Arena settings being completely ignored.

[biggetje]

I've always wondered this, but why can't we have working arena settings? It honestly doesn't feel that hard to implement...

Asking for at least karma 75% and higher, but keep getting matched with players way below that. And no, they didn't just lose a turn-based game while already in the queue, I checked that.


I get it, people quit & you can't control that. But when you explicitly ask not to be matched with certain players and it gets ignored, it's twice as annoying when they do end up quitting. I much rather not get matched at all and go do something else with my time instead.

[Ranior]

The current system is annoying because it's not clear from the settings menu where you are picking that, but the queue eventually drops all your preferences the longer you wait.

While your search bar is in the bright green zone your karma preferences should be respected. It's once you let it go farther than that that they start getting dropped and ignored and then you can get matched with whomever is in the queue. So one workaround is to make sure that you cancel and restart your queue every couple of minutes to avoid that situation.

I agree that we shouldn't have to work around this though, the setting isn't asking if you prefer to be paired with high karma players, it is asking if you never want to be matched with them--as such something should get changed.

[Een]

The current system is annoying because it's not clear from the settings menu where you are picking that, but the queue eventually drops all your preferences the longer you wait.

While your search bar is in the bright green zone your karma preferences should be respected. It's once you let it go farther than that that they start getting dropped and ignored and then you can get matched with whomever is in the queue. So one workaround is to make sure that you cancel and restart your queue every couple of minutes to avoid that situation.

I agree that we shouldn't have to work around this though, the setting isn't asking if you prefer to be paired with high karma players, it is asking if you never want to be matched with them--as such something should get changed.

It's more like concentric circles. If you have several preferences acceptable to you, the system tries your preferred first, then expands after some time to your less preferred ones, to make it more likely with more time elapsed that a game will start with options that are a valid compromise between preferences of players willing to play at this moment.

Please note though, that "I never want to play with" (red) preferences are always enforced; so if you really don't want a specific option, you have the possibility to set it to "never", and then you should never join a table with this option (otherwise it's a bug). But that may of course mean a longer wait time or no possible match if too restrictive.

[Ranior]

Please note though, that "I never want to play with" (red) preferences are always enforced; so if you really don't want a specific option, you have the possibility to set it to "never", and then you should never join a table with this option (otherwise it's a bug). But that may of course mean a longer wait time or no possible match if too restrictive.

So for reputation though you don't have color options, it's just radio buttons. You can set it to 75% or above and still get matched with people below that--at least I'm pretty sure this is still the case, and seems to be what this thread is complaining about.

At least arena now requires a minimum karma anyhow unlike the past--in the past I had my restriction set to minimum 50% which was not always enforced. It functioned like I stated in my prior reply--it respected it until you were in the queue for too long and then it seemed to ignore it.

[Een]

So for reputation though you don't have color options, it's just radio buttons. You can set it to 75% or above and still get matched with people below that--at least I'm pretty sure this is still the case, and seems to be what this thread is complaining about.

At least arena now requires a minimum karma anyhow unlike the past--in the past I had my restriction set to minimum 50% which was not always enforced. It functioned like I stated in my prior reply--it respected it until you were in the queue for too long and then it seemed to ignore it.

Indeed the reputation filter is displayed using radio buttons, but should still do what it says. If not, then there is a bug. The most useful would be to report a specific case to investigate with a table number (much more useful than just saying "It honestly doesn't feel that hard to implement" at least... table restrictions with people joining and quitting are hard to manage as a condition can be valid at one point in time then invalid the moment after, but the decision to join has to be taken at some point)

[Ranior]

I'll try to look out for it happening and report, it's just a pretty infrequent occurrence ever since a global karma restriction got placed on arena (which was great, it was long past time for that!)

Anyhow, again perhaps it got fixed, but I'm part of a private Terra Mystica BGA community with many players and we used to talk and discuss about the issue I stated above--we would have reputation requirements and still get matched with players that had abysmal karma ratings (10% or whatever). Those are frustrating games because you know it's basically certain the opponent will quit, and for a game like Terra Mystica where it can take up to 2 hours, having an hour or so wasted is obnoxious.

Now the only time it can happen is you have to have your restriction set to 75% or above and get matched with someone below that--but there's a very narrow band now that is lower than that that can still play arena anyhow. So I don't think it will be easy to find many cases, but I'll see if I can get anything soon.

(Or hopefully biggetje can just report whatever led to this complaint)

Finally to be clear I agree with you that all of this is ridiculously difficult to actually implement, queuing and matching people up is not easy. (And it's only made harder by the fact while the op here may prefer to never get a game over getting in a game with someone lower rated, I can just imagine the many complaints you might get if people did select that option but then found their wait times going up substantially--it's hard/impossible to make the queuing system that supports and respects every user's preferences for speed vs quality of table )

[Meeplelowda]

I can just imagine the many complaints you might get if people did select that option but then found their wait times going up substantially

Perhaps after a long wait time a user who has a "never" condition set can be nudged that it may be the cause of the long wait time.

Who am I kidding? People would still complain.

[GeraldineMerida]

Never is never. So ppl who have suggested this option should neither be nudged, nor placed in games that ignore their emphatic preferences.

Seems a simple fix would be to treat reputation preferences like language preferences, with the option of a red 'I never want to play....' button.

[dgjxqz]

From what I understand, your preferences only take effect if you're the creator of the table. It won't stop you from autojoining a table created by someone with a low karma. Or at least, it doesn't prevent you from autojoining a table with a low karma participant who isn't the creator in a >3 player game. It won't prevent someone with a low kerma from joining a table you have joined either.

[GeraldineMerida]

From what I understand, your preferences only take effect if you're the creator of the table. It won't stop you from autojoining a table created by someone with a low karma. Or at least, it doesn't prevent you from autojoining a table with a low karma participant who isn't the creator in a >3 player game. It won't prevent someone with a low kerma from joining a table you have joined either.

You are never the 'creator' of a table in Arena.