Ranking up fast in cooperative games

[Meereseule]

What do you think of players, who play only to rank up? I saw this in multiple games, but I think it’s problematic in cooperative games like The Crew. Elo should be given for any mission completed, not every game. But it’s not. That’s why people play only the easiest missions and end the game after it. It’s ok, when you can see, that they want to play only one round (which you can choose). But it also happened that I picked “whole campagne”, but the same players who maybe don’t find players for their easiest 1 mission game, join my game with for example 4 players and a higher mission to start with, then too end the game after one round. It takes away the fun for me. Why do people do this? I really don’t understand?

[tarongot]

What do you think of players, who play only to rank up? I saw this in multiple games, but I think it’s problematic in cooperative games like The Crew. Elo should be given for any mission completed, not every game. But it’s not. That’s why people play only the easiest missions and end the game after it. It’s ok, when you can see, that they want to play only one round (which you can choose). But it also happened that I picked “whole campagne”, but the same players who maybe don’t find players for their easiest 1 mission game, join my game with for example 4 players and a higher mission to start with, then too end the game after one round. It takes away the fun for me. Why do people do this? I really don’t understand?

I think that is close to cheating. Saw that in The Gang, picked traces of that in Don't Let it die, now same seems to be happening in Zombicide. Why people do it? For XP, for tittle that means nothing, but only for those who will look deeper into coop games no ranking. Novice might be impressed by "master" rank.

Main cause there is that COOP GAMES HAVE NO RANKING/ELO system at all. Why? I don't know. Mean answer is because BGA hate coop games. Maybe people think coop games are for kids, not smart enough for REAL games. Some might try convince that ELO can't be made for coop games. All that is bullshit.

Will that be changed? I try, but effects are small.
Link to my suggestion. But that's not enough. If we want normal ELO/ranking, a normal way to see who is really good, and who will be valuable team member for harder challenges, we need push BGA.

[Hervor]

Main cause there is that COOP GAMES HAVE NO RANKING/ELO system at all. Why? I don't know. Mean answer is because BGA hate coop games. Maybe people think coop games are for kids, not smart enough for REAL games. Some might try convince that ELO can't be made for coop games. All that is bullshit.

Cooperative games are already a nightmare to play if you are interested in a cooperative experience and get into a game with a player that only cares about rank and sees everyone else as their puppet. Some people get really rude if anyone plays suboptimally. Adding ELO what make this so much worse.

[tarongot]

Playing coop games is a nightmare because you don't know what level presents your team mates. And you have no way of knowing that. That what makes me angry. A novice who didn't even bother to do BGA interactive tutorial joins game with hardest difficult level, and I have no way to prevent it. No options I can select to limit access. And we can't even agree to abandon that game, because it is count as lost (currently idiotic feature, that I assume was made in preparation for ELO system for coops, now do nothing except irritate people).

All that because no ranking, and in game you have 2 types of player: novice (didn't played their first ranking game) and beginners (played first ranked game, but no idea if won or not), and there are also 3 people that are above beginner level (3 people in whole BGA population of players for that game). Not enough to fill whole table. That's not hypothetical that's actual game on BGA.

Main cause there is that COOP GAMES HAVE NO RANKING/ELO system at all. Why? I don't know. Mean answer is because BGA hate coop games. Maybe people think coop games are for kids, not smart enough for REAL games. Some might try convince that ELO can't be made for coop games. All that is bullshit.

Cooperative games are already a nightmare to play if you are interested in a cooperative experience and get into a game with a player that only cares about rank and sees everyone else as their puppet. Some people get really rude if anyone plays suboptimally. Adding ELO what make this so much worse.

What i hear there its an excuse to treat coop games as something worse then "normal games", as poor cousins of real games. Something I already wrote above.
Why coop players can't play to win? Why can't they figure best moves and expect that from others? If you don't like players like that you can not play with them. Or you can play games in no ELO mode. That will prevent them from joining.

And same what you speak of is in competitive games with more then 2 players (kingmaking, additional accounts, poor player whose game favours opponent, etc.). Maybe delete ELO for those as well.

