Not the usual thread about sandbagging but..

[poop_]

Just because you guys want to point at a rabbit and call it a turtle, it doesn't make the rabbit a turtle. It is still a rabbit.
dannemare The equivalent of putting iron agers into your war lineup for easier matches is the equivalent of global players finding a way to label themselves EA and attack EA bases.

I am not hiding anything when I lower my medals. My bracket is +1/-1 age above and below me. All of those players are my matches. I can attack any of them. Finding a way to attack beneath my weight bracket would be sandbagging.

Medals are what you are competing for. If I don't want to compete for them, who cares who I attack? IT DOES NOT MATTER AS LONG AS IT IS IN ONE AGE RANGE OF ME.

Lowering you medals is not sandbagging; it is just people who don't care to compete for medals and therefore open up their ability to attack everyone in their bracket. Period. End of discussion.

 

[dannemare]

At least you aren't quite as silly as elitist phil, but you are pretty stubborn.

Well, I could say exactly the same for you.

And because I'm as stubborn as you, I'll repeat myself once more: If sandbagging your way to easier matchups in WW can be considered cheating, then sandbagging your way to easier MP matchups can be considered cheating. Dropping medals intentionally directly influences who you match in MP. You match easier opponents.

 

[poop_]

dannemare just because something gives you easier match ups, it does not mean it is sandbagging. The reason you get easier match ups by lowering your medals is because you are competing with less skilled opponents. It does not mean you are competing with opponents out of your range. Does that make sense to you?

 

[Pie Empire]

I agree with poop, medals are there for individual ranking and multiplayer matching, some people do not care about medals, like me I just want to loot resources even if I lose a lot of medals, some people will loot me too without caring about medals which results to my medals going up.

Nexon got to deal with ww sandbagging coz it is annoying!!

 

[GailWho]

Ok I'd like everyone to take a step back and breathe a bit. I suppose I'll come out of forum semi-retirement here and try to paint a picture for all involved. I think most everyone here is in one of 2 categories... so figure out which category you are in and picture yourself in the opposite of the following scenarios. Until you walk in someone else's shoes...

1) you are in an alliance that has put together quite a few awesome players who have worked really well together as a team to gain glory. You are not the best of the best but you are trying your best and that's what matters. Things are running smoothly and all your people are in a groove. You are gaining glory, your people are upgrading and gaining in level every day. You feel that some day you can be best of the best. Then it happens you match with a team who's top half of the roster exceeds or equals your best guy. The bottom of the roster has Iron Age level 10 (inactive) so they can get a lower match than they should. The coalitions trade goods you just grinded for will be usless against this team. You spend the entire planning day wondering how can you plan against this? It is clear there is no way to win. But you try anyway because we are in this as a team. War day comes and these are the biggest bases you have ever attacked and see your team mates one after another fail to win what usually comes so easily. (Or you may be the lone 198 on your team you see your friends suffering loss after loss and there's nothing you can do about it because you only have 2 attacks ) players feel embarrassed to hit those Iron Age bases (with maybe 1500 in rss) that are so easily disassembled like the other team is doing to every single one of your bases one by one, systematically until they get the perfect score and then stick it to you again on the 2nd attack. You get through these two days in your game that is supposed to be fun with a sense of anxiety and sadness for your fellow team members. But it's over and a new war is about to begin. The match comes up and yes there it is again. An opponent nearly identical to the other one and you have to go through this again for another 2 days. Will it ever end? Unlikely because more and more upper level alliances are doing this and you ask yourself why?


(Please forgive me as I am only guessing on scenario #2 as I am only writing it from the convos I have had with people in this situation and what I've read here)

2) You have worked your way to the top. Months of hard work have finally paid off (or possibly you may have spent some money) to get exactly where you wanted to be.... In the top alliance working with the best of the best. You can 5 star any base you find. Your team mates can 5 star any base they find. You are ready for war! Ready to reach (or keep) the #1 spot of the leaderboard. Your leaders start the search... and it searches ... and searches.... and searches. It's been searching for 2 days. You finally get a match against a team that is your equal. You put every effort into planning day. Grind the upper medal leagues for coalition trade goods. Pick the tactics and mercs you need to take down your assigned opponent. War day comes and your team is a well oiled machine. Pancake after pancake until you get a perfect score. But your opponent gets a perfect score too. It's a stalemate... all that work for nothing. No win, no glory. Meanwhile less advanced teams are passing you up on the leaderboard. They have stacked their bases with Iron Age (ok this is the 3rd category/scenario but I really don't want to walk in these shoes so...) you look at their bases and think "I can take every one of these bases out in my sleep with no mercs or Generals." And so can all my teammates. What is wrong with this picture. They are ahead of us on the leaderboard. They are winning glory and we are just sitting here stagnant. It doesn't seem like a fix to this matchmaking/stalemating hell is coming anytime soon so the agonizing decision is made by the alliance to add some Iron Age bases to the roster. You get a match within a few minutes. It's a team you can easily win against. Win after win you make your way back up the leaderboard to where you are supposed to be. Not much challenge in it but you do get the occasional team that is doing just what you are doing so that's good. Then you read on the forum this is considered cheating. The teams that most players used to look up to including yours are getting bad press. Arguments about semantics ensue. You feel bad about sandbagging. But It's all part of the game right? What choice did you have? Should you just give up all you worked for and move to a different team? And you ask yourself why?

