Points on Arena Games

[Dodoilfilosofo]

Hello
This days I'm playing on Arena with this game, and I find very hard to rank to higher position. I'm currently on platinum, and the matchmaking system always matches me with lower ranked players, so if I win the game I earn a point, but If I'm in second or third position I lose almost every point.
Today happened that I won a game, but I earned no points anyway for the lower rank of the opponent (#82254889 this was the match).
Now, I play just to have fun, a rank or points doesn't change my desire to play, but I admit that I'm starting to feel a little frustrated by the matchmaking system.
Do you feel the same? Any suggestions? Do you think that the fact I earned no points is a bug or just the result of a bad matchmaking system?

I really apologize for my English
GL and HF to all of you

[Dyluck]

I agree that this points system is not good, and discourages playing once you reach a high tier early.

Currently I have reached Gold 6 early in the season, and I realize that I have no incentive to keep playing for now. I only have a 25% chance to win a 4 player game, and if I do win, I only get 1 point since there are only a dozen players at gold and everyone else is silver or bronze. But on the 75% chance that I lose a match, I will lose up to 3 points. This is not a good value and not good odds at all. I'm basically being encouraged to not play any more until more people climb to gold.

[Ranior]

The arena system is a bit odd in that respect, especially for games with a lot of leagues. One thing you can do is to adjust your personal settings such that you don't want to play with players 2+ ranks away from you--this means you won't get tables very quickly, but does at least ensure you'll play against people that can help you advance.

It is weird to me that you still do gain ranking points once you are elite from anyone, but when you're in other leagues, even though your EAS score is still being updated behind the scenes, you seem to get nothing for playing very low ranked players at the time.

[MoiMagnus]

Peoples here (https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =9&t=18661) are complaining about a very similar problem. Though they are mostly top players of games that have thousand of players (like 7 wonders), so their complaint are more of the kind "when you reach top 20 worldwide, the system really discourage you from continuing to play by fear of losing this place", so opinions from mid level players would be welcome.

Associated suggestion you can vote on: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=30059

[frogstar_A]

I agree that this points system is not good, and discourages playing once you reach a high tier early.

Yes, it's a shame. I find myself not wanting to play at the start, because it's so hard to progress until there are lots of Platinum and Elite players.

One suggestion I think would improve things is that you always get 1 shield for beating someone no matter how low down a league they are. Currently, if a Platinum player beats 3 Bronze ones he gets nothing at all, and if he beats another Platinum player + 2 Bronze ones he gets one shield. If there was a minimum of 1 shield he'd get +1 or +2 shields for those victories, which is more worth playing.

Peoples here (https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =9&t=18661) are complaining about a very similar problem. Though they are mostly top players of games that have thousand of players (like 7 wonders), so their complaint are more of the kind "when you reach top 20 worldwide, the system really discourage you from continuing to play by fear of losing this place", so opinions from mid level players would be welcome.

I will admit that I have also been in this position - I was fortunate enough to be 5th in Sushi Go in Season 3...but actually what happened is that when I made it to the Elite League I was actually 3rd at that point, but I then didn't want to play any more because if I lost I would go down loads. So instead I just sat out the rest of the season, during which time two people passed me and I slipped from 3rd to 5th. It would have been nice to play more, because playing is fun, and because I'd have had a chance at winning the league, but the system tends to encourage you to stop if you just want a trophy of some sort and don't mind too much which one.

In my opinion it's less of a problem though than the one above - because sitting out or not is under my control, whereas not progressing is frustrating and out of my control.

[Dyluck]

Yeah I gotta say, getting zero points for winning a game against 3 people is the dumbest thing ever

[dschingis27]

I want to add that there is also the other (equivalently bad) side of the coin, you can also gain good points by only getting 3rd place sometimes. I had a game once where I got +3 in silver league from 3rd place in a game with opponents from higher leagues. While this is not as frustrating as getting nothing for a win, It feels totally odd to get +3 for a 3rd place. So a system change preferably addresses both issues.

[sprockitz]

the problem is this league system never made sense when playing people at other levels. And you pretty much can't play games within your own level only because you will never get a game (mostly b/c there aren't enough players, but also b/c it would require all other players to also have the requirement to play against their level only). The leagues don't make sense, I argued against them and offered more mathematically sensical solutions, but the powers that be weren't interested.

They complain too many people reach Elite, so they drop you more levels...which has almost no bearing, they need to realize how flawed this level system they put into place is, but they cannot admit it.

So yeah the best solution if you want to progress at a good speed is to not start playing until the season is half over. Let other people do the hard work of leveling up for you.