🌿ELO System Updates

[6element]

I believe only games in the past ~30 days count to your winstreak, to be precise. So you don't even have to stop playing them entirely just minimise them to keep the % under a certain level.

We have no proof that there is any sort of time limit, I'm playing multiple games daily and haven't seen time limit for Elo stealing.

So far it seems that when an opponent reaches multiple sequential losses, the implied action is to not play against them until Elo stealing "feature" is reverted. This is just plain broken.

PS: The fact that in Elo ranking players who played through December (and have some of their earned Elo stolen) are compared to players who played no games since Elo stealing was introduced is just ridiculous. That's why reverting of Elo stealing should be paired with "refund of stolen Elo points".

[h_illes]

I believe only games in the past ~30 days count to your winstreak, to be precise. So you don't even have to stop playing them entirely just minimise them to keep the % under a certain level.

We have no proof that there is any sort of time limit, I'm playing multiple games daily and haven't seen time limit for Elo stealing.

So far it seems that when an opponent reaches multiple sequential losses, the implied action is to not play against them until Elo stealing "feature" is reverted. This is just plain broken.

PS: The fact that in Elo ranking players who played through December (and have some of their earned Elo stolen) are compared to players who played no games since Elo stealing was introduced is just ridiculous.

Look at this matchup for proof. There has been a 1-month break between Dec. 12 and Jan. 12, and the Jan. 13 game has no penalty.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... ateStats=1

[6element]

I was under impression games before December 12 just don't count as a winning streak.

[h_illes]

I was under impression games before December 12 just don't count as a winning streak.

OK, then check out this one.

https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... ateStats=1

Games from Dec. 14. are penalized to 0 immediately (as in, for the 6+ win streak).

[anykidrated]

I believe only games in the past ~30 days count to your winstreak, to be precise. So you don't even have to stop playing them entirely just minimise them to keep the % under a certain level.

We have no proof that there is any sort of time limit, I'm playing multiple games daily and haven't seen time limit for Elo stealing.

I don't know the analytical details, but I do believe my winstreaks against some players have gone down over time.

[Ownards]

Guess I'll just ghost players I have win streaks against for 30 days. Great

[Ranior]

Yeah, I agree with others that based on what I and others have seen, it seems it did immediately count win streaks prior to the changes, but it does also seem like it only looks at the last 30 days or so.

This is still an absurd system though since yes, you just shouldn't play players you have multiple wins against in a 30 day period but
1) you can't pick your opponents in arena
2) other games player pools are not large enough to allow this
3) If you use the service a lot, it's easier to be hit by this, however you can easily be playing enough variety of opponents there's no reasonable claim you're power leveling off any individual
4) Really problematically, this punishes higher player count games much more since it counts beating opponents as win streaking, even if you're not actually winning


Also, ever since this change they've also (Presumably accidentally) introduced the old issue of when someone quits a multiplayer game, if you're a highly ranked player, you can lose elo. Losing elo when someone else quits is absurd, and it has been corrected in the past, but now it happens again. If I wind up in an arena Agricola game against some more mid range players, and one of them quits, I'll lose elo at the moment. How this issue continues to crop up and reoccur and not be fixed is stunning.

I can't understand how the BGA admins have read this thread and not made changes for a month now. I can't understand how an issue like losing elo due to a quitter in multiplayer games crops up again--this was fixed in the past, then cropped up when they introduced elo and then fixed, and now they've made another elo change and it comes up again. How does this get past your testing anymore? It's a known issue from the past, you've been told you had to correct it and did, and then somehow it's not on a test case list when you make a change???

You have tons of users frustrated about power leveling and you're creating absurd incentives for your players to avoid playing each other, and yet you don't fix it?

I and many others love this site and what it offers, but gosh the management frustrates me sometimes.

[h_illes]

I got negative Arena points for a win once. I'm mentioning this again because it STILL hasn't been addressed, and it's not any less absurd than the other issues.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=449542561

Here is the bug report, feel free to vote on it if you don't want the same to happen to you.
https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=107164

PS: The fact that in Elo ranking players who played through December (and have some of their earned Elo stolen) are compared to players who played no games since Elo stealing was introduced is just ridiculous. That's why reverting of Elo stealing should be paired with "refund of stolen Elo points".

