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Post by [apotheosis] on Apr 19, 2017 15:33:59 GMT -5
To make a longish story shortish. Here is my 'main' hanger
Galahad[9] taran[7] mag[8] mag[8]
Lance[9] ancile[7] taran[7] taran[7]
Griffin[9] aphid[8] aphid[8] ork[7] ork[7]
Carnage[8] zues[7] zues[7]
Fury[9] trident[6] trident[7] trident[7]
Essentially a 9/7 hanger. I always play to win and havent tanked. I found myself banging my head against a wall in Diamond 3 against all 9s and 10s. My match placement moved lower as I moved up, my average damage went down, my AG payouts got lower. My equipment simply wasnt up to snuff in mid diamond 3, a trend that started near the end of gold 1. Skill and luck kept me moving up and I got frustrated.
So I changed my hanger. I threw together the leftovers from pre mm change and landed as follows.
Galahad same as above
Gareth[8] taran[7] mag[7]
Carnage[8] thunder[6] thunder[6]
Boa[6] thunder[7] Orkan[7]
Gepard[4] aphid[8] aphid[8] aphid[7]
I didnt play for damage, or beacons. I played to win like I always have. My win rate moved from low 60s on average to high 40s. I lost 200 cups. But my AG rewards went back up, my match placement began to climb again. My play style had to change to become more strategic. I ended the largely downward trend in low gold 1 and stabilized. Something else happened... I had more fun. I have played more games today than all of last week.
So the question is, was it unethical? Was it tanking? If I switch back to my main hanger Ill have an unfair advantage, how to avoid?
How does the community feel about this?
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Post by gr3ygh05t on Apr 19, 2017 15:36:20 GMT -5
My take on it is if you are having fun the community can suck their collective butts. It's game and it is your fun that matters.
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Post by Scuzzbopper on Apr 19, 2017 15:47:18 GMT -5
No. You are not.
Do you eject all your bots and leave the match?
Do you sit and let your first drop die then leave the match/spectate until the match is over?
Do you shoot once or cap a single beacon then eject then leave the match/spectate until the match is over?
Do you skip any unique map whenever it comes up because you hanger isn't designed for it?
If you do any of these chronically to specifically lower your league in order to face lesser leveled bots/weapons then you are a "tanker".
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Post by ♧SGT FURY 24/7♧ on Apr 19, 2017 15:49:13 GMT -5
Intent is the biggest issue on tanking IMO. I play the hangar I want to play and do the best I can with it. I'm usually 4 med, 1 heavy, bots @ 9, weps @ 11. Sometimes I get in the mood to run light/med, and do my best with it. As stated, it's a game, have fun with it.
To avoid the appearance of tanking and assuming the intent is not there, make gradual hangar changes. Swap a bot, play a few, repeat. Always do your best, enjoy the game.
As long as a player does his best for blue I don't generally consider it tanking.
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Post by hyderier on Apr 19, 2017 15:54:31 GMT -5
Are you trying to lose either by being passive/ditching or by actively hampering blues?
Do you equip lower level weapons than you have available, or no weapons?
Do you equip worse or lower lever bots when you have better of the same or equivalent type/role/speed (like using Destrier of same/lower stats over Gepard or Stalker)?
Do you use new bots of lower level than about 4 (very short upgrade time)?
Do you have another hangar which is much better (say, overall bot and weapon level difference of >4) and which therefore totally outclasses the bots on your current league, and to which you switch often to harvest gold, then switch back to worse hangar so you don't raise in leagues? I
If answer to all of these (and other similar) questions is no, you are not tanking. You have chosen a type of hangar, and equipped it as well as you can, and are doing your best with it. That's not tanking.
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Post by [apotheosis] on Apr 19, 2017 16:01:07 GMT -5
Appreciate everyones comments. Obviously I share the sentiment that it isnt tanking as I still play to win and am not trying to lose. I was just curious how others viewed this sort of thing.
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Post by ewing411 on Apr 19, 2017 16:02:48 GMT -5
No. You are not. Do you eject all your bots and leave the match? Do you sit and let your first drop die then leave the match/spectate until the match is over? Do you shoot once or cap a single beacon then eject then leave the match/spectate until the match is over? Do you skip any unique map whenever it comes up because you hanger isn't designed for it? If you do any of these chronically to specifically lower your league in order to face lesser leveled bots/weapons then you are a "tanker". After reading if it was unethical I had to read the OPs post again checking for most everything you said. Couldn't find any of it. If anything kudos to Apotheosis if he found a League sweet spot. May it last. |
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2017 16:10:08 GMT -5
No, it's not tanking. It's called playing the game and having fun, which should be the main goal. I change my hanger a lot, and sometimes I put in fun builds. Yes, when you're having fun, you play more. I put in my Leo Piñata Thunder and wrecked face with it on Powerplant. I haven't used this combo in ages, and thought I would die a horrible useless death. This thing is a tank and has a ton of firepower (tank meaning like lots of hit points, not tanking!, like the Titanic). Poor Griffins jumping at me, and getting shredded with my level 11 Thunder. Then that Galahad trying to corner shoot me, but eating my 3x level 10 Piñatas. I also had a Stalker w level 7 Punishers, DB Galahad w 2x level 5 Piñatas, DB Rhino w one stock Piñata, and Carnage with 2x level 6 Zenits that game. I wanted to try heavy Piñata builds, so only had 4 leveled up to 10, and the rest stock, so 7 total in that hanger. Ended up second somehow in the scoring, and everyone was same tier as me on my team (Expert).
