Board Game Arena

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑01 September 2026, 23:53 This I wholeheartedly agree with. I probably cannot guess to within 500 points what my XP is,* but if people are making decisions not to enter tournaments because the XP reward is too low, then I support giving them that carrot to sway them.

*Just to fact check myself I guessed my XP and was low by a factor of 11. Wow. 5 XP here, 31 XP there. It adds up. And even though I found it on the main page, I was just reminded that it's actually right there when you click on your avatar. Unfortunately, now that I've talked about it, it's going to take months for me to get back to not noticing it again.

Hehe, that's why I know what my XP is, that you can see it when you click on your display pic.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 00:04 Getting a little off topic, but one thing sorely needed are automated guardrails to prevent objectively ridiculous tournament settings that are going to lead to poor experiences. For example, a setting that prevents only making a round 5 days when the site data shows that this game typically takes 2 weeks, even when played at 24 moves/day. Right now there's just a warning that the time may be too short.

Agree. One thing they'd probably not do, but would probably help is if you have to have played x number of games of the game to setup a tournament, as I have noticed a pattern that a lot of the tournaments with crazy clocks are setup by people who have played like 2 games before.

Part of the problem is the time features currently are pretty useless. I set my Heat tournaments to 30 day clocks for example, it warns me every time I am setting too lower clock and recommends of setting a clock of at least 46 days which is nonsense. People are clearly ignoring this stuff anyway though as I will still see people set up Heat tournaments with like a 1 week clock where it's never going to work. The other part that would be useful if it worked would be the estimated end date, but it's terrible atm, I've seen it underestimate tournaments that will take several years as taking around a year, and eg. look at my most recent tournament I setup here https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=596586, it's estimating 7 months for a tournament that is 4 rounds with the clock 30 days, it makes no sense.

tbhp wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 00:17 To put things into perspective, is there an entity that tells us directly, officially, what is worth more between an Olympic Gold and a World Championship? In football, is there an entity that tells us what is worth more between a World Cup, a Euro, a Nations League?

The way the value and prestige of those things is determined is culturally. We may reach some collective agreements, but ultimately it's people who decide the importance of those things, and it would feel off if it was some body or organization that told us what is more important, told us what to think.

Plenty of people don't want to play competitively, because they play games here just to have fun, or don't want to play tournaments specifically because they may not like the fixed set up or they may feel like they hold little importance compared to Arena.

So we agree that some people may not pick tournaments because they feel they matter less. What I disagree with is that this has anything to do with XP. I believe the number of XP gained is very low in the list of things that people take into consideration when judging the importance of a competition. They probably don't even look at it. They are probably thinking "is the tournament prestigious, do other people care about it, does it have an aesthetic and a system that appeals to me, do I think it would look good to have on my trophies list". Those are the things that matter to most people, not the number of XP, because like I said, ultimately that's just a number. It doesn't have any effect on the actual experience of playing the tournament, or the satisfaction you'd get from doing well in it.

I think the primary way to make tournaments more appealing is for the organizers to work on designing better tournaments. Have you not noticed that some tournaments seem to catch on and get popular, while some never do? Both offer the same XP to the winner, so the difference must be in how the tournament comes off, how it presents itself to the user. Some organizers are very good at doing that, some less so.

I don't know enough about Olympic sports, but for football, yes. The FIFA rankings work by weighting the importance of matches. The World Cup is weighted higher than continental competitions which are weighted higher than Nations League. Albeit I'd argue no-one really cares too much about world ranking in football anyway.

In my experience those players still like playing tournaments, because you can still play a tournament to have fun. Indeed I'd argue it's actually better than Arena at this, because they could theoretically win the tournament, whereas Arena is a grind in comparison.

Sure, but I'm already doing that anyway, I am running what I assume must be some of the biggest tournaments on the site at just under 500 players, and could easily get more players if BGA didn't cap them at 512 players (there are workarounds, but they're messy). I am looking to help the tournament scene as a whole, it's not really aimed at my own tournaments. It's kinda off topic, but tournaments have a lot of things you have to fight against, which is limiting them, they are very hidden away for starters, where I was part of a building a strong community I have a base that I can pretty much just instantly have 500 players ready to go, but that takes both effort and time from scratch. I am also sure the changes made this year made tournament visibility worse, because there was imo on of the best run Heat tournament series, used to get 288 players no problem every season, as soon as this tournament update dropped they setup a tournament twice where it failed to get the minimum 192 players and then stopped creating them, I'm pretty sure this was driven by them no longer displaying hot tournaments. It's work to make tournaments work, and that is a problem, albeit off topic to this thread.

