🌿ELO System Updates

[SamoVrah]

Cancel the ELO drop forever! May it never be reduced!! Let everyone have as many points as they have recorded. And let ELO just go up!! After all, we gamers are tired of playing when we had 1000 ELO and now we have 150!! Give us back what is ours. Our ELO!! Please!!

[RazorOz]

The thing with the ELO reducer is it just turns ELO into a net negative game, the only way you can gain ELO into the system is new blood, but as those players will have around 100 ELO you aren't going to gain much ELO from them once you're higher ranked. The net result is in effect capping the ELO system, where it's really hard for the overall player pool to go up in ELO.

Look at this example of a race of Heat: Pedal to the Metal between 5 of the highest ranked players on the server:

https://boardgamearena.com/11/heat?table=465049233

ELO gained 25, ELO lost 34, so a net negative of 9. You're never going to gain while the system remains like that. And it's a total nonsense, reducing ELO by that much for such small win streaks which could happen at any game, it's just silly.

[howie varez]

The thing with the ELO reducer is it just turns ELO into a net negative game, the only way you can gain ELO into the system is new blood, but as those players will have around 100 ELO you aren't going to gain much ELO from them once you're higher ranked. The net result is in effect capping the ELO system, where it's really hard for the overall player pool to go up in ELO.

Look at this example of a race of Heat: Pedal to the Metal between 5 of the highest ranked players on the server:

https://boardgamearena.com/11/heat?table=465049233

ELO gained 25, ELO lost 34, so a net negative of 9. You're never going to gain while the system remains like that. And it's a total nonsense, reducing ELO by that much for such small win streaks which could happen at any game, it's just silly.

This. Exactly why this doesn't work. Maybe a system where you see Elo reduced after like a 10 game win streak is fine. But as Oz says, this is a high level game that is just sucking ELO out of the pool. That's just completely silly.

[andycupid]

There have been enough top players who have voiced their dissatisfaction on power levelling, and rightfully so. As a competitive player and top player in a handful of games, I feel especially punished by such tweaks, and now sometimes that occassional 1 loss is not going to take 10 wins in a row to recover ..but never recovered actually, since winning consecutively will not net me ELO for some reason. Now I can't even judge opponents' skill level by their ELO, and playing in many tournaments with many players I'm not familiar with is becoming increasingly hard.

Enough about that though. I've been following this discussion closely at least once per 3 days or so. What more do players need to do to get the changes reverted? Are all those previous points irrelevant? Do you want all players to lobby or something to force some changes? Perhaps players have messaged or written emails. Regardless, a customer service that has taken over a month is pretty worrying. It's true there has been ONE attempt to communicate throughout this whole thread, but there weren't any meaningful actions, or explanations even. I'm inclined to believe that BGA devs are assessing the situation and working towards the greater benefit, but after such a long time, I'm starting to question my faith. Oh well.

[h_illes]

This prolonged waiting sends the message that BGA does not care about the players. You are losing trust with every day. Maybe only few players have actually left the site so far due to the ELO shenanigans as many are still hopeful, but I guarantee you that it will ultimately result in a massive exodus (mostly top players and mostly premium).

It is obvious that the ELO leaking change has to be reverted eventually. So why wait further? The trust that players put in this site is easy to lose and hard to regain. Don't test their patience further, it has already been tested to an unnecessary extent.

Edit: I took to adding up the penalties I recieved, but ELO calculation is displayed only for games less than a week old (in that week, I received ~35 points worth of penalties). Why is it not displayed for my older games? Is lack of transparency really the way to go?

[GeoPaladin]

I would like to thank you all for your feedback on this subject.

I continue to regularly read your messages.
It goes without saying that any regression that occurs may need to be examined and dealt with.

But in reference to the primary remarks:

• Power leveling: we continue to monitor the status and it seems unfair not to be able to win ELO and only suffer the loss, even for players that keep on losing against the very same opponent.
• ELO Decay: based on all of your comments, it appears clear that this was a bad idea and that the leaderboard and arena currently in place allow for the prevention of the mentioned behavior. Consequently, we have chosen not to apply any ELO decay as originally planned.
• Red Thumbs: an attractive suggestion surfaced regarding the potential trade-off of having decaying red thumbs.

It has been 20 days since the last communication.

Surely there's been enough of an outcry to recognize this change needs to be reverted? What are the devs waiting for?

[Silene]

And I'm hopeful the necessary action on consecutive wins will follow soon after a bit more monitoring and maybe the implementation of some necessary adaptions like K-factor adaption instead of just applying a point-reduction for the winner.
My hope for this solution: Adapting K-Factor for both players in the match-up regardless of the outcome after a winning streak is detected. This seems the fairest solution that ensures a) no more leak and b) no hesitation to play someone nice again.

Unfortunately nothing happened "soon"... but I'm still hopeful. BGA team, please don't stall this longer. Thanks for your work on it.

[ChiefPointThief]

Edit: I took to adding up the penalties I recieved, but ELO calculation is displayed only for games less than a week old (in that week, I received ~35 points worth of penalties). Why is it not displayed for my older games? Is lack of transparency really the way to go?

A few weeks ago I searched an old game and realized the elo calculation was no longer showing. I thought maybe due to the new changes that this happened to all games prior to the change. But you are right. Even games after the change that are older than a week no longer show elo calculation. This is very odd. Why are they hiding the fact that they are stealing elo?

Edit: This was mentioned somewhere in this very long thread already but it is now possible to lose elo in games when someone else quits. This is also terrible and needs to be fixed. You shouldn't lose points to the other remaining players either if you have more elo than them. Everyone should get the elo earned from beating the player who quit.

[zizzeus]

There's no point in playing in Arena until this ELO leak is fixed.

As a consequence, there's little point in having a Premium membership either, so I did not renew mine on Dec. 31 and will not renew it until this problem is fixed.

Over to you, BGA!

[lanzi]

Sorry for bad English in forward...



I haven't read all messages here, but a lot of them.

→ ELO Decay

In my opinion that is a good idea.

Players who don't play anymore should lose ELO because they don't confirm their strength furthermore (and not playing a game normally means that you lose your strong abilities in that game little by little).
Maybe three months (one ARENA Season) is too short, but after not playing a special game more than a year or half a year it is okay.





→ Red Thumbs for competitive play (-> especially ARENA!)

Red thumbs are important.

But red thumbs and the ARENA Mode doesn't fit, absolutely.

Why?
- Players use this option without any reason to avoid playing special (strong) players, but it is a championship! You must challenge whoever the ARENA-system choose. In a championship you can not deny playing with several players.

- F.A.Q.s says, ARENA-rules: "You cannot choose your opponents" - but with red thumbs you restrict/influence the selection.

- In Kahuna I am affected by this from several players - without any reason (in one case without one single game) they gave me red thumbs.
In games with only a few active players it is possible to have great problems to find opponents, if some players do so against you. And so players maybe have not enough opportunities to play.

- And: Normally you are forced to give red thumbs back to them. Why? Because you can not see what/how many they are playing and you cann not see their live score in a running game - but they can see all your datas. That isn't okay.

- And it is unfair against those players who challenge all others, even the stronger one. So the ranking isn't really meaningful.



Best wishes!