🌿ELO System Updates

[Wreckage]

ELO decay is good. But it needs to be more (steady fixed rate), with no way to avoid it by playing a single rare game. Leader boards would be more fun with a more dynamic struggle to keep the top spots, instead of the top players basically never playing anyone.

If you are a confident master player, you wont mind actually having to play the game sometimes. A player who stays at #1 for years while only playing 4 games per year against a weak player (or an alternate account) is just taking away the fun of hundreds of players that are probably better than them.

I have some concerns on the other issues, but I'm glad to see the bga team making these effort.

[Silene]

ELO decay is good. But it needs to be more (steady fixed rate), with no way to avoid it by playing a single rare game. Leader boards would be more fun with a more dynamic struggle to keep the top spots, instead of the top players basically never playing anyone.

There's Arena for players with high activity and the wish to be on Leaderboards and getting trophies. It's not necessary to have any kind of leaderboard for ELO-values that players have. Right now they are not even very prominently placed on the site. A lot of players don't even know they exist or how to see them. Why the fuss about them and why do you need a dynamic struggle around those? If you want dynamic struggle, you can find that in Arena.

If people are annoyed the same players are shown there despite inactivity then by all means - just get rid of the boards. Those are not needed. You can see Arena boards for best active players. But what is needed that when I play someone, I want to make an estimation about how good they are. I want to be able to see in their profile, how good they are in which games. Independently to whether they are actively playing or not. It's not very helpful to see they have 299 ELO in 50 different games and having no idea which of those they are REALLY good at.

Or introduce stricter rules for the leaderboards which players are shown there. Reduce the duration of inactivity that removes your entry in the list. Or if you want to be more strict - make it a x games in y days, and only show the players on the boards that do fulfill the requirements so that playing one single game doesn't get you back on the board.

[Wreckage]

If you want dynamic struggle, you can find that in Arena.

Perhaps the best players in some games are playing arena, but I know games that almost none of the best players join arena, because the arena settings don't match higher skill level preferences.

If people are annoyed the same players are shown there despite inactivity then by all means - just get rid of the boards. Those are not needed. You can see Arena boards for best active players.

The leader boards are fun, so I'd like to keep them. It would just be better if they were functional. On the games I play, the ELO ranking is more accurate than the arena ranking.

The current system discourages players from continuing to play once they reach a certain position. Also, fewer people get the enjoyment of reaching the highest positions, even if they are better players than the ones who are permanent fixtures there.

[quietmint]

My gripe that the iconography is missing. If you remove the elo number display then it must be replaced by some graphic indicator of the level beginner, apprentice, master, etc. It's not clear at all which blue vs purple background color means what. Something like the cell phone signal icon to show beginner players vs master players whenever you refer to these elo levels, especially inside the game in the player panels where you don't use the words!

[Fletcheese]

The decay system as suggested disproportionally punishes players that play a wide array of games at a high level. We shouldn't have to play at least one of every game that we've ever reached strong+ status in just to maintain current ELO. It's not like there's a rapidly evolving meta or regular patches - it's the same game, why would a player's skill level change if they're inactive for 3 months?

Definitely in the Silene camp here. Arena is for active competition. ELO is for general skill level. If there's going to be decay, it should be on Arena points, not ELO.

At the end of the day sure it's just internet points, but feels like a silly change. I hate feeling like I "have" to play every game at least once every 3 months or I'll lose rating.

[Silene]

The leader boards are fun, so I'd like to keep them. It would just be better if they were functional. On the games I play, the ELO ranking is more accurate than the arena ranking.

Given how hidden those leader boards are, I don't think they are even supposed to be used as that kind of competition. However if they should stay then maybe the leaderboards should be fixed. I.e. by NOT showing players with no or low activity. Please don't try fixing it by destroying ELO into some kind of arena-like high-activity-tracker.

The current system discourages players from continuing to play once they reach a certain position. Also, fewer people get the enjoyment of reaching the highest positions, even if they are better players than the ones who are permanent fixtures there.

I have 654 ELO in Stone Age. That doesn't put me anywhere near an interesting position on the leaderboards. Obviously there was a time in the past, where I played a lot of that game and I think I ligitimately reached that ranking. I don't think my skill has decreased, but my fascination with the game is not the same as it was back then, so I play it only sometimes. I played it twice this year. And I'm not afraid to lose ELO. If I play and I lose, I'm perfectly fine with losing ELO. The reason I'm not playing more than this is that are just too many other games that are now more interesting for me.

