🌿ELO System Updates

[ickoicko]

I am no longer a premium member on Bga because of the new elo rules, only because they are so stupid. If they change it back or to something that is not so stupid I will happily start paying again!

[h_illes]

Dear Players,

LOOK AT THIS AND RESPOND. My opponent is one of the top Arena players. We meet in the Arena exclusively. For a 10-game winning streak against him, I get 0 ELO for about half of the games. Then for the eventual loss(es), I get the full minus. WHY? AND HOW DO YOU CONSIDER THIS FAIR?

https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... finished=1

YOU SPECIFICALLY ASKED FOR FEEDBACK, got plenty, yet you haven't shown your face in 2 months! You made this nonsense which NOBODY asked for. Seriously, how can you do this to all the players? Don't be surprised that it starts to show in the number of premium subscriptions cancelled. This is completely disgraceful.

[ChiefPointThief]

I really don't think BGA are aware just how bad this system is and the sort of behaviour they're now encouraging.

They are fully aware. They just don't care They believe their goals were achieved. Any side effects are our problem and we need to get over it.

It's massively in my interests to red thumb Howie Varez and say I don't want to play with him, purely because playing with him right now is so EV- for me to do, is that the sort of behaviour BGA are now encouraging, red thumbing players because it's no longer in my interests to play them?

Yes! That is exactly what they encourage. They should at least add some temporary thumbs.

→ Power levelling
This way, we encourage you to challenge other players to keep the original spirit of the ELO: show your skill at a game compared to the whole community, not just the same ones.

Beating Howie (the #2 ranked player) 7 consecutive times doesn't show any skill at all. Anyone can do that. Play several weaker opponents if you want to show me something.

[h_illes]

Dear Players,

Also, you didn't implement any changes in the Arena rankings, only regular ELO. Why? Are players allowed to cheat in Arena? This just makes no sense, no matter how you look at it.

[JustYellow]

Love the site. Love the implementation of the game I play.
But I too have decided to stop being a premium member a couple of months ago, just because of the issues discussed in this thread.
Not only the issues themselves, but the way this thread has been handled. I find it baffling.
Just no feedback and not even posting here when there is an update that changes some of things that are being discussed.
No respect shown.
As I said, baffling.

[miklomike]

It has been two months since you last addressed us. When you did so, you completely ignored all of the most common concerns and instead doubled down on the system without addressing anything meaningful.
...
Finally, remember that the elo system is already meant to account for repeated wins.
...
Setting a goal to improve your elo (and necessarily yourself as a player) is a worthy goal.

Please fix this.

Well said for everything! Also glad to see some new users posting here, especially those who have cancelled subscriptions.

[h_illes]

So here is what I do now. I play both in and outside Arena. In the Arena, my opponents are about 80% veterans and 20% novices, outside the Arena it's reversed. The Arena player pool is limited, so I tend to get the same veteran opponents over and over again; I get hit by the win streak penalty a lot, but there are also some inevitable losses, and overall, my ELO rating tends to go down during Arena games.

Outside the Arena, the player pool is much larger; I often play against new opponents, and I rarely play against the same player more than 2 or 3 times during a 1-week period (which appears to be the win streak count cutoff time for me), so I practically don't get affected by the win streak penalty. Since my ELO is underrated due to the Arena games, it tends to go up for games outside Arena. Essentially what happens is that my ELO lost during Arena games is refilled playing against novice players outside Arena. This is almost the direct opposite of your stated intention. This is what happens when incompetent and ignorant people make decisions.

If I only played Arena games regularly, my rating would be lower than it currently is. If I only played Arena games, but less often, my rating would be higher (as I would be less affected by the win streak penalty). If I only played novice opponents outside Arena, my rating would also be higher, despite the fact that my skill level is the same. This makes the new ELO formula a poor measure of skill, since a good measure of skill should not depend on such playing patterns, only on the pure level of skill.

Since Arena rating is not affected by any win streak penalty, it works just fine as before. Sure, it goes down due to losses, it goes up during win streaks, but these keep a nice stationary balance without any of the tendencies mentioned above.

I also cancelled my premium subscription due to this change. However, my current plan runs until October, so you won't see the effect of my cancel before that. I imagine the situation is similar for many others.

Let me point out that premium subscriptions are paid for fixed time intervals (not e.g. number of games played). The whole point of this site is to play games; introducing changes that incentivize playing less often is unethical at best, and grounds for legal action at worst. You really need to pay more attention to this issue.

[PaulB-UK]

Having just seen that the tables in progress screen now hides player names for Arena games I am definitely swaying to the "the changes are misguided" side. You can still see the player's names in Arena, so all that has happened is the list of tables is much less useful.

I can no longer navigate to a table I am interested in.
I can no longer quickly see if anyone has taken their turn.
I can still see who I am playing with, so there literally doesn't seem to be any upside. (I'm not sure that completely hiding opponent's names is positive, but there would at least be a point to the change).

[PaulB-UK]

Having just seen that the tables in progress screen now hides player names for Arena games I am definitely swaying to the "the changes are misguided" side. You can still see the player's names in Arena, so all that has happened is the list of tables is much less useful.

I can no longer navigate to a table I am interested in.
I can no longer quickly see if anyone has taken their turn.
I can still see who I am playing with, so there literally doesn't seem to be any upside. (I'm not sure that completely hiding opponent's names is positive, but there would at least be a point to the change).

