Arena Season 19: Harvest of Champions

[Songo]

Please only activate the "you must play this game first" in the last week or 2, this is a good feature, but it has a few bugs, and it does nothing until the end is close anyway.

Thanks

[JohnnyCyclops]

Cribbage - still shows as ‘best of 3’ which I think means best of three games, yet the season change mentions points for skunking. If I win the first two games each by one point have I won the match, or is a third game played, and if my opponent skunks me for two points are we now tied?

Or is it now ‘first to 3 points’?

[Meeplelowda]

Why have you locked the option of the expansion Pantheon to be mandatory for everyone? Under these circumstances, I will not participate in the new arena season... I'm totally disappointed.

The format changes for the next season of Arena are voted on by gurus for each game. For months people have been complaining that Pantheon was not included in Arena. I guess finally enough of them became gurus.

[blockmonoid]

It used to be that when a friend gets an Arena season achievement (for example Top Ten), this would appear in your news feed. It no longer appears there, for about a year now. You have to actively look at a particular friend's Latest Activity to see these awards. It's similar when a friend receives an all-time achievement in a game.

I would like to know when friends get these big achievements. Can you fix the notifications to the way they were a year ago?

[Waikirikiri]

Why was the Arena Backgammon Format changed?
How did that happen?

I was a Backgammon Guru and the new format was not supported.

A 3 point game with doubling makes the Arena game too long.

I liked the ability to have a quick game.

Another game that I will probably not play in the Arena again.

As a premium member I am getting less and less value for my subscription

[RazorOz]

I suppose there's a relevant forum for this as well, however posting this here to reiterate the importance:

"Penalise Arena points for inactivity" / "Promote active play throughout the season"

While the whole point of Arena, as I read on the summary page is to bring the actual top player to the spotlight and fight it out, cuz ELOs could be stagnant and not be indicative of true and live calibre. That said, with the current format of Arena people still camp at the top in the first few days/weeks and not play the next few months.

While one could argue that other could climb up too, this argument isn't holding in games where there is a lot of luck involved. Eg: Captain Flip. Playing the last two seasons I see that one could go on a luck spree (ofcourse takes some skills too) and shoot to the top with that momentum, and even more so, fall deeper. In such cases 'camping' if you're lucky enough isn't true to the spirit of the "Arena". So, provide some impetus to the players who do this to keep playing throughout.

TLDR: At the Elite level, if you don't play for a week (or X number of days), you'll start losing arena points, say -10 per day, until you play again in the arena.

This would be a bad idea for a lot of games imo. You bring up heavy lucky based games, but for games not in that category all that would happen is the most active players will not play until later in the season. It's actually pretty hard to park early in most games, because it's easier to gain Arena points when the average Arena points is higher than at the beginning of the season when Arena points are all low.

The problem generally is you can't have a system either that is just whoever plays the most games wins.

[noyb]

Why have you locked the option of the expansion Pantheon to be mandatory for everyone? Under these circumstances, I will not participate in the new arena season... I'm totally disappointed.

The format changes for the next season of Arena are voted on by gurus for each game. For months people have been complaining that Pantheon was not included in Arena. I guess finally enough of them became gurus.

I also am not a fan of the 7WD Pantheon expansion... makes the game so much more complicated and slower to play as you must consider all the extra variables at each step... so I also will not participate in 7WD this season as a result of the expansion being applied. Hoping it can go back to original format next season.

[Cheery Dog]

Can you please provide more transparency for rewards? Display what top trophies will be awarded based on current player count and how much xp will be rewarded for reaching each level.

And have the xp rewards been reduced AGAIN? Last season I got 1200 for elite in Marian Dice. This season only 400 points for the same. It has over 1100 players when I received it.

Piraten kapern last season I got 1200 for elite and this season was only 600. It has 1800 players when I received it.

Llama two seasons ago I got 1200 for elite with 1396 players, last season I got 600 points for elite with 1329 players and this season was only 400 points with 1269 players when I received it.

I look forward to figuring this out.

The games that give even less I still don't understand. For small player base games many are very hard to reach elite and yet they award only 120 even if they have the same % of people in elite vs total players as popular games. But everyone and their brother can get 1200 for playing can't stop.

Have you lost the amount of pre-elite levels in that game? The XP increases per level you have to climb through.
Player counts as far as I know are only there for if top 5/10/20 are given out.
(which also increase in XP gain based on number given)

[Meeplelowda]

Why have you locked the option of the expansion Pantheon to be mandatory for everyone? Under these circumstances, I will not participate in the new arena season... I'm totally disappointed.

The format changes for the next season of Arena are voted on by gurus for each game. For months people have been complaining that Pantheon was not included in Arena. I guess finally enough of them became gurus.

I also am not a fan of the 7WD Pantheon expansion... makes the game so much more complicated and slower to play as you must consider all the extra variables at each step... so I also will not participate in 7WD this season as a result of the expansion being applied. Hoping it can go back to original format next season.

And people on the opposite side of this are just as convinced that without Pantheon it's too simple and the first player advantage has too much of an impact. The problem is that the game has an expansion that fundamentally changes the character of the game, but is lumped in under the same title. Like having Cities & Knights bundled with base Catan. So people who like the greater depth of the expansion tend to believe that is what Arena is "supposed" to be, despite the fact that "Can't Stop" has an Arena.

[Fluckysan]

So no Catan Cities & Knights in arena
It has been asked so many times, it would have been so good. Why?