Board Game Arena

Sorry but this is not helping - we need a chance for both players when the other one breaks the code.

Congratulations. This one MIDSEASON change completely killed arena. How hope you're happy with yourselves.

95% of games are now either a tie or 1st player loses.

This rule does slightly improve the game but I don't understand why you can't just implement the 2-player version where each player gets their own code. From what I can see it doesn't seem like a matter of difficulty, it's just that you refuse to implement it for whatever reason.

It really feels like that you can hardly win as a starting player. This just feels unsatisfying.

Maybe it should be done like competitive mode in Break the Code. A match consists of a series of games where each person is first player once.

Yeah this new rule is bogus. Now I'm losing ELO whenever I play because it ends in a TIE and I more often than not play lower ELO players. I thought the new rule was supposed to make everyone WIN? A win is significantly different than a tie. Please either change it so that all players WIN (not TIE) or get rid of it entirely. This is stupid.

Whether you tie or win, you still got the same result as the other player and both your elos should get closer: so the higher one is reduced and the lower one is increased. Your expectation seems to be that a win should always increase (or at least not change) your elo. That's not how elo works, that's not how elo should works. You want something else.

Jellby wrote: ↑28 August 2025, 17:28 Whether you tie or win, you still got the same result as the other player and both your elos should get closer: so the higher one is reduced and the lower one is increased. Your expectation seems to be that a win should always increase (or at least not change) your elo. That's not how elo works, that's not how elo should works. You want something else.

You are right, my initial post was made in a reactionary fashion so I didn't think about it too much. I have since had the opportunity to do so, and have made a new suggestion even for a better rule that I think would improve the game greatly and be easy to implement too over on the bugs/suggestions page. Here's a link to it for everyone to check out, I think that active discussion about it and votes should bring it to the attention of the devs and hopefully it can get implemented and be a better experience for everyone involved: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=181758

And now I just realized that apparently not everyone gets an opportunity to even get the tie! Today and this rule just keeps getting better and better!

New rule is horrible, gives 2nd player MAJOR advantage because amount of turns does not matter. Either make this like break the code where you have 2 games so each player can be second for one, or make it so other player always gets a guess after their opponent cracks the code no matter if they are first or second.