It's not like that any more, just felt the need to add that so I can look like less of a prize plum.

[Zozoken]

Dear Players,

We appreciate you taking the time to share your feedback regarding the ELO system. We value your input and are committed to ensuring a fair and balanced ranking system for all players.

Thank you for finally taking the time to respond. It is the respectful thing to do.

We understand your concerns about the impact of consecutive losses against the same opponent and the limited visibility of past ELO changes. We have carefully reviewed your feedback and are actively working on addressing these issues.

More transparency is good. I hope you really mean that.

Upcoming Changes:

1. Avoiding ELO Loss for Consecutive Losses:
First, the introduction of an ELO reduction for consecutive wins is a positive change, from our point of view and analysis in the long run– it has become more difficult to abuse the system.

Boarding up the windows on a sinking ship does not stop the ship from sinking. There are many abuses through the system that are possible and still not addressed. And it was at the cost of elo working properly.

Your ELO is a measure of your skill on a game against the whole community, and you should not receive any benefits from repeatedly playing against the same player(s).

This would be true if many games had a varied playing field. However, most games have a small player pool, and at the top level of any game you end up playing the same people over and over due to being higher on the skill ladder. In fact, chess masters must play the same other chess masters repeatedly in order to sort the ranks of chess at the highest level. The goal is to prevent farming of low level accounts and multi accounts since boosting elo through dishonest play is the real issue you are attempting to address. The goal is not to punish players in honest competition that just happen to be stuck playing each other repeatedly, whether that's due to a small player pool, poor matchmaking, or a high skill level. This is especially true in Arena, which has been pointed out repeatedly over the course of this thread.

However, we recognize that losing consecutive games to the same opponent can be frustrating and can lead to an unfair ELO drop. To address this, we will be implementing a mechanism to prevent ELO loss for consecutive losses against the same opponent, like how consecutive wins are currently handled. This will help maintain a more balanced ELO distribution.

Lowering the K-factor would have been a more elegant solution, but at least it stops the elo leak. Certainly better than doing nothing. Thank you.

2. Extending ELO Calculation Visibility:
When we introduced the change in the ELO system, the ELO detail tooltip was only available for 1 week after the game ends.

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We acknowledge that the limited availability of the tooltip was a temporary measure to prevent inconsistencies during the transition to the new system. We will be extending the duration for which this tooltip is available. The objective is to have it available for a full Arena season, if our server bears it!

Server stability is the upmost priority. Changing elo visibility seems like a strange way to address server load from a customer point of view, especially in light of the changes to the Games In Progress page, but at least you stated a reason for it rather than us having to guess at your intentions. Thank you for your explanation.

3. Red Thumbs Change for next Arena Season:
There is no perfect solution towards the abuse of Red Thumbs at the moment. The initial solution we had considered would also negatively impact players that are not even playing in Arena.

Several possibilities are being discussed; however, we have yet to find the perfect solution. Some of the ideas we are considering for implementation in the short term include:

• considering a higher Karma threshold to join Arena,
• preventing players under no-chat moderations from joining Arena tables,
• having a new kind of player Thumb (Orange ones related to Arena),
• being banned from the current season and ranking from a game
• ...

Thank you for listening to us about the red thumbs issue. This sounds like a very good change to me.

Finally, remember to focus on having fun, challenging yourself, and enjoying the competition!

ELO isn't a prize or a badge of honor. ELO ratings serve as a tool to gauge relative skill levels and find well-matched opponents, not a measure of personal worth. Focus on enjoying the games, learning from your opponents, and refining your strategies to become a true board game master!

You can't have your cake and eat it too. Elo on this site can't both be a measure of progress and skill and also not become a badge of honor to be sought after. Once your system acknowledges that one player is better than another player at a game, you have created an incentive to climb the rankings and players will naturally do so. Some will even go as far as to cheat for it.

Unless you can magically change human behavior and psychology, this will always be a problem. And of course, considering that by their very nature games have objectives players try to achieve, getting rid of meta-progression will end up driving some of your players away. In other words, many gamers are inherently achievement-driven (myself among them), and that's why you have XP and achievements in the first place. Removing these features will remove their fun. Diluting the value of elo itself or hiding it is not the solution.

Or to put it simply: those that don't care about it can't be made to care about it, and those that do care about it can't be made to stop caring about it.

We're always listening to your feedback and working to make Board Game Arena the best place to play. Keep those messages coming!

See you at the tables,

The Board Game Arena Team

Thank you for demonstrating that you are listening to our feedback. Though you waited several months and several of our concerns were not even addressed, you at least did the minimum. Although I have a hard time understanding the admin point of view on these matters, your response is respectful and greatly appreciated.

I continue to enjoy the site and plan to continue my Premium membership, though that is mostly because of the great implementation of many of the games here on BGA, which is not even done by BGA staff. If the BGA staff performed at the same level as our great volunteers (one of which was mentioned earlier in this thread), it would be a nearly perfect site. In that case, I'd be more than happy to gift many subscriptions to friends. As it stands, I am content to only continue my membership. Especially since a game that has been in Alpha for a very long time just got released. Thank you for providing us with so many high quality games, even if sometimes it comes at the cost of user accessibility.

Here's hoping that 2024 leads to more positive changes!