Earthboundia wrote: ↑08 September 2022, 19:32
You've taken the time to give a full reply which I can respect so it's only fair I reply to that too. In regards to the ranking stuff, from anecdotes and personal experience Hanabi is a game with a very large portion of players playing public having high ELO (400+) so the idea of playing with players around my rank is extremely difficult in a practical scenario.
You can’t convince me it is impossible when I’ve done it. You may just need to become more patient. When you restrict the pool of players, it will take longer to find partners.
(Do you know why so many players have 400+ ELO? Because what you have to learn to get over 400 is almost nothing. If you can recognise a typical save clue, and play the leftmost card when you receive a clue that is not a save, that is probably enough to reach 400. Maybe you would also need to recognise the most basic form of finesse, but lots of players have wound up in games I start with a rating just over 500 and not knowing either bluff or double finesse, or even reverse.)
Earthboundia wrote: ↑08 September 2022, 19:32
While I understand the appeal of "hardcore" Hanabi, it's a next to impossible game to play on just a casual level in public lobbies. And I will admit that this is an issue in a lot of coop games which are well established. But that is probably BGA could do rather than ELO instead have a casual and hardcore mode for separate players.
If you can’t find players at your level now, what makes you think you will be able to find players after further segregating the community? Having a specially-implemented “casual” setting (which is more work for the developers, who I promise have a never-ending stream of work to do) is not going to make a large number of Average-rank players suddenly appear.
(And I promise you, implementing Casual mode will just lead to arguments over what counts as Casual. I’ve played games, mostly in person, with way too many players who consider themselves casual gamers, and want to play games with a casual attitude, which basically amounts to having nobody at the table attempting to play well, and that leads to extra rules trying to define what is acceptable during a casual boardgame, and inevitable arguments over the problematic edge cases.)
If you want to try to attract the players who don’t care about their ELO, just start games in Training mode. That’s what Training mode is for.
But be aware that there is no setting that will conjure more players.
Earthboundia wrote: ↑08 September 2022, 19:32 Also you haven't addressed the point of people deliberately quitting to maintain ELO.
What point? That’s just one form of toxic behaviour that occurs. I treat it basically the same as other toxic behaviour (with the additional step of declining the suggested abandon, when done for ELO preservation). Decline the suggested abandon; if the player hassles anybody about it in chat, or deliberately misfires to end the game, red thumb and perhaps report. Attempting to pressure others into abandoning is already subject to moderation.
This is not significantly different to how I treat insults, or other toxic behaviour.