Overall XP declines?

[tbhp]

It doesn't need to be "so dramatically". It could be something like this (made up numbers):

If the game has 1000 players or more over the last 30 days, award 30k, if it has less than 1000, award 10k.

Now that particular game could have around 1000 players. Maybe it was 998 when the first player got the trophy, it was 1001 when the second one did, and it was 999 when the third one did.

I was under the impression that there was an intermediary rank between 10k and 30k (like maybe 20k), hence the use of "dramatically".

But if those ranks are consecutive, then like you say all it would take is one player above or below the threshold to observe this difference. So in that case no need to imagine huge swings in popularity.

[BalGAmor]

The most common explanation for an XP drop is the removal of a game you've played. I can't think of any games being removed recently but it might be worth checking in your side.

[yodamus]

Mr bal g armor. This loss of xp happens often. It is usually not a big amount, but noticeable.. it is not coming from games being removed. Happens too often. Why is this happening. ?.. I have asked a few times. Zero answers from bga. I am pretty sure it has to do with what others are saying. The amount of xp gained per game for badges. It must change. Only explanation I can see. Please find out for us why this happens. While most dont care about xp. Others do. Because it is earned from playing. Time used. I understand that loss of xp can happen, but to take it away without explanation is not good. All it takes is when a player loses xp, An explanation appears telling us why. . Help mr BalG.

[FrankJones]

The most common explanation for an XP drop is the removal of a game you've played. I can't think of any games being removed recently but it might be worth checking in your side.

Are you able to provide some insight into why the same achievement would go from 10k to 30k and back to 10k so quickly? I understand what Jellby and tbhp suggested; that perhaps the differing xp awards relates to the number of active players in the game at the time of the achievement, but I don't understand the scale. If we were talking about the xp going from 30k to 28k or vice versa, because of a small change in the number of active players, that would have some logic behind it. But tripling from 10k to 30k and then back seems puzzling in terms of the magnitude of the change even if the active player count has dropped below or risen above some arbitrary threshold.

[tbhp]

If we were talking about the xp going from 30k to 28k or vice versa, because of a small change in the number of active players, that would have some logic behind it.

They were never going to do something like that. Big trophies on this site tend to make big jumps, so this is in line with that. While tripling the number can seem a bit extreme, considering that they apparently decided to go for a binary popular/unpopular, I guess it makes sense that they wanted to emphasize the difference. If they had decided to add an intermediary rank, then the numbers probably would have been 10k, 20k and 30k.

[RazorOz]

Both of the above replies give plausible explanations.

I still consider this a silly system considering there are more logical ways of awarding XP.

It's also the weighting of various achievements is ludicrous. Tournaments are capped at 300XP for winning, under valued like 100-fold, when Arena victories are awarding 60k.

Arena and top ELO achievements are worth so much more than everything else to the point of it being ludicrous. Tournaments are one thing, but things like Master rank ELO you get 500XP, you get like 1200 for making Elite in Arena at a game for the season, these are in no way in touch with the level of achievement. 20 and 50 consecutive win badges are insanely undervalued too, albeit in that case they'd need to clean the system as well, because most people getting those badges that I see are cheating the system, maybe it's not the same for all games, but in the games I see, most people are not earning them legitimately, friendly games should not count towards those badges, as it's way too open to abuse.

[FSKFSK]

For the most popular games, there should be a site-created tournament weekly or monthly with the most popular settings, with a bigger xp prize or even a few gift points for winning.

[RazorOz]

For the most popular games, there should be a site-created tournament weekly or monthly with the most popular settings, with a bigger xp prize or even a few gift points for winning.

It's not a bad idea, I imagine the issue would come in defining the most popular settings, unless you put it to a vote, because if you go on games played obviously it's going to either bias towards lower player counts or the Arena setting (which already biases towards lower player counts), but one of the beauty of tournaments is you can set settings at the actual best way to play a game without other constraints. For example Arena seasons, particularly for games where the optimal player count isn't 2, have to bear in mind the ability to actually find games when voting, whereas tournaments don't operate under the same constraints.

And that's without even getting into what's best, elimination or Swiss etc.

There's no reason for tournaments to only be awarding 300XP max anyway, it makes the whole XP system a farce because the achievements aren't in anyway represented by the level of achievement. What's funny is tournaments are actually scalable up to 300XP, but that cap is so low that basically any tournament hits that cap immediately, so you will get an 8 player tournament award the same XP as a 500 player tournament. It should be much more scalable, and capped much, much higher, like I'm not talking hyperbole when I say it should be 100x, if you base it off the Arena XP, the cap should probably be like 30k.

[Ceaseless]

Both of the above replies give plausible explanations.

I still consider this a silly system considering there are more logical ways of awarding XP.

It's also the weighting of various achievements is ludicrous. Tournaments are capped at 300XP for winning, under valued like 100-fold, when Arena victories are awarding 60k.

Arena and top ELO achievements are worth so much more than everything else to the point of it being ludicrous. Tournaments are one thing, but things like Master rank ELO you get 500XP, you get like 1200 for making Elite in Arena at a game for the season, these are in no way in touch with the level of achievement. 20 and 50 consecutive win badges are insanely undervalued too, albeit in that case they'd need to clean the system as well, because most people getting those badges that I see are cheating the system, maybe it's not the same for all games, but in the games I see, most people are not earning them legitimately, friendly games should not count towards those badges, as it's way too open to abuse.

XP isn't really worth anything, you get it for all sorts of random stuff and I'm not aware of it being connected to anything in particular besides how your XP game page orders your games. Though some of the orderings are strange. Elite league is a joke, getting master is worth far more than that.

Though I disagree with your assessment of consecutive win awards, that's just a matter of good luck and/or lots of weak pairing in honest cases. I get plenty of decent sized streaks without much trouble, but I can't claim it was from any real action on my part. It's just something that eventually played out over time because things aligned to give me such circumstances.

[FSKFSK]

Which tournament settings exactly? They could copy any tournament that got 200+ signups, or have a curated list using that as a starting point.