sense that MCOC is a competitive game. Battlegrounds is actually *two* game modes that just happen to share a turnstile. The Victory track is a game mode that primarily rewards and incentivizes progress through the tracks. The Gladiator track is a much more purely competitive mode that incentivizes placement and ranking.
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.
I honestly don’t care if sandbagging is allowed or not but I’ve had at least 3 matches against sandbaggers with 7+ 2-star champs in their deck but weren’t forced to pick up a single one… how do you consistently get that lucky when sandbagging? I feel like it should hurt you more in the long run cuz you’ll have matches where you’re forced to draft multiple 2* champs.
I dont play my alt enough to level up many champs but it has a few 6r1 and 5/65 for AQ, very occasional war and a small amount of questing. Probably 20% of the deck. The rest is trash.
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"
Comments
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"