Arena scoring question

[detlefchef11]

OK, so at one point, I managed to make it to #4 on Wingspan but lost back to back games against people in silver and bronze and lost a combined 60 pts. So a friend pointed out to me that I could restrict my opponents so I would only play high ranking players and not get punished so badly by losses.

I'm now in the mid 20s and just lost to a player who was actually top 15 and lost 20 pts.

Seems kinda steep, no? How does it work?

[ChiefPointThief]

To answer your question arena calculation is awful. Even restricting it to elite players only will not balance your losses . Just be exceptional and don’t lose. Or reach the top. Dont play anymore and hope no one can catch you.

I don’t understand how ppl like this system for luck based games like 99. Someone’s whose played less games than you can come along and take all the points you’ve worked for in a complete luck based game

[dschingis27]

Unfortunately, the way Arena is set up right now, a change of 20 points from one single game is normal, it is supposed to happen when you play against an opponent with similar Arena score. Had you won the game, you would have gained 20 points.

Does it make sense? No, it's pure nonsense to me that single games have such a big impact on your score. Unfortunately BGA refuses to change anything substantial about Arena so far.

[JohnnyCyclops]

The base win/loss change in a two player game is +20 and -20, where the players had similar Arena ELOs to start with. As the starting gap increases then the initially higher player gets fewer for a win and gives up more for a loss, say +10 or -30, and the initially lower player the reverse, say +30 or -10.

It provides a brake on runaway ELOs into the thousands, which leaves lower ranked players thinking “why bother chasing”. It also provides a brake on the downside that someone can’t go to zero ELO. Typically 95% of players will be between 1300 and 1700.

[ChiefPointThief]

The base win/loss change in a two player game is +20 and -20, where the players had similar Arena ELOs to start with. As the starting gap increases then the initially higher player gets fewer for a win and gives up more for a loss, say +10 or -30, and the initially lower player the reverse, say +30 or -10.

It provides a brake on runaway ELOs into the thousands, which leaves lower ranked players thinking “why bother chasing”. It also provides a brake on the downside that someone can’t go to zero ELO. Typically 95% of players will be between 1300 and 1700.

And this is why it is a awful format. If you are outperforming the field all season long it should be a breakaway victory. This is the equivalent of playing a basketball game and the amount of pts the losing team gets for a basket changes depending on how much they are losing by. There are mercy rules but children don’t even compete w/ these type of conditions.

I have a lot of stats to suggest this is a bad system based off my own personal experience last season. To your first point if someone enters arena late they are starting off w/ low points. Imo to help w/ this problem elo or previous arena rankings should be considered. I beat the reigning champ and a player that had more elo than me several times but because they were still in the lower leagues I didn’t get much pts. Then they went went on a streak and beat me several times and because the system is flawed it awarded them double pts. They were able to stop playing after that and just stayed at the top. This was the only player now I could get fair pts for defeating. So I had to do 4x more work to achieve the same results.

If you say limit games to elite only that also doesn’t work. I defeated a top ranked player 21 of 28 times and lost arena pts to this player because the system awarded them anywhere from 3.5-6x more pts for their victories.

[ChiefPointThief]

For instance, I’ve been playing tic tac match this season. It is rated as 1 luck but the dev clearly didn’t care to rate this properly. At min it is 3 luck. It may be rare but this is a game in which it’s possible to lose before even taking a turn. I’ve won 10 of 13 games and managed to be one of the top ranked players.

This game only has 70 participants as of now. Tumbleweeds. Even w/ only one league there are only a dozen elite players. Of those only 3 other players are on my level. That means anyone I play on this site besides 3ppl I will lose at min 2x more than I will win. When I mentioned this in another post someone commented just win your games. This mentality would be better if playing games w/ little luck factor. But for games like this where losses are inevitable no matter how much skill you have it is a very flawed system.

The goal is to reach the top of the mountain. I’m steadily climbing. Meanwhile others can set up a tent at the bottom and take helicopter rides to the top.

[shinuito]

Just be exceptional and don’t lose. Or reach the top. Dont play anymore and hope no one can catch you.

I think this one really resonates with me. I think at the core is that we (me at least, but likely many other players) want to play arena because it’s fun, because it might attract opponents that want to play competitively, and it might even get you games where otherwise the game is very dead.

So then the current arena format doesn’t seem to have any of these in mind, or do anything particularly well in any of the directions.

I mean it does get you games, particularly at the start of a new arena season - I tend to encourage people to play at this time also which kind of reinforces it

But in the long run outside of the first wave or two of games, it starts becoming unenjoyable, not just for people at the bottom but at the top too.