After ~10 days of restricting myself in December, I am now back to playing at my normal rate. I estimate by now I have lost 70+ ELO points due to the win streak penalty in Century: Spice Road. I have been on top of the leaderboard ever since 16 March 2022. I am proud of that achievement, but it could be coming to an end; there is a challenger playing turn-based games at a much slower rate, thus affected much less by the win-streak penalty. It's sad because if he does eventually take over, it will not be on equal grounds.

[6element]

Yep, indeed there seems to be a timeout of 30 days. It helps somewhat (no need to expel unlucky "frequent opponents" forever, and the list of would-be-expelled-due-to-Elo-stealing opponents shouldn't be steadily growing), but the design is still bizarre and broken - frequent strong players are at constant disadvantage when ranked vs. infrequent strong players, this is wrong / unfair.

Expelling people / being expelled is still not fun, maintaining notes "Consecutive 2/3/4..." isn't fun either. It seems that the goal of punishing bad actors clearly missed its target.

And Elo stealing suggests that random "disposable" opponents are more valuable from Elo perspective than opponents known from dozens of games, so there is less reason to be polite / learn opponents' play style / build any kind of connections. It does damage the informal player community.

Honestly, even with better understanding Elo stealing still feels like a hack / kludge below shippable quality which slipped through QA by an accident.

[ChiefPointThief]

Just because comments are becoming slightly more scarce does NOT mean everything is fine. The power leveling penalty is still in effect, and it is doing constant damage. Your failure to address that so far is utterly disappointing.

We are still with you h_illes. Keep your foot on their neck . At this point though it is like beating a dead horse. Bga clearly understands they made a terrible mistake and I do believe at some point they will change it back. The guinea pig stage is lasting far too long though.

After ~10 days of restricting myself in December, I am now back to playing at my normal rate. I estimate by now I have lost 70+ ELO points due to the win streak penalty in Century: Spice Road. I have been on top of the leaderboard ever since 16 March 2022. I am proud of that achievement, but it could be coming to an end; there is a challenger playing turn-based games at a much slower rate, thus affected much less by the win-streak penalty. It's sad because if he does eventually take over, it will not be on equal grounds.

I’ve lost over 100 in one game alone. All in arena. Vs the former arena champ I currently have a 5 game win streak, I’ve had a 4 game win streak and 1 six game win streak that resulted in about 25pts being stolen. Vs another very good player who was once top five I have a ridiculous 11 game win streak. I actually should be receiving a badge for this instead I’m losing around 55pts. I have/had win streaks over several other opponents as well that resulted in pts being stolen. This game has small community. Unlike h_illes who has about 900elo and a winrate well over 90% in this game elite is about 300+ and no one has a winrate over 66%. I’ve reached just over 400 elo and #1 status in this game. Looking at these numbers I should probably still be in that area but currently I only have 324 and fell down to the 200s. Everyday unrepairable damage is being done to games with small communities. These players that I am beating are still taking the full elo loss so everyone is just losing. This system doesn’t make sense. The elo that is took is gone forever and there is no new influx of players coming in. Another thing to consider is that every player who faces me is technically being stolen from as well win or lose because my elo should be much higher than it is.

The irony is that I have seen more cheating allegations at the end of this season than any of the seasons prior. The first steps that bga needs to take is address their policy on cheating. They did all this work to combat cheating but still there is no harsh penalty for cheating. It is the equivalent of a city wanting to reduce crime so they quadruple the police force, add cameras on every street, enforce a curfew etc. etc. just to give criminals a five dollar fine.

It seems that arena is a major motive for people cheating. I saw a message from an admin stating that once the season is over there is no way to change the winner. This needs to be fixed because there were cheaters that weren’t caught before season end that gets to have their name still on the leaderboards. If you don’t already do this xp needs to be taken back as well. Any incentive that players get should be removed once found guilty without a reasonable doubt.