🌿ELO System Updates

[GeoPaladin]

It's not worth it.

You can't said that though.
It's obligatory worth it at one point.

Assume you are playing a game mostly luck. Then you are at 300 elo while you usually are around 350/400 elo. And you have a 6 winstreak against someone you play a lot.
In that case, you should lose in purpose.


You could instead avoid that person forever, and not take that extra loss, but if you want one more opponent, in the long term, that lost will cost you less and less.
(Especially if your playstyle counter that person playstyle. But that was not what we was talking about.)
(my first post was a joke, my second way more serious. So you can remove reliably from your post, since it's not what i claim)

If you lose more than you gain, it's not worth it.

Your logic is already unrealistic in assuming a 100% winrate against a player. Even then, it doesn't always work out. At a certain rank, you need more than 6 wins (without penalty) against players you can reliably beat in order to climb while a single loss can erase 9 or more wins worth of value.

The players who could give you a profit are also good enough to where they'll take wins here and there. While this resets the streak, the penalties you accrue from it mean you typically don't make much of a profit (if any).

Your best bet is just to avoid a player you have a winstreak against for an entire month in order to avoid the penalties. Generally it's no longer worth playing with someone after the third consecutive win against them.

[Knockando]

I can't read 54 pages in english...

So perhaps someone told that before me :

when you play arena, you don't choose opponents. So why stop having ELO points against a player you play time by time ?

At Ticket To Ride USA, I played (and won) 6 games against a player, among hundreds of other games. When I won a seventh one, I have +0 ELO !
I never chose to play with him, and it isn't a serie.

Perhaps good idea at beginning, but very poorly applied

[KenFin1]

I can't read 54 pages in english...

So perhaps someone told that before me :

when you play arena, you don't choose opponents. So why stop having ELO points against a player you play time by time ?

At Ticket To Ride USA, I played (and won) 6 games against a player, among hundreds of other games. When I won a seventh one, I have +0 ELO !
I never chose to play with him, and it isn't a serie.

Perhaps good idea at beginning, but very poorly applied

Yes it's all been said multiple times in various ways. But it's good to have more people keep saying it.

TLDR for the thread: most feedback very negative and anti the changes, with detailed explanations as to why this is not a good change, nor a solution to the problems that it was supposed to address. BGA dropped one proposal (ELO decay), but kept the rest and said they will "monitor". That was said early Jan and there's been no further update from them, no explanation of why they are keeping the rest going, or why the breadth of criticism might be wrong/not appreciate something people haven't thought of. A number of posters are feeling somewhat in the dark and ignored/neglected by the lack of further communication.

That's 53 pages in a nutshell. Tune in next week for the abridged crib notes on Tolstoy's War & Peace...

[Zozoken]

Hello, my name is Zozoken. I am one of your premium subscribers. I also pay for my fiancée's premium subscription on here. I am perhaps the intended audience for these changes: I have reached 100 elo in 135 games and tried out almost 400 different games in total. At the time of typing this I have played in 4,000 tables on this site. The highest elo I've reached is 300 in Can't Stop Express. I don't play in open tables of Hanabi due to the attitude players have at the game. I don't play in Arena. The only competition I enter are a few tournaments here and there and the very fun Allround League where participants are encouraged to try out up to 70 different games and play them against each other in a league format. Though I have a competitive nature, I mostly use the site to learn games I haven't played before, play with friends and family, and play in BGA groups such as Turn Based Arena and Allround League.

After playing for 2 months with these updates, allow me to share with you my honest experience and how it's affected me:


→ Team play
It always felt wrong getting different elo than my partner in team games. The strength of both teams should be compared. This is a good change. Thank you for making this change.


→ Removing rating in Hanabi
I hate to tell you this, but this update does not solve the problem of Hanabi attitude as you had hoped. It simply made it harder for me to find players at my level. The problem with Hanabi is not the competitive nature players have or their elo showing, it's how the community handles players making mistakes. It's not fun being blamed for "ruining the game" for them. That's a problem you can't solve. It would exist even if you put the game back into Alpha and forced everyone into Training Mode. The solution for me is to play with a group that can handle players making a misplay every now and then and understands we only learn and get better through experience.


