Can we revisit Red Thumb in Arena? Some ideas for improvement

[Le007n]

Hi, it’s been five years since this was raised in bugs and suggestions, and I still find it hard to believe that there’s been no real progress.

Is this still being discussed? Will anything ever change so we can enjoy this mode for the games we love?

I understand the intention behind the Red Thumb (RT) feature, but as is often the case, a small number of players can end up undermining it for everyone else.

Instead of just complaining, I’d like to propose some possible changes that the devs could build from. There will never be a solution that pleases everyone, but I think the goals should be:

- Ladder fairness
- Queue health
- Player retention
- Player safety

I was really hoping that a new season might bring some changes. We already experiment with different Arena settings per game — why not try something season-wide?

Here are some suggestions to start the discussion:

1 — Disable RT filtering for nearby or top-ranked players

Disable RT matchmaking filters for players within ±Y ELO or within the top X% of the ladder.
This prevents players near the top from selectively avoiding strong opponents and shaping the ladder. It also improves queue health for games with smaller player pools.

2 — Remove RT in Arena and rely more on karma

If RT is mainly used to avoid quitters, then a stronger karma requirement could discourage quitting directly by preventing immediate re-queueing and making quitting feel more costly.

3 — Prevent or limit conceding in Arena

A common complaint is that players concede early, denying the opponent the chance to actually play out the game. If this is a real problem, conceding could be limited or disabled in Arena (as it is in some tournaments).

Timeouts would still remove inactive players so games don’t stall.

4 — Add RT cooldown or expiry

Avoids lasting forever feels extreme in a competitive mode. RT could expire after some time, or only block matchmaking for a limited period.

If you want to choose your opponents, casual mode already exists — Arena should prioritize competitive integrity.

5 — Make RT a soft filter, not a hard block

Instead of completely preventing matches, RT could just reduce the likelihood of a pairing.
After a certain queue time, the system could ignore RT to avoid queue starvation and complete avoidance.

6 — Disable RT above a certain ELO

Above a certain rating, Arena becomes strictly competitive. Safety tools (mute/report) remain, but matchmaking filters are disabled.
If both players are highly rated and searching, they should be able to face each other.

7 — Moderator / Dev RT powers

Give moderators the ability to apply Arena bans or restrictions to abusive players directly, rather than relying on players to self-police through RT.

Maybe it’s not one big change but a collection of smaller tweaks that gets us closer to a healthier system.

I’d be interested to hear what others think, or what alternative ideas people have.

Thanks for reading — and just to be clear, the aim here is constructive discussion, not blaming or attacking anyone.

A bad change that moves us forward can sometimes be better than doing nothing at all.

[Meeplelowda]

Hi, it’s been five years since this was raised in bugs and suggestions, and I still find it hard to believe that there’s been no real progress.

It wasn't just raised in bugs and suggestions. BGA announced that they were going to implement this:

→ Red Thumbs for competitive play
One last thing that is going to be changed in a few weeks will be the impact of the Red Thumbs.
You can currently give a Red Thumb to any player with which you had a bad game experience. This prevents you from competing against them in ranked games or the Arena, but not in Tournaments.
This system can, and unfortunately is, used to prevent some players from competing against the best players. Considering that the Red Thumb system is being abused this way, on purpose or not, we will update the way Red Thumbs are impacting the matchmaking for the next season.

But they never did "update the way Red Thumbs are impacting the matchmaking for the next season" and never explained why not. I suspect that due to regulations around privacy and/or harassment they have to keep the red thumb functionality in place, and they just aren't telling us that's why.

Is this still being discussed?

Yes. For example, Prevent arena matching making abuse, Question about red thumbs?, and Red thumb to avoid players in Arena. Or do you mean discussed internally within BGA, in which case, how would we know?

[RazorOz]

The problem is it's beyond tedious to play with quitters, particularly in multiplayer games where it voids the game and winner gets nothing from it. The punishments for quitting are nowhere near harsh enough, and it's simply not fun to play 90% of a game and have someone quit when they know they have lost. As someone who used to be on the frontlines of this problem for Heat until it was fixed, I can't emphasise just how tedious it would be to force me have to keep playing players who constantly quit, and at worst this can be used strategically to deny the winner their Arena points, at no real loss for the quitter if they were going to lose anyway.

Another thing that would help is getting rid of incentives to red thumb people, an example is the ELO reducer, I don't use the system this way, but this system is encouraging people to red thumb players, as people don't want to play games where they can't gain ELO, only lose.

