ELO & Fun

[HanabiGrandMaster]

In Team vs the Game situations, I would prefer a >99% win rate for the team. I don't like losing a game, just because we got unlucky.

What is the point in playing if your decisions don't matter and make the difference. Sure that means some games were probably unwinnable, but a large number of the wins would be games that were razor edge cases with every choice being the difference between ending now and winning.

These are my favorite sessions of a cooperative game, where the game is balanced such that when we win it's on the very last turn because on the next turn the [insert thematically bad event here] would have happened.

Personally, if a game is so easily won that you basically have to try to lose in order to fail, then what's the point?

Thank you both (Turtler7 & Meeplelowda) for your insights. I think it also helps me understand the players here on BGA that play my favourite game (Hanabi).

In this game it is possible to get perfect score in >99% of the games. It is a game that takes ca. 60 - 80 turns to complete with ca. 10 - 30 options per turn, so you have a lot of opportunities to make a mistake that can hurt your chances. Most "experienced" players still tend to have 80% winrate at best. When I try to tell them how they can significantly improve their odds, they get mad / angry (redthumb), because "I'm playing it wrong". The way they play, they often have games that come down to the last one or two cards, making it "exciting" to get either a perfect score, or perfect-score-minus-one. Personally, I hate it when a game comes down to luck (roll of the dice, stacking of the deck, etc).

Do you feel the same about competitive play? That a win:lose rate of 3:1 // 4:1 is the maximum for things to still be fun?

[Romain672]

Btw, in Hanabi, it's nowhere close to >99%: https://github.com/fpvandoorn/hanabi#optimized-winrates . It's around 98%.
In Slay the spire a turn based video games, best player got around 80%. But since they make mistakes, that should be higher.
In Faster Than Light, it was around 95%/98% I believe.

But what is the most important is the path to get those high winrate.
If you can get 95% after 20 games (7hours), that will not be the same than getting 95% after 1000 games (333hours).
And once you reach that, how much you should focus to get that winrate is really important too. Is it just always the same (find A or B or C or D+E or D+F in 95% of games), or do you need to adapt every time (find A+B+C or A+D+E or B+D+F+G or E+F+H+I...). In the first case, the games should be boring pretty fast, in the second one, you still have some unknown path every time: would A+B without C still work on this specific case since I got J+K? Would it instead be counter productive? Should I instead try to force having C? Should I find a D to give me the victory if I find E? If that change every game, it's where I got the most fun personnally.

But personnally, just finding the path even if I don't apply it is where I find fun.

On the other hand, if I'm doing something else at the same time, just playing an hard game that I can win 95% of the time with few thinking make me feel great, even if it's just some robotics actions.

But it seem that 80/95% is a good number.

[HanabiGrandMaster]

Btw, in Hanabi, it's nowhere close to >99%: https://github.com/fpvandoorn/hanabi#optimized-winrates . It's around 98%.

That's pre-flamboyants. Flambotyants are broken strong, and make the >99% possible.

But it seem that 80/95% is a good number.

Thanks for the feedback.

[Meeplelowda]

Do you feel the same about competitive play? That a win:lose rate of 3:1 // 4:1 is the maximum for things to still be fun?,

There are many games that I am absolute rubbish at (Nippon, Tzolk'in, Clans of Caledonia, etc.) that I still enjoy losing at because they involve fun and interesting choices. I recently learned Caverna. My current goal is only to do better than I did in the previous game. My ego isn't so fragile that I have to win all the time. This is just a personal philosophy. I'd rather struggle to be mediocre at something challenging than repeatedly succeed at something easy. The latter is like setting a video game to the easiest mode, then strutting around like you've accomplished something by beating the nerfed end boss.

[killjoyprose]

I generally prefer to play against players who are better than me. If I manage to beat them, then I'm thrilled. If they beat me, I typically pick something up that improves my game. Either way I'm happy

You say this but just taking a glance at what games you play a majority of the time you have an over 50% win rate. Doesn't sound like something that would happen in a fair game of multiple people on equal footing

[ChiefPointThief]

Btw, in Hanabi, it's nowhere close to >99%: https://github.com/fpvandoorn/hanabi#optimized-winrates . It's around 98%.

That's pre-flamboyants. Flambotyants are broken strong, and make the >99% possible.

Don’t say this in the hanabi forums. You will get a group of people telling you otherwise

[detlefchef11]

I generally prefer to play against players who are better than me. If I manage to beat them, then I'm thrilled. If they beat me, I typically pick something up that improves my game. Either way I'm happy

You say this but just taking a glance at what games you play a majority of the time you have an over 50% win rate. Doesn't sound like something that would happen in a fair game of multiple people on equal footing

I mostly (really exclusively with regard to Wingspan) play Arena and tournaments for the last several months. So I don't really have much say in who I play. However, given that, I prefer to play against better players, so I'm happy when that happens.

