Next Arena season

[Niall]

Any ideas what’s in store for the next Arena season? I for one have had a reasonable crack at the base game season, but find it massively frustrating and less strategically rich than the fully expanded game with goals and prestige. Is there really a big support for the base-game only setting?

[Niall]

And that is with no disrespect intended towards those who are consistently strong at the base game and winning this season. Well done you all.

[Patapouf1]

I have to agree with you, base game is much more luck oriented than any other expansion.

Less cards, less options to win. I struggled at the start of the season until I realised the only reliable way to win is a consume engine. Unless you get all the good devs to spam ofc. I managed to finish top20 not caring about anything but setting up a x2 produce tableau.

I don't know who the gurus are but why are we playing the base game again? At least they put new worlds in this time but why base game for 2 straight seasons?

[Zwack_42]

+1. Quite disappointing to see so little change from previous season.

[ksasaki]

Base is a horrible game. The game is basically determined by your starting worlds / hand, and you have no mulligan or prayer (aka search). Please, can we do BoW, takeovers on next season? I am calling it quits early this season on this luck fest

[Patapouf1]

You have nearly 12000 games played surely you are a guru no? If you are you have a say in it

[gordoz]

The new mechanics in the expansions are stilted and unnecessary. The base game has an elegance to it, like Chess. Carcassonne Arena always uses the base game for the same reason. It's fine involving all that other junk for any random game, but makes no sense having it in Arena.

[Zwack_42]

"XXX Arena always uses the base game for the same reason."

And that's where you're wrong. When there's obviously no consensus, then it should alternate between different options. Some can be used more often than others, but repeating the same setting over and over is boring and eventually drives away parts of the player base.

[ksasaki]

Yes, I am the old Season1,2,3 champion of RFTG back when it had more expansions. I did some statistical analysis on the seasons so far for the top 10 scores (I wasn't present for S5 and S6 so feel free to fill out the appropriate expansions there). I was actually impressed that last season scored so high. I think it was also Base rules? As someone who has grinded around 1900 ELO for several seasons (it sucks at that level, one win nets you like 2-5 points, while a loss is probably a 20-30 point loss), it is very difficult to reach. So I'll just count the # of 1900 players per season

S0 (1, 1919), S1 (2, 1936, 1933), S2 (1, 1910), S3 (3, 1926, 1917, 1902), S4 (1, 1912), S5 (0, one was 1898), S6 (1, 1906), S7 (2, 1931, 1914).

Season 1, 3, and 7 stand out to me (1 was three expansions BoW, RvI GS), 3 was BoW, RvI, 7 was Base. The top 5 ELO ever achieved:

1) S1 1936
2) S1 1933
3) S7 1931
4) S3 1926
5) S3 1917

I'm impressed that Base players were able to achieve an ELO so high, so kudos to them. S7 also had the tightest standard deviation (meaning the top players were all very close in rating). If my Season 1 ELO record is shattered in S8, I may rethink my notion that Base is all luck

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/ ... edit#gid=0