🌿ELO System Updates

[SudsCarrigan]

Hi there, fellow players and the wonderful Board Game Arena administrators (I think that's what you're called?). This is such a wonderful sight and a blessing to gaming enthusiasts! Thank you for all the hard work (can't even imagine tackling such a project as BGA!!!) that has gone into making this such an affordable and FUN! place to play.

I just have a comment about the ELO situation. I only play 4 games here and one of them is Hardback. I am a terrible player but I LOVE LOVE LOVE the game. And I'm shooting from the hip here...I've only read a few of the comments regarding Hardback and the ELO situation. Honestly I don't understand what the administrators' concern about the ELO is and I haven't run across players saying "oh thank you for eliminating the ELO standings for Hardback." But I have read tons of people expressing disappointment about elimination of the ELO system and asking for its re-instatement. Just thought I'd put my two-cents in...we all really miss the ELO system, at least for HARDBACK...honestly am not familiar with the other games that may be affected by this move by administrators.

Thanks for listening to my gripe...and Happy Holidays to all and keeping my fingers crossed that the ELO system is re-instated for HARDBACK. Thanks for listening!

[Panthergirl]

Just adding to the negative response regarding the ELO change. In short, it's terrible. The primary reason I joined/subscribed to BGA was so I can play remote games with family members in the US (I've moved to Europe). An unexpected side effect was that I also encountered some nice people to play with on a regular basis. Playing with randos hasn't always been a fun experience, but playing with my regular buddies and learning new games with them has been great.

Now, when I've learned a new game and am trying to measure how well I'm doing, my ELO doesn't reflect that because of this absurd change regarding repeat play. A good example is Hadrian's Wall. There's a relatively small player pool for that game, but I have three people I know I can count on for a game. (If I play Arena, I usually draw the #1 player on BGA. He's #1 on the entire site and has 300+ ELO for almost every game. Pleasant enough to play against him, and I try to learn something, but I will never ever win). I've been winning a lot against my usual opponents but my ELO doesn't change. Meaningless in the grand scheme of life, but really unsatisfying here.

If the BGA PTB don't listen to the user base and undo some or all of these changes, it will be quite disappointing and short-sighted. As others have pointed out, so many people use this platform to connect and play remotely with friends and family. Why punish the entire community for the bad behavior of some?

[TexArcher]

Just want to add to the chorus saying that the ELO decay is a bad idea.

If I'm a 450 player and I decide to take some time off from a game, and my ELO drops 10% to 405, and I come back to that game and beat someone, s/he gets credit with losing to a 405 player instead of a 450 player. Not only is it no longer an accurate reflection of my ELO, it's not fair to the first few people I play when I return.

Also, people with high ELO's sitting out to preserve their ELO's and rankings has always been an issue, going back decades with chess. I don't know why it needs to be solved all of a sudden.

And, lowering the ELO reward for beating the same person consecutively is just going to make people stop accepting rematches. Why would I play you again if I just beat you, knowing that a win is worth less than it should be, but a loss is the full deduction? I understand the rationale here, but the drop-off shouldn't start until after 3 games at least. Give people a chance to play each other to 1-1, then a tie-breaker. That isn't manipulating the system. Now, if someone is beating the same account 4+ times, then maybe they're beating a fake account, or just playing their roommate who's terrible a bunch of times to get their number up, so penalize that, sure.

[Ceaseless]

Just adding to the negative response regarding the ELO change. In short, it's terrible. The primary reason I joined/subscribed to BGA was so I can play remote games with family members in the US (I've moved to Europe). An unexpected side effect was that I also encountered some nice people to play with on a regular basis. Playing with randos hasn't always been a fun experience, but playing with my regular buddies and learning new games with them has been great.

Now, when I've learned a new game and am trying to measure how well I'm doing, my ELO doesn't reflect that because of this absurd change regarding repeat play. A good example is Hadrian's Wall. There's a relatively small player pool for that game, but I have three people I know I can count on for a game. (If I play Arena, I usually draw the #1 player on BGA. He's #1 on the entire site and has 300+ ELO for almost every game. Pleasant enough to play against him, and I try to learn something, but I will never ever win). I've been winning a lot against my usual opponents but my ELO doesn't change. Meaningless in the grand scheme of life, but really unsatisfying here.

