BETA: Arena mode (Season 0 - BETA)

[dschingis27]

There is at least one drawback with the current system: If you already joined open tables in simple manual mode or opened a table yourself and then decide, "Oh I could also play Arena mode", then you get kicked out of the simple mode tables. This is REALLY annoying. I appreciate that you can wait for simple and arena mode tables at the same time, but for now, it is only feasible starting from Arena mode, not when beginning a session in simple mode.

[dschingis27]

Show the Arena tables as the normal part of the lobby, just don't show the player names \ level.

TLDR; it brings zero additional value, while it has drawbacks.

The value of ONE Lobby would be that you could watch and search all the simple mode tables while simultaneously waiting for Arena opponents. This is not possible at the moment.

[rlees]

OK, so probably this has been pointed out ad infinitum, but, the things that seem to me to seriously need fixing are
1. I cannot SEE whether there is anyone available for anything in Arena Mode. If I could, I might adjust the game(s) I am willing to play based on availability.
2. The autostart really messes with the scoring system if the player is no longer there.

I think this will become a great new feature after the problems are sorted.

[Knockando]

- you call arena "competitive mode", but I can't choose to play with players around my level, that's not what I call competitive play. For me, competitive is trying to beat strong players, fun is playing anybody

- when there is no player in arena mode, you offer a game in simple mode. the idea is good, but our game preferences should be respected (do not put me in a game with a beginner if I selected strong players and more)

[Misha]

Until now, I thought of you guys at Arena as decent guys, that listen to their fans and friends.

Now I think you are a bunch of liars, that are not able to admit a mistake. I know that's harsh, but my experience with Arena mode is nowhere near to what your are telling us, for example the average time for starting a game in Arena mode.

According to your table it takes 187 seconds(!!) to start a Terra Mystica( in average).In the last 3 days together I've played 4or 5 TM arena games, my average waiting time is 90-120 minutes.
Before Arena mode I've played 4 or 5 games per day!
You are telling us in your post, that the amount of games have slightly increased since Arena, overall that could be, the rate of TM games dropped by 66%, I could attend.
I've been already waiting 2h for a game before I started writing this!

You really screwed this website! Who on earth thought it's a great idea to limit the player's view, so that while he is waiting endlessly for a game to start, he is absolutely not able to see the other tables?!?! (and then maybe choose a less favourite game for the sake of playing...)
One can't even check his profile while waiting for an arena game... just ridiculous.

I can't talk for all players, just for myself, but my wild guess is that most players come here to play. So why do you make it harder to play (find a table) ???
I like championships (aka arena mode) , but mostly I want to play. So why don't you integrate Arena games in the existing interface? The players themselves could be incognito, so one can see only the amount of them at a table.
All would be fine, the player pool would not be split, and everybody has the best chances to be able to play

[asd123321]

Splitting the players into 2 groups Arena and regular means more waiting, the same as when more variations are added like to Terra Mystica. I already have more waiting. I would not have done either.

Isn't the Arena ranking just temporary for a season?

The idea of getting rid of the old ranking system and only having Arena ranking is very bad.

Why does there have to be an automatic start? This gets someone stuck in the wrong game situation. This has already cost me
19 ELO in For Sale which I would not have done a 4 Player.

[Manuela O]

No. I don't like It. It's terrile.

[sourisdudesert]

Until now, I thought of you guys at Arena as decent guys, that listen to their fans and friends.

Now I think you are a bunch of liars, that are not able to admit a mistake. I know that's harsh, but my experience with Arena mode is nowhere near to what your are telling us, for example the average time for starting a game in Arena mode.

According to your table it takes 187 seconds(!!) to start a Terra Mystica( in average).In the last 3 days together I've played 4or 5 TM arena games, my average waiting time is 90-120 minutes.

You are not Premium and you try to play a Premium game

As it is clearly stated in the lobby, if you are not Premium you have to wait for a Premium player to play a Premium game. So it is way more longer to play Terra Mystica for non-Premium than Premium game.

I checked your Terra Mystica games from the 3 last days.

• You got an opponent 64% of the time. Ie: despite not being a Premium member, we managed to find you an opponent for 64% of your requests.
• Your average waiting time is 13 minutes, and 5 of the 7 tables you played started in less than 5 minutes.
• This is true that you didn't manage to find a game yesterday, during a 1 hour slot. ALL your failures from the 3 last days concerns this period of time. So the obvious reason is that there were no Premium member wanted to play TM at this time.
• UPDATE: after research, we found that a table DID start 10mn after you request a table. Unfortunately for you, one of the table gave you a red thumb (personal opinion) so you could not join. Your waiting time would have been 10mn without this. With or without Arena, this would have been the same for you.

Here is the details of your waiting times on these tables
62988213: 486 s
62984563: 498 s
62979774: 3094 s
Failed after: 4063 s
Failed after: 225 s
Failed after: 55 s
Failed after: 2595 s
62915698: 801 s
62856696: 248 s
62847024: 327 s
62842279: 97 s

You are telling us in your post, that the amount of games have slightly increased since Arena, overall that could be, the rate of TM games dropped by 66%, I could attend.