I’ve topped the arena in a few games, but unfortunately the current method of using Elo in the elite leagues I think is actually detrimental in encouraging players to play. When you’ve hit number 1, but it will take you many wins to recover the points loss of just one loss, it’s not worth even queueing up and risking losing to what could be a top 10, top 5 etc player joining late, or just generally having to play another strong player.

The current format encourages you to get to the top and then only do the minimum required to stay there. If someone passes you out, play only as much is necessary to pass them out and stop again.

The problem then is that this can all echo down the arena ladder, if number 2 wants to catch number 1, they have the same dilemma of 1 loss needing to be countered by several consecutive wins, so maybe they’ll stop playing, or only play on a good day - maybe they’ll just try again next season.

I think it’s better to assume players want to play the game, but it poses a dilemma where one needs to weigh up wanting to play vs wanting to win and becomes a silly optimisation.

At the lower end of the arena and I’m there in many games too, after a time into the arena season, you can be in a situation where the only players playing are far above your rating and each arena game is a guaranteed loss. So you’re stuck on your bronze 1 all season while the elite players are risking a lot to gain little in these matchups.

Now to be fair, it’s not all downsides, if the matchups happen and with the right attitude you can always learn something from games against stronger players, but I think this part requires a lot of dedication to strictly improving and probably isn’t fun in a competitive sense because the games aren’t necessarily competitive.

So it won’t necessarily drive average or intermediate players into the arena unless they just want to play games to gain experience more so than a realistic chance of winning (I don’t even mean in the games I play or am somewhat ok at - there’s much larger Elo gaps in other strategy games with top elo players breaking a 1000 or so elo).

Solutions?
Do I know the solution? No not really. Some player pools are so small it can be impossible to get live games, difficult to get turn based games and who knows about arena.

Splitting small pools too much for pairing won’t make sense.

Lowering the potential loss however for players in higher leagues and positions should in theory make it more reasonable for players that want to keep playing to keep on playing. They won’t have to balance off 1 loss against multiple wins, they can just focus on naturally trying to have a higher w/l ratio while playing a lot of games.

One might worry whether it makes players uncatchable, but equally forcing all players to stop playing and the arena to freeze up with no matches also makes players uncatchable.

Hopefully some more ideas come up in future discussions anyway. I really like the concept of arenas and playing with them, it’s just that no matter whether I’m top or bottom of a ladder, it becomes demotivating to play like halfway through the season or earlier.

[buu441]

I don’t understand how ppl like this system for luck based games like 99. Someone’s whose played less games than you can come along and take all the points you’ve worked for in a compete luck based game

How do you "work for" points in a complete luck based game lol. And why would anyone play a complete luck based game competitively (or expect any meaningful ranking in those)?

[shinuito]

I don’t understand how ppl like this system for luck based games like 99. Someone’s whose played less games than you can come along and take all the points you’ve worked for in a compete luck based game

How do you "work for" points in a complete luck based game lol. And why would anyone play a complete luck based game competitively (or expect any meaningful ranking in those)?

I mean it might depend on what exactly you mean by complete luck based game. If the game really is like 100% complete luck based like I throw a dice you throw a dice, whoever rolls higher wins, then I agree there’s no real playing competitively.

However there’s games you might describe as “complete” luck based games, like backgammon, where you can only really do what the dice allow you, so you can only really win “by luck” in a manner of speaking. In another fashion though, you can make decisions based on the dice rolls that increase your chances to win more on average, and so too with adopting strategies that might lose some games, but will win more on average.

So you might come out of a “complete” luck based game with 60:40 win loss rate, or more 65:35, 70:30 - I suppose it depends on what the game allows for, your opponents etc.

Still though, if games are not weighted equally then having a 70:30 winrate might still net you a big overall loss in rating - which is again the point above that arena might encourage better players to quit while they’re ahead in games of no chance or otherwise.

[Fletcheese]

And this is why it is a awful format. If you are outperforming the field all season long it should be a breakaway victory. This is the equivalent of playing a basketball game and the amount of pts the losing team gets for a basket changes depending on how much they are losing by. There are mercy rules but children don’t even compete w/ these type of conditions.

This is an unfair characterization. If you're beating players of similar skill (ELO), then it is a breakaway victory. But if an NBA player goes to the park and wins 100 games of pick-up basketball against kids, do they deserve to win that season?

ELO is doing exactly what it should do here. If it were easy to reach the top in a game, then it wouldn't be the top. When there are thousands of people competing, you have to be dedicated or perhaps crazy to play enough to get there. If you're playing a high luck game, then you've picked your poison. If you love the game, accept that winning isn't everything or if winning is everything, change games.