Players quitting games they are losing is a serious problem for arena

[dschingis27]

This happened to me for the first time this week, but twice in last 2 days, and in 1.5 hrs live games which is very annoying. It seems like the player leaving didn't lose any ELO, how is that possible/fair?

I guessed the games you are talking about from your profile. First, one of the games was quit by a beginner player with 0 Elo, so this player cannot lose any Elo. Also, on BGA, you never lose Elo when you have 0-100 Elo and you never go below 100 again. This is to make apprentice players easily identifiable and to provide those new players a nice first goal / not disencourage them by a large up and down of their Elo. You should see the value 100 as the actual "point zero" of Elo competition on BGA.

Taking the quitting player into account for ELO calculation would be much more logical, and even giving an additional ELO penalty (even if small).

In fact exactly this already exists. When you quit early, you are not only losing Elo for losing the game but also some extra amount of Elo as penalty. However, this only carries out if the above rule is not violated.

[shyrma]

In fact exactly this already exists. When you quit early, you are not only losing Elo for losing the game but also some extra amount of Elo as penalty. However, this only carries out if the above rule is not violated.

Thanks for the clarification! Indeed both were players at 100 ELO or less, that explains what happened
So a way to avoid the risk in long games is to play with players above 100 ELO I guess, even though it's not really fair for beginners.

[seattlecyclone]

I will agree that it's not great to treat it as a tie between all the non-quitting players when someone quits early. Someone with a high ELO playing against people with lower ELO will see their ELO go down in this circumstance even though the game was not allowed to finish. Perhaps it would be fairer to calculate ELO changes based on each non-quitter defeating the quitter, but ignoring the rest of the pairwise matchups entirely. That way each of the non-quitters is guaranteed not to have their ELO go down.

[shyrma]

I will agree that it's not great to treat it as a tie between all the non-quitting players when someone quits early. Someone with a high ELO playing against people with lower ELO will see their ELO go down in this circumstance even though the game was not allowed to finish. Perhaps it would be fairer to calculate ELO changes based on each non-quitter defeating the quitter, but ignoring the rest of the pairwise matchups entirely. That way each of the non-quitters is guaranteed not to have their ELO go down.

I think that's a great idea!

[xxerox]

ELO should not matter in Arena bcause ELO is pointless. Some of the top ELO players abused the mechanics or cheated to get so much points.