Red thumbs in Arena: player comfort vs. room for manipulation?

[Nils Nils]

Hi everyone,

First of all, this is not a bug report. The red thumb works exactly as the site describes it. This is a discussion about whether the rule itself is the right one for Arena tournaments, and a suggestion for the admins and the community to consider.

I play Mountain Goats every day and I’m one of the top players. Recently I noticed that several players who regularly played at the same hours as me had stopped showing up in my games. After a short manual check of their profiles, I found four players who had given me a red thumb. With three of them I have never had any conflict. Our communication was limited to “hi”, “good luck” and “gg, thanks”. The only thing that stands out is that they had lost to me many times.

Here is how the site describes the red thumb:

“Giving a red thumb is a community-based player evaluation, and is 100% subjective. A player has the right to give you a red thumb if they do not enjoy playing with you. If you feel this is inappropriate, you may want to give this player a red thumb in return.”

So any player may give red thumbs to anyone, for any reason or for no reason, and build a personal list of opponents they will never face. I’m not blaming these four players. They are acting within the rules. My question is about the rule itself and how it fits Arena.

In Play (friendly) mode this feature makes perfect sense. Nobody should be forced to play with someone they don’t enjoy. But Arena is a competitive championship, and there the same rule raises a fairness question.

Imagine a real world championship where an athlete could tell the judges: “I don’t like this opponent, and that one is too strong. Don’t pair me with them. Pair me with someone I can beat more easily.” Nobody would consider such a competition fully legitimate. Opponents are drawn at random, and everyone plays whoever comes up.

Under the current rules, a player can:

Go through the profiles of the top players and give each of them a red thumb.
Never be matched with them again.
Collect points all season by playing only against beginners and weaker players, while avoiding every strong opponent.

The final ranking then partly reflects who filtered their opponents best, not who played best.

My suggestion:

Keep the red thumb as an exclusion tool in Play mode.
In Arena, let the red thumb have no effect on matchmaking. Anyone who enters Arena accepts playing against any other participant, chosen randomly.
If someone behaves badly, there are other tools for that: reports and moderation. Manually excluding opponents is not the right answer to bad behavior in a ranked mode.

I’m raising this publicly because I can see the red thumb is already being used this way. I hope the administration will consider changing the rule for Arena, and I’d like to hear what other players think. Have you noticed the same thing? Do you think Arena should work differently from Play mode in this respect?

Thanks for reading.

[Jellby]

A few points:

1. This has been discussed/suggested/raised many times before.
2. There's nothing specific to Mountain Goats here.
3. You can already "select" players by playing at certain times or turn-based/real-time. So the idea of getting a random opponent is already flawed.
4. Different people seem to expect different things from Arena. Some think it's a world championship, some think it's a way to get quick games, some think it's a personal challenge.

[Nils Nils]

A quick tip, in case anyone doesn't know: When you view a player's profile in the "About" tab, if you don't see the line "Last seen" - it means they've given you a red thumbs-down.

[Nils Nils]

A few points:

1. This has been discussed/suggested/raised many times before.
2. There's nothing specific to Mountain Goats here.
3. You can already "select" players by playing at certain times or turn-based/real-time. So the idea of getting a random opponent is already flawed.
4. Different people seem to expect different things from Arena. Some think it's a world championship, some think it's a way to get quick games, some think it's a personal challenge.

Thanks for your reply, you’re right. Everyone decides for themselves what Arena means to them, and that’s perfectly fine.

But the question here is not only how each of us personally feels about Arena, but also how the site and the administration themselves present this mode to players. Below are a few excerpts:

Arena is the competitive mode of Board Game Arena. It consists of a structured competitive environment where:
All tables of a given game are played under the same set of rules (the Arena Format)
Players are strictly matched using BGA's Matchmaking system

At the end of an Arena season the top players of each game are crowned the new BGA world champions! To keep your World Champion status, you need to fight to defend it from season to season.

The Arena Format defines the set of game options and the player count for the season. This configuration dictates how every Arena table for a specific game will be set up, ensuring uniform base conditions for all participants in the Arena competition.

As you can see, the official description positions Arena as a competition / world championship. Since this is how the mode is presented, it is fair to ask whether the rules match that description, especially when it comes to which opponents a player can choose to avoid.

If the admins see Arena as a casual mode for quick games, that is a valid choice too, but then the description should say so. Either way, I think players should know what they are taking part in.

[beerdless]

This is a quite the dilemma!

On one hand, I assume it is greatly frustrating for players who compete at high levels in arena, especially since the margins are so slim! This issue is further exacerbated for high Elo players like Nils since it is much harder to recover from losses. The red thumb function essentially helps them avoid strong players while forcing the other player to match up with the same players --- who have not given them a red thumb --- over and over.

On the other hand, there is not much that can be changed to the current system without upsetting a large player base due to the fact that this only really affects a smaller subset. In more anger-inducing games (I play Hearts for example haha), people may not want to play with rude players or players who tend to target them. Further, when problems like this arise, people typically recommend you just give the player a red thumb and let their lowered karma do the work, but evidently, this does not solve anything...

I find these complaints to be very reasonable, but unfortunately, I do not know if there really is an easy solution. Please, players with more insight, hop into the conversation !

[Jellby]

people typically recommend you just give the player a red thumb and let their lowered karma do the work

Which lowered karma? Red thumbs do not affect karma at all.

[beerdless]

people typically recommend you just give the player a red thumb and let their lowered karma do the work

Which lowered karma? Red thumbs do not affect karma at all.

Oh, sorry, that is my bad...