Issues with Tournament Participastion ....

[RazorOz]

I'm guessing that this is being done not because they care about the effect the current system has on tournaments, but because of the poor user experience in regular games. [speculation]Maybe Days of Wonder twisted arms behind the scenes.[/speculation] It just helps tournaments as a side-effect.

[more_speculation]Oh, wait! Maybe there's going to be an official DoW Heat tournament, and they want to make sure it's not pure rubbish.[/more_speculation]

Whatever reason it has been done though it is clear it will have a significant effect on the tournament landscape, particularly for tournaments with more than 2 player games. You'd have to think they will introduce this for more games, the number of games that are just straight unplayable after a player leaves the game must be in the minority, and I imagine most people would prefer this rule, purely because at least you know where you stand before the game then.

At this point I would be content if they further monetized tournaments if it meant that they gave them more updates and support.

Currently a standard member can sign up for an unlimited number of tournaments and play in them, but only premium players can create tournaments.

Do they view tournaments as clashing with premium membership sales? Why buy premium to play a premium game if there are plenty of tournaments? Biggest reason IMO is always for the real time matchmaking. Most tournaments are turn based.

If they put some limitations on standard membership participation in tournaments then there could be a better incentive to improve tournaments. What if there was a limit to the number of tournaments that a standard membership can sign up for and/or have in progress? Would this push more of the heavy “variety tournament “ style players to premium? I’m not sure.

Imo tournaments are one of the most under explored areas of the site in terms of how great they could be. A thriving tournament scene I think would be very popular in attracting players, as people like competition. And if you throw in games running their World Championships or whatever here, the potential is big.

The issue right now is it's sort of a battle against the infrastructure to get a tournament to run fluidly, it puts a lot of players off playing them altogether, as they have a reputation of well this will end in a mess, so what's the point.

I don't know the exact reason the change to Heat has been made, but it shows infrastructure improvements are possible, because pretty much since I've been here, whenever the topic of quitters come up, I've always heard, well there's no solution to it, except now there is. I do hope some broader fixes aimed at tournaments can eventually be looked at, because like I say to me it's the area of the site where there's the greatest untapped potential.

[JFCovaleski]

Final Update. I did "Finish" the last game I was in. Thankfully, only one player quit after the delinquent player was skipped. The remaining player (Sophie 69) and I completed the game. Granted we still only got 1 point each, but I appreciated their effort. I will be withdrawing from the tournament at this point. Thank you to EVERYONE for letting me know that, while the tournament was not the best, the community IS ! Have a great day ...

ADDENDUM: I was about to withdraw from the tournament ... and then I saw that there will be a small (-4 point) penalty in my Karma rating if I do so. I realize this is a drop in the bucket, but it is the principle. I have done NOTHING wrong in this. I have participated to the best of my ability in EVERY game - and they are going to penalize me for withdrawing ? Just another reason to sour me on Tournament Participation from here on out. I WILL see this thru to preserve my perfect Karma score. But I will NOT join ANY tournament anytime soon.

Thanks again for all your advice ...

[Meeplelowda]

Final Update. I did "Finish" the last game I was in. Thankfully, only one player quit after the delinquent player was skipped. The remaining player (Sophie 69) and I completed the game. Granted we still only got 1 point each, but I appreciated their effort.

Yes, you "completed" the game, but the third player (mm_33) received exactly the same benefit in the tournament as you, +4 round robin points, and almost exactly the same ELO gain of between 0.06 and 0.08 (it was slightly different for each of you). That one point shown in the game results was your score for the game (because the framework doesn't treat it as a completely game), regardless of the in-game points tally. As far as the framework is concerned, the game ended in a three-way tie of 1 point each, not 291 to 253.

ADDENDUM: I was about to withdraw from the tournament ... and then I saw that there will be a small (-4 point) penalty in my Karma rating if I do so. I realize this is a drop in the bucket, but it is the principle. I have done NOTHING wrong in this. I have participated to the best of my ability in EVERY game - and they are going to penalize me for withdrawing ? Just another reason to sour me on Tournament Participation from here on out. I WILL see this thru to preserve my perfect Karma score. But I will NOT join ANY tournament anytime soon.

I think you are looking at karma as some kind of reflection of your moral character. It's not. At some point, if you play real-time at least, something out of your control is going to happen to cause you to lose 10 to 20 karma points. The power goes out. Your local access point has a glitch. Etc. This does not make you a bad person, nor does having 100 karma make you morally superior to someone with 96, and that person will gain it back after completing 4 games anyway.

[JFCovaleski]

Thank you for your comments. I realize I only got 1 point, but this is the first game I completed in 2 months. It is a moral victory and I needed that metaphoric win badly !

