Board Game Arena

BalGAmor wrote: ↑12 March 2026, 11:05 TOURNAMENT INVITES UPDATE

We have added a player search field to give you the possiblity to invite individuals to your tournaments.

Once the tournament is created, the host can now invite players directly from this new space.

From the Tournament State section, you can search and add players using the dedicated field. Please note that you can only invite players who meet your tournament's specific criteria (such minimum ELO and/or Karma). As a creator, the system will clearly indicate if a player matches these requirements.

If you wish to bypass these criteria and invite players who do not match them, you'll need to create a private tournament and use the existing invite link feature.

Invites are sent individually and appear as a notification for the invited player, no more emails. Your name will only become visible to other participants once you have accepted the invitation.

We are currently exploring the best way to invite players who already participated in previous tournaments, yours or others. We will keep you posted when this feature is ready.

There is also a ridiculously low limit on this of under 50 on this invite system. Not exactly great if you are trying to register a tournament and re-invite the 300 players that played last time... This limit on invites needs to be removed, because it shouldn't be this hard to alert people to the fact you've set up a new season of a tournament.

And for context on the last part, the answer isn't purely to have an option to re-invite all 300 players who played last season, though there should be some sort of mass invite option, but the limit is still an issue, because say in my last tournament 5 players went 5 days over time, I probably don't want to invite those players back to the next tournament, so merely an option to invite back the entire field from last season isn't the solution either.

A further issue is you can't invite people at this scale via DM either, and while I understand the need for spam limits on DM's, you can't have limits on DM's and limits on invites, because how are you meant to register a tournament at any sort of scale?

BalGAmor wrote: ↑12 March 2026, 11:05 TOURNAMENT INVITES UPDATE

We have added a player search field to give you the possiblity to invite individuals to your tournaments.

Once the tournament is created, the host can now invite players directly from this new space.

From the Tournament State section, you can search and add players using the dedicated field. Please note that you can only invite players who meet your tournament's specific criteria (such minimum ELO and/or Karma). As a creator, the system will clearly indicate if a player matches these requirements.

If you wish to bypass these criteria and invite players who do not match them, you'll need to create a private tournament and use the existing invite link feature.

Invites are sent individually and appear as a notification for the invited player, no more emails. Your name will only become visible to other participants once you have accepted the invitation.

We are currently exploring the best way to invite players who already participated in previous tournaments, yours or others. We will keep you posted when this feature is ready.

es el update mas mala onda del mundo no puedo invitar a mis amigos ni gente con la que juego ,en otras palabras no se puede invitar a nadie, aun sabiendo que no tienen el elo requerido y que tenga la notificacion
para mejorar asi, no le hagan nada a lo que si funciona ,VUELVAN A COMO ESTABA ANTES ,pongan gente buena onda

I have to say I really like the layout and clarity of the new invite option. It's easy to keep track who got invited and who already joined, who is eligible and who is not. It's also great to see the Elo of the player in the list that opens when you type in the search bar. It makes it easier to invite the right players, I had it several times before that I invited some random person with a similar user name to the person I aimed for. That will rarely happen anymore because Elo is a good safety check and I won't accidently invite players with Elo = 0.

I wish for an option to also use it for inviting players not meeting the entry criteria. There are several cases where this is wanted. I run a regular high-profile Harmonies tournament where the entry criterion is Elo > 500. But I used to fill that tournament up with reliable players in the 450+ Elo range, people who played my "high-profile" tournaments before but were simply not meeting the 500+ Elo criterion at the time of tournament start.
Or similarly, sometimes people set up tournaments with 100+ Elo or 200+ Elo as general criterion for the public, but there are some known reliable players not meeting the criteria who you also want to invite. Usually, these are players who regularly joined your tournaments before but simply fall short of the Elo threshold that you want to apply for any new unknown players.

Hello!

I organized a tournament with ELO restriction today and had 2 players over that ELO. I wonder if the choice we make to restrict ELO is more for an indication? Or is it supposed to naturally keep only players with the right ELO?

Thanks for your answer!

Volothamp wrote: ↑14 March 2026, 09:45 I organized a tournament with ELO restriction today and had 2 players over that ELO. I wonder if the choice we make to restrict ELO is more for an indication? Or is it supposed to naturally keep only players with the right ELO?

At the time they register, they have to meet Elo criteria, otherwise they cannot register. If they go outside the Elo bounds (in any direction) after registration, nothing happens, they stay registered. Probably that is what happened with the 2 players you mention.

Great. We are getting there. Slowly but surely. Just tweeks to the invites. Tweeks on the scoreboards. Tweeks on the tourney page. Like get rid of recommended. Since it puts up tourneys you cant join. And we could be getting somewhere. Also. I should say. The my tourneys in progress page and filters are much better.

https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=538154

I'll use this tournament as an example for feedback. Putting together tournaments like this under the current system is a lot of work, I couldn't send out invitations using the system because the limit is crazy low, I got DM banned several times just trying to invite people to my tournament. And the thing is it's not like I'm just spamming invites out there, I am mostly inviting back players who have previously played in my tournaments. There's got to be a better way than this, as most people simply aren't going to bother when the system seems to be actively trying to stop you put together tournaments of any decent size atm.

Tournaments should be great, lots of players want to play tournaments in my experience, I'm sure you could organise much bigger tournaments than this one if there wasn't a limit at 512 players, which again is just a faux pas, surely we should be trying to grow the site, and tournaments are a great way to drive people to the site, the bigger, the better. Heat isn't even the most popular game here, and yet could easily exceed these limits, so why all the limits restricting the potential the site has to offer?

Heads-up if you create tournaments without 24hr playing time. The timer is wrong and games may end automatically even with both players having time left on the clock. See: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=209956 .

PS: Great that invites are back!

dschingis27 wrote: ↑14 March 2026, 10:15

Volothamp wrote: ↑14 March 2026, 09:45 I organized a tournament with ELO restriction today and had 2 players over that ELO. I wonder if the choice we make to restrict ELO is more for an indication? Or is it supposed to naturally keep only players with the right ELO?

At the time they register, they have to meet Elo criteria, otherwise they cannot register. If they go outside the Elo bounds (in any direction) after registration, nothing happens, they stay registered. Probably that is what happened with the 2 players you mention.

Thanks for your answer, I'll keep the eye open during the next ones

RazorOz wrote: ↑13 March 2026, 14:01
There is also a ridiculously low limit on this of under 50 on this invite system.

This was fixed today and the limitation is no more.