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."
You just keep getting worse. 😂
How the hell did you get "steal money from a store" from my post?
Really bad analogy there, chief.
You're blaming Kabam for you being scummy.
How is using a completely legal strategy in a video game like stealing money from a store?
It’s a bad analogy. Doesn’t absolve you from the consensus that sandbagging is unethical and scummy. Kabam has explicitly stated this is not something they condone and have (and will continue to) change the game to prevent this.
There’s legality and there’s ethics. If you’re fine being unethical; then that’s that. That’s your conscience and the hill you choose to be on. But stop with the mental gymnastics of trying to justify your actions.
I don't find it unethical to match someone in my same tier. If sandbagging allowed you to fight people in a lower tier on the VT then you'd 100% have an argument. However, as we're all in the same tier and fighting for the same rewards, I don't see anything wrong with building a deck that gives me the best chance to win a round.
Is it unethical to bench my r4 Omega Red in favor of my R3 Domino? If not, where's the line?
And so we're clear, I ran a 4*/5* deck till Gold and have been using my best deck since and am in Plat 1 now so I never even sandbagged. I just don't like people trying to decide which strategy is "ethical" and which isn't.
More mental gymnastics. You are in the same tier; but NOT the same competitive level. Kabam has decided to arrange the ladder based on tier AND roster strength. Imagine it as 4 parallel ladders in the same tier based on roster strength. You are manipulating this to jump to a lower parallel to get easier wins. Simply because using your best roster results in less wins. That action is unethical—you refuse to face rosters similar to yours. I can’t help you acknowledge that; you are outright refusing. The community disagrees with your method. That is quite easy to see.
Enjoy it while it lasts; Kabam WILL work to fix this. This is against their vision for the game mode. They want UC/Cav players to progress; not get constantly beat down by TB/Paragon players manipulating the matchmaking.
The mental gymnastics that some are doing to not accept that everyone in the same tier is in fact in the same tier as everyone else. There are not hidden ladders or groups. It's one big group fighting for the exact same rewards.
Exactly right. Everyone is same pot, all same rewards. Whoever is better should/will win
I see. So because people are in the same arena, they should be able to cheat the system and peck off lower Players. Tell me, where's the skill and honor in picking on lower Rosters? If they're so superior in skill, why aren't they taking on their own peers and winning that way? Sounds like a poor excuse to rise on the backs of people who aren't equipped to put up a fair fight.
Let’s be clear - No one is ‘cheating’. Over dramatising stuff a bit.
People can do what they want.
I’m happy to use all My top Champs and just crack on. Some people have 10+ r4 and choose to stack a deck With all 4*, let them carry on if they prefer that approach.
Until we see some realistic Segmentation (levels, start position and rewards) then this type of discussion this will continue to exist.
Allowing people with smaller roster (with have all been there) to only match similar rosters in VT and then changing it in glad circuit and then match 15.9k rosters.. just delays their complaints and makes them Fodder in the circuit.
No. I believe we should of had transparency from day one in matching algorithm. This is war matching all over again
People are cheating the system. As for people doing what they want, evidently there are consequences to that, based on the fact that Kabam is looking at it. Just because people can get away with doing it doesn't mean it's justified.
This is me getting all the benefits from sandbagging and “cheating” everyone else.
Ended up with four 2s champs in my fighting deck. Pretty sure my opponent was ok with me “cheating” 🤷🏻♂️
You get rewarded for losses from Kabam right now if you only play three matches. Your opponent's choice was take the easy win or forfeit and give you the win you're gaming the system to get. I'd have taken the easy fight and reported you after. Kabam should ban you from the game. Full stop.
This is me getting all the benefits from sandbagging and “cheating” everyone else.
Ended up with four 2s champs in my fighting deck. Pretty sure my opponent was ok with me “cheating” 🤷🏻♂️
You get rewarded for losses from Kabam right now if you only play three matches. Your opponent's choice was take the easy win or forfeit and give you the win you're gaming the system to get. I'd have taken the easy fight and reported you after. Kabam should ban you from the game. Full stop.
Sigh, this is why reporting modders is so hard when they have to look at so many reports from people on things they don’t like versus actual cheating.
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.
How would losing in VT help you with matchmaking with what I suggested? Your "rating" in VT is basically just whatever tier of the track you're in at the time. You can't drop tiers so losing 3 matches in Gold 3 just gets you matched with more people in Gold 3. The only place tanking helps you is in GC and wins in a row don't really matter as much.
