Board Game Arena

Fetacheese2 wrote: ↑19 February 2024, 18:13
You were previously moderated for defamation on admins, please learn respect and stop harassing them.

Asking for follow up response to their posts in the thread where they keep getting told to contain their comments to is not harassment. If the BGA staff feel he is harassing them they will be the ones who need to say so. Otherwise it's more people getting offended on someone else's behalf and there's too much of that nonsense on the internet already.

In the games where ELO is hidden, is it still there behind the scenes? For example, in Bandido, I saw that people had badges for "100 ELO" etc. Is it still possible to get those badges now that we can't see ELO?

Badges are sadly no longer awarded for gaining elo in hidden elo games but elo is still tracked.

h_illes wrote: ↑19 February 2024, 17:26 So I'm posting some more feedback. After all, the situation is getting worse the longer they do not respond. I've also explained that I have tried different channels, and they directed me back here. Also, it's not just me, plenty of other players also post here (both in the past and recently), so it's definitely not just one vocal person. Also, in my opinion, when someone asks for feedback, then the feedback they get until they respond cannot be harassment by definition.

I've provided you with plenty of argument that you ignored so far. If you still want to continue the conversation, please respond to specific arguments. Or just not responding at all is also perfectly fine by me. Thank you.

Your recent posts were not "more feedback". Same "Answer me now!" posts over and over again. Nothing new. Answering takes time. They have to come up with a proper solution.

Anything specific you want me to reply to?

Stroom wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 06:42 Anything specific you want me to reply to?

My preference would be not responding at all.

Stroom wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 06:42 Answering takes time. They have to come up with a proper solution.

No they don't. They don't need to come up with anything to say "yeah it's not working, we're developing an alternative." It doesn't take any time at all to write an update post. Agreed though that some posts have sounded a bit "answer me NOW". I took that to convey the increasing frustration of shouting into the void. I'm not sure it's worth trying to defend BGA silence's over though.

Nuzzer71 wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 03:36 In the games where ELO is hidden, is it still there behind the scenes? For example, in Bandido, I saw that people had badges for "100 ELO" etc. Is it still possible to get those badges now that we can't see ELO?

Zozoken wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 05:37 Badges are sadly no longer awarded for gaining elo in hidden elo games but elo is still tracked.

Yeah sadly this appears to be the case. I just went up a grade in hardback, and got no XP notification, no award. In a competitive game FFS. BGA again, what is the point of removing ELO from a competitive game? Can you please respond on this.

Zozoken wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 05:37 Badges are sadly no longer awarded for gaining elo in hidden elo games but elo is still tracked.

That's a shame. I was looking forward to my one and only "700" badge in a couple of years

So here's my deal. I play basically one game on this site, Century: Spice Road. I have a lot of achievements (e.g. #1 all time and 7x Arena champion). I never cheated in any way.

Since the win streak penalty came in effect, my ELO rating dropped from the usual 850-950 to around 800.

I play ~10 games per day, but there are very strong players who play much less often, thus affected less by the win streak penalty. I would hate to lose my top spot on an unfair playing field.

So what do I do? I see a few options, neither of them very appealing.

• I could play fewer games. But is this really what you want to encourage on a gaming site? Also, if I do this, that would mean me sitting on top of the leaderboard and not playing for long periods of time. That's a type of behaviour known to offend a lot of players.

• I could play the 100-rated crowd to replenish my rating. I actually did that once after my moderation in this very topic to replenish my karma. It worked, but the games were one-sided, and I think not much fun for either side. The question is once again, is this really what you want to encourage?

Meanwhile, I know of several top players in Century: Spice Road who play multiple accounts. While I don't know of any direct power levelling, I have been the victim of sandbagging (a top player playing from a lower rated account), and there is at least one top player who keeps playing one account until he reaches a personal peak in Arena, then switches to another account. The win streak penalty has done NOTHING to stop or even hinder these players.

In the above situations, the win streak penalty hurts honest players and does not stop cheaters. This is why I would like to see it reverted.

If BGA wants to fight cheating, they need to find other ways to do it. There have been several suggestions in this thread. But before anything is implemented, CONSULT THE PLAYER BASE. I guarantee that players will gladly do a full analysis of any potential change quickly, and will even be happy to be involved. Just do it BEFORE implementing any changes.

Now so far this was just for the power levelling fix. I am personally not affected, but I see that many players are upset about invisible ELO in cooperative games. Once again, listen to their ideas as well, please.

h_illes wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 13:30 If BGA wants to fight cheating, they need to find other ways to do it. There have been several suggestions in this thread. But before anything is implemented, CONSULT THE PLAYER BASE. I guarantee that players will gladly do a full analysis of any potential change quickly, and will even be happy to be involved. Just do it BEFORE implementing any changes.

Now so far this was just for the power levelling fix. I am personally not affected, but I see that many players are upset about invisible ELO in cooperative games. Once again, listen to their ideas as well, please.

It is fine to experiment bit. Implement features, let ppl play around with them, see how they like them, revert any that did not work out. Unfortunately this last important part was not done this time.

If this would had just been silly idea they tried for ~2 weeks and reverted after getting overwhelmingly negative feedback it would had been fine. As Linus Torvalds said:
"It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a
small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards. Any decision
can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and
you _will_ be wrong), you can always undo the damage later by
backtracking. Suddenly, you get to be doubly managerial for making
_two_ inconsequential decisions - the wrong one _and_ the right one. "

hammastahna wrote: ↑20 February 2024, 22:48 It is fine to experiment bit. Implement features, let ppl play around with them, see how they like them, revert any that did not work out. Unfortunately this last important part was not done this time.

If this would had just been silly idea they tried for ~2 weeks and reverted after getting overwhelmingly negative feedback it would had been fine. As Linus Torvalds said:
"It helps to realize that the key difference between a big decision and a
small one is whether you can fix your decision afterwards. Any decision
can be made small by just always making sure that if you were wrong (and
you _will_ be wrong), you can always undo the damage later by
backtracking. Suddenly, you get to be doubly managerial for making
_two_ inconsequential decisions - the wrong one _and_ the right one. "

This is an amazing quote. I went and looked up the full article: https://lwn.net/Articles/105375/

In general, humans tend to be extremely reluctant to revert changes, instead reacting in an almost instinctive way to double down on the decision and ignore all input to the contrary. I've been on BGA for quite some time (my account is seemingly over 10 years old). Have there been site-wide changes which were reverted in the past?