[Meereseule]

That's so true. I think it's really bad that there are such huuuuge jumps in the rating. 1 game = beginner, 200+ games = apprentice, and only after that someone is at least an average player. Many cooperative games need (!) skills to make it really fun at all. The Crew and The Gang are among them.

This is what happens because of this bad system: Someone who already knew the game or understood it quickly remains frustrated. Good players are left frustrated because there is this huge span and it becomes harder to find players. BGA properly forces the teammates to let people in who you don't actually want to play with. I mean, you wouldn't say in competetive games: "Bad luck! You have to play with beginners!" The complete charm and fun can be lost. And then it is not surprising that so much aggression can be seen in cooperative games. People insult, red thumbs fly like candies, there is constant scolding. Precisely because you are forced to play with bad players, or you have little opportunity to say who you want to play with.

This huge reach generally makes no sense. I wonder if BGA thinks cooperative games are just like Activity or something. I mean, there are a few games where even beginners can play with with no problem. But even like in Activity, there are different levels of difficulty in terms. It's kind of logical that you want to play with people who are on a similar level so you can enjoy the game. But BGA apparently doesn't care and I really don't understand why.

[Ceaseless]

What do you think of players, who play only to rank up? I saw this in multiple games, but I think it’s problematic in cooperative games like The Crew. Elo should be given for any mission completed, not every game. But it’s not. That’s why people play only the easiest missions and end the game after it. It’s ok, when you can see, that they want to play only one round (which you can choose). But it also happened that I picked “whole campagne”, but the same players who maybe don’t find players for their easiest 1 mission game, join my game with for example 4 players and a higher mission to start with, then too end the game after one round. It takes away the fun for me. Why do people do this? I really don’t understand?

I want to know why you can select to play a whole campaign but then stop at 1 round and not have it count as a loss. My suggestion would be for settings that lock that sort of thing in "play to X", or if you want it to be flexible, have that as an option to "players vote to continue or not at the end of each round".

What do you think of players, who play only to rank up? I saw this in multiple games, but I think it’s problematic in cooperative games like The Crew. Elo should be given for any mission completed, not every game. But it’s not. That’s why people play only the easiest missions and end the game after it. It’s ok, when you can see, that they want to play only one round (which you can choose). But it also happened that I picked “whole campagne”, but the same players who maybe don’t find players for their easiest 1 mission game, join my game with for example 4 players and a higher mission to start with, then too end the game after one round. It takes away the fun for me. Why do people do this? I really don’t understand?

I think that is close to cheating. Saw that in The Gang, picked traces of that in Don't Let it die, now same seems to be happening in Zombicide. Why people do it? For XP, for tittle that means nothing, but only for those who will look deeper into coop games no ranking. Novice might be impressed by "master" rank.

Main cause there is that COOP GAMES HAVE NO RANKING/ELO system at all. Why? I don't know. Mean answer is because BGA hate coop games. Maybe people think coop games are for kids, not smart enough for REAL games. Some might try convince that ELO can't be made for coop games. All that is bullshit.

Will that be changed? I try, but effects are small.
Link to my suggestion. But that's not enough. If we want normal ELO/ranking, a normal way to see who is really good, and who will be valuable team member for harder challenges, we need push BGA.

If memory serves there were some and they got removed because they were nonsense/abused. https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33785 Makes some reference to it, but it reads that there was an earlier hit that happened that I don't know the location of offhand.

Playing coop games is a nightmare because you don't know what level presents your team mates. And you have no way of knowing that. That what makes me angry. A novice who didn't even bother to do BGA interactive tutorial joins game with hardest difficult level, and I have no way to prevent it. No options I can select to limit access. And we can't even agree to abandon that game, because it is count as lost (currently idiotic feature, that I assume was made in preparation for ELO system for coops, now do nothing except irritate people).

Abandon=loss was implemented because players used it as a way to boost. If your team was losing, abandon, since you have no opponent that can object. So players would only win.

