Originally posted by Metawerewolf:

Its not too big a deal but it does feel really bad to go into a team trials only to see the enemy team missing 2-3 horses significantly lowering their rating below what it should be. It feels really scummy and anti-competitive to.

I know not everyone's going to have full teams right away but these people have A+ horses, they could fill their team up and are choosing not to.

don't worry, they're still doing it all the way to rank 5, pvp team rank B1.

only then, 75%+ of the people you're gonna be facing are whales, too.

This is gacha, you either deal with it with your wallet or with your perseverance.

Originally posted by Night Sparrow:

This is gacha, you either deal with it with your wallet or with your perseverance.

Whaling I get is a natural consequence of gacha. What I don't get is why its allowed for someone to intentionally lower their rank to face easier opponents. Like at least make it to where if I win 2nd, 3rd, and 4th its a draw.

u wanna have more character for higher rating.
winning is just 1 key to higher score, more character is the other key

most experienced smart player spend all free carrots on scouting supporters with their new accounts, so they have less character to put on team trial. its not because they dont want to . they just dont have it.

more high lv supporter = easier to train higher stat/more skillful trainee . they are more competive. (just imagine lv50 winning ticket would give u lv4 hint on her skills each time, that is so much efficient on building a late surger)

so its like snowballing effect. experienced smart player keep building good stat breeder with more skills more stats. they would get 3sparks more often. having more 3sparks uma also means its easier to get good 9 star combination for OO affinity. which just snowballing down the road

Originally posted by Metawerewolf:

Originally posted by Night Sparrow:

This is gacha, you either deal with it with your wallet or with your perseverance.

Whaling I get is a natural consequence of gacha. What I don't get is why its allowed for someone to intentionally lower their rank to face easier opponents. Like at least make it to where if I win 2nd, 3rd, and 4th its a draw.

Consider this. Are these people in class 6 yet? No? It's probably because they're not getting as many points without a full team of racers. That "winning" is actually costing them quite a bit. A perfect example of winning the battle and losing the war. I'm not a whale, and I'm in class 6 right now with mostly b+ racers in every team trial slot.

The only benefit to winning is the point bonus. If they're not hitting promotion (Retention if class 6) they're doing it wrong, simple as.

Well, what do you expect. If there's an exploit in the game, people will use it.
They're just typical people!
But beyond the superficial mental satisfaction, I think they are only robbing themselves.

But, to be fair, some people just don't have the right specialized racers. Especially for dirt tracks and sprints. I can understand that.

Just remember that it's not just about winning, it's about the points - and more racers who finish higher than others, or finish anywhere at all, always means more points in the end.
And I didn't bother with the detailed math to figure out how much it would be better to have 3 runners and a slightly lower chance of winning, or to have just 1-2 runners and a slightly higher chance of winning.

But still, if I were to do a quick:
On average, a runner who finishes 3rd is worth (in my case at least) 27,000 points.

Let's say my most successful runners who took 1st and 2nd place brought me 37,000 and 31,000 = 68,000. Let's even for handicap add a bonus for a max. win streak +5% = 71,400. And if I had one more runner, I could get as much as 95,000 even without the bonus for a winning streak. So I feel like I'm robbing myself by doing this for no reason.

At the same time, my runners who took 3rd, 4th and 5th place (because if they only have 2, then the 3rd place is automatically freed up for you) on average get 27,000, 24,000 and 19,000 = 69,000. Only 2,400 less, and that without the maximum bonus for a win streak.
But at the same time, when you win with 3, you will always have more than those who win with 2.
So overall they won pennies when you then go and win another race and get a lot more points for all 3 riders.

In general try to challenge players in the top lane, closer to the high ratings there are less and less empty slots, because people have good runners or at least debuffers in the 3rd slot to get more points. Also, defeating them will give you more points overall.

