Do i understand something wrong about arena rank?

[Wrathberry]

There is a cost to what you want: a longer wait time. The player base is not that huge, so who do you think the top players should be paired against? 700 elo vs 500 +? 300? That is a way smaller pool of players. Not all of them play arena. Not all in your time zone.
If the queue time gets too long, a good player just not might not play at all. So now the good players are punished.

Bear in mind that Ark nova is very popular right now. In other games it will be a lot worse. And if it is 3 or 4 player games...

So it might be doable for Ark Nova, you could broaden the range after a certain wait time etc. But I think the cost outweighs the benefit.

i absolutly dont think that the cost is too high. i would gladly wait a few minutes for a game to start, instead of it starting instantly, and match me with an opponent leagues above me. and yes, the higher ranked players have to wait longer then, but thats the price for a fair competition.

you could also add an option so every player can decide by themselfs if they want to get matched against anyone, or if they decide to wait longer, to get an opponent on their elo.

so everyone can decide for themselfs if they prefer speed or a balanced matchmaking.

in league of legends the highest ranked players have to wait 10 minutes or something like that for a game. and noone would get the idea to just match them against worse opponents, because thats no fun for both sides. especialy not for the people who constantly get crushed by better players

[ylathor]

So lets compare the player base of league of legends and a game on bga... 10 minutes is not going to be enough. For lower elo it might be, but not for the top players. For lots of games the queue time is already quite long, without any restrictions.
You could also just ask the opponent to abort the game at the start. I think most players would agree to abort if the elo discrepancy is very high.