[frogstar_A]

However, recently I've encountered more and more people who deliberately lose something like 10 games in a row to lower their ELO. Only then to steam-roll lower level players 10 games in a row; and then rinse and repeat. They clearly are not concerned about their ELO, but are looking for that victory-rush.

No one is going to deliberately lose 10 games in a row. No one would enjoy that.

However, if you want to maximise your ELO score from a sequence of games you are better to have all the losses first and the wins second. Therefore if I have (say) 30 turn based games of a particular game running and I begin to realise I am almost certainly going to win 20 of them and lose 10 I am better off in ELO terms to concede the 10 losses now and then let the other 20 run their course to completion and hopefully win.

So I wouldn’t be deliberately losing 10 games in a row but it might look like that from my games history….in fact I played 30 games that were a mixture of wins and losses but just structured the results to have the losses first.

[silentProtest]

The changes to the ELO system got me thinking about competitive play. I was wondering how you (all BGA players) feel about competition.

Question to y'all: If you play a competitive game, what odds to win would you find fun?

Example answer (How I see it)
In Team vs the Game situations, I would prefer a >99% win rate for the team. I don't like losing a game, just because we got unlucky.
In Player vs Player situations, I wouldn't like anything more imbalanced than 33% : 66%, from either perspective. If I get matched against a better player, but I manage to eek out a win, that's great! But if he steamrolls me, there was no competition. So two-to-one odds is about as low as I would go.
I don't really like Free For All situations. There is a lot of opportunity for King-Making, but not a lot of opportunity for winning. Ideally, Free For All games should have equal odds for all players, and can't really be skill-based.

Some context:
I have held a tennis racket about thrice in my life. If I were to play tennis against Roger Federer (picked him, because we're the same age), he could destroy me. I don't want to speculate how it would go in reality, but I don't think it would be fun for either of us. Either he would have to hold back so much, that he wouldn't be playing tennis. Or I would barely touch a ball.

I assumed that people, in general, would like to play games against people of relatively similar skill level.

However, recently I've encountered more and more people who deliberately lose something like 10 games in a row to lower their ELO. Only then to steam-roll lower level players 10 games in a row; and then rinse and repeat. They clearly are not concerned about their ELO, but are looking for that victory-rush.

Hey there,
Im just browsing the forum, and didnt bother to read the responses yet, beyond skimming for game links.
Do you have actual examples of that<EDIT: someone losing on purpose, A LOT, to get lower elo> happening. It seems hard to imagine. If some people need that feeling of winning vs worse players that badly, why not just make extra accounts ?? O.o To be clear, I do not like such behaviour much - but your discription of that problem does seem weird to me.

To answer your question. I think it is dependent on player type. I do not mind to have a win chance of 5%-80% in a coop game just dependent on skill level and difficulty chosen. For example, XCOM the board game, feels like a real achievement, every win you manage on the highest difficulty; so do Gloomhaven variants.

In PvP, I do not even care about the chances before the game. I love a challenge. And it would annoy me out of my mind, to play players on regular basis under a certain quality bar.
The assumption here, is that the game is good. As in dynamic, somewhat balanced, challenging intellect/logic/creativity; and a nice look and easy "handleling" are nice bonuses.
Had something to add: It is more important, to me, to have a really good game, and therefore challenge, in most kind of PvP games, than ANY % winrate. To explain my point more clearly: There are really good players in 7wd, my game of choice for now, that we had awesome games; But it happened to be a 85% win rate. It is a lot of factors that lead to it. I also could have a win rate of 80% vs sucky players, with hellesh-ly boring games. Point being, win- rate is, most likely a very wrong metric for whatever you are searching for

[Romain672]

Hey there,
Im just browsing the forum, and didnt bother to read the responses yet, beyond skimming for game links.
Do you have actual examples of that happening. It seems hard to imagine. If some people need that feeling of winning vs worse players that badly, why not just make extra accounts ?? O.o To be clear, I do not like such behaviour much - but your discription of that problem does seem weird to me.

In league of legends, many people created smurfs, secondary accounts. It could be:
a) if you are a streamer/youtuber, to record themselves to show to others how to win their games against weaker opponent (/create learning video and gain money from it)
b) to test new champions/playstyle at a lower level. That let you tryhard your main account, and try new strategy in your secondary account
c) to just stomp their game, have their fun, and ignore the fact they create unbalanced games ("a smurf is rare, that does nothing about the community" = "i don't care about ecology, my impact does nothing globally") and reduces fun of others

I don't have any data, but I wouldn't be surprised if many people were in c).

On bga, I never see someone claiming a).
For b), I think I remember one question on the forum about a secondary account, but I'm unsure for what.
But some applied c) like some people which got multiple account in the top 20, don't remember on which game.