I hear you! We had played Hanabi a bunch in real life, and it seemed like a simple, challenging party game, but we really couldn't improve our scores. We started playing on BGA, and were blown away by how complex Hanabi could be, and that perfect scores were not only possible, they could be expected, with the proper collective understanding of the clues.nik592 wrote: ↑18 December 2023, 01:58 I owned Hanabi IRL before joining BGA and I'd played it... maybe 20-30 times. We'd never heard of conventions, we just played casually I guess you'd say. ... I went to read in ~the forums and discovered conventions, and ultimately decided I wouldn't be playing Hanabi on BGA anymore.
That's totally fair at lower levels -- everyone's still learning the game, so no one should have any expectations of anyone's knowledge of conventions. I'm not familiar with the current tone of games at the lower levels, and it would be a shame if Apprentices and Novices are being turned off the game by people who lack the patience to introduce convention basics. I guess I assumed that was how lower ranked players managed & taught each other. So if that's not the case, then the more experienced players are failing new members of the community. But removing ELO visibility isn't going to fix that.nik592 wrote: ↑18 December 2023, 01:58While I don't necessarily agree with the change to hide ELO for Hanabi (and/or other coop games), I think you're saying here that casual players should be avoiding high ranking players tables and/or announcing to the table that they are casual players. This seems like a strange idea to me - casual players are often unlikely to even know that there is a non-casual way to play Hanabi. Surely the experienced player should be announcing what they expect?orgle wrote: ↑16 December 2023, 03:09 Perhaps the competitive players were too vocal about their disappointment during their games, but the casual players failed first. They failed at warning players at their tables about their desired play style & known conventions in the Presentation field before the game started. It's easy enough to ward off competitive Hanabi players: tell them in advance that you're "casual," that you don't play with conventions (or list the handful you do use), or turn on Friendly Mode -- they'll never bother you again.
The thing that got me was that you can set your tables to only include players of a certain level OR you can choose not to join ones that include/are open to inexperienced players. If you want to play with a specific convention, that can be noted in the settings of the table (which it wasn't for any of the tables I joined - I don't join tables with options I don't understand), and as you say, you can mention others in the chat. Typically, a casual/uneducated player is likely to set their table with default settings and without restrictions and surely it is up to the experienced player to decide they don't want to join that table and/or setup their own tables the way they want to play.
I have seen a number of posts in the forums and in game chat over the years about how toxic the higher ranks of Hanabi are (mostly Master, but it can apply to Expert as well). So when discussing casual/competitive players I was referring to players at the Expert/Master level -- players who already understand that conventions exist, and that there are more advanced conventions they could be playing with, but choose not to. They know that there are some players who take the game more seriously and really care about getting perfect scores. They've played enough that they've reached Expert or even Master level (generally through 2p games) and now they're complaining that some players get really annoyed when they make mistakes.
So these experienced casual players who should know better are getting themselves into games without first discussing the table's conventions and table-talk preferences (eg. should they discuss issues after game or will someone coach when something goes wrong). Is everyone familiar with Good Touch Rule? Finesse/Reverse/Bluff? Trash Bluff? Are we Left focused or Chop focused? Save Unique (non-critical) 2s on chop? Gentleman's Discard? Skipping over someone is not a clue? Etc, etc.
Really, regardless of who hosts the game, the whole table should be discussing expectations prior to launch. You can't play a game with variable unwritten rules without first agreeing on the chosen rule set. That being said, specific conventions are expected at each ELO rank (mainly because it's challenging to get that high without them), so I can understand why players get lazy and don't clarify ahead of time.
But if you have ELO on for the game, you should assume the table does care about ELO. This is why I'm putting the responsibility on the casual players for joining games with ELO on but then complaining when players at the table care if they're going to take a hit to their ELO (because of the casual player's inexperience or carelessness).
Table options for Mentoring, Casual & Competitive would be helpful (with higher ELO risks for competitive). As would checkboxes for the commonly accepted conventions. But perhaps that's asking too much.
That makes a lot of sense for most games. I'm not going to complain if my opponent in Wingspan puts her Wood Duck in the blue row, or doesn't understand how "sets of eggs" work on the round bonus. I might make a comment for future games, but I'm happy to get a better score as a result of their inexperience. A bad player with high ELO is going to boost my rating when I win a non-cooperative game.nik592 wrote: ↑18 December 2023, 01:58 And while I can play in Friendly mode (and actually might, now that I'm thinking about it), I typically don't consider playing in Friendly mode for any game (probably because in my mind it's still associated with being "Training mode" and once I understand the rules of a game, I generally don't play that way).