It's not essential to have values like that on my profile. But having a profile (not just me but also other player's profile I look at) that's just a mush of 300s is pretty lame and boring and does not give me a good idea on what games the player is good at. And I wonder - who does it hurt if I keep these 654? I would have already lost 60-120 (or even 180?) points in this year alone for 1-2 play-free seasons and nobody would gain anything from that.

[dgjxqz]

This prevents you from competing against them in ranked games or the Arena, but not in Tournaments.

Which is why I have always believe that tournament system better reflects a player's skill than arena. Unfortunately BGA disfavors tournaments, giving less exp points and haven't actively improving it for ages. IMHO, arena should just be run like official tournaments. There are still many ways to dodge tough opponents in arena even without red thumbs. Also, if I'm not mistaken, non-premium players never meet each other in 2 player arena for premium games.

There are co-op games where the developers attempt to implement a meaningful ELO system like Hanabi and there are co-op games where the developers refuse to (or being persuaded by another developer who tirelessly quibble at every related post into not) implement a meaningful ELO system. For Hanabi an imprecise ranking would be good enough but the developer may need to somehow deflate the points (currently there isn't much distinction from Beginner to Strong Players while too many different levels are cramped into Masters). For co-op games with meaningless ELO, you might as well disable ELO ranks totally since most Masters play worse than Apprentices.

Another thing about co-op games is that there are open co-op games (e.g. Daybeak) and secretive co-op games (e.g. Hanabi). In the former case, players can't cheat by leaking hidden information to teammates, so tournaments should be enabled. Tournaments could also be enabled for the latter if they can be played fully anonymous with chatting disabled.

[Castz]

I assume that the ultimate goal of this change is to better differentiate casual and competitive play, also discourage ELO grinding.

In this sense, the visibility of ELO and the associated ELO achievements are already opening up lots of competiveness.
The proposed mechanism for ELO decay is also, on the contrary to the intention, encouraging competitiveness instead of casual play, in normal games.
The consecutive win penalty is just ill-conceived and making even normal games worse than before. It punishes and discourages skilled player to continually compete. Say, I would just play less or red thumb to avoid ELO penalty, for maintaining my ELO level & rankings.


By refering to some ranked system in other online games (e.g. Battle Royale, MOBA), a better solution might be hiding the ELO number from normal games to maintain casual-ness.
To further discourage ELO grinding, but to preserve some progression/matchmaking, the ELO ranking may be replaced by a broader range categorisation, say Top 20/10% player. This also discourages ELO grinding, say, to the 500/700 mark.

On the other hand, instead of ELO decay at the normal queues, season reset already suffice to maintain skill level or competitiveness.
Arena mode can be made more variety/accessible, and let the ratings, rankings and achievements be in this mode.

[Waikirikiri]

Dear players,

→ Power levelling
We encountered many situations of power levelling, linked to multi accounts, even if we are still fighting against such practices, it became obvious that the current system might encourage it.
To prevent this, any consecutive wins against the same opponent will reduce the amount of ELO points awarded from this victory. This reduction will be gradually higher as more consecutive wins are accumulated. This way, we encourage you to challenge other players to keep the original spirit of the ELO: show your skill at a game compared to the whole community, not just the same ones.

Power levelling
There is an unintended consequence of power levelling.
I live in and play from New Zealand.
This means there is a limited number of players that I play against in the games I play.
One might play against the same player daily as a simple coincidence of the time I play.
It isn't that I don't challenge or play against other players - it is simply that we regularly play at the same time.
I'm now being penalised for regularly beating an opponent who simply plays at the same time of day as me.

I think this is an unintended consequence of power levelling.
I don't "challenge" this player, we simply regularly play in the Arena at the same time of day.
I'm penalised for beating this player.
Perhaps the fix is for power levelling not to apply to Arena games where one can't choose one's opponent.

[ufm]

There are co-op games where the developers attempt to implement a meaningful ELO system like Hanabi and there are co-op games where the developers refuse to (or being persuaded by another developer who tirelessly quibble at every related post into not) implement a meaningful ELO system.

Would you please say it to my face if you have something to say? I haven't blocked you, PM me.
You're putting blame on me just because you failed to persuade any developer with your terrible arguments.
You thinking something meaningless doesn't automatically make it so.