Here is the real number of TM games played. Where do you see a 66% drop ??




Conclusion 1: we do listen to the community. The community is complaining about our leaderboards for years. This is why we introduced the Arena.

Conclusion 2: if you want to wait less, play non-Premium game or become a Premium user. You cannot blame us not to be able to play a Premium games while not being Premium (that's the point of Premium game).

[RicardoRix]

Firstly, acrimonious talk and fragile egos aside, some people are not using their mother tongue and there are passionate feelings on both sides, so let's be happy that at least we are all talking. Thank you to BGA for putting up with us and making changes to the site. This is very much appreciated if not always said.

I think it would be better if you made it clearer that this is indeed a 'development in progress with community feeedback' kind of idea. Just calling it beta is not really the same. If you're adding and adjusting features then this is not a beta, I think most people assume that this is the way it is going to be forever, and so scratch their heads and are immediately put off.

Conclusion 1: we do listen to the community. The community is complaining about our leaderboards for years. This is why we introduced the Arena.

Just because you come up with an alternative to the ELO leaderbaords, doesn't just automatically make it better.

May people complained - this is true, but that's only half the story. There are many forum threads, but I will link to one of the more prolific. I assume its threads like these that you have made your statement.
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =9&t=13439

In the thread there are voices for and against, IMO a stronger argument is the 'against'. The 'for' can't come up with a better solution, or even make any suggestions how to improve it.

You really need to do a poll so people can vote for and against. The same is true for all the suggestions in the suggestion / bug area.

You are likely to get a lot of voices when the topic like ELO has a big effect on the users, but just because there are a lot of them, doesn't mean they are right.

ELO calculations is not a problem, it's the leader boards that uses ELO that is the problem. You just need to adjust the 6 weeks for 1 game rule. Make it 10 games in 5 weeks and you must play another Top20 player (or something else: X games in Y weeks).

Arena Mode vs Current Leaderbaord:

Arena mode really is not leagues at all in the sense of football leagues, it's just a different ranking points system, and where you go from Bronze to Silver is similar as going from Good to Expert. This in itself is not really any different from what already exists, so ask yourself this:

Do I like my rating to be reset every 3 months?
Do I like to play games with a forced configuration?
Do I like to play against random and random level and reputation opponents?
Do I like to use automatic lobby mode?
Do I like my rating change on win / loss to be fixed no matter the ELO skill of my opponent?

Yes => Use Arena mode, No => Use Current Leaderboard.

Give out a medal at the end of each season to the current leaderboard and you're done.

I was expecting a brand new page to display results and tables and the like. But Arena mode results are almost hidden, how exactly do people get excited? Where are the elite level games going on?
As stated before, I assumed Arena was going to be a giant swiss tournament with league promotion \ demotion each season.

You should look at an event organised by Brisbane Roar et al, called the BGA Summer Olympics that worked very well. There was an initial massive swiss tournament followed by the finals – another swiss tournament with just the elite players. Loads of interaction, loads of hype, a really, really cool event
https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=2442708
(Sidenote: There was also team event organized which was really cool too)

The 'little games' in arena mode:

Currently the leaderboards for these games are already underwhelmed with activity. After maybe 2 years the top20 is not very active, it's going to be impossible to get a proper set of results with Arena mode each season for all these games. There are complaints about re-matches with the same people. No doubt endless waits to be matched to even get a game. (Also discussed before).

Out of the 170(ish) games maybe the top 20, 30, or 50 of them seem suited to Arena mode with enough interest for a season. For the rest, it would probably be best to highlight certain games here each season, maybe 20 of them, cycling games the same way configurations will be cycled for the bigger games. A poll for this each season?

Lastly, I do not like the way you have hijacked already established ways of doing things. Both leader boards should be displayed. If only one is displayed then it should be the mode of the game you're playing. Currently all games display Arena ranking just because I'm in Arena lobby mode.

/End of this nahsayers comments

[Meow1]

Show the Arena tables as the normal part of the lobby, just don't show the player names \ level.

Good question.

At first, we wanted to do that too.

However, what is the point? You're going to see one Arena table for each game, with anonymous players, which you can join. We cannot of course allow you to invite/suggest player so all you will be able to do is waiting.

So at the end, it is not different than using the automatic mode, except it needs more click and is more complicated.

Beside this, if there are several Arena tables, there will be all the same, so there is no way you can decide which one is the best for you. In the contrary, our matchmaking algorithm is making you join the right table in such a case.

TLDR; it brings zero additional value, while it has drawbacks.

A key element is that some people may prefer to play manual mode with settings different than are used in the Arena. If they can't find preferred players for their manual table, they may be willing to join the Arena queue. As currently implemented, they must abandon the manual table to enter the Arena queue.

Allowing them to keep hope of their preferred manual mode game alive while accepting an Arena mode game as consolation WOULD be different than using automatic mode and bring significant additional value, especially for games with long wait times.

One possible way to go about this would be to add an additional "advanced" or "hybrid" mode that allows automatic &/or Arena mode game selection within the manual table creation screen.