You suggested not matching by deck. The only alternative out there at the moment is matching by rating, which is to say ELO. If you’re suggesting matching everyone in a particular track randomly regardless of rating and regardless of deck, then you are correct losing would have no advantage, but that’s also a completely unworkable system. The assumption that the players will auto segregate over time if track was preserved between seasons would not hold true with the limited number of tracks we have. The only way to make this work in a practical sense would be to add so many tracks they would be proxies for ELO, which is completely impractical.
This also ignores decay. If we preserve track between seasons without decay, then eventually *everyone* will be in Gladiator, which doesn’t make sense. Decay plus unrestricted random matching will trap a substantial number of players between tracks. That’s untenable, because that’s the sort of thing that would destroy the game mode over time.
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.
How would losing in VT help you with matchmaking with what I suggested? Your "rating" in VT is basically just whatever tier of the track you're in at the time. You can't drop tiers so losing 3 matches in Gold 3 just gets you matched with more people in Gold 3. The only place tanking helps you is in GC and wins in a row don't really matter as much.
You suggested not matching by deck. The only alternative out there at the moment is matching by rating, which is to say ELO. If you’re suggesting matching everyone in a particular track randomly regardless of rating and regardless of deck, then you are correct losing would have no advantage, but that’s also a completely unworkable system. The assumption that the players will auto segregate over time if track was preserved between seasons would not hold true with the limited number of tracks we have. The only way to make this work in a practical sense would be to add so many tracks they would be proxies for ELO, which is completely impractical.
This also ignores decay. If we preserve track between seasons without decay, then eventually *everyone* will be in Gladiator, which doesn’t make sense. Decay plus unrestricted random matching will trap a substantial number of players between tracks. That’s untenable, because that’s the sort of thing that would destroy the game mode over time.
I didn't say anything about preserving track. I just said stagger the starting points. You can stagger starting position based on the previous season's rank (you have all the tiers of VT plus every rank tier of GC to use as separation you don't have to lump everyone that got to GC into one tier) , or if that's not a long term solution, even though it is, you can use progression levels.
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.
How would losing in VT help you with matchmaking with what I suggested? Your "rating" in VT is basically just whatever tier of the track you're in at the time. You can't drop tiers so losing 3 matches in Gold 3 just gets you matched with more people in Gold 3. The only place tanking helps you is in GC and wins in a row don't really matter as much.
You suggested not matching by deck. The only alternative out there at the moment is matching by rating, which is to say ELO. If you’re suggesting matching everyone in a particular track randomly regardless of rating and regardless of deck, then you are correct losing would have no advantage, but that’s also a completely unworkable system. The assumption that the players will auto segregate over time if track was preserved between seasons would not hold true with the limited number of tracks we have. The only way to make this work in a practical sense would be to add so many tracks they would be proxies for ELO, which is completely impractical.
This also ignores decay. If we preserve track between seasons without decay, then eventually *everyone* will be in Gladiator, which doesn’t make sense. Decay plus unrestricted random matching will trap a substantial number of players between tracks. That’s untenable, because that’s the sort of thing that would destroy the game mode over time.
There is an ocean of options between keeping everyone where they end the previous season and starting everyone in Bronze 3.
Really does seem simple, for victory track match based off of top 7 things in current deck removing all benefit of sandbagging but letting people use whatever they want.
At same time make the tokens you receive from moving up and ranked rewards scale with progression so bigger accounts get more. (Don't see many of the people who want to be just matched with equal accounts say they want smaller rewards which would be the only fair thing)
When hit certain level (either gladiator or upper part of victory track) remove all structured matchmaking and it be a free for all in that tier.
It's no fun in silver 1, being matched with people, with 10+ r4s every other match, if I pick my highest PI deck.
But you have no problem manipulating the matchmaking to be on the other side of an unfair matchup. You don't like getting matched against people with better rosters, so you go beat up on people with lower rosters, not caring that you're intentionally subjecting them to the thing you hated so much
Here's my take. I played straight up til gold 1. Then, I basically only matched accounts that have way more r4's than me and basically every new champ in the game. Literally, could not match anyone I had a real shot against because my opponents ALWAYS had a superior roster, that I could not compete with.
So, I tried some different setups.
