Skill-based matchmaking in Arena

[fairfensheeding]

Is there any way to improve on this? I'd love to compete more in Arena, but 95% of the people I get matched with just aren't very good and it leads to easy wins and often crying that I blocked their routes.

[Mathew5000]

See this thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=32905

Is there any way to improve on this? I'd love to compete more in Arena, but 95% of the people I get matched with just aren't very good and it leads to easy wins and often crying that I blocked their routes.

In Arena you can use the cogwheel to specify that (for example) you're reluctant to play with opponents "Near my level (+/- 1)" and you never want to play with opponents "Around my level (+/- 2)" or "Far from my level". But in Arena, those levels refer to your "league" in the current season, not your Elo.

In the "Simple Game" (non-Arena) section of BGA you can create a game that is restricted to certain Elo-based skill levels (for example, Experts and Masters). Click on "Restrict table access" before you open the table to other players.

You can also create a tournament restricted to players with certain Elo-based skill levels. I tried to do this last year, creating a TTR tournament for Experts and above, but not enough players signed up so it did not run: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=244667

[MadManMark]

You can also create a tournament restricted to players with certain Elo-based skill levels. I tried to do this last year, creating a TTR tournament for Experts and above, but not enough players signed up so it did not run: https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=244667

Speaking for myself only: I probably saw it, but did not join, because I did not understand why you were trying to do this when Knockando already has an established and highly subscribed monthly tournament series that targets the same player level, except that (IMO) its better defined to identify a true tournament champion, round robin vs swiss structure as I see yours was.

In ohter words you were proposing a new solution to an already long-solved problem. Knockando also has a "strong and above" monthly tourney, btw, so in essence this is a biweekly tournament series, with every OTHER one also allowing strong players.

[ExaltedAngel]

Is there any way to improve on this? I'd love to compete more in Arena, but 95% of the people I get matched with just aren't very good and it leads to easy wins and often crying that I blocked their routes.

Sad but no. The setting mentioned by Mattew is useless because every level other than Elite doesn't make any sense since it's not based on actual skill, even the worst players can climb that with enough patience. Then once people reach Elite they are all considered on the same level even if there is roughly a 1000 Elo difference between the first and last in the ladder. To achieve what you are asking (and a lot of players before you) there should be an option to filter opponents based on Elo (for example ±200 Elo), but BGA doesn't care