RazorOz wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 01:35 I don't know enough about Olympic sports, but for football, yes. The FIFA rankings work by weighting the importance of matches. The World Cup is weighted higher than continental competitions which are weighted higher than Nations League. Albeit I'd argue no-one really cares too much about world ranking in football anyway.

Yes, they don't, and they care even less about how the FIFA determines the coefficients. Giving higher coefficients to a competition is not the same as them telling us this competition is more important. It's just how they do their calculations, and we don't have to agree with it. If tomorrow they started applying higher coefficients to the Euro than the World Cup (because for example, there is a higher density of good teams in Europe), would people start thinking the Euro is more important? No, it wouldn't change anything about how we view those things.

RazorOz wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 01:35 Sure, but I'm already doing that anyway, I am running what I assume must be some of the biggest tournaments on the site at just under 500 players, and could easily get more players if BGA didn't cap them at 512 players (there are workarounds, but they're messy). I am looking to help the tournament scene as a whole, it's not really aimed at my own tournaments.

So your tournaments are doing well, which just confirms that what really matters is how well organizers design their tournaments. You won't help other organizers get more participants by requesting increases of XP. You'll help them by encouraging them to put more thought into how they are organizing them. That's what is preventing their tournaments from being as popular as yours. It's not XP.

RazorOz wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 01:35 I am also sure the changes made this year made tournament visibility worse, because there was imo on of the best run Heat tournament series, used to get 288 players no problem every season, as soon as this tournament update dropped they setup a tournament twice where it failed to get the minimum 192 players and then stopped creating them, I'm pretty sure this was driven by them no longer displaying hot tournaments.

That's possible. To be honest, when they did the overhaul I was very doom and gloom about the future of tournaments. But in fact, the turnout of players has not been as bad as what I feared, although I also noticed things like you did. I agree that certain things could be done better in terms of how the site runs things, I just don't think XP is something that has a significant impact.

Thanks for all your feedback, insights and suggestions. Give us a bit of time to look further into this.

RazorOz wrote: ↑01 September 2026, 21:47

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑01 September 2026, 18:41 What they want is to get people playing as much as possible and thats what arena does not tournaments. You want fairness, a legit competitive scene (tournaments) to be given more recognition, etc but these things aren't bga's priority. And that's why as you've mentioned they award more xp for simply reaching elite in an arena season than things like expert and master level.

In the plainest terms surely BGA's goal is to get more subscribers, they don't actually care that much how much you play, outside of obviously the site thrives off activity. I would argue tournaments are BGA's largest untapped potential in order to get more subscribers, given it's a format nearly every e-sport etc. operates off, every thriving competitive scene is driven by tournament play.

And you get subscribers by having your customers engaged/addicted to your product. There are streaming services I get temporarily for a show or a movie and then cancel once I finish them. If there was something that made me want to watch more and more daily (like arena) then I would be more inclined to be a continuous subscriber. In addition like you said the site thrives off of activity. If there's less people to play then it would bring down the overall satisfaction of users causing less subscribers.

I did numbers for another topic. Some of the most popular games have a % between 20-25% of all games played in arena. I don't think tournaments even made up 1% if I remember correctly. Also most games on the site are played in real time whereas most tournaments are turn based. As well as things like convenience, and the ability to keep playing even after you lose.

I prefer tournaments myself (as I told you I host a bunch of different themed tourneys) and agree with some of your points. But things are the way they are intentionally. Arena is designed to get players to play a bunch of games to reach a certain goal and the inclusion of leagues allows that goal to be anywhere from just +1 starting level to 1st place.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 14:54 I did numbers for another topic. Some of the most popular games have a % between 20-25% of all games played in arena. I don't think tournaments even made up 1% if I remember correctly. Also most games on the site are played in real time whereas most tournaments are turn based. As well as things like convenience, and the ability to keep playing even after you lose.

This doesn't necessarily translate to tournaments being less important for the site though. There's a lot of people who mostly play regular games, but will have a few tournaments games going on and those games are the ones they really care about, whereas the regular games are just to keep themselves busy and have some fun while they are waiting for their turn to come up in the tournament games.

It's kinda comparable to how when you are an athlete, your training time will be a lot more than the time you spend actually competing in tournaments. But the tournaments are what really matters, and if they didn't exist, you would have much less reason to train to the extent you do.