My best champ's: Worked well for awhile. Pretty even most matches until I got to gold 1 and then found myself fighting accounts that had way more 6* r4s than me, and mostly all had the newest champs. Couldn't get ahead and started hating playing. I'm not a bad player, but my account could not realistically compete with the matchups. The accounts were just way more stacked and couldn't beat them fast enough, most of the time, even with perfect game play and good matchups.
Sandbagging: Not as great as you think. More times than not, I'd get only 2* to pick from and a guaranteed round lost. Or, the one good champ was a terrible option and didn't help either. Plus, even doing this, I still faced many accounts that had comparable rosters that had better rng. Everyone acts like sandbagging is a guaranteed win. It's not - not by any means.
Using lower champs: I started playing around with teams of different rankings and PI and this is where things get interesting. You're still using your roster, fair and square but, now, I don't get matches that are lopsided on the high or low end. They're almost completely even, except when I face a sandbagger, which sometimes works in their favor, and sometimes in mine. But, I feel this is the best place to move up because I have a large and diverse 5/4/3* roster and just need to keep the pi pretty evenl across the board.
So that's where I'm at - using lower champs, but not sandbagging, because the game mode matchups are not in my favor when using my best champs - simply because that puts me up accounts that have 6* r4 rosters that dwarf mine.
Is that cheating? No. Is it unsportsmanlike? I don't think so. Does it feel good to be able to move up instead of being stuck - you bet. Does it feel good that I can't use the best champs in my roster I worked so hard to aquire and rank up - nope, not at all.
The rankings aren't great. You can't blame people for trying things to get past bottle necks outside of their control, especially if it's working. If it's not cheating, and they're willing to tweak their deck enough to find a combination that allows them to progress, and it's not cheating, you can complain all you want or you can find a strategy that works for you, or keep doing what you're doing and let them get the rewards instead.
Kabam needs to take action to make the matchups more fair at all levels of the game. If the matching system was better, then sandbagging wouldn't even be a thing. As it is now, it is a thing. And it has its own set of risks vs reward.
Instead of just using average PI, Kabam could look at the Median and Mode. Not just with PI, but with the stars as well. This could be another way for Kabam to evaluate/counter sandbagging.
And instead of screwing around with how players are matched, instead give people handicaps.
Sandbagging? Maybe you only get 20k max points instead of the standard 30k for defeating the opponent.
This cuter than BG seems like a broken war system from the past that players didn’t like. Why would BG match players in the same tier whether it be bronze, gold, platinum or higher based on the strength of o prestige of their roster. Shouldn’t all gold 1 tier fight all other gold 1 tier. If I’m in gold one as a uncollected player and have to fight only uncollected player to move up to the next tier this would be amazing for the uncollected player. How is it fair that a paragon player would be fighting only paragon players in gold 1 to move up. There should be only one ladder(pool of layers) so that sandbagging would only hurt those that do it. If every gold 1 players fights only gold 1 then it’s fair game. Do what you want with your deck and let the best player win.
Even after reading everyone's comments from this thread and others, I still don't understand why this isn't the way it's being implemented.
My opinion is that Kabam didn't do it this way because they wanted people with smaller rosters to have a more enjoyable time with the Game Mode at launch. If you're freshly uncollected, just got you're very first 5* Rank 5 and have 3 or 4 Unawakened Rank 1 6 Stars who may or may not be good for the Meta, you are going to get stomped by Paragons. That just is what it is. So Kabam added something which made it more likely that you would face even matchups and be able to win a lot closer to 50% of your matches. Of course, this is short sighted and the player base has shown very clearly why this is a bad system but it isn't unimaginable why it was done this way.
I dont care much about sandbagging since I have a diverse and relatively big roster but here's my take. I used to play fifa where people used to bronze bench and it would give them "easier" matches. This was a few years ago. Then it was made such that only the main team players counted towards the rating matchup, so ppl started putting bronze players in the main squad and using subs at the beginning of the match.
Let's say the solution is to use the top 20 champ ratings and matchup. This will work until people on purpose start using lower rated decks and bench their main champs. I am sure I could outsmart someone who has only 5* champs because their experience with mcoc is still limited BECAUSE MCOC is such a game where besides the obvious champ levels, the player skill and knowledge matters a LOT. If someone knows the champs inside out, then can easily outsmart a loaded deck.
