"New" Arena Season

[Ranior]

BGA, I can't understand how we have this issue repeatedly.

You can't put a new game in, let the arena season run for awhile and then carry forward the results while also changing the settings.

If you're going to make the "new" arena season to contain the additional action spaces, you can't keep the results from the past. Agricola got added to arena a few weeks ago and so I fully agree with the concept that you shouldn't close out the season and instead just make it a bit longer, but you can't change the settings mid season for a game.

I hope this can get updated back to not having the additional action spaces at least for this current season.

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Now for the other side of things--I really dislike this guru system. The most active users for Agricola seem to be a contingent of largely Japanese players that quite like the extra action spaces. That's great for them. However because the guru system only lets in a small slice of players to vote on the settings they like to play, and it is these mega users, they get to put in their opinions for everyone. I think that's a pretty awful system, as headlined by this decision. If you're going to just let players vote on suggestions anyhow for new arena settings, why let a small group decide things for the whole?

Perhaps I and many others would get overruled anyhow, but my experience from viewing afar is that far more total games are played without the extra action spaces, indicating most users prefer that.

[msclark]

At time of writing, 606 out of the 2988 running Agricola games use the additional action spaces, so it's a fairly clear minority of players. And you'd have to assume that they skew more towards beginners who wouldn't be interested in Arena anyway.

So yeah - a very peculiar decision. I wonder if any gurus who voted for the change would care to comment?

[Nordenwatch]

Agree with Ranior on all points - I guess I'm just glad I got to play Arena without the additional spaces, as I likely will not be participating in Season 7. Hopefully it at least switches between the variant/standard game between Seasons...

[Ranior]

At time of writing, 606 out of the 2988 running Agricola games use the additional action spaces, so it's a fairly clear minority of players. And you'd have to assume that they skew more towards beginners who wouldn't be interested in Arena anyway.

So yeah - a very peculiar decision. I wonder if any gurus who voted for the change would care to comment?

I'm not sure it skews towards the beginners. Some of the most active players really do like those extra action spaces, there are many strong and expert players that do like them. Given guru status goes to those that play the most, and right now the players playing the most do seem to prefer the extra action spaces, I don't think it's that surprising of a result.

However I do think this is an interesting issue for the new guru system. Not sure they've ran in to this sort of thing before, but I think it does point to a potential shortfall/problem with the guru system.

(Personally I'm fine if they do decide to even alternate seasons with/without the extra action spaces to help cater to everyone. I still just think it's unacceptable to have some players reaching and keeping elite league status in a different format entirely)

[RockAndSka]

What a surprise to see extra spaces in arena mode....

We have aborted the game when we have seen this...

[various_weather]

Completely agree with everything above. It is essentially a different game with the additional spaces, and it is unfortunate how it was apparently decided on. I was able to vote to keep the settings the same but I didn't realize it was only a subset of users voting.

If the data does show that more users prefer to play without additional action spaces, compared to a smaller subset of users that more frequently use the additional actions spaces, then this seems to be a misguided decision... especially with the season being extended and the settings changing midway, it doesn't make sense at all.

I cannot speak for everyone, but I think the engagement data for arena Agricola will speak for itself soon enough. I will certainly not participate in the arena mode until this situation is rectified.

[Lumin_S]

While I definitely would like the additional action spaces off, technically this is just a result of the Guru system and I can complain about that elsewhere.

The most wrong and/or annoying thing to me is changing the settings without resetting the Arena ratings, exactly as Ranior says. The admins should choose 1: change the settings and start everyone at 0 Arena points / standard start-of-season demotions; OR keep the settings and keep the ratings from the last few weeks. Not this.

[Wonderboat]

I strongly dislike extra action spaces and therefore probably won't be playing Arena at all. Very disappointed in the Gurus for choosing this. Fighting for the growth queue is what makes Agricola great.

I was very excited for Arena and just assumed extra action spaces was a niche thing and now it's pushed as a "standard" normal thing that should go in Arena?? I don't like that. Additional spaces should be an optional thing that goes into custom games. There's a reason they're "Additional" and not part of the main game.

[ufm]

Well, this is why you should cast a vote.
I prefer a group of experienced players controlling Arena system to leaving it to votes of players who played a lot.
The number of games played is not correlated to the expertise, you know.
But this seems to be the best BGA can do, at least for now.
A single experimental system cannot handle all these games efficiently...

[msclark]

Well, this is why you should cast a vote.
I prefer a group of experienced players controlling Arena system to leaving it to votes of players who played a lot.
The number of games played is not correlated to the expertise, you know.
But this seems to be the best BGA can do, at least for now.
A single experimental system cannot handle all these games efficiently...

I agree with you with respect to most of the games on this site - you can't expect the administrators to have their fingers on the pulse of every game community out there. But Agricola is one of their flagship games, with an established competitive scene, Twitch streamers and even World Championships. Whatever you think of the merits of additional spaces, making such a change is clearly going to be controversial and delegating the decision away to an oligarchy of highly active players seems rather short-sighted to me.