Board Game Arena

That is dumb, that you can red thumb people in arena just because they're a better player than you so you don't have to face them. I think they fixed that, so that red thumbs don't affect arena pairings anymore?

That's also a defect in the elo system. If a game has a luck component, the weaker player can win a certain percent of the time as long as they understand basic strategy. If you play someone with a much lower elo, you will lose elo on average, because the elo propbability distribution doesn't work for luck-based games.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑30 June 2025, 01:01I think they fixed that, so that red thumbs don't affect arena pairings anymore?

No. They announced that they were going to stop having red thumbs affect Arena pairings and even explicitly said it was because it was being "abused" (they actually used that word in the announcement, so they are fully aware that it is a problem), but they never implemented that change and never explained why they didn't go forward with it.

I think the answer is to just play and not care about your elo or arena rank.

The strategy to get #1 arena seems to be "go on a winning streak, and once you're in first stop playing and hope nobody can catch you", at least for games that have a substantial luck component.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑30 June 2025, 03:11 I think the answer is to just play and not care about your elo or arena rank.

The strategy to get #1 arena seems to be "go on a winning streak, and once you're in first stop playing and hope nobody can catch you", at least for games that have a substantial luck component.

Yeah. I don't get the arena fascination, but, to each his or her own, as the saying goes

I've been playing arena mostly because it's easy to wait in the queue for multiple games at the same time, and you don't have the issue of people quitting/sleeping at the game start screen.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑30 June 2025, 02:06

FSKFSK wrote: ↑30 June 2025, 01:01I think they fixed that, so that red thumbs don't affect arena pairings anymore?

No. They announced that they were going to stop having red thumbs affect Arena pairings and even explicitly said it was because it was being "abused" (they actually used that word in the announcement, so they are fully aware that it is a problem), but they never implemented that change and never explained why they didn't go forward with it.

I have been told that Ark Nova players have a discord group that has shared some kind of browser script or app to allows players to mass red thumb the lower rated players to avoid playing them in arena and wasting time.

The Ark Nova community has taken the red-thumb mechanic to another level and is using it to try and create skill based matchmaking.

Why can't they just make the karma penalty based on the games completion percentage? If you quit earlier, it's a smaller penalty and if you quit later, it's higher. Maybe start at -10, but every 15% of the game played, it increases by another -10. That way you can't just farm Yahtzee or Lucky Numbers to get back the -10 in about a half hour.

Shogun2049 wrote: ↑02 July 2025, 22:18 Why can't they just make the karma penalty based on the games completion percentage? If you quit earlier, it's a smaller penalty and if you quit later, it's higher. Maybe start at -10, but every 15% of the game played, it increases by another -10. That way you can't just farm Yahtzee or Lucky Numbers to get back the -10 in about a half hour.

Sometimes people might have a legitimate reason for quitting - a life situation arises, for example. And maybe in one or more of that person's games, that person is actually winning and assured victory.

SO, instead, that person gets a loss in these games, AND a minus 10 Karma penalty, but your suggestion might inflict a minus 50 Karma penalty for a single game in which the person who forfeited on time might actually have been winning.

If a game is at or beyond 50% completion, "Quitting" should just be considered "conceding", since conceding would be allowed at that point anyway. Full Elo to the winner; and no need for a major penalty to the quitter, since conceding is a valid move at that point anyway.

FrankJones wrote: ↑02 July 2025, 22:31 If a game is at or beyond 50% completion, "Quitting" should just be considered "conceding", since conceding would be allowed at that point anyway. Full Elo to the winner; and no need for a major penalty to the quitter, since conceding is a valid move at that point anyway.

I assume that you restrict your reasoning to two player matches.