How can BGA improve Real-Time matchmaking?

[RobertBr]

• Do away with the Arena system. I understand that some players are competitive to the point that internet fame is worth something to them. I'm not of that opinion. Arena takes away from the pool of potential real-time players I would be happy to play with, and if they're better they win, still getting the laurels to their ELO and getting some of that fame anyways. If that means rebranding BGA because it has the word "Arena", well it's leadership, they can do whatever they want!

Try to think about your tone (or perhaps your knowledge of BGA). Arena exists to try and solve problems. There were a variety of problems, they were raised in the forums, BGA took them seriously and tried to address them by introducing Arena (its quite new, I've played for more time on BGA before Arena existed than I have since it existed). As your complaints show any change BGA implements has the danger of unintended negative consequences - which is why they spend serious time and effort on them. And it gets harder for them the larger the number of games and the number of different player demographics (the number of games has increased ten-fold since I started playing, when there were no cooperative games, no parlour games, none of the medium to heavy weight trendy designer games, no wargames, no multi-player tournament play, no meaningful Arena options, Elo worked differently, etc.)

Your tone is very much 'god, this is so easy, why are BGA so incapable of seeing how this could all be fixed immediately and perfectly'. If you think that it might suggest you do not fully understand how difficult it is.

[Perduicitte]

About marketing:
Who watches TV, really? I also put that under the "disingenuous comment". Not realistic.

• This forum is marketing. (Customer relations)

• Relevant subreddits are marketing. (Viral marketing)

• Using Asmodée's publisher & distributors & retailer's networks (channels) to create hype for BGA is marketing.

• Relevant Discord channels are marketing. (Viral marketing)

• If market depth within western countries' target population is pretty saturated, you diversify georaphically. And linguistically. (Market expansion)

• Social media, if people still pay attention to that, is marketing.

Hope this helps you get up to speed. And I'm not in the marketing field, so this is far from exhaustive and may actually be inaccurate.

I suppose the bashing has begun, this is gonna get old very soon.

me

[Perduicitte]

About tone:

Yours is an informative post. It is very, very, very rare!
My experience has been more on the side of "mwahahaha TV adds! lol" without further thought.

So yeah, my tone could be better. I guess I soured over time.

me

[Meeplelowda]

About tone:

Yours is an informative post. It is very, very, very rare!
My experience has been more on the side of "mwahahaha TV adds! lol" without further thought.

So yeah, my tone could be better. I guess I soured over time.

me

Feel free to just focus on one narrow aspect and ignore the big picture. The big picture was what specifically you wanted BGA to do to promote whatever games you feel that you are waiting for too long so that you don't have to wait as long. You have subsequently given examples of what you would like to have done. That is a big improvement over the original post (as in the OP of the other thread) saying "this is a sad leadership" in which you said nothing about what you would do differently. We can actually have a discussion about specifics. We can't have a discussion about some vague complaint that "they failed to have real-time players matching" when obviously there is real-time player matching, just not at the frequency you want for the games you want.

[Wreckage]

The pool of available players for each game has basically been cut in half since arena players and non-arena player never see each other.

There are reasons to avoid arena. For instance if 2 or 3 players like to play together, but enjoy games that include more people. Also, arena mode may have game settings you don't like. Or maybe you like a game with all experts.

There are players I used to play games with a lot, but haven't seen them for a couple years. Once in a while I see that they are still here, and playing the same games as me, but they are in arena and I'm not. It's basically a separate site, in practical terms.

If they made an option to wait for both arena and non arena games simultaneously, then players like me that don't play arena, would have even longer waits.

[dalembraun]

I started using BGA at the beginning of the pandemic, and my usage then (and now) is with a certain circle of friends only, using private tables only. I have a premium account so we as a group can play any of the games available. I do not use BGA to just pop on and find if a particular game is being played. Perhaps I'm not the general player that BGA (or you) is hoping for - one who starts tables and hangs out in case someone else wants to play. I am willing to pay a premium to play the high-interest games, and I hope my subscription funds more talented programmers to port many more games to this site.

[Jellby]

If they made an option to wait for both arena and non arena games simultaneously, then players like me that don't play arena, would have even longer waits.

I have a dream. A dream where Arena and non-Arena tables are no different, where you can see both types of tables in the lobby and choose what you want (or "any" if you don't care). The only difference should be that in Arena tables you can't see who's already at the table (but you should still see how many players are there), and you can't change the settings (but you can still see which settings they are).

[Perduicitte]

Thank you for those who offer toughtful comments!

So far, there was no new idea from those I posted from the start, but discussion and new information happened. In sum, my understanding:
- Marketing: nothing interesting on the topic so far, see my description of marketing above, albeit clumsy, if in doubt
- Algorithms: nothing on the topic so far
- Arena: although some really like arena, and apparently it was an answer to players' dissatisfaction, the bottom-line is that Real-Time and Arena are in direct competition for players
- Obsucre new lobby: better addressed elsewhere
- Premium is NOT the solution: As explained elsewhere, https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 1&start=20, it does not address Real-Time matching. As for dalembraun, I understand that it addresses: "I have a premium account so we as a group can play any of the games available. I do not use BGA to just pop on and find if a particular game is being played." (I copied your comment there, as it's its proper discussion thread and albeit different from mine, your perspective is very well put, thank you!)

2 questions:
- Do you have further ideas?
and
- Am I correct if...? from experience (and not from data, I don't have data), I imagine that the games played Real-Time, Arena excluded, look something like this (imagine a bar chart, below):

IIII
IIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII
IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII.100....................200......................300.....................400......................500.........................636 games
Most played ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Least played

Explained in words: I have the impression, for Real-Time, that a very few games get played A LOT, and the remainder (far from being niche) get played almost none. Is that correct?

Thank you for any thoughful perspective, information, new ideas, or data!

me

PS: Thank you RobertBr, for

Your tone is very much 'god, this is so easy, why are BGA so incapable of seeing how this could all be fixed immediately and perfectly'. If you think that it might suggest you do not fully understand how difficult it is.

... but no, I don't underestimate the complexity. This is why I started this thread: to understand better, and to discuss it within the community. I positively support (now and previously) any thoughtful answer, like yours.
Cheers!

[Smeg]

Explained in words: I have the impression, for Real-Time, that a very few games get played A LOT, and the remainder (far from being niche) get played almost none. Is that correct?

You can see a live list of all real time & turn based games here:
https://en.boardgamearena.com/gameinprogress

[Stuff by Bez]

I wonder if it'd be worth having one or two different games highlighted each week. Maybe choosing from games that are a little older. Maybe giving folk an achievement if they play the game of the week, and another if you manage to win it?

Stuff that is newly released on BGA will get more folk playing. Stuff that is more popular IRL will get more folk playing here.

There's probably a lot of older games that could use a little help to be recognised as a game worth playing.

I'd also suggest that some games should maybe go back to alpha/beta. I've played most of the games here, but "I remember...." is still on my unplayed list despite having started maybe 5 games of it. Because it's bugged out every time.

By having slightly shoddy games like this on the list of 'released' games, it discourages folk from trying a game they don't know. Maybe the implementation will have issues.

I honestly wish that there was a UX person employed at BGA. As an example, I hate the way that there are at least 5 totally different ways of placing stones in very similar abstract games. Do you get confirmation? Do you have to click at the top, or again on the piece? Do you get a short time limit? Whilst the time limit is going, do you click to confirm, or cancel?

By having such different systems across similar games, it's again another small barrier for folk who might be happy to try a new game if it had a similar UI but the change of game rules and UI is a step too far.

This probably encourages folk to stick to the games they know even more than they otherwise would.