Like I said, I don't think I would seriously run this line up and have so much under leveled gear, but it was fun to see what 7 Piñatas could do. Still won too.
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Post by mijapi300 on Apr 19, 2017 16:10:41 GMT -5
It's really a catch-22. I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing. But if someone that had a max hangar changed everything to 1/1 Taran Cossacks, but still tried to win with that hangar every game, most people would call him a tanker. And technically, you're doing the same thing to a much lesser extent. And in your own words, your Ag payout has gone up as a result.
The moral is, don't ask others if what you're doing is okay. If you're okay with what you're doing, then do it. It is a game after all, and enjoying it should be your number one priority.
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Post by [apotheosis] on Apr 19, 2017 16:40:59 GMT -5
It's really a catch-22. I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing. But if someone that had a max hangar changed everything to 1/1 Taran Cossacks, but still tried to win with that hangar every game, most people would call him a tanker. And technically, you're doing the same thing to a much lesser extent. And in your own words, your Ag payout has gone up as a result. The moral is, don't ask others if what you're doing is okay. If you're okay with what you're doing, then do it. It is a game after all, and enjoying it should be your number one priority. You make some really good points. Intent is really hard to measure. It becomes a matter of degrees then. Technically loading a bot with a level 1 weapon but planning to win is no different than loading a bot with a lvl 8 weapon when you have a level 9 of the same thing in storage. Or is it? Common sense dictates your killing your blues with your lvl 1, which is far less true with the lvl 8 in the above. I posed the question to the forum more as conversation than determining my own course of action. Some ethical food for thought. |
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Post by mijapi300 on Apr 19, 2017 16:48:53 GMT -5
It's really a catch-22. I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing. But if someone that had a max hangar changed everything to 1/1 Taran Cossacks, but still tried to win with that hangar every game, most people would call him a tanker. And technically, you're doing the same thing to a much lesser extent. And in your own words, your Ag payout has gone up as a result. The moral is, don't ask others if what you're doing is okay. If you're okay with what you're doing, then do it. It is a game after all, and enjoying it should be your number one priority. You make some really good points. Intent is really hard to measure. It becomes a matter of degrees then. Technically loading a bot with a level 1 weapon but planning to win is no different than loading a bot with a lvl 8 weapon when you have a level 9 of the same thing in storage. Or is it? Common sense dictates your killing your blues with your lvl 1, which is far less true with the lvl 8 in the above. I posed the question to the forum more as conversation than determining my own course of action. Some ethical food for thought. I agree. But technically, if you call the level 1 guy unethical, you're also unethical. Whether it's unethical or not is black and white. It either is or it isn't. It's the degree of unethical behavior that's really at question. For example, think of a guy that finds out about an upcoming merger or IPO of a company. The guy makes a modest 50k a year and has $5k in his savings. He invests all of his $5k, and turns it into $20k because he had information that wasn't public knowledge. It's unethical, but nobody bats and eye because it didn't really hurt many people. Apply the same scenario to a hedge fund. They invest $200million and turn it into $800million. The world loses their damn minds. It's the exact same action, but to a different degree. Both are unethical. People just don't care about unethical behavior on a small level. In either case, we go back to this. It's a game, so ethics really don't matter. The very worst thing you can do is make a few people enjoy their game slightly less for up to 10 minutes at a time, and that's IF those people let what you're doing affect them. It's not up to you to cater to what other people in the game want. It's up to you to play the game how you want and enjoy it yourself. |
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Post by Pulse Hadron on Apr 19, 2017 17:31:52 GMT -5
I've done the same. With my strongest bots I managed iOS diamond 1 by season end but have let it slide down to diamond 3 for two reasons: 1. league rewards not big enough to justify 2. the battles getting boring.
I play a second account that was in iOS gold 2 at the time and found it more fun because of the variety, encountering every kind of bot with all kinds of builds instead of the same bots and builds wave after wave in diamond 1.
