Board Game Arena

I did some stats crunching comparing currently listed BGA team accounts to a random selection of initial and recent posters in this thread. Similar sample sizes used for each (though <10 each side so not ideal sample sizes and I ran out of time before I could do more posters).

Of the team member accounts:

• Average team join date 2016
• Average XP earned is 13.1k, with a max of 39k.
• None of the BGA staff have achieved ELO>=500 in any game and <50% have ELO300
• Only 1 staff member has earned a top 20/10 ELO rank.
• Only 2 staff members have earned 200ELO in 10% of the titles they have played.
• Only 1 staff member plays >10 games/week on average (14) the others all play less than 1 game per day.
• The net average games played/week = 5

Of the poster accounts sampled.

• Average poster join date 2020
• Average poster XP earned is 139k, with over half >100k
• All posters have ELO>500 in at least one game, >40% have in more than one game, and 70% have ELO 700 in at least one game
• Over 66% of posters sampled have got top20/10 ELO rank awards, with over 33% in more than one game
• All posters sampled have achieved ELO>200 in 10% of the titles played, and >66% of posters did so in >25% titles played.
• Only one poster played fewer than 10 games per week (8) on average, but still more than 1 game per day, everone else is playing 6+ games per day on average.
• The net average games played/week=66

It's possible BGA team have personal accounts they play from more often, but if not then the stats indicate the BGA team play far less than a number of posters in this thread. In that case the perceived importance of ELO compared to more frequent players on the site will naturally be different. The impact of ELO reduction on accounts not typically going above 200-300 ELO will be far less dramatic. Consecutive win penalties will also be less noticeable on accounts playing infrequently vs those routinely playing multiple games per day.

Perhaps this helps explain why people giving feedback in this thread might have a stronger reaction to ELO reduction vs wider player base who might not feel inclined to respond (assuming they even know the forum thread exists) and vs the BGA team who presumably decide on whether to implement and/or roll back ELO changes?

Mods I don't think this breaches any rules, let me know if anything needs editing. The aim is to try and help people see that what seems obviously negative to regular "power" users on here might not be so apparent to others.

Name=account name *deliberately anonymised
Joined=year joined from account profile
GPlayed=Games played
Titles = individual Titles played
Ach's=Achievements
MaxE=largest ELO award achieved
100 = N ELO>100 achieved (etc for each ELO tier)
T20= Ntitles>=top20 ELO award
T10= Ntitles>=top10 ELO
Gpa = average N Games played/Year
Gpw = average N Games played/week
XPpa = average XP/Year (k)
%T200E = % titles played>200 ELO

Name Joined GPlayed XP(k) Titles Ach's MaxE 100 200 300 500 700 T20 T10 Gpa Gpw XPpa %T200E

tm1 2011 642 0.6 155 141 200 6 1 0 0 0 0 0 54 1 0.1 0.6%
tm2 2011 3787 39 377 916 300 84 35 4 0 0 0 0 316 6 3.3 9.3%
tm3 2020 934 6.3 234 243 200 3 2 0 0 0 0 0 311 6 2.1 0.9%
tm4 2018 3526 26 753 1055 300 49 18 2 0 0 0 0 705 14 5.2 2.4%
tm5 2011 2324 20 225 502 300 56 27 5 0 0 0 0 194 4 1.7 12.0%
tm6 2021 134 1.5 65 68 100 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 67 1 0.8 0.0%
tm7 2022 327 2 97 111 200 7 1 0 0 0 0 0 327 6 2.0 1.0%
tm8 2014 2006 19 130 408 300 36 16 4 0 0 1 1 223 4 2.1 12.3%
tm9 2020 322 3.5 69 138 200 13 5 0 0 0 0 0 107 2 1.2 7.2%

user1 2022 5380 133 69 517 700 25 19 9 2 1 2 1 5380 103 133.0 27.5%
user2 2020 6904 297 4 123 700 3 3 2 1 1 1 1 2301 44 99.0 75.0%
user3 2021 781 11 23 147 500 8 6 3 1 0 0 0 391 8 5.5 26.1%
user4 2020 18233 104 290 1541 700 120 34 8 1 1 0 0 6078 117 34.7 11.7%
user5 2023 950 37 10 133 500 7 6 2 1 0 1 1 1267 24 49.3 60.0%
user6 2020 19610 281 289 1582 700 77 55 37 8 2 14 13 6537 126 93.7 19.0%
user7 2016 15241 107 206 920 700 92 56 31 9 6 6 4 2177 42 15.3 27.2%

Stroom wrote: ↑05 February 2024, 16:46

lordalx wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 10:41 → Cooperative play and non competitive game
For cooperative games such as Hanabi, The Crew, or Just One, competition is already disabled. However, some players were too focused on the ELO, which led to unnecessary competitiveness in an environment which should instead incentivize cooperation.
For such games, we decided to hide the ELO value of each player and only display their current rank, from Beginner to Master.

Please revert this change too. It heavily matters whether a player is 700 or 900 or 1100 elo in Hanabi. I would like to estimate how good a player is before I give advanced clues to them. I shouldn't have to make personal notes about every single player and their play style.

It is not about being focused on elo. It is about predictability of the players. It is hard to cooperate with differently skilled players.

Another argument for visible elo: HOW DO YOU KNOW WHETHER YOUR SKILL HAS IMPROVED?

