🌿ELO System Updates

[h_illes]

We value your input and are committed to ensuring a fair and balanced ranking system for all players.

The most disappointing part about the decision-making is that you didn't even have to carry out a proper analysis. The players did it for you in this very topic, all you had to do was pay attention and act accordingly. Yet you failed to do even that, AND you keep on ignoring the players' pleads. I simply fail to understand how this is good for you or the site in general. Is it really so hard to admit that a mistake was made and correct it, that we have to keep asking FOR MONTHS?

[GeoPaladin]

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

It has been two and a half months since you said this. Nearly every single person who has weighed in on the changes has been negative, including those following this last message of yours. This lack of response is incredibly unprofessional on the part of whomever among the team is in charge of community interaction.

You've been provided with many alternatives that are less unfair than the current system, which penalizes you the instant you get a single consecutive win and becomes heavily punishing at a measly 3 wins in a row. If you win 6 games in a row over a ridiculously long month-long period - a feat top players should regularly be performing - you gain nothing at all.

For instance, completing games with other players should reduce and eventually remove the penalty. It should also take much less time for the penalty to fade than a month. To illustrate how ridiculous the current system is, I've had streaks where I gained zero elo against a player whom I hadn't played in over a week, after completing 20+ games with other players against a player I was randomly paired with in Arena through no fault of my own.

Furthermore, the penalty should lower the k-factor of a match instead of rewarding players for a loss streak (they can only gain tons of elo, not risk losing any) or punish a good player for a winning streak (they can only lose massive amounts of elo, not gain any).

Elo is a complete system and does not need amateur rebalancing or handicaps. If you truly think this is effective (despite the valid reasons for skepticism posted here) you have a responsibility to at least mitigate these effects on the players

This was a mistake. It is clearly despised by the community. At this point, I have to ask what the purpose is of ignoring us for so long? Please kindly just fix this mess.

[h_illes]

We value your input and are committed to ensuring a fair and balanced ranking system for all players.

If that was true, why is there no response and no action?

Look at this matchup. My opponent is one of the top Arena players; we play against each other exclusively in Arena (that is, I never 'choose' him).
https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... finished=1

Our long-term win-loss ratio shows him a 14% win rate against me, which corresponds to about 1 win in 7 games. All good - except if he keeps winning 1 out of 7 games on average, I cannot recover the rating lost due to the single defeat (as shown e.g. in the last 7 games from 21 to 28 May 2024), and the rating difference between us will keep decreasing. This is ONLY due to the win streak penalty; with the regular ELO formula, the long term net change would be practically 0, as it should be. There is no balance, and there is no fairness to this.

NOBODY ASKED FOR THIS, yet this is what you created out of mere incompetence and ignorance, and despite your direct promises (see your quote above). The job you did on the ELO changes is unacceptable. GO AND FIX IT. You have even been told how to do it in this very topic, just read back and comprehend the analysis carried out by players.

[zizzeus]

I honestly cannot believe this.

It's been 6 months, 88 pages of replies, 2.5M+ views, countless suggestions as to how to solve the problem you've created, and despite all of this, we still don't have the Epstein client list.

[andycupid]

Right now I finally realized that while you gain less ELO in consecutive wins, your opponents also lose less ELO at the same time. Don't know when this is implemented because after a certain point all posts here seemed more or less the same, and players are just holding this afloat hoping some form of response, which, I agree, would be much appreciated, and I don't know we as players have to ask for such responses in the first place.

Now, the idea is that ELO needs to be a fixed amount and we shouldn't have ELO bleeding out of the pool for no reason. Players suggested lowering the K factor, and your fix was to grant the losing opponent less ELO loss...which feels like it solves the problem, but if you actually think it over for 1 more second, you realize that absolutely doesn't.

1. At first you wished the "power leveling" mechanism reduces cheating efficiency. Hey, now if I play against myself on multiple accounts (which, for some reason, is so hard to detect that we have to resort to these means as opposed to properly addressing via report functions), my dummy accounts won't even lose that much ELO, which defeats the original purpose.
2. This isn't the same as lowering the K factor, because once the streak is broken, the higher rated player loses way more ELO (normal calculation) than if the K factor was lowered universally. In most cases for players, we play against the same player in arena without choice, win a couple in a row, get tiny bits of ELO, then lose a game, and lose more than previously gained. That makes proper ladder climbing really rough, and it wouldn't have been like this if ELO were implemented properly.
3.Still, at the core, ELO is skewed due to these changes. The formula has existed for a long time for a reason, and it has been universally accepted as a nice way to gauge a players ability (there are supposed better methods for particular settings, but that's not the point). By tweaking it, you're effectively making the ELO inaccurate, and that renders the metric pretty much useless.

So hey, the changes don't work from a logical standpoint, they make the playerbase unhappy, they make gaming less rewarding, they make ELO useless, and they don't even solve the problems you intended to solve. All in all, whatever change is suboptimal, and I say just revert it back to normal, and find a proper way to deal with the cheating problems.

[h_illes]

We value your input and are committed to ensuring a fair and balanced ranking system for all players.
...
We're always listening to your feedback and working to make Board Game Arena the best place to play. Keep those messages coming!

Once you start taking people's money (via premium subscription fees), that comes with certain responsibilities. When someone subscribes, they do so with the understanding that they will be able to continue using the site for their enjoyment. In other words, they trust you that you do not mess up their enjoyment. This is true regardless if you put in disclaimers like 'premium subscription only gives access to premium games' etc.

With the ELO changes, you messed up big-time, and spoiled the enjoyment of the site for many players. I think such a change is grounds for asking for my money back, and legal action if refused - whether that will actually happen, I don't know. Personally I don't feel like going through a legal procedure, but just the fact that this thought occurred to me, and surely to others, should already be alarming for you. Maybe it 'only' results in many of those players cancelling their subscriptions (which is actively happening), but you should still ask yourself the question - is this what you want?

All it would take the stop this nonsense is to revert the changes and/or implement a version that makes sense - there have been many competent suggestions in this very topic ever since the changes were first introduced, yet in the last changes you made yet another faulty update, and also failed to respond.

Is this really how you treat paying customers? Looking forward to your reply.

[The Nuzzer]

Maybe it 'only' results in many of those players cancelling their subscriptions (which is actively happening), but you should still ask yourself the question - is this what you want?

The trouble is that I'm sure that the short term loss is outweighed by new members who don't know about the changes or just accept that this is how the site works.

[h_illes]

The trouble is that I'm sure that the short term loss is outweighed by new members who don't know about the changes or just accept that this is how the site works.

They would get those new players regardless if they actually acted on the feedback here. Players lost due to this nonsense are simply lost, with nothing on the other side of the scale.

[larecrue2]

Since there has been 88 pages of comments mostly against the changes and nothing has changed I don't see how adding one complaint (that has probably been said more than a few times) would change anything but here we go: it makes no sense that people would get punished for consecutive wins in arena, a mode in which you can't control who you get matched up with. I disagree with it in general, but even more when you have no influence on the matchmaking (apart from the time you chose to join a game).
Red thumb from me.

[RicardoRix]

Come on BGA, shake a leg.
It's close to ridiculous and extremely disrespectful just to leave your most devoted users hanging like this. Are you actually ghosting your own user base?
Realise this is not just users and their normal whinging, but actually very clever people that are trying to help you.

Either way - respond, or just take a walk of the nearest plank.