So so let me start one more scenario... you are Nexon. Your man Nb4powerup sends you this post. What are you doing? And how are you going to fix this for the people who are your livelihood?

 

[poop_]

GailWho thanks for posting (although me and my new friend were having so much fun). I agree with what you said especially about nexon doing something about it.

The thing is, I think there was another choice if you are stalemating: to open up your extra spots to actual active lower level players.

But, players only stay iron age for a week, so that wouldn't work. How are you going to have a super advantage in war matching then?

AND, you might have to talk to those noobs, and answer their "dumb" questions...GROSS! When you are AWESOME, ain't nobody got time for that!

I think when someone does something that makes it unfair to others and lessons their enjoyment, other members of the community should speak up. I feel this about the game, and I feel this about life. I am not going to put on a friendly face and be nice to you if you are being a bully and defend being a bully. Sorry, that's just me.

Try making a choice that doesn't have a negative effect on others. Then, I might see eye to eye with you.

 

[DomiPro]

lol always see the same old whingers complaining about the same old thing... especially ppl from active warfare...u guys gotta learn not to go abusing alliances who stacks.... u guys need to learn some manners or courtesy... lose with grace and win with class.. u should not go around abusing alliances win or lose.. it is not cool... you are entitled to your opinion, but u shouldnt go abusing others.... shows how much respect & class "active whingers" members have, what u give is what u get... =) here u are calling ppl cheaters... but, did u abuse the free worker from university bug?? if u did, is that cheatin or exploiting? to me, its within the confines of the game and rules.. hence its exploiting... u need to fix your definition of what is cheating and exploiting in ur dictionaries... cause i think u got that messed up

It is a game of war... either u adapted.. or get dominated... u can whinge all you want... but a good player/alliance adapts to any situation and new rules and such... this is why you will never be a leading alliance =)

sandbagging isnt cheating but its exploiting the system presented by the developers..i consider sandbagging as unsportsmanlike but definitely not cheating... however just like in every sports in real life..( that is if your informed of the real world)... every "professional" in any sport will be on the limit of the regulations or finding ways to exploit a grey area.. this happens all the time... If your alliance decide not to take the sandbagging route.. thats ur choice... dont blame others for not following ur way... most alliance sandbag now.. u may stay put the way u r.. no1 is complaining there are more sandbaggers in the game... in the forum there are more whingers.... its only natural u wont hear much from ppl who sandbags.. cause they dont care what the whingers are complaining about.. they just get on with it/./ and when dev finds or fix it with a new system.. im sure a new exploit will be found as always

 

[Jakob_888]

Great post Gail. I like the way you think - putting your self in others shoes
The world is not black and white, and there are always a different story everywhere.

I mostly do the search in The 1st Dynasty.
Stalemates can be a problem but never a problem I would act upon like you describe in case 2. I wouldnt use low levels to get easy wars. How borring would that be for everybody!
The real problem for our alliance is there are almost no teams to face full force now - so I really think "sandbagging" is a big problem too!!!
So far we faced 2 alliances in war which didnt use low levels when we had included some to find a war. These 2 wars were no fun and obviously a mismatch. Im happy one of the teams still reached out to us on facebook and gave us respect anyway. The other team we just faced.
All the other teams we faced were all in our matching range - some faced with full force - some where both teams used low levels.

For other teams it might be as described in case 2. But again - they probably also have a different story

 

[S_How]

Gail really hit the nail on the head, again. Its kind of disappointing to see the thread derailed by petty semantics. As a community, we should all be aligned that this (Sandbagging, and the reasons the game encourages it) is one of the biggest problems in the game and one Nexon needs to prioritize as one of their top issues.

In the end, only Nexon can solve it, and unfortunately its been 3+ months of bickering and a miserable game/community experience for most teams involved. It is Nexon that everyone should be frustrated with - lack of communication, lack of action, and apparent apathy.

