Excluding Prelude corps

[charliec247]

So now that everyone has had an Arena season with the Prelude corps excluded, what does everyone think of this option?

[Kulikk]

Less rng, more enjoyable if "fair" games are what you are looking for.

[Lytical]

It's much worse, the meta data shows last season both arena and elo points are significantly lower when prelude corps are excluded.

I talked about this with some of the top players, the reason is that it actually punish higher elo players, since CSM Vitor Luna and Credicor have easier time to overcome RNG. By excluding prelude corps, it took away 75% of winning chances in those situations when lower ranked high roll. The sub 600 players mostly squander those corps' true potential anyway. I am excluding Ecoline because if it's not on Hellas and Tharsis, it may not able to counter RNG well.

Compounding the fact it also significantly raises the chance for top players to be forced playing a low tier corp like inventrix unmi and helion, drag down by the weighted average score, you repeat that over 100 games, resulting the winning arena point over 20 away from the bench mark.

[_astarte]

Shame it’s gone. Now some corps are borderline unplayable.

[0rfevre_]

It's much worse, the meta data shows last season both arena and elo points are significantly lower when prelude corps are excluded.

I talked about this with some of the top players, the reason is that it actually punish higher elo players, since CSM Vitor Luna and Credicor have easier time to overcome RNG. By excluding prelude corps, it took away 75% of winning chances in those situations when lower ranked high roll. The sub 600 players mostly squander those corps' true potential anyway. I am excluding Ecoline because if it's not on Hellas and Tharsis, it may not able to counter RNG well.

Compounding the fact it also significantly raises the chance for top players to be forced playing a low tier corp like inventrix unmi and helion, drag down by the weighted average score, you repeat that over 100 games, resulting the winning arena point over 20 away from the bench mark.

That's just false, MLE is up across the board for strong players. My results also show that excluding prelude corps reduced variance making it easier to achieve high wr%.

[Lytical]

You did amazingly and won, I am talking about overall elo and arena points, elo topped lower this season and last season arena points went over 2150. The more important indicator is overall elo at the top are lower.

[Peach 2d]

The theme cropped up before: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=50303, and you'll read a couple of views here as well.

One question that comes to mind: if the goal is to reduce variance, how would the current set-up compare to 2p base game only? My hunch is that it is even more skill-driven. I still play base game only every now and then, and I like it as a change from full Preludes and the current Arena version. 2p base game only has never been an Arena setting, and it would make an interesting change. For 2p games, it doesn't add all that much time.

[Yahyra]

It's much worse, the meta data shows last season both arena and elo points are significantly lower when prelude corps are excluded.

I talked about this with some of the top players, the reason is that it actually punish higher elo players, since CSM Vitor Luna and Credicor have easier time to overcome RNG. By excluding prelude corps, it took away 75% of winning chances in those situations when lower ranked high roll. The sub 600 players mostly squander those corps' true potential anyway. I am excluding Ecoline because if it's not on Hellas and Tharsis, it may not able to counter RNG well.

Compounding the fact it also significantly raises the chance for top players to be forced playing a low tier corp like inventrix unmi and helion, drag down by the weighted average score, you repeat that over 100 games, resulting the winning arena point over 20 away from the bench mark.

That's just false, MLE is up across the board for strong players. My results also show that excluding prelude corps reduced variance making it easier to achieve high wr%.

This, what this person said... is exactly right.

[Lytical]

Couple seasons before, elo reached 900, arena points pushed to around 2200, prelude corps included. The data backs it up, it's not about feelings. We should study it and figure out why, instead of just going along with conventional wisdoms that excluding prelude corps makes the game better. Me, myself before this season thought excluding prelude corps make the game better, but facts are facts, you can't fool math.

[skyz0r]

Couple seasons before, elo reached 900, arena points pushed to around 2200, prelude corps included. The data backs it up, it's not about feelings. We should study it and figure out why, instead of just going along with conventional wisdoms that excluding prelude corps makes the game better. Me, myself before this season thought excluding prelude corps make the game better, but facts are facts, you can't fool math.

You should check out https://tfm-data.xyz/ and look at the arena tab.

Arena MLE is the most objective score (essentially a blended average across the season) and the top 50 players had higher MLEs than other seasons.