Sudden drops of ELO

[ChiefPointThief]

Weird system!
This creates a situation where I can count the time spent by players and simply not play the arena at the end of the season, guaranteeing myself a victory.
I'm not even talking about the fact that in this case people from the same region in a game for 3 people will have an advantage and so on

Indeed! Anybody who can play games at a faster pace than most of the bga community can exploit this system.

(d) Players with ill intentions can still game the system to some extent by starting a game close to the end of the season, then making fast moves to get to a point where they can stop playing altogether (a few moves before losing), and use less time than their opponent even by the end of the Arena season. Of course, this is risky, as it doesn't work against fast opponents, but the issue is real. I have seen this happen not in Arena, but in turn-based tournaments where there is a relatively strict time limit for every round of games. (Once this pattern of behaviour was identified, the perpetrator was banned from the group and all future tournaments.)

It's better than the previous system, as euklid314 said already.
Guess we have to live with this unless someone comes up with an objectively better solution.

For starters bga could perhaps limit ppls ability to exploit the system by not allowing slow turn based games at the end of the season? That seems like an objectively better solution.

(a) It should be made very clear to players how this works, as many are still not aware. Perhaps a warning (or several) as the Arena season approaches the finish. This is something BGA could and should address.

Actually they do. For example: https://imgur.com/a/LBEdvio
Imo, if players simply ignore these warnings, it's on them.
Also, they link the FAQ in the lobby page and block turn-based table generation during the last week of each season.

The warnings don't show until late in the season. You can join a 1 move per day game w/o any warnings and receive a quit penalty for staying within time. Why allow 1 move per day games a month out from the season when the game requires 60+ moves? In order for the game to be completed by the end of the season why not make it mandatory for the game speed to match that?

There is no reason for an honest player to view the faq because they aren't trying to game the system and intend on finishing their games before season end. I was completely unaware of it.

The fact that bga blocks tb games a week out means they acknowledge that creating tb games late is a problem. They just didn't apply an adequate solution to tame the problem. 24 moves per day 7/6/5 days remaining is still better than than 1 move per day games several weeks out.

Also, the actual ELO changes still do not get displayed anywhere, ever. This issue is why this very topic was created in the first place.

It's a side effect of turning the game into a friendly mode game, I guess. It can be improved, but afaik its priority is very low.

I've seen extreme drops in ppls profile before (my friend went from very strong player to the 100s) but I didn't know the cause. This should definitely be displayed.