I disagree with the fact that players should start and be pre-ranked each time a new season begins. That will cripple the ability to gain rewards for ppl in higher tiers and once they've plateaued. Eventually resulting in ppl dropping down the ranks and starting again, pummeling the lower rated players in lower tiers. This was a problem in fifa as well.
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.
How would losing in VT help you with matchmaking with what I suggested? Your "rating" in VT is basically just whatever tier of the track you're in at the time. You can't drop tiers so losing 3 matches in Gold 3 just gets you matched with more people in Gold 3. The only place tanking helps you is in GC and wins in a row don't really matter as much.
You suggested not matching by deck. The only alternative out there at the moment is matching by rating, which is to say ELO. If you’re suggesting matching everyone in a particular track randomly regardless of rating and regardless of deck, then you are correct losing would have no advantage, but that’s also a completely unworkable system. The assumption that the players will auto segregate over time if track was preserved between seasons would not hold true with the limited number of tracks we have. The only way to make this work in a practical sense would be to add so many tracks they would be proxies for ELO, which is completely impractical.
This also ignores decay. If we preserve track between seasons without decay, then eventually *everyone* will be in Gladiator, which doesn’t make sense. Decay plus unrestricted random matching will trap a substantial number of players between tracks. That’s untenable, because that’s the sort of thing that would destroy the game mode over time.
There is an ocean of options between keeping everyone where they end the previous season and starting everyone in Bronze 3.
That is true, but also irrelevant to the question of how players are matched. If you are assuming that it should be obvious that the track that players start in would determine who they match against, I will point out here that players are not restricted to matching against players in their current track now.
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.
How would losing in VT help you with matchmaking with what I suggested? Your "rating" in VT is basically just whatever tier of the track you're in at the time. You can't drop tiers so losing 3 matches in Gold 3 just gets you matched with more people in Gold 3. The only place tanking helps you is in GC and wins in a row don't really matter as much.
You suggested not matching by deck. The only alternative out there at the moment is matching by rating, which is to say ELO. If you’re suggesting matching everyone in a particular track randomly regardless of rating and regardless of deck, then you are correct losing would have no advantage, but that’s also a completely unworkable system. The assumption that the players will auto segregate over time if track was preserved between seasons would not hold true with the limited number of tracks we have. The only way to make this work in a practical sense would be to add so many tracks they would be proxies for ELO, which is completely impractical.
This also ignores decay. If we preserve track between seasons without decay, then eventually *everyone* will be in Gladiator, which doesn’t make sense. Decay plus unrestricted random matching will trap a substantial number of players between tracks. That’s untenable, because that’s the sort of thing that would destroy the game mode over time.
I didn't say anything about preserving track. I just said stagger the starting points. You can stagger starting position based on the previous season's rank (you have all the tiers of VT plus every rank tier of GC to use as separation you don't have to lump everyone that got to GC into one tier) , or if that's not a long term solution, even though it is, you can use progression levels.
You can do a lot of things of that nature. But I don't see how any of them produce reasonable match conditions.
This almost certainly falls under the umbrella of what I described in my original post as wildly differing opinions on what the nature of the competitive modes even are supposed to be, and I don't think there's going to be any way to resolve those differences. Which is why I said a wide range of people might disagree, but I was specifying what I would do if it were my decision to make, because while other people might take issue with it as being contrary to their ideas of competition or fair play, they don't contradict mine in this context.
The reason I referenced War is because the exact same argument came up with the Matchmaking there. Since Players are able to get the same Rewards, they should be competing with the "best". I never supported that type of quasi-vigilantesim then, and I don't now. Reward structure is a separate issue. I agree the Rewards need to be appropriate to skill, as well as what a Player needs, and in tandem with effort put in. What I don't condone is the idea that such manipulations are fair. Players who aren't doing such things are depending on the Matchmaking system to allow them to progress with "reasonable" Matches. Reasonable is subjective, but what that means is within reasonable capabilities. They don't have to be an exact match, but certainly not something that ambushes them into an almost certain Loss. I'm not subscribing to the justification that their skill is what matters because the people doing this are almost definitely aware that these cherrypicked Matches are not really capable, both in Roster and skill. It's not a matter of earning Rewards because they're more skilled. It's a matter of taking it upon themselves to stop lower Players from getting Rewards. Do I think that all people doing this have that motive? Not specifically. I just think people are using the system for easy Rewards. Something that's not uncommon in this game. However, the simple fact remains that taking advantage of other Players is not in the spirit of fair play, regardless of whether the system allows them to. Players should be rewarded appropriately. They should also be matched with Players in their own "paygrade", so-to-speak. A Player with a lower to mid Roster shouldn't be matching with a Paragon full of R4s unless there was some natural way of them making their way up that ladder. Again, one wrong doesn't justify the other.
