BETA: Arena mode (Season 0 - BETA)

[Otithes]

At BoardSpace.net they have a 'Ladder' ranking system (in addition to the ELO).

Now this sounds clever, and rewarding. I've long been annoyed with the fact that many of the top-ELO players on BGA are either long gone, or no longer play the game in question. It makes it so that a player can have a lucky streak and stay atop the rankings forever as long as they never play the game again, whereas another player who actually is way more skilled can never reach the top. I don't personally care about staying at the top of the rankings, but it makes the entire "top player" thing meaningless, and it's boring to even look at the rankings.

[Pistolero]

Speaking as the #1 player for 7 Wonders. I stopped playing competitive because I see no point of giving the chance to random players to make me lose ELO points, while I can't get upper than #1. I kinda think they don't deserve it. Now don't it badly, I was talking about random players. What I would LOVE would be a challenge against the top 10 or top 20 players ONLY. And this accross multiple games to cope with luck. I thought the Arena would be suited for this, but seeing that after 2 weeks you had already 50 elites players, I quickly saw it's pointless. Next season there will be 300? Since you can never be downgraded. There should not be more than 20 players in elite mode. Period.
For me this is the only thing that makes sense. I've read people saying "but we don't have the chance to steal your points" when they have 300 Elo. Guys, you didnt earn the chance for that. Get to 500 and then we'll talk. In any correct ranking system, 500+ elo players would be in the elite league and would ONLY play amongst themselves to determine who's best (and yes, that will include turn by turn games because 20 given players cannot all be connected at the same time. Games will be have to be scheduled). When you arrive Elite, you should be prepared to face only turn by turn games because the opponents might live on another continent. If you don't play, you lose points. When you are in a game, you have something like 12 hours to do your next move. If you don't, you lose. And if it seems to hard for you, then don't play elite mode. I see no other way of making elite players play amongst themselves and only amongst themselves.
Now, besides of this, I'm opening lots of training games for people. I keep playing and it offers the chance to people to come and see how I play, and try to understand the strategies so that, when they play for Elo, they can climb. Some players join tables and then refuse to launch the games because they realize it's training. I think this attitude is pathetic when you get the chance to see how a good player plays, and you can learn from that.

[Ponk]

I'm #1 and #3 in two games and my feelings are exactly the same. I would like to play against the top 20 or 30 to find the best. The current league system can't afford this. After some seasons the most players will be elite, because the best players are regulary promoted to the upper league and don't come back.

Let players choose if they want to play a game competive or not. If they don't want, remove elo for them. Make officiall bga tournaments in Swiss mode at the end of a season and force the top 20 the participate. Maybe let some wild card players additionally participate trough qualification tournaments.

Edit:
To get a good competive ranking, let them earn points in this tournaments. For example, if there are 30 participants, number 1 earn a 30 points, number 2 29 and so on. To make a ranking, summarize all points of the last 4 tournaments. If you want to stay on top for this ranking, you have to be a really good player (much elo or winning qualification tournaments) and you have to beat other high ranked players constantly. In this mode a "elo cheater" or an inactive player can't never reach the top.

Long story short: I really like the tournament mode here. Improve and use it for the competive mode.

[Grey Lord]

In general, I would like to thank BGA for working on the new arena mode, but the current beta version still had many drawbacks.

1) Division of players into two lobbies. You could only wait for simple games or only arena mode games. It extends the time to start the game because there are certainly a lot of players like me who would like to play the game regardless of whether it is simple or arena mode to avoid waiting.
You can leave only one lobby in the style like for simple game and add a button to the game menu button "I want to play arena mode" you would see there an extra table in arena mode after about the variation of the game and how many players are potentially waiting to launch this table without the information about players themselves.

2) Players are forced to play many games every season with players who are completely outside their level.
This is a problem especially in games where the game lasts more than 30 minutes, usually they are a games with little influence of chance. Because of big difference between the players the winner is decided often in 10 minutes. Finishing such game (sometimes even 1 hour) is not pleasant for the loser or the winner.
ELO works well to determine the level of players. It would be good to link ELO to the arena level at which you start the season. E.g. "Good" players start in "Silver", "Experts" starts season in "Gold". As a result, weaker players would have to play more games to get into the Elite Group, but on the other hand they would have the advantage of improved EAS if they make their way to the elite league after 30 games compared to top player who got into the elite group after 5 games. At the same time, such a player is likely to significantly improve his ELO, so in the next season he will start in the higher league.

