Board Game Arena

Hagardunor wrote: ↑01 November 2026, 17:45

Jellby wrote: ↑01 November 2026, 14:42 You created a thread for public discussion, you will get public discussion, some comments for, some against.

What I have some difficulties with, is why some answers absolutely try to demonstrate that my request is nonsense. Just tell "I don't like it", or "I don't need it".

If you really want to go further and advocate against my request, try to answer some of these questions before :

• Do I understand why Hagardunor would be pleased if this request was implemented ?

• will this request cause me any harm ?

• will it harm anybody else ?

• do I know if the developpers are against implementing it, whatever the reason ?

• would I feel better if this request was rejected ?

All I want when opening this thread is to gather enough support so that the developers will take my request into consideration (we're still a long way from that). As long as it doesn't harm anyone, there's no reason to try to tear it down.

That doesn't mean I forbid any negative opinions about it (people have the right not to like it). What I can't stand is when people feel compelled to come up with bogus arguments to justify those opinions. Or maybe it's just that they're not sure of their own opinion.

Anything that rewards high ELO can potentially cause harm if it encourages people to play games JUST to get ELO. Examples include:

- colluding with other players to let them win and build ELO
- becoming addicted to luck based games trying to better their best ELO
Etc

I think out of interest it might be nice to see it,sure, but I dont think you can assume it's just an all positive thing

frogstar_A wrote: ↑12 November 2026, 23:31 Anything that rewards high ELO can potentially cause harm if it encourages people to play games JUST to get ELO. Examples include:

My attitude, and one that I wish were more widespread and that the site encouraged, is: you have a particular skill in a game. That skill can vary over time, as the game's meta changes and/or as you change and learn new things. Elo is an attempt to measure that skill. That's all. It should not be seen as a reward in and of itself; it's just trying to measure something ineffable.

By making a big deal of it, and giving out trophies etc, BGA has triggered Goodhart's Law: "when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure". Suggestions such as this one, to put your highest ever Elo on your profile, are making it even more of a target, and thus less of a good measure. I'll oppose any suggestions that make Elo more of a target and less of a measure.

This won't be popular a popular suggestion, but I think my ideal would be to have Elo be almost or completely invisible, but much more widely used in matchmaking (i.e. "only match people within 100 of me" instead of the arbitrary buckets they have now). That would remove nearly all the incentive for cheating, kingmaking, etc, and allow us to get on with simply playing games.