If you change your strategy and play a bunch of games... how can you know whether it has resulted in a better score overall? If you hide the elo, you won't really know above 700... But your elo can be up to 1200-1300 naturally. You can not know what is a generally better way to play the game if you have no feedback. This can cause worse play styles to become prevalent and everyone will be OK with mediocrity.

Seriously, this was the worst kind of change you made. All the other ones could have been OK with a better execution.

dinnyesbacsi wrote: ↑06 February 2024, 12:07 I am playing around 5-10 games of nova luna per day, my Élő (note that it is named after a Hungarian mathematichan, Élő Árpád) is around 500. I just played against a player having around 300 Élő. It was the 11th game between us over ~6 weeks, received 0 points... does it really seems as "Power levelling"??

https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1628

You should lose one game in purpose, that way you can gain more elo during your next 6 games.

Romain672 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 01:42

dinnyesbacsi wrote: ↑06 February 2024, 12:07 I am playing around 5-10 games of nova luna per day, my Élő (note that it is named after a Hungarian mathematichan, Élő Árpád) is around 500. I just played against a player having around 300 Élő. It was the 11th game between us over ~6 weeks, received 0 points... does it really seems as "Power levelling"??

https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1628

You should lose one game in purpose, that way you can gain more elo during your next 6 games.

I hope that was irony. Above a certain difference, playing against that one opponent, he can't even recover the points from that one loss. (Of course he might recover it against others, but than again, gaining points from others is also better without the extra loss).

It has a risk component to it for sure, if you are sure at 100% to play again against that player, then losing will happen at one moment, and so all your futures games against that player will either be neutral, or will make you lose the elo of one game.
And if you think you will reach your peak elo after playing a lot of game against that player, then losing or winning against that player doesn't matter at all once you have a 6 winstreak against them.

Your elo will have ups and downs, and so when your elo got some downs, your goal should be to try to reset your gain and loss against players where you got lots of winstreak (i would said 3+) if you play a lot against them.
Once you have reset your winstreak against most of them, you can climb again since you got no penalities anymore.

With games with a lot of luck component, that look really good since that make you in the best position possible to take advantage of a good streak of luck.


I'm unsure of how much the effect of this strategy is, and if it has enough effect to be used as a meta-strategy for elo, but if it is, the system incentive players in specific situation to lose in purpose to try to maximise their peak elo.

Romain672 wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 01:42

dinnyesbacsi wrote: ↑06 February 2024, 12:07 I am playing around 5-10 games of nova luna per day, my Élő (note that it is named after a Hungarian mathematichan, Élő Árpád) is around 500. I just played against a player having around 300 Élő. It was the 11th game between us over ~6 weeks, received 0 points... does it really seems as "Power levelling"??

https://boardgamearena.com/gamestats?pl ... me_id=1628

You should lose one game in purpose, that way you can gain more elo during your next 6 games.

If you're getting 6 wins reliably against an opponent, you're almost certainly at an elo where 6 wins and 1 loss results in you losing more elo than you gain even without a penalty.

It's not worth it.

Bouncing off my last post, the strategy that's actually incentivized is to block/avoid good players once you have a winning streak against them & then unblock them a month later if you remember.

Ironically, this results in playing more lower ranked players & trying to farm them, since there are a lot more of them available. It reduces the quality of competition substantially, since regulars that you would need to avoid tend to be at least mid level elo.

I've yet to actually follow through on this since I like playing against better players, but it has cost me substantially.

It's frustrating how easily the devs could fix this and how much it would do to improve the quality of the site, but we can't even see any signs they're listening, let alone taking us seriously at present.

GeoPaladin wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 07:20It's not worth it.

You can't said that though.
It's obligatory worth it at one point.

Assume you are playing a game mostly luck. Then you are at 300 elo while you usually are around 350/400 elo. And you have a 6 winstreak against someone you play a lot.
In that case, you should lose in purpose.


You could instead avoid that person forever (edit: one month), and not take that extra loss, but if you want one more opponent, in the long term, that lost will cost you less and less.
(Especially if your playstyle counter that person playstyle. But that was not what we was talking about.)
(my first post was a joke, my second way more serious. So you can remove reliably from your post, since it's not what i claim)

lordalx wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 10:41 As usual, feel free to post your feedback, we will continue to monitor the current situation and improve the system accordingly.
These changes are a first step towards a more enjoyable overall experience for ranking on the platform and that we heavily rely on your feedback during this process. We acknowledge the existing limitations in the current system and will continue to explore ideas for enhancing the team or cooperative game experience.

It should be clear for a long while now that you have managed to make the game experience significantly worse. The direct opposite of what you stated in the original post. So why don't you respond, lordalx? The situation is already very bad, and you keep making it worse with the continued silence. Please respond.

h_illes wrote: ↑07 February 2024, 09:25

lordalx wrote: ↑13 December 2023, 10:41 As usual, feel free to post your feedback, we will continue to monitor the current situation and improve the system accordingly.
These changes are a first step towards a more enjoyable overall experience for ranking on the platform and that we heavily rely on your feedback during this process. We acknowledge the existing limitations in the current system and will continue to explore ideas for enhancing the team or cooperative game experience.

It should be clear for a long while now that you have managed to make the game experience significantly worse. The direct opposite of what you stated in the original post. So why don't you respond, lordalx? The situation is already very bad, and you keep making it worse with the continued silence. Please respond.

BGA have been busy introducing the new tables page. The feedback is equally constructive. https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 66#p168466

Edit: Sorry this is the official thread: https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... 62#p168462, it's just harder to find on the main forum page.