🌿ELO System Updates

[Meeplelowda]

Wow, 100 pages of comments. When was the last input from BGA?

March 15, 2024 on page 70 by lordalx. We're just barely past the one year anniversary of the last admin post, and it completely missed the point of all the criticism.

As soon as BGA rolls any of this back me and 300 other people will come here to post comments about why we don't like it and why ELO decay was better. Me and an army of rollback-the-rollback stalwarts will post until our fingers bleed. If we generate 105 pages of scattered reasoning on why BGA should rollback-the-rollback perhaps the rollback will be rolled back. This of course will trigger the rollback-the-rolled-back-rollback initiative in hopes of 110 pages of scattered reasonings and a subsequent rollback of the rolled back rollback.

Your sarcasm aside, there is a problem here, and the problem is not that they didn't revert the changes in response to this feedback. It's that they gave no explanation after months of feedback about why they weren't going to revert the changes. If they think 100s of posts are wrong, then they should explain their reasons why they think they are wrong. They can even end it by saying "we consider this issue closed and will not be taking further action or responding further." But they said the opposite. They explicitly said "We're always listening to your feedback and working to make Board Game Arena the best place to play. Keep those messages coming!" Just being silent after saying that is 1) disrespectful and 2) makes it seem like that invitation to give feedback was disingenuous.

These changes have not affected my life in the least, so I am not personally invested in what they do or don't do on this issue. But eventually they are going to screw up something major that I do care about and all evidence suggests it is going to be handled the same way.

[Zozoken]

The update is damaging in 4 ways:

1. Their refusal to revert this update and several other updates with strong negative feedback shows the company does not care about community feedback, damaging trust and potential premium membership
2. Their lack of communication and transparency on this update and several other updates with strong negative feedback shows the company does not care about community feedback, damaging trust and potential premium membership
3. Their claim that they want feedback on this update and several other updates with strong negative feedback and then ignore that feedback to do things their own way and force us to accept it shows the company does not care about community feedback, damaging trust and potential premium membership
4. Their priority to work on these updates instead of solving serious site issues and bug reports and with improvements to show on the client side, as well as games being pulled due to licensing issues without warning or clear communication (PARKS, Duck & Cover, Love Letter, many many others, thanks for bringing back Point Salad after over a year) shows the company does not care about community accessibility, damaging trust and potential premium membership

And has the following 3 upsides for the company:

1. They can pretend like they are customer-oriented because they said they listen to feedback and did not close down topics even when there was an outpouring of negative feedback
2. If the backlash does not affect the bottom line, they know they have absolute customer loyalty and can continue business as usual. If it does affect the bottom line, they can do a number of things to win back disenfranchised customers. The company may see this as a small risk, big reward strategy.
3. They can continue to claim these updates have actually improved the site by cutting down on cheating and making the site more stable, which might be real but since the company appears to have a loose relationship with the truth right now, there's no way for customers to know for sure

The truth of the matter is, this update does not improve the competitive scene of this site. Players have adapted to the competitive meta by blocking playing certain players so that they can get their full points. Elo rating on this site was already strange to begin with, but now it seems these updates encourage structural play, ironically the very thing this update is supposed to combat. Sometimes when trying to fix something, the cure can be worse than the illness.

[teallite]

As soon as BGA rolls any of this back me and 300 other people will come here to post comments about why we don't like it and why ELO decay was better.

Well, in that case you can start right away, because ELO decay wasn't even implemented in the first place.

[miklomike]

but since the company appears to have a loose relationship with the truth right now

Well said! Just like the last year's summer of games, where they said it was the most clicked on of their events. But their own numbers show a decrease in participation by 35-95% by each category.

It doesn't help that most premium users are on a yearly subscription. It makes it harder for immediate feedback where it counts.

[h_illes]

If they think 100s of posts are wrong, then they should explain their reasons why think they are wrong. They can even end it by saying "we consider this issue closed and will not be taking further action or responding further." But they said the opposite. They explicitly said "We're always listening to your feedback and working to make Board Game Arena the best place to play. Keep those messages coming!" Just being silent after saying that is 1) disrespectful and 2) makes it seems like that invitation to give feedback was disingenuous.

I still hope that at some point, (possibly new) decision makers look at this 100-page mess and decide to do right by the players.

[h_illes]

It doesn't help that most premium users are on a yearly subscription. It makes it harder for immediate feedback where it counts.

That would be me. The majority of the duration of my last annual subscription was marred by the Elo shenanigans. I have not renewed it as a result, and don't plan to until the Elo issues are properly addressed.

[KenFin1]

It doesn't help that most premium users are on a yearly subscription. It makes it harder for immediate feedback where it counts.

That would be me. The majority of the duration of my last annual subscription was marred by the Elo shenanigans. I have not renewed it as a result, and don't plan to until the Elo issues are properly addressed.

Check out the latest "improvements" to the site UX. They are spending their time breaking what was fine and ignoring what actually needs fixing (bugs, correcting ELO back to how it was etc). These ELO issues will never be fixed and this site will continue getting worse. I too have not subscribed and wont do again.

[h_illes]

I want to acknowledge the issues concerning the end of Arena Season 15 that have emerged in the past few days and explain a bit what happened and how we managed the situation.
Basically, everything was linked to the recent ELO changes (released last December)...

We're always listening to your feedback and working to make Board Game Arena the best place to play. Keep those messages coming!

It seriously saddens me how detached decision-making has become from actual user experience here on BGA. Major changes are made to the site that make it actively worse, then all feedback that says so is ignored. Extremely disappointing.

[Solarman9]

I want to acknowledge the issues concerning the end of Arena Season 15 that have emerged in the past few days and explain a bit what happened and how we managed the situation.
Basically, everything was linked to the recent ELO changes (released last December)...

We're always listening to your feedback and working to make Board Game Arena the best place to play. Keep those messages coming!

It seriously saddens me how detached decision-making has become from actual user experience here on BGA. Major changes are made to the site that make it actively worse, then all feedback that says so is ignored. Extremely disappointing.

ever since the changes that happened when we got the new logo, my browser crashes every game and gives errors every game, no matter what game. I constantly reload every game I play

[Oloof22]

I'd like to express my dissatisfatcion with current "consecutive loss" thing. I guess it was done to combat multi-account and cheating. I'm sure cheating still exists (maybe to a smaller extent), but the whole ELO system is ruined. I recently played a bunch of Mr. Jack games with my friends while he was still learning, and I hit that 6 win streak quite fast before he got how the game works and won against me for the first time. I didn't have any malicious intent, these were proper games perfectly following the rules and after all that games (20+) I would be very happy to see what our true ELO rating looks like in comparison too each other, because it contains information about victory chance, but I can't trust modified ELO to get that information from. Personally I can't give a single advantage current ELO system has over an unmodified one, and there are a bunch of disadvantages. The only thing this ELO should have is some kind of decay system (for example starting after 1 week of not playing) so people that got high rankings in the past won't get stuck in the best positions forever.