Is arena broken?

[Traconis]

Does Ark Nova arena is so unpopular (aka low number of players) then it must pair beginners with the elite players most of the time?
How we can even try to progress if we are paying against 500 elo and elite rank most of the time?!

[Guillaumito]

You can set your preferences to be matched against players near your level. From the lobby, that's in Ark Nova > gear > adavanced.

You can get more details in one of the previous threads about this : https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=36262

[naven12]

Even with the preferences set, it still pairs me with 300-500 rank players all the time.

[greenjacket124]

Even with the preferences set, it still pairs me with 300-500 rank players all the time.

But what is their Arena rank? ELO doesn't matter in Arena.

[Gagneto]

I'm kinda bewildered as to how meaningless the ranked system is, to the point of begging the question "why even have one", the whole point of rank and elo is to do better matchmaking and yet all I'm paired up with is elites with triple and quadruple digits of games.

I'm still learning and trying to get better and it's kinda useless, especially in a "race to the top" game such as ark nova, to play people way better than you. You can't compete, yeah sure, you can watch their plays and try to understand why each play is made, but there's a limit to how much you can learn from that, not seeing improvements is one of the biggest drop offs in ranked play in general, alongside with toxicity, the problem with ark nova, and honestly bga in general, is that there seems to be 0 effort on the matchmaking system to pair you with players of equal skill, I understand queue times are a thing, but when I'm queueing in less than a minute in to an elite player, it's pretty clear the matchmaking didn't try to pair me at all

[greenjacket124]

the problem with ark nova, and honestly bga in general, is that there seems to be 0 effort on the matchmaking system to pair you with players of equal skill

To be fair, that's on you to setup the restrictions you want.

[Gagneto]

the problem with ark nova, and honestly bga in general, is that there seems to be 0 effort on the matchmaking system to pair you with players of equal skill

To be fair, that's on you to setup the restrictions you want.

you'd think they work

[greenjacket124]

the problem with ark nova, and honestly bga in general, is that there seems to be 0 effort on the matchmaking system to pair you with players of equal skill

To be fair, that's on you to setup the restrictions you want.

you'd think they work

They do, when you use them.

[Gagneto]

To be fair, that's on you to setup the restrictions you want.

you'd think they work

They do, when you use them.

they don't, at least not in arena, I literally just played vs an elite while queueing with only "Avarage(my level)" and lower marked and I'm 0 ranks bronze

look, humor me for a minute, even if they did, if we think about it we'd all reach the same conclusion, the idea itself is asinine, any reasonable competitive player from any game with a ranked mode would laugh at the idea of stomping newbies for the purpose of rank, first because the miniscule change in rank from the elo system would mean they'd have to play dozens of matches to make it worth 1 match vs a real opponent, not to mention the off chance they lose and tank unreasonable amounts of points, also the idea of stomping every game is just not fun, the novelty wears off really quickly

I bet a lot of league or valorant players would be against a button that says "waste 1h but gain 3 MMR", then again, those psychos exist, and that is another reason we don't have those kind of buttons, the elo system really wasn't made for this, it's like trying to hammer a nail with your hands, it's not the right tool, you need a hammer, though I don't know what the hammer for bga would be, but it's definitely not elo

[sorryimlikethis]

you'd think they work

They do, when you use them.

they don't, at least not in arena, I literally just played vs an elite while queueing with only "Avarage(my level)" and lower marked and I'm 0 ranks bronze

look, humor me for a minute, even if they did, if we think about it we'd all reach the same conclusion, the idea itself is asinine, any reasonable competitive player from any game with a ranked mode would laugh at the idea of stomping newbies for the purpose of rank, first because the miniscule change in rank from the elo system would mean they'd have to play dozens of matches to make it worth 1 match vs a real opponent, not to mention the off chance they lose and tank unreasonable amounts of points, also the idea of stomping every game is just not fun, the novelty wears off really quickly

I bet a lot of league or valorant players would be against a button that says "waste 1h but gain 3 MMR", then again, those psychos exist, and that is another reason we don't have those kind of buttons, the elo system really wasn't made for this, it's like trying to hammer a nail with your hands, it's not the right tool, you need a hammer, though I don't know what the hammer for bga would be, but it's definitely not elo

The restrictions do work, but you have to know where to look (it is NOT obvious). I made a short video on how to queue properly using the "old lobby" instead of the "new lobby/game page" that BGA is trying to get everyone to use.
https://youtu.be/_QHKEMP7xOE?si=TzGxyYj8QswrYiCB