→ Removing rating in Hardback
It would be nice if you made an exception for Hardback. This game is mostly played competitively.


→ Removing rating in other cooperative games
I play with my fiancée in several coop games including Burgle Bros. We used elo as a sense of progression and achievement. The way it's affected me is that I don't treat these as "real games" on BGA anymore. Like Chess, it's a game that "doesn't count". That's why I use another site for chess. I try not to think of coop games that way but I treat them as if they are still in alpha. The way it's affected my fiancée is that she is discouraged due to a lack of visual progress. She still wants to play coop games with me but we don't have milestones anymore so she doesn't tend to stick to the same coop games anymore. This most notably affected our play sessions of Forbidden Island and Regicide. We have physical copies of these games and tend to just play these games in person now.


→ Power levelling
I used to play games in Training Mode with my fiancée once we reached a certain elo. That way we're not farming each other. My fiancée didn't like this because it made her feel like she wasn't "good enough". She doesn't care about the elo, but she felt a little ashamed when after a losing streak I'd put the game in Training Mode. That way, we wouldn't be accused of power levelling. Since the update, I no longer worry about it and play her in rated games, knowing that the elo will ultimately drain to 100 as we play each other. Although this is the worst update for most of the loyal users of the site, I no longer feel forced to play Training Mode with her and when she does hit a win streak against me, she feels happy that she reached a point where she's beating me so much that she can't get points from me anymore. Meanwhile, if I hit a win streak against her, she's happy I can't siphon any more points from her. Unexpectedly, this has been a benefit for the both of us.

Despite that, power levelling really should be changed because it's actually robbing elo from players in honest competition. It turns elo into a joke and solidifies my opinion that BGA is not yet ready for holding serious competitive events. Thankfully, prize money isn't on the line.


→ ELO Decay
I'm glad you walked this back. As someone who plays a lot of games, all it would do is make me feel that trying to go up in rating on games would be pointless because there's way too many games to try to keep current. The power levelling update is already doing that. It would cause more mismatching than already happens on the site. Thank you for removing this idea.


→ Red Thumbs
While I appreciate the BGA team making every effort they can to ensure the Arena is faithfully comparing the skill level of competitors, this is not the way to handle players that dodge matches against opponents. The main reason I don't play in Arena is because of the reports of extremely lopsided match-making. Ideally, each division would have a pool of players at similar level so for example a Silver player matches against another Silver player of similar elo. For smaller games the range should of course be extended. When I RT a player, it's for good reason. It means I had a bad experience with that player and do not want to play with them again. Although I don't play Agricola that much, I wouldn't want to play an Arena game of it with quitters. It seems this idea is being walked back (orange thumbs?) but no details yet. If it is, thank you for compromising on this idea. It's the only tool we have to handle players that create unpleasant games for us. By the way, it would be really nice if we could access our list of green thumbs and red thumbs in case we ever change our minds or want to give someone a second chance.




I enjoy playing on this site in spite of its flaws. It has an impressive library of titles and many of the games are extremely well implemented. There are a few games I'd rather play on BGA than in person just due to how well the games are implemented. That's why I am able to tolerate massive changes done without any notice. But trust and stability are very important to me and the lack of communication does not fill me with confidence. Point Salad has been removed for over a year due to an "uncommon legal issue" and "will make everything possible to get the game back soon". Not a word since then. Updates that greatly affect the users of this site including me. Banning or other disciplinary action without an easy and transparent appeal process. And of course the silence on this update. I can understand the BGA team puts a lot of work into these updates and were expecting a more positive result. I can understand the BGA team wanting to die on this hill. If you're dead-set on pushing these changes despite the backlash, it would be nice if you were transparent about that with your customers.

This message is likely just going straight into the void. There were several times I thought about posting here but kept silent because I do not believe the company actually values or wants my feedback. Here it is anyway in case you really do. I will continue my subscription for me and my fiancée because at the moment we feel we are still getting value for what we pay.

Please continue to work hard on improving the site. You created something that we care about and that's why we're so vocal when things go wrong. The biggest improvement you could make is server stability. Please work on server stability rather than elo or games in progress presentation.