If you solve that problem, then maybe the solution would be to make it so you cannot red thumb players with 100% karma, I would imagine that would stop the majority of strategic red thumbs purely to avoid players.

[Le007n]

If you solve that problem, then maybe the solution would be to make it so you cannot red thumb players with 100% karma, I would imagine that would stop the majority of strategic red thumbs purely to avoid players.

I like this as an idea. You would need to have a great reset to remove existing red thumbs from players with 100% karma or a second arena flag for this but it's a good option.

Players which constantly quit games would be open for this rt. Other players with 100% karma would not.
Other abuse and issues would be dealt with by the mods.

[JimBut]

If you solve that problem, then maybe the solution would be to make it so you cannot red thumb players with 100% karma, I would imagine that would stop the majority of strategic red thumbs purely to avoid players.

I like the idea of red thumbs to avoid problematic players - you may want to RT someone who has 100% karma.

I think RTs should not impact arena matchmaking but give users tools to mute specific players

[RazorOz]

I like the idea of red thumbs to avoid problematic players - you may want to RT someone who has 100% karma.

I think RTs should not impact arena matchmaking but give users tools to mute specific players

A problematic player shouldn't have 100% karma though, at least at the time you red thumbed them.

The 2nd point comes back to my point about how tedious no red thumb system is. I know a lot of games Arena is either set to 2 player or quitting isn't common, but I have seen the other side of Arena set to more than 2 players in games where quitting is common, it's tedious. Heat kind of solved this issue, amongst other issues with it's all games play to completion regardless rules, but given Heat is the only game on the site with that rule currently implemented I believe, most games don't have that fix, and without it I think making red thumbs not work for Arena is untenable.

[Le007n]

A problematic player shouldn't have 100% karma though, at least at the time you red thumbed them.

Exactly that.

I looked at the people who had rt'd me a while back and I'm pretty sure I've never even played some of them before. I had some from ark nova players where i had conceded (not quit) games it was clear I couldn't win in the early days and then mainly abyss players who just don't want to lose.

All games / arenas were 1 vs 1 so conceeding just speeds up the process. Ark nova games were standard play. Conceeding in a 3+ player arena game should be treated differently imo and not be allowed since it alters the result.

My point being, if a form of rt remains in arena , it should not be allowed on a whim to pick and choose. Another suggestion, show the option to 'limit matching with player in arena in future' if they leave a game early if really needed so there needed to be a means to the action.

[Exotic Dreams]

You have some interesting suggestions.
I would be supportive of getting rid of red thumbs in the arena if two issues were changed:

If the rules were changed to forbid kicking players out of games that have lost internet connection or the BGA webpage crashing, I would be more supportive of removing the red thumbs from the arena. I find it poor sports personship to penalize a player for something that is beyond their control. Despite what they say, penalties are not always forgiven and this means the player who got back into the game first after BGA webpage crashes can kick another player out if their internet connection is faster.
I'e had this happen before, took a screen shot of the error message from the BGA webpage crashing, submitted it and the penalty I got while the BGA webpage crashed was not removed.

I'm not going to mention the other reason because it seems to be a more sensitive topic. I will be happy to discuss this issue via PM. However I've heard some had issues discussing publically in the forums.

Because I am always striving to be a better player, I analize the red thumbs I get the same as my game mistakes. Unfortunately I do see a correlation between games that I am better in and being blocked. The better I am at a game, the more red thumbs I get. There isn't much interest to block me in games that I'm bad at. Because most players seem quite content with easy gains over a bad player in the arena from my experience.

[ChiefPointThief]

The problem is it's beyond tedious to play with quitters, particularly in multiplayer games where it voids the game and winner gets nothing from it. The punishments for quitting are nowhere near harsh enough, and it's simply not fun to play 90% of a game and have someone quit when they know they have lost. As someone who used to be on the frontlines of this problem for Heat until it was fixed, I can't emphasise just how tedious it would be to force me have to keep playing players who constantly quit, and at worst this can be used strategically to deny the winner their Arena points, at no real loss for the quitter if they were going to lose anyway.

Haven’t looked into it but after seeing this thread looks like formula d has the same problem as heat.

https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=47032

[JimBut]

A problematic player shouldn't have 100% karma though, at least at the time you red thumbed them.

Players can be unpleasant to play with for reasons other than being kicked out of games. They may be rude in chat or complain about luck or the like without straying into moderation territory. Some players RT people with a playstyle they don't enjoy - while this isn't something I would do I think it's reasonable for them to be able to limit who they play with outside Arena.