I've been hit multiple times by paragon players with deck's of r4 6* and 1* champion's. I have a decent roster but nowhere near Thronebreaker let alone paragon. Everybody wants to achieve the best roster they can the difference is how you go about it and the type of person you are. For those of us who play the game as it's designed are generally decent people with morals and values. Those that sandbag/cheat/manipulate for their own gain's are sad individuals who are happy to go to any length to get ahead with little or no respect for anyone else. Unfortunately this only mirrors real life, something that the human race will eventually destroy itself over because of wanton greed. We may not like it but we learn to live with it.
Wakanda Forever is out soon, that's something to look forward too and can't be sandbagged lol.
My random suggestion to help fix matchmaking, instead of taking the mean (average) of the deck strength, take the median, or more precicesly something like the 10th strongest champion in the deck as a determination of who to match up with. This would make putting 2*’s in the deck completely pointless. If there was a set number of which champion to use then people would still try to manipulate the system so they could randomly change the champion that counts for matchmaking from say 10th to 15th strongest champion in the deck. There would still be some variance to the type of opponents you matched up to but it would be considerably closer to a fair match than the current system.
This is me getting all the benefits from sandbagging and “cheating” everyone else.
Ended up with four 2s champs in my fighting deck. Pretty sure my opponent was ok with me “cheating” 🤷🏻♂️
You get rewarded for losses from Kabam right now if you only play three matches. Your opponent's choice was take the easy win or forfeit and give you the win you're gaming the system to get. I'd have taken the easy fight and reported you after. Kabam should ban you from the game. Full stop.
Sigh, this is why reporting modders is so hard when they have to look at so many reports from people on things they don’t like versus actual cheating.
Sandbagging is cheating. Period. They belong in the same basket as modders. Both are a blight to the game mode and experience.
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 skill = rewards, money ≠ rewards. You want to win in a fair fight? Get good at the game, battlegrounds should be all about skill so I'm glad sandbagging is finally getting addressed. You're only seeing this from your point of view and ignoring how frustrating it is for people who are good at the game, to have to lose match after match just because they're opponent is exploiting a system that's flawed.
The purpose of the game mode should be to pair accounts according to the tier they're in not similar accounts. If a cav player is in Plat 3 and so is a paragon then why can't the 2 meet... this is how the matchmaking should work but it doesn't 🤦♂️.
It shouldn't be off of deck rating or similar progression or similar rated account etc etc
I am against those who sandbag
Cause if you do that then you're just giving the paragon player free points and rewards with no effort whatsoever when logically the higher the league the harder the fights should be for both sides but not to the point where one side just automatically gets the win due to their roster being far superior because then all that difficulty is gone for that side on a league where fights should be hard (and you've probably also given the cavalier player a headache in the process because that's the tenth time they've faced a paragon in a row)
This is me getting all the benefits from sandbagging and “cheating” everyone else.
Ended up with four 2s champs in my fighting deck. Pretty sure my opponent was ok with me “cheating” 🤷🏻♂️
You get rewarded for losses from Kabam right now if you only play three matches. Your opponent's choice was take the easy win or forfeit and give you the win you're gaming the system to get. I'd have taken the easy fight and reported you after. Kabam should ban you from the game. Full stop.
Sigh, this is why reporting modders is so hard when they have to look at so many reports from people on things they don’t like versus actual cheating.
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."
You just keep getting worse. 😂
How the hell did you get "steal money from a store" from my post?
Really bad analogy there, chief.
You're blaming Kabam for you being scummy.
How is using a completely legal strategy in a video game like stealing money from a store?
Valid? They literally called it cheating my guy lmao
You take a clip (why very fuzzy, btw ?) from in the post about hiring of a new person to combat cheating, in which they lay out different things. Of which, you can toss in the newer post they made which DOES actually say that “WIN-TRADING” is not allowed.
And then as a side note in this earlier announcement, they also mention changes they will make to sandbagging (without calling sandbagging cheating, like the modding, etc, is).
Your 2nd paragraph would be summarizing the rest of the post, not specifically pertaining to sandbagging (which was not the primary purpose of the post).
