Board Game Arena

You can adjust settings to change your pairings to only be at the same level, but you will reduce your pool of opponents. Also, if you make your settings have you paired at a level of +1/-1 level, this can still mean pairing a bronze against an elite, because there may only be a bronze and elite level for that game.

Also, tournaments (which this forum/thread are about) are a wholly different thing to Arena. There isn't a separate forum for Arena itself though.

I actually like it when I get paired with someone higher rank in arena, because I'm going to get lots more points for a win than I will lose with a loss.

If you get paired with someone too much lower than you, then you can get 0 points even if you win. It still counts for Arena ELO, though.

FSKFSK wrote: ↑08 February 2025, 07:46 I actually like it when I get paired with someone higher rank in arena, because I'm going to get lots more points for a win than I will lose with a loss.

If you get paired with someone too much lower than you, then you can get 0 points even if you win. It still counts for Arena ELO, though.

You can't really make it pair only lower or only higher - all the filters are +/- some number of levels. The only purpose of the filter is in determining how far from your level you want your opponents to be (eg. only on your level or some distance away in either direction).

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑24 January 2025, 00:22

BananaHarambe wrote: ↑23 January 2025, 23:16 There are some serious red flags with the tournament you signed up for that would make me run away personally:

-It's a group stage with 2 stages of Swiss
-Each stage is 20 matches!
-Game duration is 30 days so the first round will take 600 days to complete

This particular tournament is called "The Long Game." At least there's a little bit of warning. But clearly not everyone who entered understood how Swiss tournaments work. Nine months ago in this tournament someone asked "When does the next round start?" The tournament administrator responded "When the current round finishes."

If the person who asked the question understood that a Swiss round lasts as long as any table in a round has not finished up to the maximum round time, maybe they would not have joined the tournament at all. If everyone said, "um, no, I don't want to be playing a tournament for 3 1/4 years [because the second stage is just as long as the first]" then the tournament would fail and the TA would learn a lesson. So far 30 people have withdrawn from this tournament!

I had another comment on group stage swiss with a format like this. I believe that for Group Stage all Stage 2 Swiss portions are bugged to always have 5 matches, even if you set less. I've encountered it when setting up second stage for 3 matches where it made 5 matches (even says so in the text link here:

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=339223

Based on this I believe the tournament will be bugged and actually end after 5 matches in Stage 2 Swiss. So technically it will only take 750 days max to complete the tournament, not 1200 like intended.

Do these Tournament Forums need a READ ME for tournament creators as recommended reading before making tournaments? Something we can link to others. Most importantly it should include a list of all MAJOR BUGS for each tournament type so players can avoid those settings (no stage 2 swiss in group stage), but also recommendations on registration time, tournament size, number of rounds (swiss tournament logic), etc.

BananaHarambe wrote: ↑13 February 2025, 22:50 I believe that for Group Stage all Stage 2 Swiss portions are bugged to always have 5 matches, even if you set less.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=127102 (As of 2024-06-28, "We confirm the issue and are working on it.")

Mathew5000 wrote: ↑14 February 2025, 03:22

BananaHarambe wrote: ↑13 February 2025, 22:50 I believe that for Group Stage all Stage 2 Swiss portions are bugged to always have 5 matches, even if you set less.

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=127102 (As of 2024-06-28, "We confirm the issue and are working on it.")

Oh nice, so there’s 2 bug reports that are acknowledged for that! One from June 2024 and one from Feb 2024.

Thanks; I had not been aware of the earlier bug report https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=105389