Board Game Arena

I think ELO decay is defeating the purpose, that you said ELO does on this platform:

lordalx wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 10:41 The best way to assess your experience and skill in each game is through the ELO system, which adjusts your ranking points after every non-friendly completed game.

But decaying ELO is really against this idea of what ELO shows. It's also blurring the difference to the Arena-Ranking - which is already a ranking for recent events. The normal ELO doesn't need to depend on any recent events - it only needs to show skill level.

Another problem: When everyone starts at 0 ELO, you needed ways to feed points into the system. That's so far achieved by favorable K-factor for new players and the down-cap at 100. This way seemed quite balanced as it ensured that new players joining the community don't draw their points out of the community, dragging everyone down. So far so good - without ELO-decay. This system didn't need a mechanic to erase points from the system repeatedly and I think this is bound to drag everyone down - not just the players it's supposed to hit. People will hate to play with players whose ELO got artificially deflated.

I do realize that - as many other players - I've just jumped right at the change that I think is bad. So I'll also say this: I really appreciate most of the other changes you made - especially fixing the evaluation within teams!

Please don’t take away the ability to red thumb, i dont want to be forced to play against someone I’ve identified as a multiaccount or toxic chatter & player to play arena. If people are abusing it look for a way to identify abusers instead of removing it, (find people mass red thumbing top of leaderboard or people they haven't played against)

Please raise the karma requirement for arena and weight the karma system by game length and/or make the karma system have much longer memory. Currently some players farm karma in 5 minute games of 7 wonders and then sabotage 2 hour long games. It is too often i see players who have 100% karma but their game record indicates they have established a pattern of leaving specific games.

I will atleast need a great interface where I can track which games I need to play to avoid elo decay, ideally on a seperate tab. I dont have much faith that that will happen, so I am not really looking forward to this change

Ranior wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 16:36 Power leveling--I understand the concern about the people abusing the system, but I think this "fix" hurts more than it solves. There's a lot of people that just play a bunch of games in a row with friends sometimes, this "fix" isn't good for that. For lots of games with smaller player pools, if you play real time games around the same time most days, you wind up facing the same opponents fairly regularly. Especially for higher player count games. I do not like this change.

Actually, this is perfect for this purpose. Players shouldn't be basing their ratings on their performance against just their friends. The elo pool bases player skill relative to their opposition, playing a minimal number of players messes with that. Nothing wrong with playing a lot of games with friends, but that's more of a casual thing that can be done in unrated as well. If you were trying to gauge your skill level though, you should be playing a much more diverse field than that.

Are achievements for cooperative games still active?

lordalx wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 10:41 → Power levelling
We encountered many situations of power levelling, linked to multi accounts, even if we are still fighting against such practices, it became obvious that the current system might encourage it.
To prevent this, any consecutive wins against the same opponent will reduce the amount of ELO points awarded from this victory. This reduction will be gradually higher as more consecutive wins are accumulated. This way, we encourage you to challenge other players to keep the original spirit of the ELO: show your skill at a game compared to the whole community, not just the same ones.

I think a good tweak to this would be to change the K-Factor on repetitive rematches instead of just reducing the points awarded for a victory. So while you gain less if you win, you also lose less when you lose and the expected win/loss would still be the same. So you won't be discouraged to play a rematch when you found someone you enjoyed playing with. And offering a rematch is a nice way to emphasize you had a good time. Playing different opponents is great. But making new friends is too - and you barely befriend someone after just 1 game. Often going in a rematch is a conversation-opener for me.

I don't mind, gaining less in case I win twice (or more times). But to not discourage me from accepting the rematch, there should also be less at stake should I lose the 2nd game.

I strongly disagree with the idea of adding elo decay and removing the ability to filter from arena with red thumbs. Others have already spoken as to why these are bad ideas, but just wanted to add my voice in opposition.

Especially with red thumbs, getting rid of them will make Arena mode terrible for long games. We already have a problem with quitters, and the rep requirements are not strict enough to filter them out.

Ceaseless wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 17:50

Ranior wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 16:36 Power leveling--I understand the concern about the people abusing the system, but I think this "fix" hurts more than it solves. There's a lot of people that just play a bunch of games in a row with friends sometimes, this "fix" isn't good for that. For lots of games with smaller player pools, if you play real time games around the same time most days, you wind up facing the same opponents fairly regularly. Especially for higher player count games. I do not like this change.

Actually, this is perfect for this purpose. Players shouldn't be basing their ratings on their performance against just their friends. The elo pool bases player skill relative to their opposition, playing a minimal number of players messes with that. Nothing wrong with playing a lot of games with friends, but that's more of a casual thing that can be done in unrated as well. If you were trying to gauge your skill level though, you should be playing a much more diverse field than that.

You didn’t address the portion of his post not regarding friends. I’ve played many consecutive games w/ ppl I don’t know. I played 8 straight matches against the back to back arena champ in dig up recently. Won 5. I don’t know this person. Why should these wins count less? Also how do you make friends here? By bumping into ppl you share common games with.

Some comments regarding overall BGA rating system and this update:

ELO ranking allows to classify players in 7 distinct skills levels: Beginner (0 point), Apprentice (1-99 points), Average (100-199), Good (200-299), Strong (300-499), Expert (500-699), Master (700+).

How about adding more levels?
This is one of the most upvoted suggestions: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=13021

→ Team play

Even without fine-tuned team setting, this alone will greatly enhance team game experiences. Good job

→ Cooperative play and non competitive game

This is debatable. I'm against the change though:
https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=33774

→ Power levelling

Imo, this should have been done long before. Want to play only against 'friends'? 'Friendly' mode is there.
However, as others said, this doesn't work properly in many games with a small player pool.
Also, this adjustment should be applied to the whole K-factor to even out the risk and reward, rather than rating gain alone.
If not, this will highly discourage rematches against the same opponent.

→ ELO Decay

I wrote a post about this 3 years ago: viewtopic.php?t=18601
But, now I think Arena mode also needs ELO decay as parking frequently happens even in Arena mode.
Also, playing 1 or 2 games periodically should not either stop or affect rating decay, for obvious reasons.

→ Red Thumbs for competitive play

I don't know how this would go as this hasn't been done yet.
Indeed the red thumb system has been largely abused in Arena mode.
However, it is currently the only way to prevent all kinds of trolls from matchmaking. This must be done with caution.

Elo decay is fine. Something similar to glicko. If you don't play then your skill does tend to decrease. So you have to prove to the system and other players that you are still as good as you were when you last played the game.

Definitely need more ranking types. 200-300 differences are OK. But anything above master also has differences.