 

[GailWho]

Thanks for making my fuzzy POV a little more clear on behalf of your team Jakob_888 I'm curious how do you combat stalemates and long searches? Are you bringing in more mid to lower level actual players as poop suggested? You are obviously doing something to get viable matches to keep yourselves at #1. I know you don't need to explain yourselves but if the folks here knew what actually occurs from someone who isn't trolling (as some of your members have) it may make things a little less tense around here. You can understand by reading 1) what we are going through so it would be good to know if your alliance or any of the other prominent alliances are actually the source of our misery and adding to the problem or if you have been falsely accused. (Just as a side note I'm not sure you are aware but it doesn't look like the bottom 6 in your alliance are playing much and it doesn't help your cause... just sayin)

It would be nice to hear from the searchers on the other Elite teams to gain insight on what they are experiencing as well.

 

[GailWho]

I certainly agree that we must speak up about this issue but I like to get at the heart of why people do what they do. Not that I am condoning but everyone has a story and I'd like to know what it is. I think the point of my post is that everyone has been affected by this poor matching and it's up to Nexon to keep us informed so we aren't at each other's throats. I admire your efforts poop_ and have had a few chuckles because of it Not discrediting your cause just adding my own take on the situation so we can possibly get it resolved or at least have a timeline when it will be resolved.

 

[Tower]

So we (Viking Army) just had our first loss after 16 straight wins. The viking beaters was Korea United.
Looking at the line up, we had 11 Global players they had 22... How did this crazy match up happen?
Let us scroll down the 35 members of the Korea United alliance, whats that? 6 players lv 8-12? Wow this must be great and valuable players since they are allowed to play w the big boys...

I must go to Korea United alliance page and see what these Iron Age wonderboys contribute with..
let us sort on level.. Hmmm 5 out the 6 haven't logged on for the past 10 days plus...

Huh... Why would such a great alliance like Korea United include people who evidently have quit the game?

Strange...

 

[Jakob_888]

@Gail
Sure, no problem. Besides the 2 mismatch wars we only hit top teams with high level all around. All of them were either full global/IA or with decoys on both sides. We hit exactly the same teams as we would hit with or without low levels.
We are not hitting "diverse" teams (teams like your self with a lot of different levels - im sorry for the caracterization - hard to define).
This is probably due to our very high level - we would have to use like at least 10 decoys to do that. Hell no I want those wars. Im perfectly fine with our "normal" high level opponents

 

[maggiepie]

It seems to me dannemare and vincentdang4 are using a bit of an association fallacy-

Sandbagging is cheating
Sandbagging is rank lowering
All rank lowering is cheating

Just because one says it, doesn't necessarily make it true, or accurate. It's like saying: Billy is a criminal. Billy has green eyes. All green eyed people are criminals. The logic isn't sound.

In addition it's a case of getting caught up in semantics- some people want to define sandbagging as cheating, but I would respectfully disagree. It's a tactic (albeit a largely unpopular one in the eyes of the majority of this community) that is available by design (for better or worse) that anyone is free to use or not. At worst it's a manipulation of a flawed system, but I wouldn't say that's a cheat. Arguing semantics, I'd define a cheat as more of an unauthorized access to certain content/actions/whatever that only a few people are able to do. Well, someone can make the argument that anyone can actually access something in an unauthorized way- but I think it's far more trouble than it's worth to most people. At any rate, I don't think sandbagging is cheating anything- but clearly it's causing problems (thx to GailWho for very nicely explaining why it's a practice that's not really helping most).

As for medal dropping being akin to sandbagging (which the forum defines as the intentional addition of low level, often inactive, accounts to a roster of extremely high level accounts with the purpose of achieving a lower total war rank to match with an easier opponent), i wouldn't say they're entirely the same- I do, however, understand the idea behind the comparison.

What's being left out is the way we perceive medals. Low medals are seen as a range for casual players or those that are farming rss specifically. Whereas we see high medals as a range for competitive play- where players meet similar high level bases which better test their skill. There was a time where we could attack any age, but because it was seen as grossly unfair for higher ages to completely pummel lower ages, an age limitation was imposed (+/-1 or own age). Are the bases at lower levels largely easier- yes; it's not always the case ('big fish' actually do hide out in lower levels...a lot), but for the most part you can see many either newly minted players which are really still at an age down or you see players that simply don't know how to play the game (i.e. they are at a more comparable level, but don't upgrade or design properly). But- there are still restrictions in place to make matches more fair than they previously were.

So, perhaps that distinction should be applied in some way to war, which is already seen as a more competitive feature meant to reflect collective skill (especially as it applies to the leaderboard).

I'm not going to pretend I have a solution, but I think if ones wishes to define 'sandbagging' and 'medal dumping/playing lower medals' in similar terms then they should be distinguished similarly. Alliances wishing to play at a lower rank should perhaps be seen as more casual/less competitive and have some sort of parameters to contend with that do not see them rank as well on a leaderboard (just like I can't rank on a leaderboard individually by lowering my medals). And those alliances matching more closely to their opponents should see better gains- just like the high medal players that rank on the boards by beating their 'equals'. How to do that, I haven't a clue; but at the moment, lowering medals and lowering war rank aren't as similar as has been suggested. Though it is an interesting proposition, I will say that (even though I believe the actual intent of the comparison was more to antagonize).

