Arena Season 2: let's go!

[sourisdudesert]

Congratulations to every winners of the first official season!

Season 2 is NOW launched.

You can find here the complete list of format change for the new season.
Season 2 will end on Monday, October 5th, 12:00 UTC (3 months).

As at each start of the season, you are switched to a lower league, which puts everyone back on an "almost" equal starting line. Almost because those who had reached the upper leagues have a small advantage anyway

For this season 2, you have been demoted from 1 to 3 leagues, depending on the number of existing leagues for each game.

Minor change: games in BETA are no more accessible for Arena (this caused some difficulties this season).

It's up to you to find the way of the elite!


TO YOUR MOUSE!

[bananasplay]

For this season 2, you have been demoted from 1 to 3 leagues, depending on the number of existing leagues for each game.

Was this posted in advance somewhere?

Because I started late in certain games last season, knowing that I wouldn’t have enough time to make it to Elite but thinking that I’d make acceptable progress and only drop 1 league for Season 2, and carry on from there. Now that I’ve been unceremoniously booted down several steps (back to Bronze in my one case) in nearly everything is a kick in the face and a strong incentive to not bother with Arena, because, well, what the hell else is going to change without warning next?

[dschingis27]

I also think that it was not a good idea to relegate players TWO leagues down. It was ok after Season 0 because it was a Test Season anyway. But now it is disappointing to me. Now I have to play again against players who don't match my skill. This is not so dramatic in quick games but e.g. for Tzolkin it is annoying and it keeps me away from playing Arena. I would even suggest pre-classification into leagues based on ELO at season beginning but this seems not the direction that you want to take.

Relegating players down two leagues maybe increases the overall number of played games in the short run. But I think that it mostly increases the number of uninteresting games.

Maybe you can create a poll before next season about some general Arena issues. The poll should be among all Arena players, not only in the forum. Some points that come to mind:
1. Should relegation between seasons be always only at most one league?
2. How to handle turn-based games when the season comes close to its end?

Also: Any plans on allowing different K factors for EAS between different games? To me it is really not good to have the same K factor for all games.

Just my 2 cents. Big thanks to the staff for all the progress of the site in recent years anyway!

[sourisdudesert]

Hi

Thanks for your feedback. There are other posts where players are arguing that Elite league is not selective enough, and that it makes Arena uninteresting.

We are trying to find a compromise between something too selective and something not selective enough. Obviously some of you will always find that we don't go far enough in the right direction, but that's the definition of "compromise"

[Foppeke]

I believe it is safe to say that certinally for popular games that get played a lot the arena mode isnt selective enough.
For example 7wonders had more than 1000 players in elite league. Without additional filters (for example search above 1600, 1700, ... rating) or other measures it's far less competetive than just playing regular games with filters to strong and elite players for example.

For example value: I was in top10 for almost the entire season but fall down hard last 2 weeks (also due to bad play ). I had games where my arena points are at ~ 1800 (ELO ~450) and I played against other players in elite with ~1400 and ELO 150 or less: that's not competetive at all.
If you get a bad streak going, it's also hard to bounce back(each loss takes several wins to get back).

We also had a topic about this in the 7wonders forum
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 92&t=15960

[Pistolero]

+1

[nmego]

I wish we had a "post-upvote system" for this kind of stuff

But yeah, totally agree. I remember there being 1300-1400+ players in elite for 7wonders, that's insane. And without a way to restrict matchup based on EAS, it is just better to create a normal game to play competitive 7 wonders, because then you are able to restrict based on ELO.

[Pistolero]

I also VERY strongly encourage all players to only play versus players of exactly the same rank. Dont play with lower leagues players. You will just feed them WAY too many victory points when they win by pure luck. They should deserve the higher leagues by beating other players from their level, multiple times. And not just one lucky victory versus higher players that would bring almost all the tokens necessary to climb.

[dschingis27]

Thanks for your feedback. There are other posts where players are arguing that Elite league is not selective enough, and that it makes Arena uninteresting.

We are trying to find a compromise between something too selective and something not selective enough. Obviously some of you will always find that we don't go far enough in the right direction, but that's the definition of "compromise"

I also argue that Elite league is not selective enough, absolutely! But what makes you think that relegating players further down would make Elite league more selective? Starting further down just means that you have to play more but not that you have to play better. The players who inflate the Elite leagues are those who play a lot but aren't experts. After enough grinding, you will often get one good streak that let's you promote.

The only way to make Elite league more selective is to increase the number of points/wins you need for promotion (which should be game-specific, obviously). (And to me, Arena can only work in the long run if you gradually implemented game-specific systems. There can't be one Arena system that fits all games.)

[Pistolero]

Yes. The entire last month of the season has been completely wasted by low skilled players.
For the first month, I saw challenging games. For the last month I saw very poor games with lots of kingmakers who don't understand their bad choices. And since they were Elite, it was impossible to remove them. I had to red thumb them to avoid being paired with them. It's sad...