Board Game Arena

The worst thing that ever happened to BGA. Tournament basically died for me

nghiadt wrote: ↑24 February 2026, 19:32 The worst thing that ever happened to BGA. Tournament basically died for me

I love playing tournaments but the number of tournaments has dramatically decreased, I have never seen so few tournaments in my filter (not even in the summer holiday, while I play a lot more different games now compared to last summer).

nik592 wrote: ↑21 February 2026, 09:23 I personally don't have much stake in this change, because I don't create tournaments, and I haven't played them much in quite some time due to scheduling issues (and generally preferring to play with a RL friend group rather than strangers anyway).

I've only posted in the thread announcing the new tournaments lobby until now because this one seemed redundant (and the community liaison is actually participating in the other thread). But this statement reminded me of my prophesy nine months ago in the Elo Systems Update megathread:

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑25 May 2025, 22:14 These changes have not affected my life in the least, so I am not personally invested in what they do or don't do on this issue. But eventually they are going to screw up something major that I do care about and all evidence suggests it is going to be handled the same way.

Now that time has come. This is why I was sympathetic to people making reasonable arguments in the megathread who felt they weren't being listened to and were met with silence even if I didn't really care about the issue (not to say that you aren't sympathetic).

That said, I think BGA has handled the tournament lobby issue better so far, both with BalGAmor posting in the main thread, and BGA already fixing some issues being raised there. Or in one instance attempting to fix it, but doing it in a way that is still broken. But at least they are visibly responding both with words and actions, which is worlds of progress compared to the Elo Systems controversy.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑25 February 2026, 23:49

nik592 wrote: ↑21 February 2026, 09:23 I personally don't have much stake in this change, because I don't create tournaments, and I haven't played them much in quite some time due to scheduling issues (and generally preferring to play with a RL friend group rather than strangers anyway).

I've only posted in the thread announcing the new tournaments lobby until now because this one seemed redundant (and the community liaison is actually participating in the other thread). But this statement reminded me of my prophesy nine months ago in the Elo Systems Update megathread:

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑25 May 2025, 22:14 These changes have not affected my life in the least, so I am not personally invested in what they do or don't do on this issue. But eventually they are going to screw up something major that I do care about and all evidence suggests it is going to be handled the same way.

Now that time has come. This is why I was sympathetic to people making reasonable arguments in the megathread who felt they weren't being listened to and were met with silence even if I didn't really care about the issue (not to say that you aren't sympathetic).

I'm absolutely sympathetic - my point was more that I haven't been playing tournaments for a while, so it's not affecting what I do on BGA right now, but if anything, the discussion here was making me feel like going back to investigate tournaments at present would be a frustration at best. My other point was, I feel like I've seen this pattern before - where they release some new feature to a group of testers for a quite short period, get a bunch of practical feedback, ignore it and release anyway. I'd like to say they're looking for actual (major UI/implementation-breaking) bugs, although the debacle with tiebreakers suggests they weren't even trying to make it bug free. So I'm very confused why they even put it before testers.

nik592 wrote: ↑26 February 2026, 05:18 My other point was, I feel like I've seen this pattern before - where they release some new feature to a group of testers for a quite short period, get a bunch of practical feedback, ignore it and release anyway. I'd like to say they're looking for actual (major UI/implementation-breaking) bugs, although the debacle with tiebreakers suggests they weren't even trying to make it bug free. So I'm very confused why they even put it before testers.

Given your subject matter expertise, I value your educated guesses about their motivations. The weird thing about the tiebreakers is that they seemingly wanted to take tiebreakers away entirely at first and released the new framework without tiebreakers. It was putting them back that introduced the bug, but that happened after the new framework went live, so no one could have caught it during testing.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑26 February 2026, 05:55 Given your subject matter expertise, I value your educated guesses about their motivations.