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑02 September 2026, 14:54

RazorOz wrote: ↑01 September 2026, 21:47

ChiefPointThief wrote: ↑01 September 2026, 18:41 What they want is to get people playing as much as possible and thats what arena does not tournaments. You want fairness, a legit competitive scene (tournaments) to be given more recognition, etc but these things aren't bga's priority. And that's why as you've mentioned they award more xp for simply reaching elite in an arena season than things like expert and master level.

In the plainest terms surely BGA's goal is to get more subscribers, they don't actually care that much how much you play, outside of obviously the site thrives off activity. I would argue tournaments are BGA's largest untapped potential in order to get more subscribers, given it's a format nearly every e-sport etc. operates off, every thriving competitive scene is driven by tournament play.

And you get subscribers by having your customers engaged/addicted to your product. There are streaming services I get temporarily for a show or a movie and then cancel once I finish them. If there was something that made me want to watch more and more daily (like arena) then I would be more inclined to be a continuous subscriber. In addition like you said the site thrives off of activity. If there's less people to play then it would bring down the overall satisfaction of users causing less subscribers.

I did numbers for another topic. Some of the most popular games have a % between 20-25% of all games played in arena. I don't think tournaments even made up 1% if I remember correctly. Also most games on the site are played in real time whereas most tournaments are turn based. As well as things like convenience, and the ability to keep playing even after you lose.

I prefer tournaments myself (as I told you I host a bunch of different themed tourneys) and agree with some of your points. But things are the way they are intentionally. Arena is designed to get players to play a bunch of games to reach a certain goal and the inclusion of leagues allows that goal to be anywhere from just +1 starting level to 1st place.

That data can just be used to support the point that tournaments are the biggest untapped potential on the entire site.

There are other things these numbers won't necessarily show, they won't show the number of players playing each way. A high volume real-time player can drive a huge amount of the traffic. I can't really talk site wide, but again at Heat there are far more turn based players than real-time, like at least double, but then also at Heat your numbers aren't reflected either, by my rough numbers around 55% of Heat Arena games are played turn based. The point being it's going to be massively game dependent, games that can be played in 5 minutes are driving a huge amount of that real time action, because they are likely primarily played real time, but it won't be true for longer games. But it's # of players overall that matters.

Things being that way intentionally also doesn't mean they have to continue that way. I also suspect they've sleptwalk into it being this way, because like I say these things can coincide, it's not either, or. Tournaments are almost on the site as an afterthought, like anyone that hasn't spoken to lots of players would probably be shocked how many players simply don't know tournaments even exist, because they're hidden away, and not promoted at all. I suspect lots of games would have large tournaments running if tournaments were pushed more, but right now it's on the players to do all the work.

One of the reasons I say I think it's more likely they've sleptwalk into this position, is because take a point we agree on, that the site relies on activity. You would therefore think the site would encourage high volume players, because a small % of players are driving a significant % of the traffic, which enables players to get games, and therefore the for the site to thrive. Except, in reality they discourage high volume players, particularly strong high volume players, because things like the ELO reducer absolutely body players for being very active, and actively discourage you from playing lots of games in a short space of time. I don't believe they've truly designed Arena to be weighted 200-fold higher than tournaments, sure they have pushed Arena to be the premiere competitive way to play games, but not to that extent, because it would be totally illogical.

Above from razor. Could not have said it better. Bga. Promotes arena. Does not promote tournaments. That is one of the main reasons arena outnumber tourneys. If bga would place a tournament tab at the top with the rest. So everyone can see that tournaments exist. Many more would join. As the majortiy of players probably do not even know tournaments exist. Hidden behind tabs. Bga needs to promote tourneys, run some of their own tourneys, with bga merchandise as prizes. More would join. As mentioned. Tourneys have unbelievable potential at bga if they would try to make it that way. The last frontier. Tournaments. Do better bga. Fix the xp for tourneys, promote, and find a way to keep bad tourneys from being made (time wise)

My reasons for avoiding timers aren't relayed to the low Xp gains, but rather, the bizarre ways forfeits and timers are implemented in tournament games.

In general, yes, BGA does not do much to promote tournaments.

I'm confused how players can not know tournaments exist. They are literally present in the toggle that you have to use to pick a game mode. That's like the first thing you learn about when you start playing, that you have the choice between three modes, normal, tournaments, and Arena, and they even tell you something like the latter will unlock when you reach 100 Elo. So I don't see how people could miss it unless they are literally not reading.