Board Game Arena

I just finished a 2p game of roll for the Galaxy and got my butt handed to me easily by a "beginner player". When I asked him about it,he stated that just because he's a beginner doesn't mean that he's a beginner to rftg... he's a beginner to BGA lol.
Ok... He's not wrong... But it was kinda disingenuous IMHO. I'm not a rftg vet (I've played a total of 6 times now), but I would never pass myself off as a beginner, It just seems so dodgy and lame to me.

My question is: do you guys think that BGA should make a distinction between new to a game and new BGA user?
Thanks in advance for your thoughts.

How?

Depending of the situation,

If never played a game of a specific games, he either, good whiteout knowing it, cheating or chances from the game.

If they seem goods, and don't cheat at all, he's maybe a high IRL Elo.

Expanding on N_Faker's answer: How would something like this be implemented? Would you require that every time someone played a game for the first time on BGA that they complete a survey stating how often they had played it before and what their skill level was? The extra time required to wait for someone to fill that out would discourage allowing new players at a table, preventing people from experiencing new games. Then, how would you handle people who straight up lie? What about people who are the best in their game group (so they truly believe they are "expert") but the entire game group plays poorly (so they are at best "good")?

With the way most people fill out internet forms, "On a scale of 1-5, how good are you at this game" will see mostly 1s and 5s. The 1s from honest new players, the 5s from braggarts. The answer of 3 (average) will probably be the least answered, although it is the truest answer.

Then, if people are allowed to set their starting ranking, the opposite of your experience will happen. Instead of an inexperienced player being soundly defeated by a player that BGA doesn't realize is an expert, experts will be wasting their time playing ranked players that BGA doesn't realize is a beginner/apprentice.


If you dig into the mechanics of how ELO is calculated, you will see that the k-factor changes once several games have been played. This is to allow the ELO of a new (to BGA) player to fluctuate quickly, in order to more rapidly approach their true ELO.

Hey thanks for the replies guys.
I'm not at all interested (or intending) to start a flame war, just musing my thoughts about something that seems kind of weird to me from a matchmaking standpoint.

It just seems broken to me, but I digress. Oh and for what it's worth, I'm also a "beginner" to BGA lol.... For whatever that's worth

No worries. A flame war is when you are an idiot. Good discussion comes when just your ideas are idiotic.

So... Are my ideas idiotic..? Haha funny

There are probably ways to implicitly tell.

If it is a semi-popular game on bga, and the player's account has been there for some time. It is likely that they are new to the game.
If it is a game that was just-released, it could go either way honestly.
If the player's account is new, it could also go either way.

But most of the time it is impossible to tell before the game actually starts. It doesn't really matter honestly, if they already know the game then they'll probably jump up the ranks quickly. And even then, sometimes players get beginner luck/master the game quickly so that they look that they have played it before but in reality it is their first game.