And same what you speak of is in competitive games with more then 2 players (kingmaking, additional accounts, poor player whose game favours opponent, etc.). Maybe delete ELO for those as well.

If BGA decided to do that, I won't be shedding any tears.

[tarongot]

And same what you speak of is in competitive games with more then 2 players (kingmaking, additional accounts, poor player whose game favours opponent, etc.). Maybe delete ELO for those as well.

If BGA decided to do that, I won't be shedding any tears.

I think you will when your player base will reduce to 5%. Its already hard to find players for many games, except few most popular one. Imagine how often you will play if you will have not 10mln but 0.5mln players.

As for Coop ranking, even if there were bad attempts before it is still no excuse to not implement right one, assuming you are right. There is at least 1 game on BGA that probably, I say probably because details are hidden, have ranking, or something close to it. So why not all, why is not standard?
After all coop games in this matter aren't that much different from competitive. And same mechanics could apply.

[Ceaseless]

And same what you speak of is in competitive games with more then 2 players (kingmaking, additional accounts, poor player whose game favours opponent, etc.). Maybe delete ELO for those as well.

If BGA decided to do that, I won't be shedding any tears.

I think you will when your player base will reduce to 5%. Its already hard to find players for many games, except few most popular one. Imagine how often you will play if you will have not 10mln but 0.5mln players.

As for Coop ranking, even if there were bad attempts before it is still no excuse to not implement right one, assuming you are right. There is at least 1 game on BGA that probably, I say probably because details are hidden, have ranking, or something close to it. So why not all, why is not standard?
After all coop games in this matter aren't that much different from competitive. And same mechanics could apply.

I don't see removing 2+ player ratings reducing the playerbase to 5%. And the ones lost would be tilted to those locked into 2+ player games to begin with, which wouldn't be the sort of players getting paired for 2 player games.

As for the "right" method, someone would need to have one, and that could be implemented to cooperate games as a whole given BGA's one size fits all approach. Then someone would need to do the work needed to get it implemented.

You say there's one games that "might" have it, so you're not even sure, but if you wanted to streamline things it would be just as easy to say why not eliminate the holdout. Easier even, given its removing work to deal with down the line rather than adding to it. Hard to say given I have no idea what game you have in mind, which might give important details.

But cooperative games are very different from competitive ones. For one thing, competitive games have real opponents, ones that actually think, where cooperative games don't. This distinction alone is the cause of one of the boosting issues in cooperative games (everyone agreeing to cancel losing games) that had to be handled. Cooperative games are going to have their own problems and need their own solutions, what works for one group won't necessarily work for the other.

[Meereseule]

I want to know why you can select to play a whole campaign but then stop at 1 round and not have it count as a loss. My suggestion would be for settings that lock that sort of thing in "play to X", or if you want it to be flexible, have that as an option to "players vote to continue or not at the end of each round".

You actually really decide after each round if you want to play the next round or not. The whole campaign can be 50 missions long and one round can have multiple tries before you win it. I don’t mind if someone don’t want to play anymore. But this was a turn-based game. And the same person for example who only play 2-player games with missions 1, was one of the team members in my game, which started at a mission over 20. And then he chose to play only one round again. But he saw, that I wanted to play the whole mission, before joining. Others who do the same too will play only one mission and it doesn’t matter if they win or not. They don’t want to start again to try to win and they don’t need it actually, because even a loss is counted as a win.

[Meereseule]

But cooperative games are very different from competitive ones. For one thing, competitive games have real opponents, ones that actually think, where cooperative games don't. This distinction alone is the cause of one of the boosting issues in cooperative games (everyone agreeing to cancel losing games) that had to be handled. Cooperative games are going to have their own problems and need their own solutions, what works for one group won't necessarily work for the other.

I honestly don't understand what you're trying to say. Cooperative games also have real thinking people and are even sometimes heavier than competetive games. Because you have to find solutions together, some of them very difficult. If someone makes a fault, does not understand the game properly, or has little experience, you can no longer win the game or progress at all.