Please welcome our new Lead Community Manager

[KenFin1]

If there are players cheating, why aren't you reporting them?

Because the option for reporting king making is gone, and the bar for proving cheating is so high BGA don't look into it. But it's obvious when people are using solvers etc, however proving it to the standard BGA want? Yeah good luck with that.

[Countes-Olivia-Manny]

Nothing new here!

[KenFin1]

Nothing new here!

Then why are you replying? I'll take that as acknowledgment you know I'm right.

[h_illes]

More than keeping players happy as you said, part of my job is to make sure your voice is heard.

This doesn't mean that things will change everytime someone says something on these forums. But when players talk about an issue, I'll bring it up with whom it may concerns on the BGA side.

As suggested, I'll read on these 2 topics but I am sure that members of the team are already aware of the ELO and Red Thumb concerns from the Community.

Hi! Any news on the Elo and Red Thumb concerns? It's been a few weeks now...

[BananaHarambe]

More than keeping players happy as you said, part of my job is to make sure your voice is heard.

This doesn't mean that things will change everytime someone says something on these forums. But when players talk about an issue, I'll bring it up with whom it may concerns on the BGA side.

Hello BalGAmor, welcome to BGA. I am glad to have a community manager. We had a few minor feature updates to improve tournaments earlier this year (auto Swiss option and prevent skip option) and the tournament creation community was hoping to get another round of tournament updates soon. The focus has been on (hopefully) minor updates that should be easy to implement since they are just more options for tournaments, no major reworks or new modes.

I created a forum post to compile the most wanted requests here https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=43463 . TLDR of the most requested and realistic updates.

Your help would greatly be appreciated bringing these requests to the BGA team.

Allow 1 Group in Group Stage

This bug report to allow for 1 group in group stage tournaments has risen greatly in the last few months, up from 15 votes in June to 96 votes now, very high for a tournament only bug report (Page 2). https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 3&start=10 This simple update would make Group Stage tournaments much more functional with many examples explained in the forum post and bug report. Single Group for Swiss with top players qualifying for Stage 2 finals is the desired outcome.

Staggered Start for Round Robin

There are multiple bug reports for this, but this one has the most votes. https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=8591

Round Robin tournaments on BGA are notorious for catching players off guard because they always start all games in your group immediately instead of one at a time like is required for a real life round robin tournament. This simultaneous game system has some merit for making higher game density tournaments and making round robin stand out from Swiss or Single Elimination, but it is still unintuitive and limiting in its current form.

The simplest adjustment to Round Robin tournament mode would be to include a new option called "staggered match start time" or something similar for organizers to choose how to stagger the start times of the matches. Have it default to 0 hours which will behave exactly like it currently does but with extra clarity. Options somewhere between 1 hour and 15 days would be helpful. I would personally use 1 day or 2 days most often.

Add more game duration options

Most voted one I could find. Votes are scattered across different bug reports https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=153554

Game duration options for tournaments are quite limited at the longer end with only 15 days and 30 days as options. Adding 21 and 25 days as options or 20 days would be helpful for a handful of popular games. There is also interest in allowing for longer than 30 day game duration. Many 4 player games are borderline unplayable in 30 days without timeouts. Splitting the thinking time 4 ways for 7.5 days per player in these long games often leads to players timing out just from sleeping despite being active during 16 hours per day. Allowing 40 day games would help make many game more realistic to complete without timeouts. Add 21, 25, and 40 day options or add 20 day and 40 day options.

[BalGAmor]

Thanks for bringing these up. I will relay to our developers.

Please understand that this doesn't mean it will be done/fixed/sorted. Our goal is to regularly bring new games to the Community and update the site as often as possible. But it takes time to go through all the reports and the team isn't that big. We are trying our best to improve regularly.

All I can say for now is that tournaments are being looked into by the team.

[BananaHarambe]

Hi BalGAMor, thank you for the reply and bringing it to their attention. Understood that it is no guarantee on these tournament updates and that adding more games to BGA is the primary focus with limited team size. Hopefully these update requests are feasible enough that the devs can make progress on them in between the busy weekly game updates.

[h_illes]

More than keeping players happy as you said, part of my job is to make sure your voice is heard.

Hi! Any news on the Elo and Red Thumb concerns? It's been a few weeks now...

At this point, it's been 3 weeks of no reply since I asked about the ELO concerns, addressed specifically to you. How do you think I feel about the 'my voice getting heard' part?

A few more issues that were poorly handled:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=192529 - a player lost Arena rating incorrectly. The bug is acknowledged, yet he hasn't gotten his rating points back. Why? Restoring it should be the norm.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107164 - this was me, the issue is kinda similar, I got negative Arena points for a win. The bug was acknowledged, but I never got my Arena rating back. It was not even addressed. Once again, why?

BGA has an utterly poor record of handling player relations. I thought your job is to improve that. Please do.

[T72on1]

More than keeping players happy as you said, part of my job is to make sure your voice is heard.

Hi! Any news on the Elo and Red Thumb concerns? It's been a few weeks now...

At this point, it's been 3 weeks of no reply since I asked about the ELO concerns, addressed specifically to you. How do you think I feel about the 'my voice getting heard' part?

A few more issues that were poorly handled:
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=192529 - a player lost Arena rating incorrectly. The bug is acknowledged, yet he hasn't gotten his rating points back. Why? Restoring it should be the norm.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107164 - this was me, the issue is kinda similar, I got negative Arena points for a win. The bug was acknowledged, but I never got my Arena rating back. It was not even addressed. Once again, why?

BGA has an utterly poor record of handling player relations. I thought your job is to improve that. Please do.

I think it's clear that BalGAmor's job is to make the voice of the community as a whole is heard. You might really think that this person should address all specific, individual cases. But to me, that doesn't seem realistic at all.

[h_illes]

I think it's clear that BalGAmor's job is to make the voice of the community as a whole is heard. You might really think that this person should address all specific, individual cases. But to me, that doesn't seem realistic at all.

The ELO topic has over a 1000 replies. Is that enough voice from 'the community as a whole'? Because that's what I've been asking him about 3 weeks ago.