Arena Season 3: let's go!

[Roelzzz]

This is really a sad news for me.
I liked playing several games at once on Arena.
sometimes finding a player took few days for games that are not popular and that I like.
They will not be played any longer on Arena as finding a player will be impossible.
But that's something minor.
The biggest problem I see are games that takes in real life longer then 90 minutes.
I just won't be playing them.
You took some joy today from me.

Hear hear!

[rdf240]

I agree with all the comments about disabling turn based arena. i guess the problem was some people deliberately didnt finish games they weren't doing well in? But I think there are better fixes (ie you could just "score" all live games at the end of the arena based on current positions/scores or something) Or any of the other fixes suggested.
I think the real time is much more problematic.

[Cheery Dog]

Does the switch to turned option still work?

I think for the less popular games, you might be able to find common times online with other players, start talk time and then switch to turn based.
Because really, if you can't get a normal real time game of it, you probably actually know who the other players of the game are

[Mythrix]

Thank you for taking into account this issue with the system, however this is a very poor fix. You are basically doing away with the problem instead of tackling it and, as mentioned in prior comments, preventing the Arena system from working for a slew of games (this will for instance destroy the Arena for Kahuna, which was otherwise working).

It was only "easy" to game the system (at the end of the season) because of the way the Arena games are fixed up for the turn base basis.

Instead of destroying Arena for a lot of players (who cannot unfortunately find the time to fit in lots of real time games in their schedule - and we all know getting to the top requires a grind), a much better fix would be to do the following :
- Harmonize the time per player for an Arena game (depending on the game obviously) instead of allowing players to state their preferences on the number of turns per day
- Put the timer as a fixed time per player (ie fixed maximum time for the match) instead of a resetting counter
- Close the Arena to new turn based tables in advance of the deadline, so as to ensure that all games MUST finish prior to that deadline
- Automatically attribute a loss to the player whose time has run out when the deadline for the full match has expired
- Disable the "holiday" grace period on Arena (this is competitive, people shouldn't start games if they are going to be offline).

Since Arena ranks only matter at the end of the season (no one cares who is at the top during the season), this would completely address the turn base gaming.

You could also chose to ban/punish players who have abused this to inflate their ranks.

In addition, a nice QOL improvement to Arena, for games where there are enough players, would be to have an arena "decay". Because given how punishing the system is when you reach the top ranks in terms of losses per game, the ideal stance to take when you reach the top is to stop playing. This is a poor incentive to keep the competition going.

+1 for this. Completely sums up my feelings.

I'm horrified that arena is now completely closed off to me. I am an active turn based player but I absolutely don't have the time to commit to session play. Completely gutted by this.

[rdf240]

Further to my previous comment. I've just tried real time - its not for me. I like to have a number of games on the go and then make all my moves. This is really disappointing, especially since I have just upgraded to premium.
The fact some people were gaming the rankings didn't bother me.
I hope there will be some other solution, otherwise I guess I will not be renewing!

[Velvetlad77]

Disappointing fix.

Whenever live or turn-based, the top players will still "seat out" and stop playing. It is the same problem with elo rating.

Cheating? In some games like chess, this can be of course a concern.

Some games will be hardly playable (those expert games with settings at 4 players like Terra Mystica !) means that the 4 people need to play in a row 2 hours long without being disturbed and without one of them quitting. I am afraid there will be so many games uncompleted that finally the top players will be the most present on line, not necessarily the best ones.

By the way, some people still have turn-based games pending from the previous arena season that can not be joined (because the access is broken) nor cancelled (because the table creators can not have access to the table). Please kill delete all those tables.

[board game nerd]

I like turn-based arena too

[board game nerd]

Thank you for taking into account this issue with the system, however this is a very poor fix. You are basically doing away with the problem instead of tackling it and, as mentioned in prior comments, preventing the Arena system from working for a slew of games (this will for instance destroy the Arena for Kahuna, which was otherwise working).

It was only "easy" to game the system (at the end of the season) because of the way the Arena games are fixed up for the turn base basis.

Instead of destroying Arena for a lot of players (who cannot unfortunately find the time to fit in lots of real time games in their schedule - and we all know getting to the top requires a grind), a much better fix would be to do the following :
- Harmonize the time per player for an Arena game (depending on the game obviously) instead of allowing players to state their preferences on the number of turns per day
- Put the timer as a fixed time per player (ie fixed maximum time for the match) instead of a resetting counter
- Close the Arena to new turn based tables in advance of the deadline, so as to ensure that all games MUST finish prior to that deadline
- Automatically attribute a loss to the player whose time has run out when the deadline for the full match has expired
- Disable the "holiday" grace period on Arena (this is competitive, people shouldn't start games if they are going to be offline).

Since Arena ranks only matter at the end of the season (no one cares who is at the top during the season), this would completely address the turn base gaming.

You could also chose to ban/punish players who have abused this to inflate their ranks.

In addition, a nice QOL improvement to Arena, for games where there are enough players, would be to have an arena "decay". Because given how punishing the system is when you reach the top ranks in terms of losses per game, the ideal stance to take when you reach the top is to stop playing. This is a poor incentive to keep the competition going.

+1 for this. Completely sums up my feelings.

I'm horrified that arena is now completely closed off to me. I am an active turn based player but I absolutely don't have the time to commit to session play. Completely gutted by this.

+1

[Calmon70]

I'm also mainly a turn based player who joined 2-3 months ago. I play a lot of the strategy games (Terra Mystica, Through the ages, Clans of Calendonia, Troyes, Caylus, Puerto Rico, Hawaii and more).

I have a lot of fun to bring the games to 100 ELO to activate arena and than joined basically arena only for this kind of game (99% turnbased).

For me all this is gone now, I can continue with normal turn based games but it feels way less competitive. I really don't understand why it needed such a drastic step. I mean I not even know how Season 2 Arena ended for me because there is no final list after arena ended (why is this the case btw?). So its somehow meaningless anyway when you are not #1.

I suggested already in the linked thread: Bring back turn based arena for Season 3 and work on another solution for this but please do not just remove it for the next 3 months without any replacement. The problem it caused is far less problematic than removing the whole mode.

[BruceGee]

Add one more player to the list of those who were becoming addicted to turn-based Arena play, and who can't switch to realtime.
I don't know the numbers in the different games, but I would guess they looked something like this: twenty folks or so jockeying like crazy to get to the top spot, and ten times that number farther down the ladder, just having a good time playing the game.
It was a challenge: if I play one game of this at a time, turn based, how far up the ladder can I make it before the season runs out? I don't care how many people there are above me (actually, I couldn't even figure that out) -- I just wanted to know if I could make it to 100 points, to silver, to gold, to platinum, to diamond -- I couldn't care less who ended up in the top spot.