Season 7: New Season & New Features!

[bananasplay]

As for things like Agricola just rolling their season forward, I agree that's a good step. Please though, stop doing this and then also changing the arena settings. Agricola got updated to including the extra action spaces which is fair enough if that's what people voted for, but you can't make a change in the middle of an arena season which is what is happening for Agricola given you didn't close it out. You would obviously never update arena settings mid season for any other game, so I hope that can get fixed.

I agree that it should be obvious, but it's not so for BGA—they totally changed the parameters for Saint Petersburg midway through a previous season, moving from 2-player to 4-player tables, thus giving a huge advantage to players who'd already climbed the ladder (because winning against 3 opponents is much harder than against 1). I was thoroughly disgusted and quit the season then and there.

Disappointed but not surprised to see that no lessons have been learned with respect to running a competitive environment.

[ChisaiNinja]

Also, will Guru's be updated? I have won Thurn and Taxis 2 seasons in a row and was 2nd place the previous season but am not listed as a Guru. I also played a couple other games a ton (St Pete and Happy City) and figure I probably played enough to be able to discuss the format.

From what I can tell it's all matches played for that game, and not just Arena matches, that count towards your total. For example I'm in the guru group for a game that I've never played in the arena. It also looks like it might be a % of the players for each game, so more popular games will have more gurus but you'll also need to be playing more than a lot more players to get into that top however many % it is.

[Vandaley]

Also, will Guru's be updated? I have won Thurn and Taxis 2 seasons in a row and was 2nd place the previous season but am not listed as a Guru. I also played a couple other games a ton (St Pete and Happy City) and figure I probably played enough to be able to discuss the format.

From what I can tell it's all matches played for that game, and not just Arena matches, that count towards your total. For example I'm in the guru group for a game that I've never played in the arena. It also looks like it might be a % of the players for each game, so more popular games will have more gurus but you'll also need to be playing more than a lot more players to get into that top however many % it is.

Interesting. The problem with this for T&T is there are a few people who exclusively play 2 player and have dozens of games going at once and do not play arena. This is the only way I and think of where people are playing more often than I am as I set up about 80% of the tournaments and consistently play arena (but rarely to never play the friendly games were these other players are who play all the time).

[OutOfHabit]

we will try to make sure the waiting time is predictable, so that the wait is less painful

Removing the waiting times (or more specifically: always showing 1 min or 2 min for real time games) is not only related to the arena. Prior to a few months ago, the waiting times felt like they were more in line with actual waiting times. (Still not really great, but closer to reality. This was true for all games, Arena and not.)

Important: Arena suggestions must clearly write which game options must be set (ex: "Expansion X: Yes"), and they must be options that already exist. Otherwise we are forced to set the suggestion as "invalid" and the current format will be kept for the next Season. If a suggestion is not clear enough, we recommend all Gurus to downvote it so it is not selected.

This "Format" isn't listed on the Gurus page. You can't just write it on this post and not provide proper examples to follow whee it would be used.

Did you make it clear for each game that you were ignoring the highest votes or did you just ignore it, as noted above? Some games might have suggestions that are applicable and understood by players, but not as clear to someone just pulling levers?

If the format changes for your game, you should see it in your newsfeed soon.

Any chance of adding in options to filter our newsfeed?
I don't want to see who adds my friend or who they add as a friend. And I might want to look at posts just for a specific game at some point.

Starting this season, Arena is reserved to players with a Karma higher than 60.

Thanks for this change!
60 is still really low and indicative of a problem player. It isn't hard to keep Karma perfect most of the time, with an occasional drop to 90s/80s, or a little lower when there is an odd streak of "bad days, but this is a start at least. (And yes, i know I can filter by 75+)

[flolem]

Please change the format for rallyman : GT.

The suggestion was maybe not clear enough.
But when we were talking about random track, it was to change the Track length too to random.
Random track = both track and length is random.

[VitelNet]

"Arena" mode
"For sale" & "No thanks!"

Too much players required.
Waiting time is awful!
Please, go back to 4 players-game.

[KongKing123]

However, we are still not satisfied with the Arena matchmaking, and we plan to do another experiment during a future Arena season. Again, there is no magic: it will mean that you will be able to play less games, but with more appropriate opponents. However, contrary to this experiment and following your feedback, we will try to make sure the waiting time is predictable, so that the wait is less painful.

Please don't. While well-intentioned, the previous experiment was a disaster and pretty much killed Arena while it ran.

The system is fine as is. There simply aren't enough players to design a more advanced matchmaking system around and people aren't willing to wait 30 minutes for one "quality" match.

If you want to stop people complaining about not getting Shields from their games, then just remove Diamond rank completely (at the current player counts, no game needs this) and make every victory award at least 1 Shield.

And if you really want to improve Arena, start by calculating rank based on peak score, as suggested here: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=30059. This would encourage people to play more games.

[frogstar_A]

The relegation hasn’t worked correctly for Draftosaurus - Platinum players from last season have dropped down only one league and kept their shields!

I’m not complaining but maybe check your code for next season

[JeroenDemeyer]

It seems that the longer delay discouraged a lot of you, and that this experiment had to stop. Since then, the Arena has been just like it was before.

I am wondering now: do you use the same matchmaking rules for real-time and turn-based games? I am mostly a turn-based player, which means that I'm used to waiting anyway. So I don't really care much if I have to wait a few extra hours to find a better-matched opponent.

[JackKey]

[*] For all games and all leagues, your number of Arena points is reset to 1, and your AES ("Arena Elo") is reset to 1500.

Following that, there can be a situation when 2 players of the same Silver-1 league have much different AES: one who did not play any game yet (got it by downgrading from higher league) = 1500 and another one who reach it from Bronze = 1700 by beating some tough guys on the way to Silver.

Even more, 2 players of different leagues (e.g. Silver-1 and Gold-1) will have the same AES = 1500, because they were downgraded from different leagues.

I believe the league and the position there must correlate with AES. E.g. the higher AES, the higher you in the leagues. I would prefer to have some mapping: AES in [1500..1600) = Bronze, [1600..1700) = Silver, etc. instead of those +3..5 per win.