Meeplelowda wrote: ↑24 February 2026, 23:06
Mattuna74 wrote: ↑24 February 2026, 22:17
instead of improving the arena mode you have damaged the tournament one!
From what you say here it is not clear whether you are aware that "gurus" decide the mode for the arena season, not BGA. For this issue your ire should be directed at the "gurus" who are making choices you don't agree with. Or is your proposal that gurus should not be allowed to vote on the format and instead someone at BGA should individually decide the arena format for 100s of games every season?
The gurus system has its advantages and disadvantages.
Clear advantage: Actual players get to decide which rules are used for Arena.
But which players? The gurus, which are the ones who play the game the most. But therein lies the vicious cycle: players who like the current Arena rules will play more, players who don't like the current Arena rules will not play as much. So the guru selection process naturally favors the people who like the current rules, meaning the current rules are more likely to be picked again for the next season. That's a major disadvantage. It would be solved, as Meeplelowda suggested, by having different Arenas for the same game but with different settings.
There are several games I play a LOT. But I don't like certain expansions, settings, or player counts, etc. So when those rules are in Arena, I don't play Arena, which reduces my play count and makes it unlikely for me to become a guru. So the next season, the same rules get selected by the same people. I would LOVE if those games had a separate arena, say, for 2-player vs. multiplayer, or for this expansion vs. base game. I'd only play Arena for the settings I like against people who also like those settings. It would be great. But instead, people who don't like the current Arena settings sit out 3 months, hoping (often in futility) that the next season will be something they like.
In any case, I think Meeplelowda's main point was that Arena has issues and that rather than fix those issues (like the guru selection bias I mentioned above), BGA keeps saying "we don't like everything with Arena, but we're going to keep doing it" and then they pick a new part of the site to make worse. Tournaments this time, ELO last time, Games in Progress / Lobby before that, ...
There's so many bugs and suggestions that have literally thousands of votes. You'd think they would start there as inspiration for making sitewide changes to BGA. But instead they make changes that no one wants and that break things that people actually care about. See my previous post (or any of the other 100 posts by others here) for a description. (that last line is directed at BGA admins, not Mattuna)
