The developer has previously stated that each Arena season features a different expansion, and there was actually an official poll to decide that Alien Artifacts was to be selected. There is nothing inappropriate about this decision and I do like cycling between expansions. Now your complaint is centered around "Alien Artifacts is a unbalanced game", which is true to a certain degree, but looking at past threads, literally every arena season had some people complaining that the chosen expansion is unfair, unfun, or too luck-based. That's the essence of card games, and each expansion may be flawed in its own way, but people simply live on with it. There are many, many games on BGA to enjoy anyway.
Speaking of competitive integrity, which I emphasize a lot in such threads, I've come to the conclusion that in most cases I'm simply not good enough of a player to make such claims. Players have close to 1900 EAS for a reason. I entered the season riding a 10+ game win streak and strolled into top 10 for a moment. But the slightest of mistakes quickly brought me down to earth. I wasn't even close to 1900 (peaked at 1770), but my skill level and luck can only bring me that far. Skill dictates consistency, and while I sometimes win games off top players due to the somewhat high luck factor RFTG has, these players still hold a commanding win rate against me. So I suppose I wouldn't care too much about ranking when I'm out of the top 50.
Above are some objective observations. I'm not here to disregard your feelings, so I'd share some of my thoughts on the game's balance.
Each expansion has some "unhealthy" cards. Unhealthy, as in "requiring less skill to pilot". I never liked Galactic Federation (seriously, I still think the discount should be -1). Mining Conglomerate is busted when one opens with Alpha Centauri. Later in GoS and RvI we have stuff like Improved Logistics (by the way, Imperium Convoy is a much better design), and Galactic Bankers as an overly good starter world. Some people liked BoW most. Woah, prestige is a broken mechanic that the top level player base dislikes as an consensus. Pan-galactic Affluence is a good example. Galactic Power Brokers wins games easier than Galactic Federation: it has draw power, prestige, and points. Playing these cards don't necessarily mean a win, but it allows for less skillful players to spam develop or win without developing any sort of strategy. One never likes losing despite outplaying the opponent, but oh well, as previously mentioned, a bit more consistency would help. Now onto Alien Artifacts.
Alien Artifacts is centered around "discounts" and "bonuses". It discourages doubling on an action because doing so might accidentally favor the opponent. This is why Research Labs, something that's pretty bad in other expansions, is somewhat more playable. One has to play more tactically, and slowly build engines to leech off opponent's actions. The biggest problem in my opinion is the "spam development" strategy you mentioned, and that comes from the abundance of "draw 1 when you place a development" (Public works power). It's guaranteeing endless draw while aimlessly playing developments. The biggest culprit would be Galactic Investors, which is about as evil as Galactic Power Brokers. The strategy works because developments are generally cheap, so you're actually net-gaining when playing stuff. Also, most developments generate value (Galactic Federeration(ugh), New Economy, Galactic Expansionists) and score points along the way, and if you have some worlds their value sky-rockets. Many developments offer other discounts, such as Interstellar Bank and the Terraforming cards, and if they're cheap, they become problematic. An example would be Scientific Cruisers: It does too much for a 2 cost card, and it's cheap fuel for aimless double develop actions. And there are multiple copies of it, ouch. The same doesn't happen with the actual engines: worlds. Worlds tend to do too little in the game, and while they produce stuff they most of the time don't come with consume powers. Alien Artifacts tries to buff settling by introducing more terraforming style cards and tourist world style powers. The downside is that they're somewhat expensive, but the payoff is immense...if your setup is quick and accurate (requires skill).While you are setting up your engines, your opponent may be double-developing like mad and leeching off your settle actions, which happens in 15% or so of games, and losing to that is extremely tilting. Just think of this: You can win by spamming developments, but you almost never win by spamming worlds, and you actually lose a lot by doing so. So while I like the idea of such buffs, they are still a bit slow. (Maybe worlds could be worth more points for example.) The reason that produce-consume strategy is dominant in the base game is because the game is slower, discounts are way less prevalent, and cheap stuff is scarcer. So spending a turn to build Diversified Economy or Consumer Markets loses less momentum. In Alien artifacts these engines are often slow, so I'd much rather just go for Galactic News Hub (a bit too good imo), or the old school Tourist World. Although the card pool is bigger, less strategies and card combinations are viable. As for military, it's still in its weird spot of being a hit or miss. The pool of high value military worlds is still a bit small, so it becomes a bit reliant on luck. That said, having too many high cost worlds isn't good either, so we might as well leave it where it is. Overall, I think we're simply ranting about development spamming, but it's a game design issue, and people have different opinions on it, so we can hear out what other top players think.
