Arena season situation

[dschingis27]

There are three main problems with the Arena system:

1. Only the end state matters.
2. The very high K factor of 40 leads to big swings.
3. There is no way to filter by Elo (as pointed out, the Elite filter is kind of pointless since even players with the minimum rating of 100 can reach Elite).

This is so greatly accurately summarised! Thank you for that.

Personally, I have been rambling about the K=40 for years (I am not playing Terraforming Mars but complaining at the Arena system since forever.) It can make the experience so very frustrating and can make you not care about the Arena score after all, given it's large dependence on only the last couple of games you played. What's the point running after this score if it can just drop by 100 on any bad day without much you can do? I am convinced that many people play Arena despite the way the current system is, not because of it. The general urge to have some easily accessible pseudo-competitive system is just high, but it could easily be so, so much better.

Be assured, dear TM community, you are not the only people being frustrated with the current Arena mode. https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 87#p222587

[StrandedKnight]

Yes, I play and enjoy the Arena a lot too. I'm not in the running for a top spot, so the rank doesn't really matter to me. As dschingis27 puts it here, it's just that urge to have an easily accessible pseudo-competitive system.

So, is this system really unfair? Was it unfair what happened to Bogeyun? As stated, Bogeyun could have sat out the remainder of the season and won the Arena. Well, if the purpose of Arena is to win, then why not do that?

When I say it's unfair to Bogeyun, I mean that the Arena rewards gaming the system more than it rewards playing the game. I assume Bogeyun cares a lot more about playing and enjoying the game than trying to win an Arena season.

It's just a shame that it's left up to chance like that, because with all the games being played over three months, there are so many better ways to determine a worthy winner, and the title could hold a lot of prestige.

I'd like a different system, which I saw suggested elsewhere or maybe earlier in this thread: Keep the k-factor of 40. Update each player's Arena tokens after each game. But the leaderboard would show each player's current number of tokens, AND that player's highest token reached. At the conclusion of the season, the winner of the person who reached the highest token level, not whoever has the highest token level at the moment Arena season ends. Then, everyone has incentive to keep playing.

Yeah, this would be a lot better.

[FrankJones]

Wait, can someone help me out here ???

I am fairly high level at "Earth". I just won a grueling, difficult Arena game, and I gained .... 13 Arena tokens. Where's this K-factor of 40 ??

I am very confused.

[StrandedKnight]

Wait, can someone help me out here ???

I am fairly high level at "Earth". I just won a grueling, difficult Arena game, and I gained .... 13 Arena tokens. Where's this K-factor of 40 ??

I am very confused.

If you win against someone with the exact same Arena rating as yourself, you gain 20 points. If they're lower rated, you gain less. You would need to make a huge upset to gain almost 40.

[FrankJones]

Wait, can someone help me out here ???

I am fairly high level at "Earth". I just won a grueling, difficult Arena game, and I gained .... 13 Arena tokens. Where's this K-factor of 40 ??

I am very confused.

If you win against someone with the exact same Arena rating as yourself, you gain 20 points. If they're lower rated, you gain less. You would need to make a huge upset to gain almost 40.

Arena ranking ???

So, if an equal Elo player happens to have just started arena and has a very low arena ranting, I stand to potentially lose 35 but only gain 5?

That's absurd.

I'm one of the higher rated arena players! Is there a way I can avoid getting matched with bronze arena players !???

[Andrei3009]

Wait, can someone help me out here ???

I am fairly high level at "Earth". I just won a grueling, difficult Arena game, and I gained .... 13 Arena tokens. Where's this K-factor of 40 ??

I am very confused.

If you win against someone with the exact same Arena rating as yourself, you gain 20 points. If they're lower rated, you gain less. You would need to make a huge upset to gain almost 40.

Arena ranking ???

So, if an equal Elo player happens to have just started arena and has a very low arena ranting, I stand to potentially lose 35 but only gain 5?

That's absurd.

I'm one of the higher rated arena players! Is there a way I can avoid getting matched with bronze arena players !???

You can make so you play elite opponents only, but you still can fase 1500 opponents and lose around 30 rating. In earth arena rating in not that high unless you in top 10, in Tfm top rating around 2100 and losing to 1700-1800 opponent who probably has 500+ elo will cost you a lot

[RoyalRook]

It's psychological too. After a bad loss to a much lower ranked opponent, players likely to tilt. That's why people drop off like that, in order to win 20 to 30 games straight in a game like TM, you have to have absolute trust in your game especially when you ran into an invincible combo like natural earth cat, Ai plus AGT and media. You can still win it because they lower ranked will DEFINITELY give you tiny openings, you just have to trust it, but when you are on tilt, it doesn't matter how good you are, you wouldn't find it and grind it out.

So yeah sure the match making may work against you and bug out and give you a lowly ranked, but it also gave you more chances to win. +2 is much better than -16 to 29 against a highly ranked, whom more than likely will give you zero chance when they have the nuts.

The arena experience is pretty incredible when you really go for it, I think there is beauty in its match making flaws. It gives me feeling of going to an open tournament in chess, sometimes it's so stressful because I dont even want a tie.

[Jellby]

So, if an equal Elo player happens to have just started arena and has a very low arena ranting, I stand to potentially lose 35 but only gain 5?

Arena is separate. Arena doesn't know about elo. It's no different from playing a regular (non Arena) game against a "beginner" who's actually a very experienced player playing their first game in BGA.

[Kulikk]

100% agreed. If you are winning it is because you outplayed your opponent, if you are losing it is 100% down to bad luck!

[HappyMeaI]

Arena doesn’t care about your elo, but it affects your elo. It shouldn’t, and it’s really that simple of a fix.