It'd be fun to play my strongest hangar in diamond 1 again but just for a little bit. I don't want to take all the time to slog back up there and potentially be flagged because I know I'll come back down after a bit. Missing the old MM.
I've only slid to diamond 3 because I'm not purposefully trying to 'tank', just playing the most fun instead of most strong and that's where it's settled. Haven't noticed an increase in gold or silver, if anything I'd say there's less silver. My fun weapons are already leveled too high to naturally slide down to gold 1 which I want to get to somehow. All new weapons will only be leveled to 6 or 7.
As long as you aren't unfairly screwing up peoples games I don't see a problem.
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Post by zeus on Apr 20, 2017 8:22:04 GMT -5
Don't worry too much about it as long as you play your best without trying to gimp your team.
I lost 300 points switching out my plasma griffin for my stalker and playing my tri fury as first or second bot. I think I got the hang of playing stalker, managed to hang onto the low end of e3 and I'm going to leave my fury as a late bot or when the circumstances need a mid range bot. Going to test my db rhino soon, and play him as first bot, leave stalker as 3rd or4th and see how that works out.
There are a ton of 11/12 tankers in iOS diamonds.
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Post by hyderier on Apr 20, 2017 12:30:35 GMT -5
It's really a catch-22. I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing. But if someone that had a max hangar changed everything to 1/1 Taran Cossacks, but still tried to win with that hangar every game, most people would call him a tanker. And technically, you're doing the same thing to a much lesser extent. And in your own words, your Ag payout has gone up as a result. The moral is, don't ask others if what you're doing is okay. If you're okay with what you're doing, then do it. It is a game after all, and enjoying it should be your number one priority. The max hangar guy certainly has Tarans above 1, as well as Orkans, and Tulus, enough for 5 Cossacks. Not using those, but instead buying new level 1 weapons, that is tanking. Using level 1 Cossacks is tanking, because it takes like half an hour to upgrade them all to level 2. I'd say, anything below 4 can be considered intentional tanking, YMMV. Also, it's possible, but hard to believe the maxed out player didn't have any old lights, which were upgraded a bit, left. Buying a level 1 bot and leaving existing bot unused is clearly tanking to me. Of course there's still a blurry line, but it is higher than levels 1/1. |
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Post by mijapi300 on Apr 20, 2017 13:01:34 GMT -5
It's really a catch-22. I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing. But if someone that had a max hangar changed everything to 1/1 Taran Cossacks, but still tried to win with that hangar every game, most people would call him a tanker. And technically, you're doing the same thing to a much lesser extent. And in your own words, your Ag payout has gone up as a result. The moral is, don't ask others if what you're doing is okay. If you're okay with what you're doing, then do it. It is a game after all, and enjoying it should be your number one priority. The max hangar guy certainly has Tarans above 1, as well as Orkans, and Tulus, enough for 5 Cossacks. Not using those, but instead buying new level 1 weapons, that is tanking. Using level 1 Cossacks is tanking, because it takes like half an hour to upgrade them all to level 2. I'd say, anything below 4 can be considered intentional tanking, YMMV. Also, it's possible, but hard to believe the maxed out player didn't have any old lights, which were upgraded a bit, left. Buying a level 1 bot and leaving existing bot unused is clearly tanking to me. Of course there's still a blurry line, but it is higher than levels 1/1. You're missing my point. There is no "correct" answer to the OPs question. If you're strictly looking at it black and white, then yes he is technically tanking (voluntarily choosing to field a hangar with lower levels while benching similar bots that are higher level). My analogy was similar to the ridiculous comparison people use of comparing stealing a candy bar to murder or 「grape」. Both actions are a crime. It's just that one is such a minor crime, the majority of people don't care about it. When you have four level 9 Griffins, and you choose to use four level 8 Griffins instead, that is intentionally fielding a weaker hangar, with the inevitable result of dropping league points. Based on that fact alone, someone could make the claim that it is tanking. I personally don't feel like doing that is wrong or unethical. That's my personal tolerance for ethics. Someone that is all high and mighty can make the claim, and a perfectly valid claim, that it is indeed tanking and unethical. Just because you aren't tanking all the way to Bronze doesn't mean it isn't tanking. Again, I personally have no problem with what OP chose to do. But it is, by definition, tanking. I guess a real life comparison to put it into perspective would be point shaving in sports (teams that could easily win by 10+ points intentionally only win by 3 or 4 points in order to control gambling outcomes). For the record, to put my opinion into perspective, I also don't care about the people that tank all the way to Bronze. People are going to be the type of people they are. I have no reason or right to feel the need to control the actions of them. Nor does it do me any good to stress myself about something I have no control over. I play my game, the way I feel like playing it, and that's all that matters to me. |
