[ARENA Season 0] Switch between 4p and 3p versions

[Gormenghast]

I'd love to have a 7 player 7 Wonders arena. Something's magical with 7 and 7, I guess.

[smugskull]

Arena is perfect as it is.

More than 4 players is too random. Leave that to simple mode.

Now for alternating seasons on 3 and 4. I am not a fan of 3p, as a player have access to all resources and that takes away a lot of hard decisions from the game. But I guess I would just be skipping the 3p seasons.

[RicardoRix]

I like to play 5 or 7 players. In my eyes, the game really shines here.

2 very popular and successful 5-player tournaments were organised here:
https://boardgamearena.com/group?id=2356793

The 'more competitive with less players' argument is very thin. It's just more of a known-known that you're playing with. So when it's this situation you just do this to win, and if it's that situation then you just do this to screw them up. If it's a larger player base then you need to be more dynamic in your positioning.

With fewer players you're just trying to highlight the counting cards and possible denial of resources\certain cards as a strategy when I don't see this as the main theme of the game.

In 3-player, just because you know to bury the only double stone from giza/rhodes doesn't sound like a high-level tactic to me.
And in 4-player the high number of resources just means in later rounds it's more of a case of the brown cards you get left with, rather than picking up the right ones during the round with the other cards.

[smugskull]

Arena is perfect as it is.

More than 4 players is too random. Leave that to simple mode.

Now for alternating seasons on 3 and 4. I am not a fan of 3p, as a player have access to all resources and that takes away a lot of hard decisions from the game. But I guess I would just be skipping the 3p seasons.

Actually, now that I am plying more of Arena, I think allowing 3p player games along with 4p would be better so people wouldn't be left out on tables. But I dislike very much 3p

[Serilo]

Arena is perfect as it is.

More than 4 players is too random. Leave that to simple mode.

Now for alternating seasons on 3 and 4. I am not a fan of 3p, as a player have access to all resources and that takes away a lot of hard decisions from the game. But I guess I would just be skipping the 3p seasons.

Yeah but it also takes away some ... things you usually lose to even if you try. These hard decisions you talk about.... some of them you can`t make at 4p. You cant avoid being short of something like loom if your non-neighbor plays it first round(unless you have THAT wonder). You have a gigantic problem if your non-neighbor refuses to play military, which you cannot force them to. If they play science, you usually don`t win.

[dschingis27]

@Serilo: Exactly, thanks! I'd also say that there are truly hard and interesting decsions in 4p, 5p, 6p, 7p, but the frequency of these decisions is lower than in 3p. Just because in the 4p+ games you end up more often in unlucky situations with no power to do sth about. Or let's say you have more often the feeling at game end that many of your decisions didn't matter at all.

[Pistolero]

Now for alternating seasons on 3 and 4. I am not a fan of 3p, as a player have access to all resources and that takes away a lot of hard decisions from the game. But I guess I would just be skipping the 3p seasons.

I suggest you have a read at https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 92&t=14557 about the 3P configuration. Maybe this will change how you view 3P

Cheers

[Serilo]

Arena is perfect as it is.

More than 4 players is too random. Leave that to simple mode.

Now for alternating seasons on 3 and 4. I am not a fan of 3p, as a player have access to all resources and that takes away a lot of hard decisions from the game. But I guess I would just be skipping the 3p seasons.

No. Its different, with different decisions. What you call a bad feature of that one(players have access to all played resources(hint: you can discard them)) isn`t worse than what happens at 4p - all but one player have access to the resources, and the military situation can be wrecked by your non-neighbor if they ditch military. I`ve seen players with a high rank- higher than 30 - getting 4th simply because no one else made major errors and they... sat opposed to a scientist(who never played military)

[Gunslinger99]

Having been forced to play the the 4P version because of the Arena, I find the games extremely boring. Every game is the same! Hali going for science like crazy, and nobody ever tries to stop it. If it's not Hali, it's Babylon. Repeat endlessly. I don't understand how players can find this configuration entertaining.

[Pistolero]

Suggestion for the coming 3P season in the Arena: put everyone back to the lowest rank. Why?
The main reason is that being an elite 4P player doesn't mean AT ALL that you are an elite 3P player, and not even a good one (the opposite is true also). The games are completely different and there is no reason why the rank should be conserved.
Then, it seems the developer think it's nice that the players get rewarded by being promoted. So, by putting everyone back to the lowest rank, it gives the chance to everyone to climb the ladder again and to feel the reward from promotion to upper ranks.
Finally... Do you realize there are now 670 elite players for "only" 400 for the league below? The system currently in place makes no sense. It's like a world dominated with pretended super athletes. Doesn't seem right to me... The current implementation is just a reform of the old ELO system, except it's worse because low skilled players have made it to the elite league by playing against very low skilled players.
If all players are not brought down to bronze, this will only get worse as time flies by. With a system with leagues, the player distribution should be closer to a gaussian curve, with only a few percent belonging to the elite league...