If the BGA PTB don't listen to the user base and undo some or all of these changes, it will be quite disappointing and short-sighted. As others have pointed out, so many people use this platform to connect and play remotely with friends and family. Why punish the entire community for the bad behavior of some?

I'm not seeing what you're referring to here. In Hadrian's Wall, your account only has 2 users you've played more than twice at the moment. https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1820 Rylande, with a rating of 263, who pushes the bottom of the top 100 regular ratings with no arena points, and missymoo with a rating of 100, also no arena games. The #1 in arena and regular ratings in Hadrian's Wall is Ethical Chloroplast, who you have never played in Hadrian's Wall. Could you clarify?

[Yurdrin]

My assumption is that whoever came up with these changes does not play on the site. As someone that plays Agricola Arena, the proposed changes for red thumbs, power levelling, and elo decay are all awful as many others have explained. The red thumb change is by far the worst. I have noticed that the main Agricola streamers no longer stream arena following the change. If the changes are not reverted I will likely stop using the site other than for occasional games.

[Panthergirl]

Just adding to the negative response regarding the ELO change. In short, it's terrible. The primary reason I joined/subscribed to BGA was so I can play remote games with family members in the US (I've moved to Europe). An unexpected side effect was that I also encountered some nice people to play with on a regular basis. Playing with randos hasn't always been a fun experience, but playing with my regular buddies and learning new games with them has been great.

Now, when I've learned a new game and am trying to measure how well I'm doing, my ELO doesn't reflect that because of this absurd change regarding repeat play. A good example is Hadrian's Wall. There's a relatively small player pool for that game, but I have three people I know I can count on for a game. (If I play Arena, I usually draw the #1 player on BGA. He's #1 on the entire site and has 300+ ELO for almost every game. Pleasant enough to play against him, and I try to learn something, but I will never ever win). I've been winning a lot against my usual opponents but my ELO doesn't change. Meaningless in the grand scheme of life, but really unsatisfying here.

If the BGA PTB don't listen to the user base and undo some or all of these changes, it will be quite disappointing and short-sighted. As others have pointed out, so many people use this platform to connect and play remotely with friends and family. Why punish the entire community for the bad behavior of some?

I'm not seeing what you're referring to here. In Hadrian's Wall, your account only has 2 users you've played more than twice at the moment. https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1820 Rylande, with a rating of 263, who pushes the bottom of the top 100 regular ratings with no arena points, and missymoo with a rating of 100, also no arena games. The #1 in arena and regular ratings in Hadrian's Wall is Ethical Chloroplast, who you have never played in Hadrian's Wall. Could you clarify?

The player I'm talking about is here: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=447042112

You're correct in that I play Rylande and Missymoo most frequently because I know them. But I'll never get my ELO up unless I'm willing to take a risk with random players in Arena, which I tried and then got this opponent with a 500 ELO.

[LesserJester]

So, here is how I'm playing now.

When I win a game I roll mouse over the Elo change and check number of consecutive wins against each player. If it is five - add a personal note regarding this player. Then expel them before the start of the next game, with apologies in the chat. I appreciate all opponents and like playing against most of them, but that's the new way of playing on BGA, apparently

If you like them just play friendly games with them.

I disagree. Friendly games should be used only when you need them in an informal /teaching setting / distinctly imbalanced pool of player abilities. It's why it used to be called teaching mode. Why strip people of timers and the ability to kick non responsive players? The new ELO system is not good and that is where the problem lies, not in the selected game mode.

[Ceaseless]

Just adding to the negative response regarding the ELO change. In short, it's terrible. The primary reason I joined/subscribed to BGA was so I can play remote games with family members in the US (I've moved to Europe). An unexpected side effect was that I also encountered some nice people to play with on a regular basis. Playing with randos hasn't always been a fun experience, but playing with my regular buddies and learning new games with them has been great.

