🌿ELO System Updates

[__X__]

To sum it up: Different people play for different reasons and elo means different things to different people. The current change seems to negatively impact everyone EXCEPT the cheaters.

I had really high hopes that BGA would improve when Asmodee took it over, but sadly, they still ignore the userbase. This change only became obvious to a lot of us when our co-op elo disappeared. Shouldn't it have been news? How many people actually check the forums on a regular basis anyway? Personally, i ignore them for months at a time until a specific issue comes up. Even then, in issues like this thread, we're just pissing in the wind anyway, because BGA simply doesn't seem to care about the opinions of the community.

[TheDiamondRuff]

I reported someone for cheating in Thermopyles years ago. The correct action would have been to ban that player, scrub their history from the site, and fix the exploit they were using to game the system. Instead the solution was to create an arbitrary cap of 8,700 ELO for all games.

The proper solution is to ban anyone that is blatantly cheating and wipe their results from BGA. Myself and others have done an admirable job over the years reporting blatant cheaters but sadly the response from BGA has been less than ideal to say the least. Players that aren't cheating (which I am guessing make up the vast majority of users on BGA) shouldn't be penalized by a "fix" to discourage the bad apples on the site that are cheating.

Weird right? Bga policy is really lenient towards cheaters. They aren’t increasing the penalty for cheaters and are just deciding to install something that hurts the entire community instead. The penalty for quitting one game (or just missing game start because of buggy system) -20 karma

The penalty for trying to address the issue of bga’s handling of cheaters in the forum = -50 karma and a 10 day restriction.

The penalty for being convicted of using multiple accounts and cheating for an entire arena season = -30 karma and no restriction.

When your account is muted and the warning appears ppl may assume that you are vulgar which is not the case. Maybe you were muted simply for telling a cheater that they are a problem. But bga doesn’t think there is a need to show a warning that an account was just found guilty of cheating multiple times? I’m seeing ppl enter the cheaters games completely oblivious.

Another thing that I noticed is that ppl who questions bga policy on cheating have their comments erased but I see accounts in a game I play make several threads openly expressing how they cheat and will continue to cheat and aren’t punished.

As a paying customer I have issues with how BGA handles issues. Last year I was given a penalty/moderation for a conversation I had during a game in which 2 of the other players and myself were talking about prior games we had played. One of them asked me a question about said past game and my answer involved explaining to them that the player involved in that scenario was simply a bad player. It wasn't in reference to the current game, any current player at the table, and that comment itself is incredibly benign. I had the option to either accept this unjust penalty/moderation but if I got another one within a certain timeframe I could be banned for life or contest it. If I contested it I had to wait until I heard back from BGA and in the meantime I can't use the very site that I am paying for as a Premium member. If my appeal was denied I was going to be punished even more. I figured my case was airtight and it would take a few days to a week max and it was worth it because I hadn't done anything wrong. Well months passed by and I never got a response. I tried contacting BGA on Facebook etc. but there is literally no good way to contact them - especially if you can't fully access your profile which you can't do unless you accept their penalty no questions asked. I had a number of players DM'ing me because they were worried that I hadn't played in months. I eventually gave in and accepted the penalty as it was clear BGA was never going to respond to my appeal. How is that acceptable behavior to a paying customer - or even non-paying customers? There needs to be a better way for people to contact BGA when they are experiencing issues.

[orgle]

If an old player returns to playing, their old score doesn’t reflect their current skill, and gives them a huge unfair advantage.

Another example:
In Hanabi, the rules changed a few months ago regarding abandoning games. As a result, the average player that played 1 year ago gained more ELO than the average player does now.

I can only really speak to the ELO changes in Hanabi, as it's the game I keep coming back to... Originally, I found the change to ELO loss for abandoning games really, very annoying, as the high ranking Masters generally only abandoned when it was clear a low-ranked Master simply didn't understand the basics of Finesse and Bluff (making for a miserable waste of time), or when a player went offline and failed to return (we generally didn't kick players out of time, because we all have RL emergencies, and turned-based is really annoying unless there's only a few cards left).

However, none of us realized what a problem abandoning was becoming for lower ranked unskilled players grinding ELO. To be honest, we should have known something was up, as it seemed like none of the new Masters in the 700-750 range had a clue how to play with anything beyond the basic conventions (and even those were causing bombs).

So I now appreciate the reasoning behind the Abandon change, even though it's annoying to those of us who weren't gaming the system. I'm running into fewer clueless new Masters, as unskilled players are unable to rise through the ranks (without straight up cheating).

In the same way, a player with artificially inflated ELO from years ago is going to be self-corrected when they start playing games again. Without an understanding of the conventions used at the 1000+ level, they're going to bomb out or get imperfect scores and get RT (or uninvited) by the other high ranked Masters. Their score will naturally decrease fairly quickly. It's just slightly annoying for the other players at the table who realized too late that the rank does not match the skill level.

