BAD ARENA Season REWARD

[BarboRosso]

#263667799 try to see this match.... Both in Elite

One piece different, I lost 27 points

[Jellby]

So? A win is a win, and a loss is a loss. ELO and Arena points are, as far as I know, independent on the score difference. This is for every game here, and for most sports in real life too.

[dschingis27]

#263667799 try to see this match.... Both in Elite

One piece different, I lost 27 points

You should start to play Basketball.

[BarboRosso]

So? A win is a win, and a loss is a loss. ELO and Arena points are, as far as I know, independent on the score difference. This is for every game here, and for most sports in real life too.

This is precisely the wrong point, whoever is ahead in the standings (even slightly), in the event of a defeat, loses many more points than they would receive in the event of a victory (even for a single piece of difference)

[BarboRosso]

#263667799 try to see this match.... Both in Elite

One piece different, I lost 27 points

Happens again

#264586552

incredible injustice of reward points, at this point let me choose to play ONLY with whoever is before of me in champions

[dschingis27]

First of all, please acknowledge that one piece different doesn't matter. That was what Jellby was writing about.

In principle, you are right that the current way the Arena score is determined is not suitable for Backgammon. The score is bound to go up and down in large steps, and because of that it fails quite often to reflect actual skill. However, you haven't really provided a viable solution. This is actually a very complicated issue that is not solved easily.

The point is, there has to be a level of Arena score where it gets hard to earn even more points. Otherwise it gets a grinding hole even more. The question is how this "hard" should be implemented. The current format might not be the best way.

[Jellby]

whoever is ahead in the standings (even slightly), in the event of a defeat, loses many more points than they would receive in the event of a victory (even for a single piece of difference)

There's nothing fair or unfair about it, it's just how ELO works: higher rated players have more to lose than to win, and lower rated players have more to win than to lose. And it is based on reasonable assumptions, that may or may not be appropriate for high-luck games, and you may or may not like, but that's the way it is. If you believe ELO is just a score that only increases as you play more and more games... well, that's not what it is.

... and I presume it's the same for Arena scores, they're just "reset" every season.

[Silene]

If you want a good ELO, you need to perform above average. If you managed to get a good ELO through some good results but then play only average niveau, you will get back to average ELO. If you want to keep good ELO, you need to keep performing above average. There's nothing unfair about it. It's just that ELO is not about endless gaining points. You have a certain skill, and the ELO-system is designed in a way that has a tendency to draw you towards the score that reflects your skill. So if you had a good run and have a score that is actually higher than one would expect for the skill you have, than you will naturally be dragged down again.
The same is true after a bad streak. If you had a losing streak and find yourself in a very low score, it will be very easy to you to get back up.

When you think you're better off with only playing people with a higher score than you, you're wrong. Because those are usually stronger players too, making it harder for you to win .

[dschingis27]

@Silene: I will disagree/comment on a few things you wrote there. I know that Elo is supposed to work as you describe it.

If you managed to get a good ELO through some good results but then play only average niveau, you will get back to average ELO. If you want to keep good ELO, you need to keep performing above average.

For a game like Backgammon, the problem is that your Elo/EAS is likely to strongly drop down repeatedly even if you perform almost perfectly. You are right in what you say if you define 'performance' in terms of winrate, however, I define 'performance' in terms of good moves.

I did some simulations once and it showed me that with a K factor of 40 only about the last 50 games played really matter for your Arena score. And of course the more recent games matter more than the less recent ones. 50 games is nothing in Backgammon and it doesn't make much sense to me to compute a score based on a snapshot of just 50 games. Unfortunately the luck factor is just tremendous.

You have a certain skill, and the ELO-system is designed in a way that has a tendency to draw you towards the score that reflects your skill.

I would say that's not really the case for the Arena score with a K factor of 40. The system is designed in a way so that your Arena score shoots up and down and you can never really know if you are close to your personal "true score" at any time. For me it is a really frustrating system. If you took the average of your Arena score over a long time period, then you might get some indication of your skill. But the Arena score itself can and will often be very far from a reflection of your true skill.

So, as I wrote before, the system is really not good for a game like Backgammon. It does work quite ok for games like Terra Mystica or Tzolkin as there it makes a lot of sense to measure your skill by your last 50 games.

While this is all quite frustrating for me, I do get that changing the system can have some drawbacks, so it is really not an easy business. However, I would say it should be worth at least to try something different.

[euklid314]

I agree with most of what dschingis said.

A high Arena standing does only tell that you recently had a huge winning streak. Of course the chances for a l9ng winning streak is considerable higher with playing the correct moves all the time. But luck is important.

Thus winning the Arena in Backgammon does mean to play a lot until you hit your winning streak and then you MUST stop for the rest of the saison.

Forcing players to keep playing on (e.g. 1 game per week, as was already suggested) does not solve the problem at all. In the contrary, then the player who had the longest winning streak in the last week of an Arena saison will win the saison. All of the many weeks before do not really have great impact on Arena standings for players that play regularly.