Board Game Arena

Whenever I try to change the levels I am willing to play against, it keeps reseting them (it lets me change them but after clicking okay/play now and going back I see they are back to a new default of play against my level only) and then I am stuck waiting and waiting and not getting a game.

I´m in the same situation. Is it a web failure???

Extremely annoying, everyone is in the same situation.
Arena seems... more chaotic now, because of this; you never knew precisely when a game might have started, with sound notif. bugs, etc... but now it is worse.
I am sure it is just a technical bug, that BGA will take care of, as soon as possible.

This is a test.

A lot of you remarked that Arena does not try enough to match you with opponents from the same league, which is sad for a competitive mode.

These days we are forcing the "desired level" with the following settings:
_ during the some time (when your search bar is in green), try to match you only with an opponent from same league.
_ after that (search bar in dark green), try to match you with +1 to -1 league
_ after that (search bar in brown), try to match you with +2 to -2 league
_ never match you with opponent in +3/-3 or more (since the winner cannot get any points)

Our stats shows -21% Arena games number and +26% waiting time (which means an average of 20 more seconds of waiting).

At the same time, for a game like 7 Wonders Duel:
_ before the change, you were matched with an opponent from the same league 54% of the time
_ after the change, you are matched with an opponent from the same league 89% of the time

Does it worth 20 more seconds of waiting? Well, we don't know, and probably 100% of you who will read this will answer "no" (because the others will probably never see this message ), however these numbers means that this is at least a good test that needs to be continued to see how all of this evolve.

Changing the defaults is a reasonable thing to test. Please let us change our own preferences away from the defaults if we'd rather play a game sooner than wait for someone on the same level of the ladder. I actually like playing against people in different levels (especially against people on higher levels) because it gives me an opportunity to move up faster if I win.

Terrible change. For games like Clans of Caledonia it’s already hard enough to get enough people to play Arena. Revert asap

I know it's just an anecdote, but the last two Arena games I joined, we had to boot a player because they failed to make their first move in time. It's super frustrating when that happens, moreso when it took so long to get a table together in the first place. I feel like if the matching was faster we'd have fewer people forget they were waiting for a game and walk away from the computer.

I'm playing Yatzee on Platinum Level and it takes several minutes until I'm matched against an opponent. Quite a difference compared to 20 seconds - several minutes make Yatzee unplayable for me

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑27 August 2021, 17:50 At the same time, for a game like 7 Wonders Duel:
_ before the change, you were matched with an opponent from the same league 54% of the time
_ after the change, you are matched with an opponent from the same league 89% of the time

Does it worth 20 more seconds of waiting? Well, we don't know, and probably 100% of you who will read this will answer "no"

It is definitely NOT 20 seconds for most other games, more like 20 minutes. If 7W is the only one you care because it's your most popular game and pays the bills, call this 7 wonders arena, refund the rest of us and be done with it

Setting this as default for every game once - ok, maybe fine, not sure what is better, increased waiting time or different level opponents.
But enforcing this no matter what - nooo, bad idea. In multiplayer games where there aren‘t that many ppl playing, you see that an arena game has open spots, click to join, then „searching for 3 (of 3) players“ -> „ok, lets stop looking then again, never will fill up anyway“ OR „bug?!?“ OR „some red thumbs involved“.