Kind regards,
Zozoken

[hammastahna]

After having played some more with losing elo on win streaks, I do not like it. My initial reaction was rather negative, but I wanted to give it fair chance so that it wasn't just theorycrafting. It did not feel any better in practise and seeing it for quite some time already did not make me appreciate it any more. It is just tiring to see it still here. I'd appreciate it if this change would be revoked.

[KenFin1]

After having played some more with losing elo on win streaks, I do not like it. My initial reaction was rather negative, but I wanted to give it fair chance so that it wasn't just theorycrafting. It did not feel any better in practise and seeing it for quite some time already did not make me appreciate it any more. It is just tiring to see it still here. I'd appreciate it if this change would be revoked.

Yup. The more I encounter it the more I hate it. No exaggeration, I HATE it. A run of games in Arena against an opponent, oscillating wins, with the odd streak either way and instead of breaking even it's net negative. What is the point?

From the stats the bga team don't appear to play much and so don't accrue ELO like frequent daily players. I wonder if until someone has done so they might not understand the effort required to get to expert in competitive games, nor the injustice of then having that artificially eroded.

And to what avail? For casual infrequent visitors to not feel unwelcome? They will just play against lower ranked players and wonder wtf the numbers are anyway without a real clue what's going on to start with, like I didn't for the first 6 months during lockdown. Heck they'll probably take a break, lose their login details and have to make a new account like I did. I really cannot see any purpose in the ELO change. For anyone else I cannot see how ELO reduction offers any benefit.

[Zozoken]

After having played some more with losing elo on win streaks, I do not like it. My initial reaction was rather negative, but I wanted to give it fair chance so that it wasn't just theorycrafting. It did not feel any better in practise and seeing it for quite some time already did not make me appreciate it any more. It is just tiring to see it still here. I'd appreciate it if this change would be revoked.

Yup. The more I encounter it the more I hate it. No exaggeration, I HATE it. A run of games in Arena against an opponent, oscillating wins, with the odd streak either way and instead of breaking even it's net negative. What is the point?

From the stats the bga team don't appear to play much and so don't accrue ELO like frequent daily players. I wonder if until someone has done so they might not understand the effort required to get to expert in competitive games, nor the injustice of then having that artificially eroded.

And to what avail? For casual infrequent visitors to not feel unwelcome? They will just play against lower ranked players and wonder wtf the numbers are anyway without a real clue what's going on to start with, like I didn't for the first 6 months during lockdown. Heck they'll probably take a break, lose their login details and have to make a new account like I did. I really cannot see any purpose in the ELO change. For anyone else I cannot see how ELO reduction offers any benefit.

I must admit, I had considered entering the competitive scene for Living Forest and a few other games but recent changes such as Power Levelling forced me to reconsider. There's no point in grinding for Master or Elite in games when there are so many artificial obstacles in the way. I think ladders and leagues are the way to go right now.

Interestingly enough, the Power Levelling is supposed to deter people from playing the same people over and over in rated games, but the main reason I play rated games with friends is because that's the only way to get time controls.

[6element]

I did some stats crunching comparing currently listed BGA team accounts to a random selection of initial and recent posters in this thread. Similar sample sizes used for each (though <10 each side so not ideal sample sizes and I ran out of time before I could do more posters).

Of the team member accounts:

• Average team join date 2016
• Average XP earned is 13.1k, with a max of 39k.
• None of the BGA staff have achieved ELO>=500 in any game and <50% have ELO300
• Only 1 staff member has earned a top 20/10 ELO rank.
• Only 2 staff members have earned 200ELO in 10% of the titles they have played.
• Only 1 staff member plays >10 games/week on average (14) the others all play less than 1 game per day.
• The net average games played/week = 5

Of the poster accounts sampled.

• Average poster join date 2020
• Average poster XP earned is 139k, with over half >100k
• All posters have ELO>500 in at least one game, >40% have in more than one game, and 70% have ELO 700 in at least one game
• Over 66% of posters sampled have got top20/10 ELO rank awards, with over 33% in more than one game
• All posters sampled have achieved ELO>200 in 10% of the titles played, and >66% of posters did so in >25% titles played.
• Only one poster played fewer than 10 games per week (8) on average, but still more than 1 game per day, everone else is playing 6+ games per day on average.
• The net average games played/week=66

It's possible BGA team have personal accounts they play from more often, but if not then the stats indicate the BGA team play far less than a number of posters in this thread. In that case the perceived importance of ELO compared to more frequent players on the site will naturally be different. The impact of ELO reduction on accounts not typically going above 200-300 ELO will be far less dramatic. Consecutive win penalties will also be less noticeable on accounts playing infrequently vs those routinely playing multiple games per day.

