Arena: nothing changed this season

[FrankJones]

Where was the vote for season changes?
I would have liked a map or player count change.

If you're a guru, you get a message linking you to the page to vote.

[zlefin]

Too bad, it seems like a poor choice to not change a format that the game is ill-suited to. Also it seems like, as a matter of principle, more effort should be made to rotate settings every season; while a simple guru vote has some merit, I suspect it misses out on important factors. People with a variety of tastes should all get a chance to play arena if they want to; and these seasons are quite long-lasting, so there's some extra merit to a degree of forced rotation and/or extra pressure/bonus votes toward changeups.

I think it's fine to not have colonies, as it's still technically in beta, so even if it really runs fine, it's fine as a point of policy to just not have 'beta' things even be an option (no idea if it was an option in voting or not).

[FrankJones]

I think anything Beta cannot be in Arena.

Rest assured, the developer for TFM has been working tirelessly to get colonies fully functional, and, in my opinion, has succeeded. I hope everyone appreciates her dedicated work and thanks her for it.

I believe Colonies will very soon be out of Beta.

[Azoken]

If you don't like the current Arena format, the solution is the play the version you don't like a lot so that you have 1 vote to maybe make it differnet the next time.

games don't have to be in arena to be counted so you can play your favorite mode outside of arena and still get a vote (as long as you are one of the most motivated players)

Is that really the case? How about friendly games that are abandoned? Could you just spam useless games to be a "guru"?

It needs to be ranked, not specifically arena, it's explained in the faq, but as it's in my language, i won't be able to copy/paste

[rambling_coherently]

it seems like a poor choice to not change a format that the game is ill-suited to.

Are you saying the current (and last season's) arena format is bad? How come?

You can certainly make the argument that it's a shame it's the same thing again, but 2p BP is very competitive. Random map would have been near perfect. Ideally you'd get rid of prelude corps as well, but that's another can of worms.

games don't have to be in arena to be counted so you can play your favorite mode outside of arena and still get a vote (as long as you are one of the most motivated players)

Is that really the case? How about friendly games that are abandoned? Could you just spam useless games to be a "guru"?

It needs to be ranked, not specifically arena, it's explained in the faq, but as it's in my language, i won't be able to copy/paste

I've seen people saying they've gotten guru from solo games in the AN Discord, though. I know what it says in the FAQ, but why would FrankJones be guru if he's not playing any ranked games?

The system seems a massive mess.

[FrankJones]

I am purely speculating here, but I think I became a guru because of my work as a volunteer admin on the TFM bug report forum.

I spent countless hours closing literally hundreds of bug reports, tirelessly setting up 5-p-layer hotseat games to confirm or reject bugs, etc.

I just wanted to help make the game better and get Colonies out of Alpha. And, Victoria_LA, the primary developer for TFM here, was able to work well with me and spent her own tireless efforts to get everything in working order.

It was fun, I enjoyed the work. I'll likely always be a 500-550 Elo TFM player; my skillset is better put to use solving problems and dealing with bug reports.

[zlefin]

it seems like a poor choice to not change a format that the game is ill-suited to.

Are you saying the current (and last season's) arena format is bad? How come?

You can certainly make the argument that it's a shame it's the same thing again, but 2p BP is very competitive. Random map would have been near perfect. Ideally you'd get rid of prelude corps as well, but that's another can of worms.

Many things can be bad but still be competitive; it also depends on what one means by bad. I mean what I said: that it's a format the game is ill-suited to. In particular that the games balance points are not set well for 2-player. In game design, choices have to be made, and there's plenty of games that, while they do 'work' at a sizeable range of player counts, they're designed more for certain player counts than others. Just as one when designs or balances a game one can balance at different skill levels.

It seems pretty clear that the attack cards in particular, are not balanced for a 2-player game in mind cost-wise.

Of course a player can adapt to any level; and I'm sure one could argue that 5p can also be very competitive.

[rambling_coherently]

3p (and higher) suffers massively from kingmaking. Besides that, 4-5p B+P games make engine completely unplayable.

There's a reason this season was more active and had better players competing.

[Corvus Mortis]

it seems like a poor choice to not change a format that the game is ill-suited to.

Are you saying the current (and last season's) arena format is bad? How come?

You can certainly make the argument that it's a shame it's the same thing again, but 2p BP is very competitive. Random map would have been near perfect. Ideally you'd get rid of prelude corps as well, but that's another can of worms.

Many things can be bad but still be competitive; it also depends on what one means by bad. I mean what I said: that it's a format the game is ill-suited to. In particular that the games balance points are not set well for 2-player. In game design, choices have to be made, and there's plenty of games that, while they do 'work' at a sizeable range of player counts, they're designed more for certain player counts than others. Just as one when designs or balances a game one can balance at different skill levels.

It seems pretty clear that the attack cards in particular, are not balanced for a 2-player game in mind cost-wise.

Of course a player can adapt to any level; and I'm sure one could argue that 5p can also be very competitive.

To me the hate cards are *only* balanced in 2p. Most of the hate cards (leave aside terraforming events) are weak-to-unplayable in 3p+; on the flip side, the terraforming events become very overpowered at higher player counts.

[Crines]

I don't understand why the same map again. Tharsis is so boring compared to other maps. Probably because I've played it so much the last season, but still. A change would be nice. My motivation for this season's arena is already pretty much gone.