Board Game Arena

For next BGA Arena season, we are studying the idea of Arena rating decay, and we would like your opinion on this.

Why decay?

Some players stops playing on Arena mode when they reach a good position in Arena leaderboard. A decay for inactivity would incite them to play again.

Who would be concerned?

It only affect your "AES", ie the points displayed when you have reached Elite leagues. The only effect is on Elite league players.

How would it works?

After 5 days without any Arena matches for a game, you would lose 1 point every day (-1 for 5 days without playing, -1 again the day after, and so on until you play again in Arena mode).

About ELO

ELO would not concerned, as the goal of ELO is to tell the level of a player (which does not decrease with time).

Please vote above!

It's not immediately obvious why this would be better.

If everyone stopped after a good winning streak, doesn't it just favour the people who stopped the latest? So just pure luck to when you get your winning streak, hopefully within 5 days of the deadline...

My guess is that players would prefer a stricter reputation system for Arena and Tournaments rather than a AES decay.

A hard no on this. BGA is not a profession or a chore, people don't need to be penalised for not constantly playing.

If you want to encourage people to keep playing, this is a much better suggestion that already has support: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=30059 (see https://boardgamearena.com/forum/viewto ... =9&t=18661)

Carrots, not sticks.

What is this???

For any criteria for 'inactivity', top players should take their effort for meaningless calculation for avoiding penalty???
It would make it even harder to be like top-10 for a season for a every single game for EVERYBODY.

How would this proposed decay work for players who mostly play turn-based, versus players who mostly play real-time? It seems hard to balance, and I can already imagine a real-time player joining occasional turn-based games and playing intentionally slowly to stay "active" if a game in progress is enough to delay the decay.

Furthermore I agree with RicardoRix that a stricter reputation and/or account age requirement is much more preferable. Agricola in particular has seen a few strong players who like to quit, repeatedly going through a cycle of making new accounts and winning some Arena games before going on a losing streak and quitting games.

Good idea, 1 point per day, after 5 days, is nothing. Losing one game when at the top you easily drop 30 or more points. Penalty for quitting for a month would therefore be about one loss. It will make arena more interesting, especially for the borderline rankings between 20th and 21st, 10th and 11th and so on. If you want to be in contention to win it all or be top 20 in the world, you should be able to play and win a game per month or per week. If you go on holiday or something and can't play for a week or two, the punishment of dropping a few points is harmless.

sourisdudesert wrote: ↑07 June 2022, 14:10 After 5 days without any Arena matches for a game, you would lose 1 point every day (-1 for 5 days without playing, -1 again the day after, and so on until you play again in Arena mode).

Make it 6 days? What if it's a youngster that is only allowed to play on weekends.
He'd play his last match on Sunday, and when he logs in next Saturday, he'd already have lost a point.

What if in the first 2 months of a certain season, in a certain game, a certain player struggled hard to get in top 20 and managed to do that, probably having enough to remain in top 20 at the end of that season...
Then... at the beginning of the last, 3rd. month, a relative dies (or any other personal issue) and he/she cannot possibly play so often, for most of the remaining season...
What then?
How is this idea fair for such people? They would probably lose their place in the top 20 at the end of the season, because they had a real life situation.

I think people should be free to choose when they want to start and end their play in a season, without risking such repercussion.
The only risk should be that if they decide (or have to) prematurely end playing in a season, another player can jump in front of them; which is a fair risk that often happens.

With all due respect, instead of thinking about the idea presented, I suggest doing something with the players owning multiple accounts and occupying more than 1 place in the Arena tops... I consider this to be a more worrying situation.

Bad Idea; there are reasons why people can not play every day.

This is an utterly terrible idea. Why should people whose success comes earlier in the Arena season be penalised compared to those who do well later?

It's already tougher to get to Elite early in the season as you tend to lose shields easier than gain them when opponents are low ranked.

If you introduce decay all it means is I literally won't bother to play Arena until the last few days/weeks as otherwise my hard work is just lost.