Second, I am well aware that the Karma score is a minor deal. But I am still irritated that I am being penalized for my frustration with BGA’s lack of supervision of these tournaments. Is that petty … maybe. But it still irks me. And I am not ready to give in

[BananaHarambe]

ADDENDUM: I was about to withdraw from the tournament ... and then I saw that there will be a small (-4 point) penalty in my Karma rating if I do so. I realize this is a drop in the bucket, but it is the principle. I have done NOTHING wrong in this. I have participated to the best of my ability in EVERY game - and they are going to penalize me for withdrawing ? Just another reason to sour me on Tournament Participation from here on out. I WILL see this thru to preserve my perfect Karma score. But I will NOT join ANY tournament anytime soon.

Thanks again for all your advice ...

I understand the principle of it, withdrawing shouldn’t always give a karma drop. In Swiss tournaments it should be expected to drop out if you’re near the bottom after the initial “sorting” rounds, that’s how real world tournaments work. -4 is quite minor as you already know.

Can’t tell if you’re being sincere or a bit sarcastic about your perfect karma score. One funny thing I’ll mention is that I will sometimes dig up someone’s profile to check their reputation and previous karma drop penalties to judge their character when making friends here or inviting people to tournaments. Your withdrawal from the tournament doesn’t show up there and you have 100 karma so you have a 100% clean profile. Somebody that got skipped in a tournament wouldn’t since it would link the skipped game.

There’s no reason not to withdraw from the tournament https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=216778

The 4 reputation lost is temporary. You will be up to 100 again after 4 games, which is less than 1 week? There is also no record of it anywhere on your account profile so no one will ever know. No need to stay perfect 100% all the time and torture yourself with that tournament with inactive players. No one is going to judge 96 karma and if they snoop on your account they won’t see a timeout game so they will be able to actually infer that you dropped out from a tournament and didn’t ruin a game.

PS: here’s a link to a “good” CoB tournament that’s filling up fast and starts soon https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=359752
You’ll notice it was made 4 days ago and starts in 6/7 so it only has a 10 day signup window. It’s also only 32 player maximum so less chance of someone ruining it.

[FSKFSK]

The solution I found was to play "multiplayer elimination" or "single elimination" tournaments. Then you avoid the problem of slow players, because they will usually get bounced in the first round or two.

So if it was 4p Castles of Burgundy, I would set up the tournament to be "multiplayer elimination", with matches of 3-4 players, and 2 advancing.

[BananaHarambe]

The solution I found was to play "multiplayer elimination" or "single elimination" tournaments. Then you avoid the problem of slow players, because they will usually get bounced in the first round or two.

So if it was 4p Castles of Burgundy, I would set up the tournament to be "multiplayer elimination", with matches of 3-4 players, and 2 advancing.

Great settings, that's a great idea for a new 4 player Castles of Burgundy tournament! The game seems popular enough to make the tournament 2 weeks in advance and get 32-64 players signed up, which is 5-6 rounds by my calculations. A reasonable tournament length in my opinion. 4 player tournaments with 3 advancing have their own issues such as taking too long and having awkward arrangements near the end that violate the "3 players advance" idea. There's also the inability to run 3 player games for uneven players because all 3 would advance so there are skips required.

The only downside is that muti elimination tournaments do not handle skips well if more than 1 person needs to be eliminated so it will remove 1 of the 3 remaining players that played on time to keep the tournament going and there's no workaround for it at the moment. Even worse is that

I know absolutely nothing about Castles of Burgundy so I was wondering if the game would have any issues with 4 players and 2 qualifying regarding game mechanics or politics. I assume it would be a fair setup similar to a game like Carcassone I'm familiar with where everyone is trying to maximize their own points, but with opportunities to collaborate/be kind or disrupt certain players which is player interaction that adds to the game enjoyment. Also, how does 30 day game duration fit with this game? My brief research tells me it should be fine with most 4 player games over within 10 days? That means the opportunity to skip a player with the unfortunate turn order for their timer (on them while sleeping) should be fairly low. How many "turns" does each player need in general?

[FSKFSK]

The reason I like 3-4 player matches with 2 advance is that it can handle ANY number of players, no skips or byes. I.e., you get down to 8 players, easy, 2 matches and 4 make the final. You get down to 6 players, play two 3 person matches and 4 qualify for the final. You might have some people playing a 3 way match while others play 4, but nobody gets skipped.

Castles of Burgundy is a game where there's a fixed number of turns, 25. So if someone checks 2-3 times a day if it's their turn, it should be fine if you set it to 30 days. Even if someone gets "timezone screwed", they lose 8 hours a day, 8h x 25 = 8 days, just a little more than their time allotment. And that assumes they get max timezone screwed every time it's their turn (previous player always makes a move just after they go to bed).

[Voight]

I'll just add in this thread rather than creating a new one ... my issue is: I am trying arenas in 2 separate games. While working my way up from bronze, I am always always paired with Elites 1400+ ELO ! Maybe I win 1 out of 5 games ... BGA how the hell do you expect me to progress this ??? I tried in the morning and then in the evening, always the same !!

[FSKFSK]

In Arena, 1500 ELO is the starting amount. Someone with a 1400 Arena ELO is winning less than half their games.

Arena is designed to make it not too hard to make Elite, as long as you put in enough games. That's because you need 10 points to jump a level and you can't go below zero.