The problem I have with ELO decay for Hanabi is that good former Masters could be locked out of Masters games if they're dormant for too long. It's really challenging to play with Experts when you're accustomed to a higher level of play. The former Master will find the complex clues just come naturally, and the Experts will struggle to understand. I've tried teaching Hanabi to friends & family, and I'm really, really bad at sticking with just finesse and bluff, and even those conventions are too complex for beginners.

Anyway, my point is that there's really no need for ELO decay for Hanabi. But it wouldn't ruin my play experience, if they did implement it -- unlike invisible ELO. I have found these last few days highly unenjoyable -- to the point where I am spending my free time reading through new insights on this thread, rather than playing my favourite game (AKA the reason my Husband and I both pay for BGA memberships).

[TheDiamondRuff]

To sum it up: Different people play for different reasons and elo means different things to different people. The current change seems to negatively impact everyone EXCEPT the cheaters.

I had really high hopes that BGA would improve when Asmodee took it over, but sadly, they still ignore the userbase. This change only became obvious to a lot of us when our co-op elo disappeared. Shouldn't it have been news? How many people actually check the forums on a regular basis anyway? Personally, i ignore them for months at a time until a specific issue comes up. Even then, in issues like this thread, we're just pissing in the wind anyway, because BGA simply doesn't seem to care about the opinions of the community.

The fact it wasn't communicated out ahead of time so customers could react before it went into effect is a huge problem. It should have been news when you first log in like when a new anticipated game is added to the site. People are logging in to have fun - not read the forums. The vast majority of us only head over to the forums if we have questions or issues. We all deserve better customer service.

[franko]

Do you think that if someone has not played for 1 year, he would be exactly as strong player as he is now? 10% decay is not that much, really. 100 elo is not a big difference.

Except the decay is meaningless to do what it says it's attempting to do. Let's take a real example of a game where someone is parked in the #1 ELO spot: *

What the proposed change does is destroy ELO for people who have entirely moved off of a game (I suppose that's fine, but why is that necessary when they're already removed from the leaderboard?), or punish players who like to play many distinct games somewhat regularly. I'm currently playing Hadrians Wall, Kingdom Builder and Villagers, but obviously in the past I climbed up in other games (e.g. Spyrium I'm technically in the top 10 by ELO even though I don't show up as I haven't played that game in *years*). Would I still be top 10 if I played now? Probably not. Does the fact my account is holding this ELO impact anyone? No. So why is it important to decay that ELO?

I post here because I want to see elo scores in coop games. But the rest of the changes are OK. And the reasons for against those changes do not make much sense. Your gaming skill does decay if you don't play the game. Whether you want to admit it or not. So should elo.

The rest of the changes are absolutely not okay. I'm the 10th person on this site to have hit Master for Kingdom Builder (https://boardgamearena.com/award?game=1225&award=27) -- the first hit it on December 10th 2020, and mine was May 21st 2023. That's 2.5 whole years for only 10 people to hit Master. I can say with pretty much absolute certainty that if these changes stay in effect that there's no chance of anyone else ever hitting Master. Active players will begin destroying ELO, removing it from the entire pool that the community has, thus making it harder and harder to accumulate 700 ELO. There's already barely enough ELO to support getting to 700, and the game does have some elements of luck/streaks which will again go towards ELO deletion. https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... finished=0 is the run I took to get to Master -- 61 games over 5 days where I had 53 wins and 8 losses. While that run shows mainly distinct opponents: (1) for some of the names that I only have 1 win during that period it would have been a consecutive win in our history since there is no way to reset streaks, (2) I would only need to earn 0.28 less ELO per win to not have been able to hit Master. If you look at one of my best streaks against BgKeyKey (another top player) https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1225 there are 4 wins between 06/14/2023 at 22:55 for the first game and 08/29/2023 at 09:07 for the last -- oh boy that 2.5 month long "boosting" totally being prevented by this decay -- but with the applied ELO penalties that would have destroyed ~5 ELO from the community. If you actually extrapolate that against all of my opponents, and look at all active players and all of their opponents, it's definitely going to destroy hundreds if not thousands of ELO in a year. There's just no way to introduce more ELO with such a small player base, since that only occurs for wins against <100 ranked players (who can't lose ELO), and when new players join as their elasticity allows for the "creation" of ELO.

ELO needs to stay zero-sum, otherwise for many games you're just shrinking the total ELO for a game over time. I don't see why that would make sense to do.

*Moderation Edit: please do not use the Forums to call out specific tables or players by name, this is what the Moderation Reports are for. The Forums should remain a general discussion.

[TheDiamondRuff]

Why do you people care so much about elo anyway? Your place in the rankings is not a meaningful representation of your skill. Only those that intentionally play to gain elo will climb to the very top. Elo decaying if you don't play similarly does not take anything away from you. You can always just play more and your score rises naturally.

Just play the games and enjoy it.