—- But, yes, changes will be made to better do matchmaking. I would think something like a PRESTIGE-based system of the DECK you are using, like average rating of your top-10 in the deck (10 out of 30, so wouldn’t matter who you bring for 11-30).
But, yes, changes will be made to better do matchmaking. I would think something like a PRESTIGE-based system of the DECK you are using, like average rating of your top-10 in the deck (10 out of 30, so wouldn’t matter who you bring for 11-30).
Exactly what I was going to suggest. Giving Battlegrounds decks prestige values based on the top 10-15 champions of their deck and matching players based on that prestige value makes sandbagging completely impossible, while (hopefully) not punishing players too hard who happen to have a few high rank champions on their roster that could unbalance that value i.e. a player having 3-4 6r3s but only having 5r5s besides that, wouldn't be forced to play against players with full 6r3 rosters.
As far as the ranking system itself, I feel like Victory Track should be removed entirely. No other competitive game that I can think of has a ranking system that completely prevents a player from demoting. The way the Battlegrounds rank system is currently setup, if we really wanted all players to be matching with similar rosters, we'd have cavaliers coming out of Victory Track just like Paragons who have significantly superior rosters but still end up in the same place on the ladder, resulting in the same issue of cavs getting stomped by paragons straight out the gate and having no reason to ever play Battlegrounds once they reach the circuit due to a broken ladder.
If we wanted to have player ranks carry over between seasons, that introduces the problem of figuring out how to distribute token rewards to players who are already in high ranks and can't possibly rank up from B3 to B2 etc.
The best solution I can think of would be to implement a milestone system that rewards players for reaching rank thresholds relative to the rank they ended the previous season in.
So you would have players start every season 3 divisions below where they ended the previous season i.e. someone who ended this season in Plat 3 would start the next in Gold 3, which forces players to prove that they actually belong in whatever rank they're in and didn't simply get there through a streak of good luck.
Milestone rewards would be given out as you approach your last season's rank, giving you your total trophy tokens when you reach that rank, then giving you small amounts (1-200) per win as long as you're above your past season's rank, incentivizing people to continue ranking up while minimizing rank exploits.
For the highest ranks, say celestial, mysterium and quantum, rewards can be directly tied to individual wins since there's no real way to exploit rank when you're playing with the best players, plus it's a lot more difficult to rank up when you're already at the top.
I just hope any sort of BG Prestige won’t be just your regular Prestige. Should be based on the actual DECK you use each time.
**Points for BG Events reward more for using certain champs (Villain, and more specifically Off.Burst and Def.Util tagged ones). So I actually want to use ONLY those tagged champs for my actual fights.
No way I would have that many tagged available from among my top champs, so I take them from among a fuller availability of 4* roster (and Skip using any high 5* and 6* champs), so I have more of those 4* specific tagged champs available for my Deck and Fights.
Which even then would be at a disadvantage against other 4* who bring top performing champs (not necessarily some weaker ones like Off.Burst Gamora).
If Kabam wants to match you based on your overall Roster, and not your Deck, then they can’t be specifying bonus points for just a certain subset of champs.
This is me getting all the benefits from sandbagging and “cheating” everyone else.
Ended up with four 2s champs in my fighting deck. Pretty sure my opponent was ok with me “cheating” 🤷🏻♂️
You get rewarded for losses from Kabam right now if you only play three matches. Your opponent's choice was take the easy win or forfeit and give you the win you're gaming the system to get. I'd have taken the easy fight and reported you after. Kabam should ban you from the game. Full stop.
Sigh, this is why reporting modders is so hard when they have to look at so many reports from people on things they don’t like versus actual cheating.
Sandbagging is cheating. Period. They belong in the same basket as modders. Both are a blight to the game mode and experience.
This is so wrong. If you're in the same tier as someone you should be fair game. If you can't beat someone with half a roster you don't deserve to be in a tier with them. Kabam artificially propelling low accounts into higher tiers that they don't belong in hurts everyone.
Being in the same Tier as someone doesn't justify manipulating the system to take advantage of the Matches. People want a monopoly on the board. They want their own position, and they want to take it upon themselves to use the system to sabotage others. That's not in the spirit of fair play no matter how you justify it.
Comments
This also ignores decay. If we preserve track between seasons without decay, then eventually *everyone* will be in Gladiator, which doesn’t make sense. Decay plus unrestricted random matching will trap a substantial number of players between tracks. That’s untenable, because that’s the sort of thing that would destroy the game mode over time.
