Board Game Arena

Congratulations to every winners of Season 3!

Season 4 is NOW launched.

During last season, we introduced new rules, especially on turn-based Arena. We also recently improved a lot of things in the Arena UX. Season by season, we will continue to improve Arena little by little, so please don't hesitate to post your feedback!

New rules for Turn-based Arena

Following your feedback and to avoid Arena ranking cheating, we established new rules:

• For Arena turn-based game, for a given game, you are now forced to play on the table where it's your turn for the longest time. Example: if you have 2 Carcassonne games, you can't play on the game where it's you turn for 5 minutes before playing on the other one it's your turn for 5 hours.
• You cannot start a Arena realtime game if you have a turn based game with the same game in progress where it is your turn to play.
• At the end of the season, all turn based games will be stopped, and the player who consumed the most time will lost the game (all the opponents will be winners).
• 5 days before the end of the Season, this is not possible to create new turn-based table anymore.

Note: these changes have been made following a huge discussion with you to find the best way to address turn based Arena (read viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17703 for details). We'd like to thank all of you that help us to make this solution possible!

Arena interface improvements

[*] The Season number and end date of current season is now clearly displayed on the Arena lobby.
[*] Arena hall of fame: you can now access all the stats, rankings and results for current and past seasons, for all games.
[*] Your latest Arena results have been integrated to each game page.


Important: recent games are not concerned by the end of this season

All games published (= out of Beta) less than 1 month before the end of a season are not concerned by the end of the season (no trophies, no relegation).


It's up to you to find the way of the elite!


May the odds be ever in your favor!

Loving the history pages for arena, great work on that. Thanks much for following through on all the discussions for turn based arena. I know it's made some unhappy who were unaware of some of the rules, but I think the current system is a good compromise between all the competing concerns.

I'm extremely unhappy about in-progress turn-based games being ended prematurely, especially as I was unaware of the change. Do whatever you need to to protect ELO and Arena standings, I really don't care, but there's no reason to stop people playing through their games to completion! We've invested so much time and thought into these games, over a period of weeks, just to have them cut off with no opportunity to complete them. What a waste of time!!
I really don't think I will bother playing in Arena mode in future if this is how it will work. Why can't you just switch the games to "Training Mode" or similar after you've made the ELO/Arena changes you need to?

I didn't know the games would just be canceled at the end of the season. I didn't have time to finish 10 games of carcassonne and now my rating has dropped from 479 to 309. It is sad to see that, knowing that I would have won most of these games.

poptasticboy wrote: ↑05 January 2021, 18:06 I'm extremely unhappy about in-progress turn-based games being ended prematurely, especially as I was unaware of the change. Do whatever you need to to protect ELO and Arena standings, I really don't care, but there's no reason to stop people playing through their games to completion! We've invested so much time and thought into these games, over a period of weeks, just to have them cut off with no opportunity to complete them. What a waste of time!!
I really don't think I will bother playing in Arena mode in future if this is how it will work. Why can't you just switch the games to "Training Mode" or similar after you've made the ELO/Arena changes you need to?

I join all the words you said!

Q re: ranking

I see that for some of the games I play, my level was reset from elite to bronze 1 (example: Love Letter), but for others, I kept my elite level (example: Cribbage). Is this accidental or intentional? If intentional, what's the criteria for maintaining one's level in a game across a new season?

Such a system for TBD games provides tremendous opportunities for abuse. Are you definitely not going to change it?

*all winners (not every winners)


www.YouTube.com/AmassGames

You cannot start a Arena realtime game if you have a turn based game with the same game in progress where it is your turn to play.

I understand the need to not let people start new games when not finishing others, but fast games like backgammon and cribbage, how can you ever start a real-time game when it is your turn every other minute?

poptasticboy wrote: ↑05 January 2021, 18:06 I really don't think I will bother playing in Arena mode in future if this is how it will work. Why can't you just switch the games to "Training Mode" or similar after you've made the ELO/Arena changes you need to?

This link explains everything: viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17703

If you're not sure to finish you turn based games before the end of the Arena season, I agree that it's way better to play in simple/training mode.

mickalot wrote: ↑05 January 2021, 18:22 I see that for some of the games I play, my level was reset from elite to bronze 1 (example: Love Letter), but for others, I kept my elite level (example: Cribbage). Is this accidental or intentional? If intentional, what's the criteria for maintaining one's level in a game across a new season?

Cribbage has been published less than a month, so the first official season of Cribbage is Season 4. Thus, there have been no relegation.

Woooland wrote: ↑05 January 2021, 18:27 Such a system for TBD games provides tremendous opportunities for abuse. Are you definitely not going to change it?

We did. We actually did a lot of work on turn-based Arena to avoid cheating, to avoid a worst solution (removing the whole turn based arena). Everything is explained on the following link viewtopic.php?f=3&t=17703

MikeIsHere wrote: ↑05 January 2021, 18:30 I understand the need to not let people start new games when not finishing others, but fast games like backgammon and cribbage, how can you ever start a real-time game when it is your turn every other minute?

Don't worry, we took this case into account and it shouldn't bother you.