Advantage/disadvantage - changing how teams are chosen

[ChiefPointThief]

It isn’t elo farming. You play who is available. Well, I will speak for what I do personally.

With all due respect, when so many players can easily abuse the system, it's a big red flag although you and some others try to be fair.

If there is a complaint about improper ratings something needs to be done about how elo is calculated for rage quitters. 5 of my last 25 games (20%) I was rage quit on and the majority of the split elo went to the person on the losing team

This is irrelevant to custom team member order at all, since this happens in all games.

A lot of the top players have been the same few ppl on different accounts fyi

This is even worse in team games with custom team member order.
Custom team member order makes this manipulation much easier and subtler.

If you think arena is the standard for high quality play you are highly mistaken

I didn't say anything like 'the play level of Arena mode Spades is higher than normal mode'.
What I said are:
- Beating a bunch of beginners with a fixed partner doesn't mean the team is highly skilled
- Custom team member order is being actively used to farm Elo by many players
- Farming EAS with custom team member order is impossible in the current Arena mode setting
- A large portion of leaderboard players avoid Arena mode entirely and then play as a fixed team to beat beginners

A beginner is someone who doesn’t know the game. What you are referring to are less skilled players. Which like I mentioned are the majority.

Farming eas is still possible simply by creating multiple accounts and joining the same game. Which team the dummy account is on doesn’t matter.

Farming eas isn’t illegal although ppl frown upon it. Players can do this in non team games also.

I personally avoid arena becuase I don’t want to land on someone’s team who can’t even count bids. If I’m going to dedicate 25-60min of my time on a game I want to know my p is competent. It has nothing to do with my opponents.

There are some quality players in arena. There are some quality tb players. The 4 different modes divides the player pool which you are completely ignoring.

I did recognize the difficulty with consistently getting high quality matches years ago which is why I reached out to all good players for games.

There may be some accounts who just want to elo farm. But that doesn’t mean rankings should be voided because of that. You can do that without fixed teams. There are many problems with the ranking system as I explained already and ways to manipulate it. What you are arguing is that all games in which there is a skill gap should be friendly. Because the issue isn’t that two players are on a fix team but that they are two good players.

[ufm]

A beginner is someone who doesn’t know the game. What you are referring to are less skilled players. Which like I mentioned are the majority.

Please skip the semantics.

Farming eas is still possible simply by creating multiple accounts and joining the same game. Which team the dummy account is on doesn’t matter.

This matters A LOT. Even some mods confirmed it.
If the dummy account is not in the same team as the main account (2/3 chance - twice of the same team pairing), they eventually have to actively sabotage the teammate.
And needless to say, this is easier to spot, red thumb, report and moderate.

Farming eas isn’t illegal although ppl frown upon it. Players can do this in non team games also.

The predatory matchmaking is significantly harder in multiplayer games where all players face each other, because the high rated player must beat EVERYONE to earn rating in tables with only a single high-rated player.

Mostly this is done in:
- 2-player tables, by cancelling tables until a lower rated player joins - Elo limit option does not allow blocking the same Elo level
- Team games with custom team order - less obvious than the option above

I personally avoid arena becuase I don’t want to land on someone’s team who can’t even count bids. If I’m going to dedicate 25-60min of my time on a game I want to know my p is competent. It has nothing to do with my opponents.

There are some quality players in arena. There are some quality tb players. The 4 different modes divides the player pool which you are completely ignoring.

I did recognize the difficulty with consistently getting high quality matches years ago which is why I reached out to all good players for games.

There may be some accounts who just want to elo farm. But that doesn’t mean rankings should be voided because of that. You can do that without fixed teams. There are many problems with the ranking system as I explained already and ways to manipulate it. What you are arguing is that all games in which there is a skill gap should be friendly. Because the issue isn’t that two players are on a fix team but that they are two good players.

Check out BGA Chess or word games to see some games with actually voided competitive features. They literally don't have leaderboards.
What you are suggesting is simply a false dilemma and a perfection fallacy:
- Forcing friendly mode to custom team member order disables neither ranking nor tournaments.
- Blocking every abuse 100% is impossible. No one can do that.
Still, you are arguing 'A cannot fix these problems completely, therefore A should be rejected'.

If you can't (or don't want to) understand what I'm saying, well, then let's agree to disagree.

[ChiefPointThief]

I referenced that 20% of my last 25 games resulted in a quitter. What do you think that number would be w/o the deterrents of karma/elo penalties? What you are suggesting is extremely diminishing the quality of team games on bga just because there are a small # of players who may try to abuse the system. I wouldn't bother playing fixed teams games anymore because anytime my opponent is losing they could just quit with no penalty. Which you can see already doesn't stop some players.

A beginner is someone who doesn’t know the game. What you are referring to are less skilled players. Which like I mentioned are the majority.

Please skip the semantics.

This needed clarification. You are trying to imply that playing against "average" players is predatory and picking on the weak when over 90% of players are "average" players. You are also acting as if players who willingly accept games with fixed teams are victims somehow.

Still, you are arguing 'A cannot fix these problems completely, therefore A should be rejected'.

There are several problems with the ranking system. #1 in particular is far more important in determining players true strength than fixed team games are.

1. The win probabilities calculation are inaccurate for team games.
2. Players can't go below 100 elo. If a player is so bad that their true rating is -200 then so be it. Also if you are paired with a player that has a true rating of -200 then that should be accounted for in your win probability (I am aware players used to be able to fall below 100 but bga changed that to protect ppls feelings).
3. If someone rage quits then they lost the game. Not a certain % of the game. The entire 100% and the team who didn't quit should get full elo.
(there are probably other problems that are not on my mind right now.)

To touch more on #1 I've played with tons of players throughout my time here and have a sense of certain players true skill levels. I have several friends right now ranked as "average" players who are far from that. Why? Because the win probability calculations are inaccurate resulting in improper ratings for these players. So the current system doesn't account for your partner when calculating probabilities but even head to head probabilities are wrong because players initial ratings before game start can be inaccurate.