Arena points system

[Jellby]

You can only filter by league. If you are in the Elite league, you can't be matched with "much stronger" players, because as far as Arena is concerned, you're already in the strongest league. Arena doesn't know or care about elo.

[ResonanceSM]

There's been times where I was starting my arena season in bronze league and I got matched with players who were currently battling for the top spots. It must have been frustrating for those players to lose lots of point against me just because they had the bad luck of being matched with a starting Elo player who is actually above this level.

... and because they didn't set league filters.

Not every game has league filters though.

[Meeplelowda]

Not every game has league filters though.

Do you have an example of one that doesn't.

[nik592]

I believe every game has at least Bronze and Elite. However, it's not hard to get to Elite, at which point, you can't filter anymore really (apart from restricting to only other elites, which is a pretty widely varying pool of skill in games that only have Bronze below).

[ChiefPointThief]

You can only filter by league. If you are in the Elite league, you can't be matched with "much stronger" players, because as far as Arena is concerned, you're already in the strongest league. Arena doesn't know or care about elo.

Arena does know about aes though. Which there is no filter for. The leagues are meaningless. They are just there to get people to play more. Same reason for hiding players aes until elite. “You have a 1200 aes? Don’t worry! You still have hope of being an elite player!”. I just looked up how many azul “elite” players there are under 1500 (which is the starting point) and there are close to 500 some reaching as low as the 1200s. While the top is 2100. It takes a lot of winning to get to 2100 and a lot of losing to get to 1200. So you can definitely be matched in elite vs someone who is “much stronger”

[FrankJones]

The fact that people cannot be demoted sort of makes the leagues nonsense; essentially what ChiefPointThief pointed out.

The whole thing is weird. Arena is just a goofy gimmick, and yet it seems to be where the serious players go to play.
For example, I never seen an open invite table of "Earth" with the abundance expansion. Only base game, which ... meh.

For games that I can get an open table to fill quickly, I typically don't play in the arena. Which is ... most of the games I play.

[RazorOz]

The fact that people cannot be demoted sort of makes the leagues nonsense; essentially what ChiefPointThief pointed out.

The whole thing is weird. Arena is just a goofy gimmick, and yet it seems to be where the serious players go to play.
For example, I never seen an open invite table of "Earth" with the abundance expansion. Only base game, which ... meh.

For games that I can get an open table to fill quickly, I typically don't play in the arena. Which is ... most of the games I play.

Depends on the game I imagine. For example a good number of the best players aren't playing Heat in Arena, Arena is stronger than simple games, but to find all the best players you've either got to be in private games or tournaments. Part of that is because the Arena is set to 4 player for time reasons, so queue times aren't so bad, but common perception is the game is best at 5 or 6. I imagine many games have that sort of clash too, where the Arena isn't at the best player count, particularly for games where the best player is higher than 2.

You also get what's the best competitive player count isn't necessarily the most fun/common way to play the game. So one example to me is something like Ticket to Ride, I would imagine the base games are not that often played at 2 player in real life, especially as you have maps specifically designed for lower player counts, but it's deemed competitively they play best at 2 player. Indeed a number of games probably fit this description, as I know Wingspan has a hot topic about 2 vs 3 player Arena, and again I'd argue gameplay wise it's probably better at 3-4.

The approach to Arena also probably differs by game too, eg. a lot of the advice in this thread about using filters is only recommended I imagine for 2 player Arena games, because eg. if I searched for an Elite only Heat game I'd be searching all day, as there's only 59 players in Elite, I think multi-player games are harder to reach Elite in generally.