1) do you even know what sandbagging is?
2) if you think you do, what is it in your opinion?
Because your arguments seem to be justifying something completely different
At same time make the tokens you receive from moving up and ranked rewards scale with progression so bigger accounts get more. (Don't see many of the people who want to be just matched with equal accounts say they want smaller rewards which would be the only fair thing)
When hit certain level (either gladiator or upper part of victory track) remove all structured matchmaking and it be a free for all in that tier.
So, I tried some different setups.
My best champ's:
Worked well for awhile. Pretty even most matches until I got to gold 1 and then found myself fighting accounts that had way more 6* r4s than me, and mostly all had the newest champs. Couldn't get ahead and started hating playing. I'm not a bad player, but my account could not realistically compete with the matchups. The accounts were just way more stacked and couldn't beat them fast enough, most of the time, even with perfect game play and good matchups.
Sandbagging:
Not as great as you think. More times than not, I'd get only 2* to pick from and a guaranteed round lost. Or, the one good champ was a terrible option and didn't help either. Plus, even doing this, I still faced many accounts that had comparable rosters that had better rng. Everyone acts like sandbagging is a guaranteed win. It's not - not by any means.
Using lower champs:
I started playing around with teams of different rankings and PI and this is where things get interesting. You're still using your roster, fair and square but, now, I don't get matches that are lopsided on the high or low end. They're almost completely even, except when I face a sandbagger, which sometimes works in their favor, and sometimes in mine. But, I feel this is the best place to move up because I have a large and diverse 5/4/3* roster and just need to keep the pi pretty evenl across the board.
So that's where I'm at - using lower champs, but not sandbagging, because the game mode matchups are not in my favor when using my best champs - simply because that puts me up accounts that have 6* r4 rosters that dwarf mine.
Is that cheating? No. Is it unsportsmanlike? I don't think so. Does it feel good to be able to move up instead of being stuck - you bet. Does it feel good that I can't use the best champs in my roster I worked so hard to aquire and rank up - nope, not at all.
The rankings aren't great. You can't blame people for trying things to get past bottle necks outside of their control, especially if it's working. If it's not cheating, and they're willing to tweak their deck enough to find a combination that allows them to progress, and it's not cheating, you can complain all you want or you can find a strategy that works for you, or keep doing what you're doing and let them get the rewards instead.
Kabam needs to take action to make the matchups more fair at all levels of the game. If the matching system was better, then sandbagging wouldn't even be a thing. As it is now, it is a thing. And it has its own set of risks vs reward.
And instead of screwing around with how players are matched, instead give people handicaps.
Sandbagging? Maybe you only get 20k max points instead of the standard 30k for defeating the opponent.
I used to play fifa where people used to bronze bench and it would give them "easier" matches. This was a few years ago.
Then it was made such that only the main team players counted towards the rating matchup, so ppl started putting bronze players in the main squad and using subs at the beginning of the match.
Let's say the solution is to use the top 20 champ ratings and matchup. This will work until people on purpose start using lower rated decks and bench their main champs.
I am sure I could outsmart someone who has only 5* champs because their experience with mcoc is still limited BECAUSE MCOC is such a game where besides the obvious champ levels, the player skill and knowledge matters a LOT. If someone knows the champs inside out, then can easily outsmart a loaded deck.
I disagree with the fact that players should start and be pre-ranked each time a new season begins. That will cripple the ability to gain rewards for ppl in higher tiers and once they've plateaued. Eventually resulting in ppl dropping down the ranks and starting again, pummeling the lower rated players in lower tiers. This was a problem in fifa as well.
This almost certainly falls under the umbrella of what I described in my original post as wildly differing opinions on what the nature of the competitive modes even are supposed to be, and I don't think there's going to be any way to resolve those differences. Which is why I said a wide range of people might disagree, but I was specifying what I would do if it were my decision to make, because while other people might take issue with it as being contrary to their ideas of competition or fair play, they don't contradict mine in this context.
What I don't condone is the idea that such manipulations are fair. Players who aren't doing such things are depending on the Matchmaking system to allow them to progress with "reasonable" Matches. Reasonable is subjective, but what that means is within reasonable capabilities. They don't have to be an exact match, but certainly not something that ambushes them into an almost certain Loss.
