Cannot Change Desired Level in Arena Mode

[sourisdudesert]

Q2/Q3: if you win against an opponent from league N-3 you do not get any Arena point. This is a regular complain (you can search in forums about this), so we have to fix this. This fix has practically no incidence on waiting time.

[PiratenPatsy]

I am a bronze league Piraten player, if i win against a player who’s three leagues above (Platinum and higher), I will not gain any shields?
There are barely any bronze-gold league players willing to play the game in real-time arena. Pls allow players to decide for themselves if they’re okay with matching with players of 3 leagues and higher…

Thank you

[sourisdudesert]

There are certainly a lot of Bronze players wanting to play against higher leagues to get plenty of Arena points, the problem is the opposite: no one from the upper leagues wants to be ever matched against a bronze player with no way to get anything from there.

We are receiving tons of complaints about top players who did not get anything from these matches and do not want to receive more.

[PiratenPatsy]

Yes, from the perspective of players in the upper-leagues, that makes a lot of sense.

Nevertheless, my question is really simple-
Why can’t players decide the arena setting for themselves? Why does have it be enforced?
If a player from the upper league feels they have nothing to gain from matching with players from the lower leagues, they can always place restrictions in their personal arena settings which will ensure that they never do.
There really is no reason for BGA to take this power away from the players by enforcing the settings.

Thanks for all your prompt responses so far
It is highly appreciated and helpful.

[Ranior]

The arena settings and queue certainly do not work perfectly, there are issues. One of them is exactly this--the queue allows players of very disparate league to play each other, and the low league player will sometimes get big wins and rapidly rank up. Because of this, everyone can often hit elite league, and you don't get any benefit really from having a league system to try and keep players playing others in similar skill level, etc. Could we perhaps throw all that out and just display everyone's arena rating at all times and not care about trying to match players within their skill levels? That is one option I suppose, but as long as they keep leagues they should put some restrictions on it all.

Having the defaults set to something that prevents disparate league matchups is welcome. Many players will not modify these defaults, so that's one reason. Another reason is what I list above, the system will only really start to work well if players somewhat face opponents in nearby leagues so that advancement up the leagues is not so inevitably up.

Finally, the other issue is somewhat the one I listed--without making this change, individual players cannot reasonably enforce their own preferences in multiplayer games. You will just be sitting in the queue forever and watch all the other players match at other tables. Your settings will prevent you from getting three players in the queue that all want to play at your table before there are four total players in the queue with matching settings.

Actually there is even one more problem---currently the queue just ignores all your personal restrictions after long enough anyhow. Even if you click that button for never played with low karma players, you can still wind up playing someone with 0 karma. (Which if the admins are still reading and you're trying to improve arena, stop letting stupidly low karma players play in arena games, and make the karma filters actually work!) The reason being after queueing for long enough, the system drops all your personal restrictions to match you at any table. This is a reasonable enough step which helps ensure players won't wait too long for a game, except I think the queue should listen when you say you "never" want to play certain settings. But as things work today in real time queues, the system eventually drops all those restrictions and will place you at a table with anyone, be they low karma, many leagues away from you, etc, etc.

[PiratenPatsy]

Hi again Sourisdudesert,
Could you kindly respond to my last post?
Many thanks in advance

P. S. I really would like to know why BGA has to enforce anything and not allow the power to decide arena settings with the players.

[aesche]

Hi again Sourisdudesert,
Could you kindly respond to my last post?
Many thanks in advance

P. S. I really would like to know why BGA has to enforce anything and not allow the power to decide arena settings with the players.

Because a large group of players is too blind or dumb or both to find the settings, so instead they complain to the owners, who understandably can‘t hear it anymore. Can be read out of the last 3 answers from souris already.

[Wonderful Plays]

I like the idea behind this change, but I'd like to approach it from a different perspective. The best way for a lot of players to get more fair games is to incentivize people to play. There is just a lot of parking and anxiousness when playing arena, my idea:

https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=30059

Just let people spam the games and good luck with fairer matchmaking I think it is an important project.

[PiratenPatsy]

Q2/Q3: if you win against an opponent from league N-3 you do not get any Arena point. This is a regular complain (you can search in forums about this), so we have to fix this. This fix has practically no incidence on waiting time.

From personal experience, this fix has a huge incidence on waiting time. For a bronze league player in a popular game like Piraten Kapern, the waiting time earlier would’ve been 1-2 mins, now it takes 12-15 mins on average. Pls have a look into this and remove all league restrictions. It’s quite frustrating to not even be able to get a single game sometimes in the time that I have to play.

[Ze Monstah]

All got back to basics, anyone can set any level restriction, again.