However, in cooperative games, it's the exact opposite -- we rely on the other players' knowledge and skill in order to increase our own ELO. I can't think of another cooperative game which relies so heavily on unwritten rules (conventions) in order to succeed as does Hanabi. Generally, someone's ELO matches their understanding of these complex conventions (in H-Group terms: what convention level they play with).
Players do generally restrict their games to their own level. But there's such a big gap in knowledge between a Master with 700 ELO and a Master with 1000+ ELO that it causes conflict when we're grouped all together without distinction. There should really be another tier starting at 900 for Hanabi -- that's how vastly different player knowledge and experience has to be to get above 900 ELO, since you need to have perfect games nearly all the time. 2p games should also track ELO separately from Multi-player, but that's another topic.nik592 wrote: ↑18 December 2023, 01:58I'm not totally clear on what you mean here either - what is the Presentation field? Is this the "Convention" field in the settings? If it is, there is no option for Casual, though I expect Standard convention is much the same. You say they use their host's ELO - so if the table host has an ELO of 750, this indicates that... players of lower score shouldn't join? How would an inexperienced player know this? And I'm also not clear what the "Layered" tag is - all of these are probably just reflections of my lack of knowledge within the Hanabi community, but that's pretty much my point - how am I to know to look for these things, or how to interpret them to avoid joining games with experienced players who are going to get angry at me when I inadvertently spoil their perfect games? Surely the easier way is to set the table to only include players of Master level and higher, nominate a convention, etc. If a player joins a table where a convention is nominated in the table settings and doesn't play with it (or doesn't know how to), I agree that players have a right to be annoyed by that, tell the player (politely) that they shouldn't have joined, and/or abandon the game. But otherwise, I don't understand how experienced players are ending up at tables with casual players - I understand the reverse, that can be just inexperience on the part of casual players. But experienced players know better, so why aren't the settings being used as designed? I am genuinely curious about this, wondering if there is some issue with the table settings that I'm not aware of.orgle wrote: ↑16 December 2023, 03:09 The proper solution to appease casual players who say they don't care about ELO is to tell them to only play Friendly games. Or announce themselves as "Casual" in the Presentation field "(no presentation set) [Modify]". We all need to warn our table what sort of game we're expecting. High Ranked Masters used to do that simply through their host's ELO or the "Layered" tag.
Hanabi players usually only play with other players in their rank due to the challenge of making everyone's understanding of conventions mesh. Masters, in particular, nearly always only play with other Masters. Possibly because a) they like the challenge of using advanced conventions lower ranks likely wouldn't understand, and b) there's no tangible benefit to being a mentor -- you're likely to bomb out or get imperfect scores & lose ELO (which is quite hard to regain at higher levels). Plus, lower level players don't necessarily want a much higher ranked player at their table since they won't gain as much ELO. It's also really challenging to type out explanations of conventions mid-game. Particularly on mobile!
So Experts in the 650-700 range generally haven't been mentored by the Old Masters, which means that when they become Masters at 700 their conventions tend to be out of sync -- some common conventions can work for lower levels, but have to be unlearned in order to advance to more complex conventions. Also, most New Masters are unfamiliar with the Layered convention, which is now considered standard for 900+ ELO.
Previously, New Masters would generally avoid games filled with 900+ ELO Masters. This might be because they get less ELO than playing with others closer to their rank. Or, they recognize that there's a knowledge gap between the two and they're not yet ready.
Likewise, some Old Masters just want a smooth game and avoid anyone under 900, if at all possible.
BGA's conventions aren't as well defined as H-Group's, so there's still some disagreements, even in 1000+ ELO games, but we have a pretty solid system. Someone who plays with the "layered" set of conventions is generally highly skilled and expects to get a perfect game every time. They could have a rough deck get in the way, but a score of 29 is considered a loss (and also ELO confirms that).
Unfortunately, the "Conventions" drop down menu is incredibly outdated. BGA "Standard" IS "Finesse" now and there's no standardized method for outlining the other expected conventions which build on Finesse (Reverse, Bluff, Gentleman's Discard, Trash Bluff, Stacked Clues, Promised Cards, Chop Moves, colour focus when multi is tagged, Layered, etc). Meanwhile, H-Group has 20+ levels of conventions.
I've played a handful of 5p games this week and it's been pretty rough. First off, it's been incredibly challenging to fill a 5p Hanabi game. Long-time players appear to have decided invisible ELO isn't worth it. Second, if a player is new to me, they're likely a New Master or only ever played 2p. I used to be pretty good at determining appropriate clue complexity based on ELO. But now, rather than simply glance at their ELO to get a sense of their convention level, I have to take time to sleuth through their profile to see how many Hanabi games they've played & won. It's really annoying. Frankly, it would be easier to simply stick with the players I already know are 900+.