And incidentally, I don't think there should be age restrictions for wars as in PvP- I think anyone should be able to war and attack each other. But perhaps somehow the disparity between ages should be better accounted for in awarding glory and perhaps matchmaking.

 

[LexLoci]

So so let me start one more scenario... you are Nexon. Your man Nb4powerup sends you this post. What are you doing? And how are you going to fix this for the people who are your livelihood?

Has Nexon ever commented on including total time into the equation? This seems like the logical solution to stalemates. Total stars > % destruction > time spent attacking.
If you include Iron Age bases you would be giving your opponents a massive time advantage.

We could also move into age brackets, let the alliance leaders set what age they are competing in and don't allow bases below that age, or more then +/- 1 but at least half your bases need to be in that age or something. Then we can stop worrying about trying to find the perfect match and go straight glory vs glory. Right now glory is just a measure of how well you can game the system, it has no real bearing on your skill.
That or force stricter matchmaking requirements, if one Alliance has an Iron Age base the other one also has to have at least 1 Iron Age base, same for every age on up. The problem with that solution is longer match making times though.

 

[poop_]

I AGREE 100% that Nexon needs to do something about this issue. (Maybe they get a bump in supposed player numbers by all the newly introduced iron age accounts and somehow can use that for advertisers.) I join everyone in their confusion as to why they have stated it is an issue but have yet to take action.

In the meantime, I will not accept silly statements defending it. It may be currently in the rules (at least so much as you can't get banned for it), but it is clearly a manipulation of the system that goes against the intent of an even match up. You can argue over the definition of "cheat," but to me, it falls into that category.

I try to keep the humor in it, so no one gets too trollish, but ultimately, I have difficulty keeping my mouth shut when I see someone gaming the system to the detriment of the whole.

Maybe, I should focus more of my attention on harassing nexon everyday... I am not sure what would get their attention though... How many bad app reviews would it take for them to start prioritizing it more? Has anything worked in the past?

 

[poop_]

Oh, and ultimately, a way to reduce war search time is MORE players in the game. Having a system that currently frustrates/demoralizes lower level players will not accomplish this.

 

[LexLoci]

I'm in a small alliance with just some real life friends who are all developing their nations and I absolutely agree that stacking is destructive to the community.

If we didn't all know each other and communicate as much as we do during wars we probably would have quit, or at least stopped warring by now. It's tiring running into global age players when your highest age is enlightened. It's lame having to throw attacks at Iron Age bases for 2.5k-27k war loot. We've been lucky that the alliances we've fought have been exceptionally terrible, if they had been organized there's no way we would have half our wins.

 

[Christopher-Outlaws!!]

dannemare Your logical falacy is.... the metric is completely different, there are fiscal limitations on who you face in WW vs Multi-Player. if you dump medals you are still confined to face someone 1 above, or 1 below you, unless you're going below 200 medals, then all bets are off. Certainly this is a strategy that even I use. However, you've assigned corralation to these two where there is none, WW is based on a completely different metric, and there is no stopping a fully stacked GA alliance from sticking 10 iron aged bases in in order to run over a diverse alliance with representation from each age. Don't corralate these two, they aren't the same. I'm likely not going to participate past your response that I'm sure will be aptly as entertaining as this argument. But it needed to be pointed out.

If/When you are looking for a fair matchup, come find us, we'll set you up proper
https://discord.gg/gK3gaQy

 

[maggiepie]

You can argue over the definition or "cheat" but to me, it falls into that category.

I'm starting to think that the argument over this term is becoming a distraction from the real issue at hand. The issue is WW matchmaking and glory calculation/allotment isn't ideal and is causing severe dissatisfaction in game play for a majority of this community- the issue really isn't whether this is classified as a cheat or not. The fact that some people want to call it a cheat and others do not shouldn't be the sticking point here. I think it's dividing people unnecessarily when it seems at least some of the people are saying the same thing: that sandbagging is making too many people unhappy and something needs to remedy the situation. Calling something a 'manipulation' vs a 'cheat', having to have it one way or the other over a matter of principle? Does it really mean that much?

I'm inclined to agree that sandbagging is a problem that needs to be addressed. I'm less inclined to have to categorize people because of how I feel things are.

(I'm not trying to single anyone out- I just think this has gone to a really weird place, and I wonder about the real point of it, or how useful it really is in solving the actual issue at hand. And I especially think that when people are trying to say the same thing: that an issue needs a better resolution, I think we should try to just come together as much as possible and not try to create divisions over things that ultimately don't matter).