Reading through your comments you keep acting like we shouldn't care about losing our ELO via decay despite the fact that dormant users don't occupy the leaderboards anyway after 60 days. Yet in the same breath you want us losing our ELO via decay. You can't argue that people shouldn't care about ELO and then call for changes to the ELO system. That is illogical. If you truly believe people shouldn't care about ELO you shouldn't be involved in a discussion about changes to the ELO system AND you shouldn't be advocating for changes to something you claim people shouldn't care about. You clearly do care and you want people to lose ELO via decay for some reason that I haven't seen justified yet.

[orgle]

→ Cooperative play and non competitive game
For cooperative games such as Hanabi, The Crew, or Just One, competition is already disabled. However, some players were too focused on the ELO, which led to unnecessary competitiveness in an environment which should instead incentivize cooperation.
For such games, we decided to hide the ELO value of each player and only display their current rank, from Beginner to Master.
This rank is based on existing win / loss games from the underlying ELO system. This way, you will not lose your rank with this change. For some games where chapters or scenarios are played, the more successful chapter will get you to the next rank faster, but you will not know how far from the next rank you could be at a given time.
This also applies to games where competition is disabled such as Chess.

I didn't even catch this on my first read through (I was too distracted by other's invisible ELO to realize I couldn't even see my own ELO!). Previously, I would fairly regularly play with lower ranked Masters as I had a good idea that I could at least not lose ELO if we got a 29. Now we have no way to gauge if our score was reasonable considering the average level at the table & if it boosted our ELO, or we actually lost a significant amount (as I would when playing with high ranked Master).

These changes were meant to increase community and cooperation, but if I can't tell how much ELO I gain/lose from each game, and I have no clue how close I am to losing Master status, I'm going to completely avoid playing with unknown players, as I'll have no concept of how many games it would take to negate an ELO loss for an imperfect game, and I don't want to get locked out of playing with other Masters. This is a truly horrible decision for the cooperative game community, particularly Hanabi which relies heaviest on player's understanding of conventions.

→ Power levelling
We encountered many situations of power levelling, linked to multi accounts, even if we are still fighting against such practices, it became obvious that the current system might encourage it.
To prevent this, any consecutive wins against the same opponent will reduce the amount of ELO points awarded from this victory. This reduction will be gradually higher as more consecutive wins are accumulated. This way, we encourage you to challenge other players to keep the original spirit of the ELO: show your skill at a game compared to the whole community, not just the same ones.

Does this apply to cooperative games as well? We regularly run rematches after a successful Hanabi game. A good group that really meshes can be hard to find. I certainly hope that this is not the case -- right now we can't even see if we're gaining/losing ELO, so gaining nothing for a perfect game with friends would be an absolute travesty. Please advise as I'm unable to personally confirm due to the ridiculousness of invisible ELO.

[h_illes]

What the people running the site need to realize is that damage is being done constantly as this ridiculousness goes on. The player base in all games is leaking ELO due to your power levelling 'fix'. Please undo it! There is no shame in correcting a mistake, but you should really act fast. Switch to a decreasing k factor if you want something similar that actually works.

[franko]

What the people running the site need to realize is that damage is being done constantly as this ridiculousness goes on. The player base in all games is leaking ELO due to your power levelling 'fix'. Please undo it! There is no shame in correcting a mistake, but you should really act fast. Switch to a decreasing k factor if you want something similar that actually works.

Yeah, I don't see the point in playing non-arena games any longer in terms of competition since this has really undermined any meaning ELO used to have. Even in arena depending on the game and likelihood of increasing your rank I don't really see the point playing there either, so I guess BGA has succeeded if their goal was to make it so I don't want to play any more games?

Another anecdote, I just saw someone create a game of Kingdom Builder and thought "oh that name seems less familiar, maybe this wouldn't be considered a win streak", but no: https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1225 if I played this and won it would count as a 6th consecutive win and thus give me a huge ELO penalty -- even though this player is near 500 ELO a win would be worth less than a first win against someone with like 200 ELO. Also kind of shocking that I'm in a "streak" against someone that began on 1/18/2023 -- a nearly 12 month long counter-example of why this approach to countering boosting has entirely missed the mark. Or maybe it's just me playing the long con of trying to eek out "extra ELO boosting" by having a 6th consecutive win interspersed amongst 2404 times I've played the game this year...

My mind is boggled.

[frogstar_A]

ELO decay : I hate this idea. Firstly it just reduces ELO points out of the system, making it harder in total to progress up the ELO scale. Secondly it virtually forces people to play as a chore to retain their ELO rating, instead of playing whatever they feel like playing. Finally if high ELO players choose not to play who cares? They have earned their ELO fairly, why can't they keep it.

Power levelling: this is crazy. Cheaters can still cheat they just need 3 accounts not 2. Meanwhile if I have an evening playing BGA games with my wife all evening we get ELO punished for playing each other too often. Madness.

Red thumbs: I like this change. I have definitely noticed people cheating in arena by r3d thumbing all the good players. It makes a mockery of arena as a competition.