I'm not subscribing to the justification that their skill is what matters because the people doing this are almost definitely aware that these cherrypicked Matches are not really capable, both in Roster and skill. It's not a matter of earning Rewards because they're more skilled. It's a matter of taking it upon themselves to stop lower Players from getting Rewards.
Do I think that all people doing this have that motive? Not specifically. I just think people are using the system for easy Rewards. Something that's not uncommon in this game. However, the simple fact remains that taking advantage of other Players is not in the spirit of fair play, regardless of whether the system allows them to.
Players should be rewarded appropriately. They should also be matched with Players in their own "paygrade", so-to-speak. A Player with a lower to mid Roster shouldn't be matching with a Paragon full of R4s unless there was some natural way of them making their way up that ladder. Again, one wrong doesn't justify the other.
Everybody wants to achieve the best roster they can the difference is how you go about it and the type of person you are.
For those of us who play the game as it's designed are generally decent people with morals and values.
Those that sandbag/cheat/manipulate for their own gain's are sad individuals who are happy to go to any length to get ahead with little or no respect for anyone else.
Unfortunately this only mirrors real life, something that the human race will eventually destroy itself over because of wanton greed.
We may not like it but we learn to live with it.
Wakanda Forever is out soon, that's something to look forward too and can't be sandbagged lol.
Maybe they should be awarded a special default profile pic of a giant chicken?
You're only seeing this from your point of view and ignoring how frustrating it is for people who are good at the game, to have to lose match after match just because they're opponent is exploiting a system that's flawed.
You take a clip (why very fuzzy, btw ?) from in the post about hiring of a new person to combat cheating, in which they lay out different things.
Of which, you can toss in the newer post they made which DOES actually say that “WIN-TRADING” is not allowed.
And then as a side note in this earlier announcement, they also mention changes they will make to sandbagging (without calling sandbagging cheating, like the modding, etc, is).
Your 2nd paragraph would be summarizing the rest of the post, not specifically pertaining to sandbagging (which was not the primary purpose of the post).
—-
But, yes, changes will be made to better do matchmaking. I would think something like a PRESTIGE-based system of the DECK you are using, like average rating of your top-10 in the deck (10 out of 30, so wouldn’t matter who you bring for 11-30).
As far as the ranking system itself, I feel like Victory Track should be removed entirely. No other competitive game that I can think of has a ranking system that completely prevents a player from demoting. The way the Battlegrounds rank system is currently setup, if we really wanted all players to be matching with similar rosters, we'd have cavaliers coming out of Victory Track just like Paragons who have significantly superior rosters but still end up in the same place on the ladder, resulting in the same issue of cavs getting stomped by paragons straight out the gate and having no reason to ever play Battlegrounds once they reach the circuit due to a broken ladder.
If we wanted to have player ranks carry over between seasons, that introduces the problem of figuring out how to distribute token rewards to players who are already in high ranks and can't possibly rank up from B3 to B2 etc.
The best solution I can think of would be to implement a milestone system that rewards players for reaching rank thresholds relative to the rank they ended the previous season in.
So you would have players start every season 3 divisions below where they ended the previous season i.e. someone who ended this season in Plat 3 would start the next in Gold 3, which forces players to prove that they actually belong in whatever rank they're in and didn't simply get there through a streak of good luck.
Milestone rewards would be given out as you approach your last season's rank, giving you your total trophy tokens when you reach that rank, then giving you small amounts (1-200) per win as long as you're above your past season's rank, incentivizing people to continue ranking up while minimizing rank exploits.
For the highest ranks, say celestial, mysterium and quantum, rewards can be directly tied to individual wins since there's no real way to exploit rank when you're playing with the best players, plus it's a lot more difficult to rank up when you're already at the top.
Should be based on the actual DECK you use each time.
**Points for BG Events reward more for using certain champs (Villain, and more specifically Off.Burst and Def.Util tagged ones).
So I actually want to use ONLY those tagged champs for my actual fights.
No way I would have that many tagged available from among my top champs, so I take them from among a fuller availability of 4* roster (and Skip using any high 5* and 6* champs), so I have more of those 4* specific tagged champs available for my Deck and Fights.
Which even then would be at a disadvantage against other 4* who bring top performing champs (not necessarily some weaker ones like Off.Burst Gamora).
If Kabam wants to match you based on your overall Roster, and not your Deck, then they can’t be specifying bonus points for just a certain subset of champs.