The problem as I see it.....

The Devs made a problem with the game and obviously the recognize it with last weeks, "Rules of Fair Play" post.

It started with making Legendary items the rare unicorn that no one can get without spending countless hours playing or pouring in a ton of money. They tried to equalize things by making the Guild Challenges and making Legendary items easier to get. The problem is now, people are tanking in order to have lower infamy to make it easier to complete guide quests so that they can stockpile guild tokens until the Red Legendary piece is available in the raffle. That's why you see more and more LV6 players with 1200-1800 infamy. It is a lot easier to win and rack up damage points when fighting player with 1200 infamy then ones with 2200 infamy. This causes a whole chain reaction where the noobs can't compete, the game gets unfair, people are deliberately not trying, and all in all the quality of game play diminishes.

I don't know what the solution is, but feel like this is becoming a bigger and bigger problem.

 

Well, the recent patch (a few weeks ago now) went a long way towards solving this.
The Rivalry matchmaking has completely changed from what you described.
Guilds are no longer matched against other guild's with similar infamy. (This largely gets rid of the reason people were tanking.)
Now they are matched against other guilds that have done similar # quests previously.
This has its own set of quirks, but overall, a strong player (or a guild of strong players) will no longer be able to tank their Infamy and crush noobs in Rivalries.

The issue with Legendaries you mentioned was also (potentially) largely solved with the addition of the new Weapon Achievements.
If you do 1 mil dmg with a weapon - you get an Epic!
If you do 10 mil dmg with a weapon - you get a Legendary!
So, honestly, that makes them MUCH more obtainable.
I'm not convinced this is healthy for the game... but at least they're not virtually impossible to get like they were before...

There are still issues with the game. But I honestly believe Rovio is still interested in hearing suggestions and trying to improve the experience for players at all levels.

 

I agree. This last patch didn't go as far as I had hoped but then again, the sorts of changes I'd want are extreme and would need substantial testing. I am heartened by the fact that they are looking at the drivers for tanking rather than going with "rules". I hope they continue in that vein. I still think that the way Battle Bay is set up, the min/max solution is to be high level at low infamy. You are rewarded largely for your captain level not your infamy. If they swapped that around I suspect things would change.

Noob content should drop noob gear... period.

 

The change in the guide setup helped but didn’t solve the problem of tanking. All of the guild challenges only reward you if you win and it certainly is a lot easier to win a battle as a LV6 player with low infamy against LV4 player with the same low infamy then it is against LV6 players with high infamy. As a LV6 defender I would dominate against lv4 shooter with only 2000HP.

 

I don’t think intentional individual tanking is helpful at all for the guild quests (now). In order to maintain your low level, you need to lose every other battle to keep your inf from climbing. We already know playing regularly will give about a 50% win rate anyway so you aren’t really making it easier to get the wins for points. And dominating small ships doesn’t give you the damage totals that you would get being an average player playing against bigger ships that can take more total damage (thus giving you more damage opportunity). I can’t say that people aren’t tanking intentionally thinking it will help them, but I would hope after a short time they would figure it out.