🌿ELO System Updates

[hammastahna]

In general, humans tend to be extremely reluctant to revert changes, instead reacting in an almost instinctive way to double down on the decision and ignore all input to the contrary. I've been on BGA for quite some time (my account is seemingly over 10 years old). Have there been site-wide changes which were reverted in the past?

They reverted ELO decay pretty quickly, that was nice.

[KenFin1]

In general, humans tend to be extremely reluctant to revert changes, instead reacting in an almost instinctive way to double down on the decision and ignore all input to the contrary. I've been on BGA for quite some time (my account is seemingly over 10 years old). Have there been site-wide changes which were reverted in the past?

They reverted ELO decay pretty quickly, that was nice.

They didn't revert it exactly, they hadn't implemented it. The other things they did launch and now won't repeal.

[GTSchemer]

In general, humans tend to be extremely reluctant to revert changes, instead reacting in an almost instinctive way to double down on the decision and ignore all input to the contrary. I've been on BGA for quite some time (my account is seemingly over 10 years old). Have there been site-wide changes which were reverted in the past?

They reverted ELO decay pretty quickly, that was nice.

Good catch, though I thought they hadn't actually added it (were merely talking about it), as KenFin1 says.

[miklomike]

In the games where ELO is hidden, is it still there behind the scenes? For example, in Bandido, I saw that people had badges for "100 ELO" etc. Is it still possible to get those badges now that we can't see ELO?

Badges are sadly no longer awarded for gaining elo in hidden elo games but elo is still tracked.

Yeah sadly this appears to be the case. I just went up a grade in hardback, and got no XP notification, no award. In a competitive game FFS. BGA again, what is the point of removing ELO from a competitive game? Can you please respond on this.

Seriously? I thought the whole point of keeping elo in the background was to still be able to achieve these. This is even more of a reason to revert these changes!

And although only a few people are posting more often to keep this thread alive, there are lots of us who still follow it and chime in once in a while to show we are still invested in this. I have started telling people I play against to come to this forum so more people are aware of what is happening.

[nik592]

The last change that got an outcry in this kind of way (albeit smaller) was the no time limit removal for competitive (ELO scoring) games. This was met with some brief explanations, which were challenged, but no further responses from admin occurred. A bug was raised asking to reinstate the options that made sense, which now has 419 votes, making it the #9 bug/suggestion for the site, but no admin responses, no action taken. That said, the top 6 bugs, which have at least that many votes obviously (and in some cases more than 4x as many) and date back to 2018-2020 mostly, have minimal responses and action as well, so I'm not sure that means much. But the pattern is similar - implement a thing, when people raise objections with it, pretty much ignore them until they go away. And it's a lot easier to ignore a thread on a forum than it is to keep posting.

I know Stroom was suggesting you should do a petition instead of constantly posting on the thread, and I guess a bug report is basically a petition, so you could put in a bug report. Hard to know if it would get closed though since it was a deliberate implementation by BGA (which is typically not described as a bug). It's also hard to get it in front of people to get votes - a lot of people don't even know the bug reporting system exists (or that it applies to things beyond "this rule in Game X is implemented incorrectly" or "My game froze and I can't play anymore").

[KenFin1]

The last change that got an outcry in this kind of way (albeit smaller) was the no time limit removal for competitive (ELO scoring) games. This was met with some brief explanations, which were challenged, but no further responses from admin occurred. A bug was raised asking to reinstate the options that made sense, which now has 419 votes, making it the #9 bug/suggestion for the site, but no admin responses, no action taken. That said, the top 6 bugs, which have at least that many votes obviously (and in some cases more than 4x as many) and date back to 2018-2020 mostly, have minimal responses and action as well, so I'm not sure that means much. But the pattern is similar - implement a thing, when people raise objections with it, pretty much ignore them until they go away. And it's a lot easier to ignore a thread on a forum than it is to keep posting.

I know Stroom was suggesting you should do a petition instead of constantly posting on the thread, and I guess a bug report is basically a petition, so you could put in a bug report. Hard to know if it would get closed though since it was a deliberate implementation by BGA (which is typically not described as a bug). It's also hard to get it in front of people to get votes - a lot of people don't even know the bug reporting system exists (or that it applies to things beyond "this rule in Game X is implemented incorrectly" or "My game froze and I can't play anymore").

Exactly. It's hard to draw any other conclusion from that you make. The people making decisions will continue to do as they please. The track record is they do not appear interested in what end users think unless it agrees with their ideas to start with. Let's look at the last year or two:

• Feedback doesn't like the new lobby, lobby pushed to the whole site, and new lobby is here to stay they say.
• Feedback doesn't like removal of no limit games, no change back.
• Feedback doesn't like ELO change, they brush it off and stop responding.
• Feedback doesn't like the new "games in progress " page. They ignore that too launch it to the entire site and won't reinstate the old version, even as an option, despite the repeated request for that to be available.

So yeah, our opinion counts for diddly squat it would seem. I have long been baffled by the lack of action on old bug reports. But I guess it's hard to address those when there's perfectly good pages they can bork and drown in unnecessary visual bloat. Those unwanted banners, ads and logos don't just post themselves y'know. It takes devoted time and effort to ruin them so well, and there's only so much they can do at any given time.

[h_illes]

But the pattern is similar - implement a thing, when people raise objections with it, pretty much ignore them until they go away.

I guess they could do that, but then why ask for feedback? Nobody forced them to ask for feedback, they could have just declared the changes and that's it. It's pointless even if they wanted to pretend to care about feedback, because who are they fooling? The players who read this topic can see what's happening (or not happening). The players who don't read this topic will not see the pretense in the first place.

I don't understand it, even though I would like to. Maybe I will ask lordalx (again).

As usual, feel free to post your feedback, we will continue to monitor the current situation and improve the system accordingly.

Hi lordalx! Why ask for feedback if you are not going to act on it?

[anykidrated]

Quitting a 4p Agricola game near the end of 2 hours is a very different thing and should not be so easily offset by playing 2p Can't Stop for a couple of minutes to get your rep back.

They should make it so if someone quits a multiplayer game, they are replaced by an AI who makes random moves.

Advantages:

If you are well ahead but dc, you should still win.

Cannot grief a game by quitting in the middle/end.

[aussievic]

What's the point of having the ELO then? It's super difficult to go up, difficult to maintain and super easy to go down. Eliminate it then and it'd \be better.

[KenFin1]

What's the point of having the ELO then? It's super difficult to go up, difficult to maintain and super easy to go down. Eliminate it then and it'd \be better.

Tbh I suspect this might be their ultimate aim.