Sandbagging - seriously...

[Tower]

So we are facing W.A.R for the 3rd time in 5 wars (despite shifting our search 12 hrs).. to compensate for their increasing number of Atomic members that they now have they have added another Iron age base and are currently using 14/40 iron age bases...

This constant exploit is ruining the game completely. We have 50 members of all ages - all active the last 24 hrs or so.. and now we are facing 48 hrs of boredom and waste...

We can't beat these guys. It is impossible.. No point doing anything... Our top 5 can match their top 5 and hence perhaps 5 star their top 10.. but then - our 10-20 stand no chance in *ell..

W.A.R is climbing fast on the glory leaderboard - seemingly getting the thumbs up and pat on the back from Nexon.

Nexon, please intervene in this war - give them the 200 or so glory they can get from beating us and let us start over again - at least we are not wasting 48 hrs on nothing...

 

[Mountainking]

When you get a 'match' you have no option to decline it? Just asking because I don't know how it works. Cheers. I would agree this is borefest.

 

[helix900]

That really sucks and with all these sales of extra troops there´s really no more meaning doing wars. Its the ones with the deepest pockets who wins, and when they also sandbagging its totally pointless. Nexon is killing their own game and that is such a shame. This was one of the best apps until they got to greedy.

 

[S_How]

Sorry you are going through this. It happens to us, too, and many other teams. 100% of our wars at 35/40 are with sandbagged teams. Any team not using this to manipulate matchups (we dont) is punished. Have already seen many players simply quit due to it.

Anyhow, the first fix (lowers glory rewards for sandbagged teams) will go in. Its not a good fix, but hopefully will help some with situations exactly like this - where teams are using it only to manipulate matchups (not because they are a top 10 team and cant get matched otherwise)

 

[Tenacious D]

50 members of all ages is the ultimate sandbag. You never need your attacks from your bottom 20. It ensures you always have easy matchups. Bravo to WAR for countering you.

 

[QuébecGlory]

We just lost to WAR. They used 14 sandbags on us too. We fought the best we could but we're no match. We are now adding more sandbags to avoid being outsandbagged again, our answer to Nexon. You might not like our way of fighting back the problem, and it might make unfortunate victims, but I refuse to stand down and roll over. If they won't fix the problem, we have to take in our own hands. In a way, think of it this way, if all teams would have 50% sandbags, the match-ups would be according to the top 50% and be fair.

Face it, you can whine all day...or for months...but the only ones who can change something is Nexon... or let's all have 50% sandbags.

I honestly thought that real changes were about to happen with the amount of sandbagging complaints...

 

[Europeos]

Until the system changes you have two choices: either you use sandbags yourselves like most alliances do and mostly face alliances your level, or arrange h2h on discord.
Btw, the lower glory fix proposed by Nexon won't be the end of sandbagging as little glory is still better than no glory at all for alliances playing the leaderboard.
​I think 1 attack per player really is the easiest way to fix stalemate and sandbagging.

 

[TizJourney]

or third option: just give up on wars in this game. totally not worth it.

 

[Penumbra]

Outsandbagged again!! Ha! Hopefully they will get this issue fixed in the next six months

 

[Mountainking]

1 attack per user would fix sandbagging real fast. But then war times would have to be shortened or something.

 

[Mountainking]

Or a 2nd option is that if all accounts have not obtained at least 1 star, others cannot use their second attack. This would kill sandbagging big time

 

[Europeos]

That would be the best option, but I don't know if Nexon could code this...

 

[Nikolo]

My team is currently facing a team impossible to beat for us. 2 atomic age and 1 high global. They have created 3 iron age to sandbag, the three of them have not been connected for 3 days exactly . Meaning they have been created for this purpose at the same moment to meet a weaker team, lucky we are it s us. They are not attacking, of course they don't have to as their top3 made easily 5 stars on our top 6.
What can we do ? Nothing
Their top 3 have 60 levels more than ours. It' s impossible to even reach their tower center.

Nexon i thought you were supposed to diminish the winning glory for team sandbagging and glory to lose for the team victim of that.
Of course it is not, as we are going to lose 650 glory points, in case of miracle we would have won something like 70 glory points.

What s the purpose to make ww so, if you have no chance to win ?

