🌿ELO System Updates

[h_illes]

OK, this is getting ridiculous. Normally, if I win 9 out of 10 games, I get +2 ELO for each win, which balances out the -18 for the one loss. But if I don't even get the +2's, but get the full -18, it just feels hopeless. How am I supposed to counteract the eventual losses if not by winning? And the consequence - why is my rating decreasing, even though my skill is not?

WAKE UP, BGA. Show some respect to the players, respond and take action NOW.

[Osnofaac]

the lack of communication and respect for their clients is just crazy. not even the courage to show up and defend their own measures.

[LesserJester]

OK, this is getting ridiculous. Normally, if I win 9 out of 10 games, I get +2 ELO for each win, which balances out the -18 for the one loss. But if I don't even get the +2's, but get the full -18, it just feels hopeless. How am I supposed to counteract the eventual losses if not by winning? And the consequence - why is my rating decreasing, even though my skill is not?

WAKE UP, BGA. Show some respect to the players, respond and take action NOW.

agreed. Let's look at an example.

Next Station London - Arena. Me vs a player called Aksukarhu. (green thumbed - they're fun to play against) We're at a similar level. 5 games played. 3:2 win:loss but all of them extremely close.
193-195 (loss)
186-186 (won on tie break)
188-191 (loss)
192-188 (win)
215-209 (win)

These are really close games, won on fine margins, with the lead swapping constantly throughout the games. There is no way either of us should be penalised for having played this person before in Arena nor having the win ELO reduced. I just got a reduction applied, despite having to absolutely battle to overturn their strong lead. It was neck and neck until the last couple of plays. This ELO overhaul is madness. It's not an easy game. a 2:2 win loss ratio before this game was played, how is that indicative of me having any kind of advantage?

What uttter warped thinking has gone into this new ELO system? Is it because the people making the decisions have no ELO amassed to speak of? Seriously look at a few of their accounts. Some of the main people have loads of games with just 1 ELO and not many, if any, >300 ELO in anything. If you're new and can't be bothered to take the time to get good at a game then of course you're going to want a system that seems to favour you and close the gap more quickly. But in doing so ELO is not a true reflection of skill anymore.

the lack of communication and respect for their clients is just crazy. not even the courage to show up and defend their own measures.

As for why the silence? Well it's easier not to try and defend the indefensible I guess. Better to be an ostrich and pretend it's not being criticised than acknowledge that it is and have to respond. I hope I'm wrong but so far it doesn't look good does it?

[Zozoken]

Do draws break winning streaks? If so, that may be the workaround for the strange penalty.

[h_illes]

Many games do not have a draw.

[Janetta]

As usual, feel free to post your feedback, we will continue to monitor the current situation and improve the system accordingly.
These changes are a first step towards a more enjoyable overall experience for ranking on the platform and that we heavily rely on your feedback during this process. We acknowledge the existing limitations in the current system and will continue to explore ideas for enhancing the team or cooperative game experience.

BGA admin asked for feedback . . . we are nearing 300 replies to the original posting . . . but maybe more significant are the 143 THOUSAND + views to this thread.

To say that there are a lot of folks concerned about the changes BGA admin has made would be an understatement. Not everyone . . . including me . . . can articulate what is wrong with the changes . . . and not everyone . . . including me . . . wants to put their concerns in writing.

BUT . . . again . . . 143 THOUSAND + views to this thread ! ! ! People want to know . . . are the changes permanent . . . will BGA take up any suggestions . . . how is BGA receiving the feedback they requested . . . ? ? ?

[6element]

The Elo stealing of the first kind (for consecutive wins) is obviously going to be reverted (hopefully sooner than later, because we care about health of BGA) - it is actively damaging the gaming community on the site and it helps with nothing.

Regarding Elo stealing of the 2nd kind (for inactivity) - it is going to be applied only once per quarter and hasn't been applied yet (ever). Since the demonstrated speed of BGA reaction to feedback is quite slow, it might take substantial time to be reverted. Unless they revert it as part of the whole package.

But the direction is obvious - changes are eventually going to be reverted or completely redone, since they don't solve issues they were supposed to solve and create unforeseen issues. So far nobody liked them and the fact that "majority didn't complain yet" isn't really a good defense.

PS: The lesson someone might learn from this story is the following - excellent implementers of existing (already designed and tested) board games do not necessarily possess skills needed to design a meta-game of (tweaked) Elo ladder climbing. Good software engineers aren't necessarily good game designers. Time will tell if it'll be learned.

[h_illes]

Look at this game: https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=455318170

It's a hard-fought, close game against an Arena top 3 player. Why do I get penalized for winning? You might argue that the penalty is just -11%, but it's still 0.5 ELO burnt, and if I win 1 or 2 more, it will be even more. This makes no sense.

[Scops]

In the end it's not so surprising... all these measures are penalizing strong competitive players which are a very tiny minority.
Online gaming platforms are always looking for ways to make weak players feel less weak so that they don't quit. It's normal... nobody likes to lose... but public evidence of your poor performance can be even worst that the loss itself and people tend to quit when it becomes too obvious.
Power Levelling and Elo Decay do the job quite well by flattening the elo distribution curve so that everyone feels a bit less weak at the game.

For me, this is a major disaster and now I find this platform a lot less enjoyable. But that's just minor collateral damage for BGA.

You might overthink this. What you say means that they (a) put in the amount of thought that you did...

You do have a point here!

[Siveure]

There are a couple strange things I've noticed about the power-levelling change to the system.

1) There appear to be some cases where the consecutive wins doesn't count all your wins vs that player. For example: the winner of this game https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=453273097 has 13/13 hits in finished games vs the player in 4th all time, and gets full elo for this game. At a guess it is only checking games in the last month / 30 days. Of course, the solution of "I have too many wins vs this player, i will try to not play them again for a month" does run into the issue that you are actively selecting the players you want to play against (which is what bga is proposing to remove). I also don't believe the second issue is confounding the time hypothesis.

2) https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=455422695 in this game I noticed that in the elo calculation popup I had consecutive wins (2) vs the player who quit. on checking my history vs that player it seems like the consecutive win penalty counts even games where players quit. The interesting corollary that i have yet to verify is whether consecutive win streaks end in multiplayer games where a third player quits because you are technically having a tie with the other players in the calculation.