If it's any consolation, I still see this from time to time on the JP server. Not much you can do about it if someone is farming for presents. I think the difference is that some players only do it when they are actively doing Team Trials and you just get unlucky that they were online the same time you were. When they are done farming, most players put their team back to full strength so that lower ranked players don't face a racer that is way above their level. Leaving your team that way when you get no benefit but make things worse for lower ranked players is just considered griefing.

Unfortunately, it's the downside of an open PVP system. But also, how often do you choose to race the higher ranked team when you are selecting your opponent? You're most often selecting the middle team who has around the same team score as you do or the bottom team with a lower team score than you so you can win more. Unless you're very confident in your racers being built for Team Trials, there's little benefit from facing the higher ranked team other than for scoring purposes.

A small compromise would be letting the player preview the opponent prior to committing to making their selection so at least you can avoid those players. Sure, it might lead to more players rerolling the opponent roster until they find a match up they like but it's still no guarantee they'd win. But it's infinitely better than getting to the opponent team match up and seeing that the other team has only 1 racer that is several ranks higher than your entire team.

Don't worry about people without full teams. They actually hurt themselves, and give you a better chance. Those people either do not know how Team Trials work (neither do you apparently), or like to gloat with strong Umas in lower rank.

Team trials aren't about winning the race. The more Umas you have, even if they are bad, the higher points you can get. I just reached C6, and I get demolished most of the time here. But my Team Trial Umas are trained to trigger skills and have enough sustains and debuffs to get all my Umas to top 5. That is really all you need. When I lose a match, I still get like 80k points.

I can't imagine what the top 1,000 is like. I'm currently around 9,000 and losing my position quickly. That is 475k points. I'm not so sure I can stay C6, but at least I got up there for the reward.

Team Trial Umas are not necessarily trained to win, they are trained to activate skills and screw with the other guy so you can get top 5s... lol

Edit:

I race with B+ and A Umas, with my highest rating at 10800 and lowest around 9500. So if someone as weak as me can do this, anyone can.

Originally posted by Metawerewolf:

Its not too big a deal but it does feel really bad to go into a team trials only to see the enemy team missing 2-3 horses significantly lowering their rating below what it should be. It feels really scummy and anti-competitive to.

I know not everyone's going to have full teams right away but these people have A+ horses, they could fill their team up and are choosing not to.

The bonus to actually winning is very insignificant. most of the score is performance based on the three racers

Originally posted by Caelestus:

I race with B+ and A Umas, with my highest rating at 10800 and lowest around 9500. So if someone as weak as me can do this, anyone can.

Now that the kitasan black banner is over, the people who were botfarming rerolls and the whales will probably fill up most of c6 over the next couple weeks. It will get harder and harder over time to make it that high, which makes me glad I managed to get in there early. I'm probably going to get demoted out of c6 too, but at least I got the reward for getting there.

Unfortunately my team trials team is like this. Only 7 slots filled, 6 of them being A rank. I only have 7 horses in my roster. Stuck between Class 3 - 4. Would actually fill out the slots if I actually had more umas to train.

But thats my own fault for saving and throwing pretty much 100% of my carats at kitasan banner and forgetting about rolling for horses.

Originally posted by The Grand Mugwump:

Consider this. Are these people in class 6 yet? No? It's probably because they're not getting as many points without a full team of racers. That "winning" is actually costing them quite a bit. A perfect example of winning the battle and losing the war. I'm not a whale, and I'm in class 6 right now with mostly b+ racers in every team trial slot.

The most correct take here. Winning is not important, getting high scores is.

Originally posted by Pidgeot:

Unfortunately my team trials team is like this. Only 7 slots filled, 6 of them being A rank. I only have 7 horses in my roster. Stuck between Class 3 - 4. Would actually fill out the slots if I actually had more umas to train.

But thats my own fault for saving and throwing pretty much 100% of my carats at kitasan banner and forgetting about rolling for horses.

Drop some 20-30 rolls on Curren banner, but not more. It is difficult to play if you don't at least have all *-** umas.