Perhaps this helps explain why people giving feedback in this thread might have a stronger reaction to ELO reduction vs wider player base who might not feel inclined to respond (assuming they even know the forum thread exists) and vs the BGA team who presumably decide on whether to implement and/or roll back ELO changes?

Mods I don't think this breaches any rules, let me know if anything needs editing. The aim is to try and help people see that what seems obviously negative to regular "power" users on here might not be so apparent to others.

Name=account name *deliberately anonymised
Joined=year joined from account profile
GPlayed=Games played
Titles = individual Titles played
Ach's=Achievements
MaxE=largest ELO award achieved
100 = N ELO>100 achieved (etc for each ELO tier)
T20= Ntitles>=top20 ELO award
T10= Ntitles>=top10 ELO
Gpa = average N Games played/Year
Gpw = average N Games played/week
XPpa = average XP/Year (k)
%T200E = % titles played>200 ELO

Name Joined GPlayed XP(k) Titles Ach's MaxE 100 200 300 500 700 T20 T10 Gpa Gpw XPpa %T200E

tm1 2011 642 0.6 155 141 200 6 1 0 0 0 0 0 54 1 0.1 0.6%
tm2 2011 3787 39 377 916 300 84 35 4 0 0 0 0 316 6 3.3 9.3%
tm3 2020 934 6.3 234 243 200 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 311 6 2.1 0.9%
tm4 2018 3526 26 753 1055 300 49 18 2 0 0 0 0 705 14 5.2 2.4%
tm5 2011 2324 20 225 502 300 56 27 5 0 0 0 0 194 4 1.7 12.0%
tm6 2021 134 1.5 65 68 100 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 67 1 0.8 0.0%
tm7 2022 327 2 97 111 200 7 1 0 0 0 0 0 327 6 2.0 1.0%
tm8 2014 2006 19 130 408 300 36 16 4 0 0 1 1 223 4 2.1 12.3%
tm9 2020 322 3.5 69 138 200 13 5 0 0 0 0 0 107 2 1.2 7.2%

user1 2022 5380 133 69 517 700 25 19 9 2 1 2 1 5380 103 133.0 27.5%
user2 2020 6904 297 4 123 700 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 2301 44 99.0 75.0%
user3 2021 781 11 23 147 500 8 6 3 1 0 0 0 391 8 5.5 26.1%
user4 2020 18233 104 290 1541 700 120 34 8 1 1 0 0 6078 117 34.7 11.7%
user5 2023 950 37 10 133 500 7 6 2 1 0 1 1 1267 24 49.3 60.0%
user6 2020 19610 281 289 1582 700 77 55 37 8 2 14 13 6537 126 93.7 19.0%
user7 2016 15241 107 206 920 700 92 56 31 9 6 6 4 2177 42 15.3 27.2%

This is extremely polite way of saying a single word which starts with "in" and ends with "competence". Impressive!

[6element]

The entire issue stems from a single engineer who pretended to be a game designer, and lack of QA / management / process to keep them accountable.

Admitting that correctly implemented feature wasn't designed well and isn't really what people wanted (and reverting it in December) would've been the best course of action, but it didn't happen. Maybe that person was upset, because our original feedback was too negative / not polite enough, and decided to punish the players? Or they had a vacation or other high priority issues to take care of? Anyway, time for a quick revert is now gone.

Reverting the feature with a formal apology and refunding stolen Elo would've been right thing to do in January. By that time sufficient volume of feedback has been delivered. And still no reaction. This makes me think that there is no management of any kind. The entire site we love and spend hundreds of hours annually is operating as a hobby project maintained by a very few folks.

This is all quite upsetting, honestly.

PS: Almost 1.7 million views and the only reaction in a month is deleting a post of a paid customer for "defamation"? Great job!

[Stroom]

Sunk cost fallacy runs deep in the BGA development team. Sometimes you have to admit that your feature sucks and move on.