3) If you want to play the game (except for a few of the most played 2 players games) with "Gold" and higher level, you must also accept playing with players +-2 levels or wait hours for start of the game. The consequent possibility of gaining 1 arena point and loss of 5 points is quite inadequate especially in games with greater chance (you have to beat 84% of your opponents just to keep the loss and gain balanced)
I would suggest for this league style to limit the loss of points to a maximum of 3 for the player who beated you, regardless of whether he is in the same league or 2 leagues below. The gains would remain the same.

4) Start of arena tables without confirmation from players and not allowing to leave the lobby when waiting for players in arena with the exception of the previously started turn base games. (Wait 20minutes for any of several games to start and when find out that you lost a game reputation, arena points and lot of ELO just because you have to go to toilet or just do not look for 2minutes and 30seconds on BGA screen is really unpleasant.)
If you do not want to add confirmation button for start you should at least consider increase the time allocated to players at the beginning of the game. 5 minutes would be nice. It should be allowed to switch to other parts of the BGA (Forum, game informations, statistics) while waiting for the arena table. In case of game start it would automatically switch to the game as in simple games now. Then you are playing turn base table where should be some warning that "arena" or "simple" realtime game just started and is waiting for you.

5) Arena tables should be in variant for which the game is optimized (or has official tournament rules). Variant can change between seasons but not to use always 2 players mode just because it is easy to start table. If there is not enough players for game in optimal mode it would be better not to have arena mode at all.
For example, Tzolkin, Clans of Caledonia, and Terra Mystica are balanced for 4 players, with 2 players you throw away three quarters of the game. Some players like it that way because they can play the same strategy in every game but I think that is not what should be promoted. (You already can play that format in tournaments)

[spedia2116]

This is terrible because it just rewards players for putting in volume. It's the same issue we currently have in the ELO system where some top players will just spam games against beginners that have close to 0 chance of winning, resulting in a lot of +1's all the way to the top.

I have already proposed a solution based on that, but more stationary. You basically keep your level between seasons but decreased by one. With assumption that we have following levels / leagues: elite, gold, silver, brown, if you end up your season as elite, you will start next season from gold level. You need to again compete with others to reach the highest one. If you don't play at all you will finally end up as a bronze. Second assumption is to play with players only within your own league.

[sourisdudesert]

UPDATE (January 24th): Arena mode is back (like it was before).

Following the survey, we are opening back the Arena today.

There is no change compared to before. The reason is this: following the survey, we are working now on a new version of the Arena, with significant changes to the lobby part to fix the following issues:
_ we want to make it easy for players from the same leagues to match together.
_ we want to find a way to have a real competition for the least played games.
_ we want to reduce waiting time before Arena games.

We decided to re-open the "old" Arena while working on this new version, because even if it is not perfect a lot of you appreciate it.

We really want to have the best system for the Arena on BGA. It may imply that we have to go through several systems before finding the right one, and this may be confusing for some of you, but we are confident that with our work and your feedback we will build something good here.

Thanks for your patience.

[AKoNIT]

Thanks a lot for all! Tu es la meilleure gerbille du monde

[tinway]

please make ROLLFTG a 2-playergame again in arena

[alextingle]

Any reason Puerto Rico has gone back to 4 players? It was impossible to get a game when it was set to 4. The 3-player version is more skill-based in any case.

Personally, I'd like you to set it back to 3 players.

[sourisdudesert]

please make ROLLFTG a 2-playergame again in arena

Any reason Puerto Rico has gone back to 4 players?

Sorry about that, it has been restored.

However, you got an hint about what we are working on. We are not very satisfied that we had to decrease player number to make possible to find opponents in the Arena. We'd like to have the best players configuration for each game on the Arena, so we'll find a solution for this.