I mean, I get that there's a degree of them putting in the best solution for their whole user base, not just a vocal minority. I've seen customers of our own product complain that they can't believe we haven't fixed bug X (because they're the only one who really cares) or why we've changed a process to work a different way. But I know there's a lot that goes into considering the best choices - and our customers don't really have a good handle on what other customers are saying. But BGA doesn't have a dedicated support team who are talking to customers individually (as we do), I highly doubt they're doing market research to drive sales and comparing to other similar providers (as we do), I don't believe they run surveys and user conferences to get feedback on what people want. This forum (and bug reports) is likely the main place they're getting that info. And we also release early access releases to testing groups, but their feedback is noted and valued, even if some of it is tabled for a down the track fix. This feels like at least the second time where testers were engaged by BGA and then ignored. So why even engage them, unless you're just looking for major bugs that make the whole system fall over?

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑26 February 2026, 05:55 The weird thing about the tiebreakers is that they seemingly wanted to take tiebreakers away entirely at first and released the new framework without tiebreakers. It was putting them back that introduced the bug, but that happened after the new framework went live, so no one could have caught it during testing.

Ah, that makes sense. It seemed like an odd bug to have been left in there. That said, removing tiebreakers also seems like lunacy - ties are going to be a thing, and need to be resolved (I guess even if that resolution is to share placings, but then you have things about dividing XP awards between multiple players, etc.).

nik592 wrote: ↑26 February 2026, 07:35 That said, removing tiebreakers also seems like lunacy - ties are going to be a thing, and need to be resolved (I guess even if that resolution is to share placings, but then you have things about dividing XP awards between multiple players, etc.).

As I said in the main thread, this decision reeks of being made by someone who doesn't actually play and understand round robin and Swiss tournaments. But they asked for feedback from people who DO play them, and I know several of us noted the absence of tiebreakers being visible.

To be fair, BGA did not ignore the testers, the testing-development cycle was helping and improving the module but at some point they just stopped and released it with unresolved core issues.

That brings me back to my earlier point that 35 days might be too short of a testing period and the feedback collection needs to be better. At the beginning of the testing period, the tournament module was very unfinished and that's fine, exposing an early version to feedback is very fine. But if you start with such an unfinished product, you should probably plan more time to polish it.

They could have also just have another fresh group of testers before they release. Maybe even collect approvals like they do for alpha games. Particularly they should probably collect some quantitative structured feedback from testers (a poll) about the features of their new modules, that kind of feedback can be easier to handle than the free text messages which was the only communication we had. With quantitative structured feedback, is can be easier to see the really important issues in your module, and not having to deal with an avalanche of unstructured text messages.

dschingis27 wrote: ↑26 February 2026, 10:34 To be fair, BGA did not ignore the testers, the testing-development cycle was helping and improving the module but at some point they just stopped and released it with unresolved core issues.

Perhaps not entirely, but it seems that issues were raised by the testers and not fixed before the release. Then non-testers started pointing out the same issues, and some of them asking how this got by the testers? To which the testers very fairly respond that it didn't - they reported it, but it was released as is. That's ignoring (on those issues anyway). Just because they take on board some feedback doesn't allow them to ignore other valid feedback. At the very least, they need to be explaining the rationale behind decisions to leave work unfinished.

The issue with invitations for example - so many people are bothered by that. And the response by BGA is that the old system was somehow problematic without elaborating. That said, when they have given reasons for things in the past, users have often pointed out that the solutions they are proposing don't fix the problems and also still annoy the people who are missing the old way, then they go radio silent. It's not a good look. I tend to think a community like this thrives on being collaborative - explain the problems, ask your users for suggestions (up to a point, yes, but I can't imagine what information they'd be giving away by explaining whatever issue they think they're having with invitations). People who use a system are often well-placed to offer ideas that might work for a majority. But that's not the way BGA operates (for some reason).

As far as the invitation situation. I am totally confused as to why Bga is letting a few bad eggs rotten the entire tourney scene. If someone is abusing the invitation system. Warn them. Then ban them. Simple as that. Or as others have mentioned. Tab on your profile to accept invites or not. This issue should have been the first to be fixed and could have been done quite easily. Since it does not matter if you fix the Swiss and round robin scoreboards if nobody can be invited to play and for many tourneys that is how they get players in. Unless you know where the tourney tab is hidden. Many players dont even know they exist. So many more players could be playing tourneys. Seems we are going backwards.. and i started this thread even tho I know bga had its own. Many players feel more comfortable speaking in the forums to other players. And not directly to bga. Else get in trouble.