 

[Tower]

Three Iron Age? This is W.A.R line up in the war against us.. If you want to sandbag. This is how you do it:

197	AA
209	AA
180	AA
188	GA
198	GA
188	AA
199	GA
187	AA
174	AA
177	AA
184	GA
183	GA
194	AA
184	GA
188	GA
192	AA
172	GA
164	GA
166	GA
161	GA
148	GA
165	GA
151	IA
105	IA
127	EA
80	EA
9
12
13
11
12
10
9
11
10
10
9
8
12
8

 

[Nikolo]

Sorry but we don't do 40 to 40 wars, we do small wars so yes 3 is too much for us and enough to have an impact on the matching.
​​​​​​

 

[S_How]

Im surprised you havent run into this more. This is what most IA average teams that dont stack have a chance to hit every war 35-40. A 40% sandbag is about the sweet spot, it drops the matchup level a ridiculous amount. Makes it so that the offending team doesnt even have to waste resources for mercs or coalitions when most people are hitting 2 ages down. We've run into the 40% sandbag the second week of glory 2x against UA. At least they are good without it, but also many of the top alliances we've faced use this ratio, including VN elite, Project Tera, Ares Army and more. Other teams like Anzac forces, USAE, Voodoo, seem to use about 30%. It decides a war before the match is even made, and its a terrible experience for teams without sandbags.

The good thing is, they are going to stop rewarding good glory for victories using this (if their new change works). It will probably filter out a lot of the bad teams who are artificially high on the leaderboards. Good for teams like mine who never use sandbags and typically have a 3-4 age spread. But, unfortunately its bad for the true top 10-15 advancement teams who will suffer from less glory, or stalemates if they go in full weight. That needs to be solved immediately if they go forward with anti sandbagging measures.

 

[JuDomines]

So we can seriously talk about solving the sandbagging issue

First, let's begin with the current state: no one like sandbagging. Neither the teams using sandbags, neither the team facing sandbaggers.
But the ongoing effort to reduce sandbagging is doomed to fail and I think it's time for everyone, including the devs, to understand the dynamic at play here and get a better grasp of the whole enchilada. Here the sequence:
1. Sandbagging emerged a few days after the Glory system launch. The one and only reason for that is that when their is a stalemate, alliances receive no glory point. So they can't climb the leaderbooard. the thing is, there is a small number of alliances (100 maybe 200) that are constantly facing stalemate because their members are skilled enough to reach perfect score in each war, or so.

2. Thus, those alliances, in order to compete fairly for the leaderboard obviously seek to avoid facing each other because that would result in stalemate again and again. It turns out that they use sandbagging to enlarge the pool of alliance they potentially could match with in wars.

3.Obviously alliances opposed to sandbaggers are not happy. They get beaten all the time. So, they use sandbagging themselves and then the domino effect kicks off. This is absolutely true that stalemate impacts only a tiny portion of the alliance pool. But the domino effect magnify the issue and it spreads like a cancer.

Going back to the upcoming changes that will give a smaller amount of glory to alliances using sandbags, this is basically a joke. The top-100ish (in term of skills and development) alliances will have the choice between (i) a tiny amount of glory when they use sandbags and (ii) no glory at all because they will reach perfect score an stalemate when they don't use sandbags. It does not take a rocket scientist to predict what they will chose.

So please, everyone and NB4powerup in particular since you are the only person from Newon/BGH we are allowed to interact with, it's time to came to the realization that there is only one and unique way to solve this: this is to distribute some glory to alliance reaching stalemate. This is where all this ugly story began. This is where it has to end.

JJu, FR~R.A.T.

 

[Vixen]

keep the issue forefront !!

 

[snowleopard]

Agree with you. In the case of the tie, the alliance with higher average destruction wins. Does average destruction take the bases in account who didn't attack at all?

 

[Europeos]

I completely agree with your diagnostic. I don't think stalemates should give any glory though. It's just not right in the ELO system, unless it's only a marginal amount when there's a big difference between opponents.
What I think needs to be done is to get rid of stalemates.
The ideal solution is to make both attacks count. That would solve everything.
And if this is too complicated to implement, then five only 1 attack per player. That's so easy to do and could be done really fast.