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Post by hyderier on Apr 20, 2017 22:42:12 GMT -5
You're missing my point. There is no "correct" answer to the OPs question. If you're strictly looking at it black and white, then yes he is technically tanking (voluntarily choosing to field a hangar with lower levels while benching similar bots that are higher level). My analogy was similar to the ridiculous comparison people use of comparing stealing a candy bar to murder or ?grape?. Both actions are a crime. It's just that one is such a minor crime, the majority of people don't care about it. When you have four level 9 Griffins, and you choose to use four level 8 Griffins instead, that is intentionally fielding a weaker hangar, with the inevitable result of dropping league points. Based on that fact alone, someone could make the claim that it is tanking. I personally don't feel like doing that is wrong or unethical. That's my personal tolerance for ethics. Someone that is all high and mighty can make the claim, and a perfectly valid claim, that it is indeed tanking and unethical. Just because you aren't tanking all the way to Bronze doesn't mean it isn't tanking. Again, I personally have no problem with what OP chose to do. But it is, by definition, tanking. I guess a real life comparison to put it into perspective would be point shaving in sports (teams that could easily win by 10+ points intentionally only win by 3 or 4 points in order to control gambling outcomes). For the record, to put my opinion into perspective, I also don't care about the people that tank all the way to Bronze. People are going to be the type of people they are. I have no reason or right to feel the need to control the actions of them. Nor does it do me any good to stress myself about something I have no control over. I play my game, the way I feel like playing it, and that's all that matters to me. OP isn't fielding similar bots with lower levels. Gareth is unique with its speed and shield, Aphid Gep with its speed and weapon layout, Boa with its HP and speed. Hangar composition alone never makes it tanking, IMO. Now replacing Griffin 9's with Griffin 8's, ie. exact same bots, that'd be different situation. |
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Post by frunobulax on Apr 21, 2017 6:05:14 GMT -5
It's really a catch-22. I don't see anything wrong with what you're doing. But if someone that had a max hangar changed everything to 1/1 Taran Cossacks, but still tried to win with that hangar every game, most people would call him a tanker. And technically, you're doing the same thing to a much lesser extent. And in your own words, your Ag payout has gone up as a result. The moral is, don't ask others if what you're doing is okay. If you're okay with what you're doing, then do it. It is a game after all, and enjoying it should be your number one priority. Not sure I agree about that last sentence... That would legalize both clubbing and tanking. But you raise a valid point. There is no clear baseline between tanking and "legal" play. A player who has 2000 points, if he drops 200 points by playing light robots, reverts to the old hangar and has a high win rate until he is back at 200 points, is it clubbing/tanking? What if he drops 500 points? What if he is outmatched at 2000 points (weaker than the average player there), but he drops to 1500 points where he is stronger than the other players? What if he uses level 12 Ecu Cossacks, but gets a lot of beacons? Or level 6 Stalkers, just running around doing no damage and not capping beacons, but distracting reds? Bottom line, tthere are two activities. On one hand, a player that is actively trying to lose a battle by either not participating or even sabotaging the team is "tanking". And there is no way around this, a player can play his strongest hangar and use the robots as hatstands, or to block the missiles of his teammates. (And the only way to prevent this is to remove the incentives to do so.) On the other hand, running just a (very) weaker hangar than usual, frankly, there are some good arguments for and against whether this constitutes tanking. Some player may run it to intentionally drop in the rankings, other players just want to have fun, in the end this player will lose 20 of the next 30 battles, and we can argue all day if it is tanking or not. But to me there is no doubt that this is something the matchmaking should take care of. Regardless of player performance, the hangar must play a role such that there can't be huge differences in hangar strength. "Clubbing" OTH I would define by the hangar. I know what a "normal" hangar at my level looks like (gold 3 on Android), which is roughly a level 8 5-robot hangar with lots of gold and WSP stuff, or a level 9 hangar with silver robots, give or take a bit. If I face a guy with a Lance/Fury 11/11 hangar, he's tanking. If I face a guy with 9/9 Galahads, Rhinos and DB Griffins in low bronze, he's also tanking. (Hard to place a hangar like I saw just today that has a level 11 Hydra Spiral Griff, a level 8 Natty with one l11 Treb and one l12 Nashorn, and some other level 8 robots in silver 1. Not tanking, most likely.  ) Of course, some guys are just bad players, but it helps to check the win rate (both below 35% and above 65% is a hint at tanking), max damage and total victories. And now I have written another argument why matchmaking must be hangar based |
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![[apotheosis] Avatar](http://storage.proboards.com/6607038/images/OuKSi978FMhqrm9hw6mi.png)
) Of course, some guys are just bad players, but it helps to check the win rate (both below 35% and above 65% is a hint at tanking), max damage and total victories.