BETA: Arena mode (Season 0 - BETA)

[Forevergm]

Would it be possible to change the default players for the game “For Sale” to 5 players instead of 4 players given 5 players is the recommended way to play the game as per the system instructions? Thanks.

[Zoras]

So I've been trying the arena mode and so far it's great - good job !
I personnally think it is fair not to show the elo - it discourages people from playing the rating rather than the position.

I play mainly Terra Mystica, and I was wondering though why landscapes are not part of the arena mode - it seems to me that it's a nice peculiarity of this site, as it makes some factions more playable, and the community seemed very found of it, since the large majority of games where played with it; for next season, my wish (and recommandation) would be to add them.

Keep up the good work!

[Misha]

I like Arena modus so far, BUT I want to kick the idiot, who removed the sound of 'START of GAME'!!
I waited over 1 h for a Terra Mystica game, and played on another website meanwhile, and when I checked again, I lost some points , obviously the game started without any sound. Later I could verify that, there is no sound when an arena game starts! Combined with the fact that even a popular game like TM needs 1 -1.5 h to start, Arena mode is absolutely useless!!!

[iliz sera]

So far the scoring system for Arena mode is pretty well and easy to understand for me, until I see this game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=62764324

Here, bleu329 earned a victory and he jumped directly from Bronze league (lowest) to Elite league (highest, I think?). How could it be possible? I remember that each victory will earn you 3 points in this rank and (if able) promote/relegate to the next adjacent rank.

I also checked some popular games (7 Wonders, For Sale,...) and the highest rank they earn is only silver/gold at the moment (given 1 day for Arena mode only). Is the Targi game I posted above a mistake from calculating score for Arena mode or not?

[Waterd103]

For unpopular games, there are less leagues for what i see, which makes sense. I like nile but is rare to see a game

[sprockitz]

So far the scoring system for Arena mode is pretty well and easy to understand for me, until I see this game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=62764324

Here, bleu329 earned a victory and he jumped directly from Bronze league (lowest) to Elite league (highest, I think?). How could it be possible? I remember that each victory will earn you 3 points in this rank and (if able) promote/relegate to the next adjacent rank.

I also checked some popular games (7 Wonders, For Sale,...) and the highest rank they earn is only silver/gold at the moment (given 1 day for Arena mode only). Is the Targi game I posted above a mistake from calculating score for Arena mode or not?

The less popular games have only 2 leagues for this beta run (bronze and elite)

[dschingis27]

Arena mode is well done work so far! Some thoughts from me:

A) An easy way to see your personal current position in the ranking alongside the opponents near above and near below you would be really great for the feeling of playing a competition against people. It would make progressing the ladder way more personal and satisfying. Also the percentage of active Arena players better or worse than you may be a meaningful number to display.

B) I would need a separate favorite games list for the Arena Mode. The games in my favorites are those I like to play, the games in my Arena favorites were those I like to compete in. Only if there is something like personal Arena favorites (or a way to mark prefered Arena games with a different symbol like the heart), then the button "Play any of my favorite (Arena) games" is really useful.

C) It is great that the system can also search for normal games while searching for Arena opponents. However, the other way around is currently quite frustrating. I configure and open a table in simple mode, then the prompt appears "There are Arena opponents for this game", I click it and my just opened table is gone. Then I possibly wait a long time like 15 min or more to see that there are not enough opponents in Arena mode, knowing that my simple mode table would have filled up easily in that time. This is particularly true when I opened up a 2P table and Arena mode is 4P. Long story short: It would be great to have a simple mode table open and simultaneously search for Arena games. Also when you search simple mode games from Arena mode, it is not clear which game settings are used for the search.

[Tatasmurf]

I was under the impression that arena was limited to 100+elo. I just played a game of Hive with arena turned on vs someone who was playing their first game on the site, they still had the text under their name with this is my first game..

[RicardoRix]

so if you're in Simple mode then you can see which games have Arena players waiting, but if you're in Arena mode then you can't....

The link supplied by iliz sera:

https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=62764324

For me this results show an exchange of ELO, how does iliz sera see the exchange of Arena Ranking points?
I guess if I am participating in the Arena league for this game then I would see an exchange of Arena rank. But why? why are different people seeing different things?

Please stop hijacking tables and labels that are already there. It's very confusing. You should be showing both.

[PatrickoftheIsles]

I do not like arena mode, and I do not think it is a good thing.

Chess players do care very much about ELO at the top levels, it is an important mechanism for evaluating your opponent, so the statement in the original post that ELO does not matter in real-life competitions is silly.

In games where I have an expert ELO rating, if I go to the arena then I am required to play whoever is online, which may mean playing a beginner, which is not fun for either of us.

Also, resetting standings every three months is bad, because it is fun to try to build your rating over many months and get better.

ELO worked perfectly fine, no need to fix it.

The original post mentions people who will only play low-rated players in order to get small ELO boosts and thus climb the leaderboard. That sounds boring and not much fun, and if they really want to do that, then let them. ELO is a strong system, and we do not need this other mode.

Instead of doing this Board Game Arena should focus on getting more Top 50 Games from Board Game Geek, like Great Western Trail, Brass: Birmingham, and Gaia Project!