Not many people play Arena?

[Wonderboat]

Hey guys

I was just wondering why I get games on Arena much slower than if I just make a table? I'm 300 ELOish, I guess I'm only bronze league atm because I can't be patient enough to wait for Arena games. Will my queue time get much faster if I get a higher Arena rank? Or is it just not popular because people don't like TGS expansion, or what?

Thanks!

[jmcl99]

I believe, from comments in other forums, that the Arena matching algorithm has been modified recently to try and produce games between people of a similar rank. This stemmed from complaints that too often you would get games matching an Elite player against a Bronze player. The Elite players would complain that a win would net them very little advancement but a loss would drop their ranking a lot. Conversely the Bronze players would compiain thet they were being put in games they couldn't win.
A look at the RTFG stats shows that over 41000 Arena games have been played this season so Arena mode is certainly not unpopular.
I've recently hit a similar situation with Lucky Numbers.

[Retired Actuary]

I’ve sort of been ignoring the arena button. Other than clicking on it, how can I tell what expansion is being played? Thanks.

[TS GiN]

Sometimes the real time searches take so long you forget you're in them and you lose a bunch of karma / elo

[Wonderboat]

Thanks for the replies!

I got instant games today. Maybe just got my ELO high enough that it was faster or something. But many times when I was lower rated it would take a bunch of minutes to get 1 game, whereas a custom game would fill instantly. That's why I made the topic, but it's all good now. Can't be sure it was getting a better ELO that fixed it but that's my best guess.

[Wonderboat]

I’ve sort of been ignoring the arena button. Other than clicking on it, how can I tell what expansion is being played? Thanks.

It's "The Gathering Storm" expansion + Base right now.

[JEricB]

Arena uses expansions that make the interface issues more problematic. I avoid Arena for that reason.

[Retired Actuary]

Arena uses expansions that make the interface issues more problematic. I avoid Arena for that reason.

Well, this season has swung in the other direction, as it’s the base game with no expansions (which has issues of its own).