Now, when I've learned a new game and am trying to measure how well I'm doing, my ELO doesn't reflect that because of this absurd change regarding repeat play. A good example is Hadrian's Wall. There's a relatively small player pool for that game, but I have three people I know I can count on for a game. (If I play Arena, I usually draw the #1 player on BGA. He's #1 on the entire site and has 300+ ELO for almost every game. Pleasant enough to play against him, and I try to learn something, but I will never ever win). I've been winning a lot against my usual opponents but my ELO doesn't change. Meaningless in the grand scheme of life, but really unsatisfying here.

If the BGA PTB don't listen to the user base and undo some or all of these changes, it will be quite disappointing and short-sighted. As others have pointed out, so many people use this platform to connect and play remotely with friends and family. Why punish the entire community for the bad behavior of some?

I'm not seeing what you're referring to here. In Hadrian's Wall, your account only has 2 users you've played more than twice at the moment. https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1820 Rylande, with a rating of 263, who pushes the bottom of the top 100 regular ratings with no arena points, and missymoo with a rating of 100, also no arena games. The #1 in arena and regular ratings in Hadrian's Wall is Ethical Chloroplast, who you have never played in Hadrian's Wall. Could you clarify?

The player I'm talking about is here: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=447042112

You're correct in that I play Rylande and Missymoo most frequently because I know them. But I'll never get my ELO up unless I'm willing to take a risk with random players in Arena, which I tried and then got this opponent with a 500 ELO.

Didn't expect you to mean someone you've only played 2 times as the player you usually get paired with, though I'm not sure what measure you're using to say they're first on the site. As a side note, it doesn't have to be Arena if you're just raising regular ELO, I find there are a lot of players in regular mode from my experience in other games, I'd be surprised if Hadrian's Wall differed in this respect.

[Panthergirl]

I'm not seeing what you're referring to here. In Hadrian's Wall, your account only has 2 users you've played more than twice at the moment. https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1820 Rylande, with a rating of 263, who pushes the bottom of the top 100 regular ratings with no arena points, and missymoo with a rating of 100, also no arena games. The #1 in arena and regular ratings in Hadrian's Wall is Ethical Chloroplast, who you have never played in Hadrian's Wall. Could you clarify?

The player I'm talking about is here: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=447042112

You're correct in that I play Rylande and Missymoo most frequently because I know them. But I'll never get my ELO up unless I'm willing to take a risk with random players in Arena, which I tried and then got this opponent with a 500 ELO.

Didn't expect you to mean someone you've only played 2 times as the player you usually get paired with, though I'm not sure what measure you're using to say they're first on the site. As a side note, it doesn't have to be Arena if you're just raising regular ELO, I find there are a lot of players in regular mode from my experience in other games, I'd be surprised if Hadrian's Wall differed in this respect.

Go to the BGA landing page. You will see that player is the #1 player on all of BGA.

I'm only going to Arena because it takes forever to get a HW game otherwise. There just isn't a huge player base for some reason. I think it's a very cool game but for some people it's basically just a spreadsheet.

[Ceaseless]

The player I'm talking about is here: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=447042112

You're correct in that I play Rylande and Missymoo most frequently because I know them. But I'll never get my ELO up unless I'm willing to take a risk with random players in Arena, which I tried and then got this opponent with a 500 ELO.

Didn't expect you to mean someone you've only played 2 times as the player you usually get paired with, though I'm not sure what measure you're using to say they're first on the site. As a side note, it doesn't have to be Arena if you're just raising regular ELO, I find there are a lot of players in regular mode from my experience in other games, I'd be surprised if Hadrian's Wall differed in this respect.

Go to the BGA landing page. You will see that player is the #1 player on all of BGA.

I'm only going to Arena because it takes forever to get a HW game otherwise. There just isn't a huge player base for some reason. I think it's a very cool game but for some people it's basically just a spreadsheet.

Ah, #1 in BGA exp. Don't know how much that says about them, guess exp is made of a mix of nonsense like games played vs actually interesting stuff like rating/ranking achievements. I was looking at the game of reference, Hadrian's Wall. In any case their profile seems to have a solid number of decently rated games.

Unfortunate that Hadrian's Wall is so lacking in getting a game, it's been on my BGA list of games to check out at some point.