COMPETITION!

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

Why is it not feasible to establish an additional arena-style competition
that would not affect ELO rankings and where the use of Red Thumbs is prohibited?

[Jellby]

Having non-friendly games that do not affect elo defeats the purpose of elo.

[6element]

I suspect Arena is a very special case thing. It isn't "a competition", but a hardcoded "entity", so creating "yet another Arena" would be non-trivial amount of work. Like, it is likely technically feasible, but somebody has to pay for a few months of work.

Plus, having multiple arenas would split the player base even more, reducing number of participating players and devaluing trophy players earn.

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

To date, a total of 1,108 games have been developed; however, the only features currently available are the Arena and the All-time Leagues.

The duration of three months for an Arena season is substantial.

There are instances in which players attain top 10 rankings in the Arena and subsequently discontinue their participation.
These individuals frequently create multiple accounts to restart the game.

The ELO ratings are subject to considerable fluctuations, which ultimately renders them neither effective nor beneficial.

Lastly, Arena has consistently lacked fairness as a competitive environment due to the allowance of player blocking.

[6element]

Well, there are many issues with Arena. The first one is lack of Elo filtering which forces to play with low-Elo players who are making essentially random moves, serving as kingmakers without realizing what they're doing. Another major issue is lack of a mechanism against creating multiple accounts per player. The third issue is lack of incentive to keep playing after reaching high enough place in Arena ranking (aka "parking"). I'm also very skeptical that turn-based and real-time games can be considered comparable because amount of time for decision making differs tremendously (and thus they require two separate Arenas).

Without solving these issues Arena cannot be considered a fair and fun competition IMHO. Just solving "abuse of thumb down" wouldn't magically fix everything.

Given the fact there have been very few (if any) tweaks / fixes for a few years now, I'd say chances of getting it all suddenly solved are relatively low. So either use Arena as is, or ignore it.

PS: I also strongly disagree with Elo not being beneficial. If you consider it a range (not a number), it makes a lot more sense and for me it corelates well with my assessment of opponent's strengths based on prior experience.

[Meeplelowda]

however, the only features currently available are the Arena and the All-time Leagues.

What about tournaments? And matchmaking in tournaments is not affected by red thumbs, which seems to be something you want.

[BananaHarambe]

I’m with Meeple on using tournaments more.

Is Arena a test of skill? Yes, but it has its limitations. It acts similar to in-game ladders that many online games have, but omits skill based matchmaking in favor of fast matchmaking to ensure players can find pairings easier. Players that can grind a lot of games will have an advantage climbing the AES compared to someone that can’t.

Also, even though it looks like everyone is playing in the same arena pool, they really aren’t. Real-time and turn-based are often entirely different players so you might never pair against a top 3 arena player in real time for example. There’s also the effect of different time zones and sleeping patterns which means that not all players can pair against each other due to their play time patterns, real time lobby or request time for turn-based.

There’s the option of using red thumbs in Arena to affect pairings, but I don’t consider that to be too bad compared to the combination of everything above. It’s not like you can force a game against someone who wants to red thumb you anyways. They could simply switch their gaming schedule around or change the lobby settings in real time speed or turn based number of moves to avoid you.

Do you know what produces much more reliable competition than Arena? Tournaments! They are structured specifically around fair competition first, not around matchmaking convenience.

There are no issues with grinding games, splitting player base (except who registers versus who doesn’t), and avoiding specific players. Tournaments even solve some issues that Arena can’t such as skill-based matchmaking. If you are 3 rounds into a 64 player 2p Swiss tournament you are already going to notice the natural matchmaking that the Swiss tournament generates. This is a great feature of Swiss tournaments.

If you win a bunch of games in a tournament you get rewarded with harder opponents and a chance for trophy. If you win a bunch in Arena you gain rating and leaderboard position, but it has no affect on matchmaking.


Off topic, but why doesn’t Arena matchmaking have a limit on AES difference in matchmaking? I heard the ratings difference in Ark Nova is so extreme that top players have to resort to mass red thumbing weak players to avoid time wasting matchups with no reward and huge risk. Any pairing with over 200-300 AES difference seems like bad matchmaking?

[ChiefPointThief]

Having non-friendly games that do not affect elo defeats the purpose of elo.

Having the strength of your partner be neglected for win probabilities in team games also defeats the purpose of elo.
(Op is a spades player & I watch spades players elo go on roller coaster rides all the time.)

@meeple - no tournaments for spades

@6element - about tb and real time. Another thing too is that most ppl play one or the other. So a tb players arena results are from a completely different pool of players than a real time. On the topic of red thumbs you can actually avoid certain players just by not playing the mode they play in (real or tb). So yeah. There is a long list of problems w/ arena. Pretty much agree w/ what you said on the matter.

[BananaHarambe]

Why is it not feasible to establish an additional arena-style competition
that would not affect ELO rankings and where the use of Red Thumbs is prohibited?

If you want more fair competition, start participating in tournaments. If tournaments do not exist, make them yourself.

Arena will always have its limitations. It’s a competitive mode, but will always remain fairly casual.

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

This post is regarding fair competition!

The Chief is only one that really understands!