Request for scoring option: all non-winners are equal

[el cosimo]

It enforces playing for 2nd place while you should ONLY play for the win. If a player is willing to ruin the game if he can't win then he will definitely also ruin the game to get the 2nd place. To me, it seems like it would enforce better sportsmanship if all players play for the win only, not for 1st loser or 2nd loser placements.

Play in friendly mode then! many games here get then that problem.. if you don’t want to play with any influence on elo

[Stroom]

Play in friendly mode then! many games here get then that problem.. if you don’t want to play with any influence on elo

If elo is important at all then only winning should matter. You should never play for 2nd place in pretty much any board game.

[silentProtest]

If people didn't quit they'd start doing BS trades to try and power 2nd place to win out of spite. The current system is the lesser of two evils, and frankly it gives me something to play for when I get a crippled start and know I can't win. I've been quite pleased with my 2nd places where I've come back from nothing. If people know they are worse off for coming last they will play better to avoid it and that makes it a better game all round.

And if someone is at second place seeing that he can't win, he'd just trade cards to 1st place and make him win faster. Players who care about elo are going to ruin games either way. It's about board game ethics. You can't force people to play the way you want only because of some pointless metric.

It is still useful to have the option to play the game right, even more so in arena. And I would argue there is (almost) always a chance, in catan, to win it, if you can cooperate against the clearly leading player.

PS: player quitting like on playcatan wouldnt be that common here, esp. for people going for elo!! (when you quit you not only losing karma but more elo than you could have lost just losing) - Also kingmaking (pushing all resources into first player for it to be over more quickly) will just get you RTed by all on that table.

[Stroom]

It is still useful to have the option to play the game right, even more so in arena. And I would argue there is (almost) always a chance, in catan, to win it, if you can cooperate against the clearly leading player.

PS: player quitting like on playcatan wouldnt be that common here, esp. for people going for elo!! (when you quit you not only losing karma but more elo than you could have lost just losing) - Also kingmaking (pushing all resources into first player for it to be over more quickly) will just get you RTed by all on that table.

I guess we agree that you should play to win. BUT if you play for elo, then playing for 2nd place would still be an option. That should not exist. You can win from ALMOST every situation.

Kingmaking to get 2nd place for higher elo is not really a RT offense. I've seen people intentionally ruin games and not get punished for it.

[MrBeardy]

so you're saying neither option is perfect and ELO is pointless, ergo why ask them to go to any effort of changing it? I've not seen the problem you're describing. I have seen the opposite, lots. This is how BGA works. Even Not Alone with multi player vs 1 player has crazy ELO. It's just how it is. And as others have said, someone who gets 9 deserves to get better ELO than someone who picks their nose all game and leaves with 2VP.

[Stroom]

so you're saying neither option is perfect and ELO is pointless, ergo why ask them to go to any effort of changing it? I've not seen the problem you're describing. I have seen the opposite, lots. This is how BGA works. Even Not Alone with multi player vs 1 player has crazy ELO. It's just how it is. And as others have said, someone who gets 9 deserves to get better ELO than someone who picks their nose all game and leaves with 2VP.

I am saying that one winner is better. ELO itself is quite pointless for Catan indeed. It just makes more sense to beat down on the player with the highest elo. Skill has much less influence when lower elo players gang up on the player with highest elo. No chance to win 3 vs 1.

Getting a higher score in Catan might not mean much. Someone could steal 2 points of longest road or largest army from you making you drop to last place from 2nd... Score really means nothing unless you win.

[MrBeardy]

So you want the system changed because you don't want to have to worry about bad tactics letting someone steal largest army and longest road?!

[Romain672]

From my experience IRL, at 4 players, you often have someone which is way behind, and which got no chance to win.
You could assume he got like 0.1% maybe, and even that look too high for some games.

So if that person want to play for elo with the request of this post, he wants for the highest elo to win the game, because since that higher elo player is expected to win more games in average, he will lose less elo.
And so that player will try to help as much as he could the highest elo player.

Which... Look worst than the actual state of the game. Especially on games like Catan where I believe you can give all your ressources to someone else.

.

Note that I would want this idea. But without a great idea to counter what I just said, this is just so much worst.

[Stroom]

So you want the system changed because you don't want to have to worry about bad tactics letting someone steal largest army and longest road?!

I want the elo system changed because in most games only winning matters.
Sometimes you have 2 options:
You can sacrifice gaining points in order to stop someone from winning. But if they do, you have less points so you would lose more elo for that.
You can NOT sacrifice gaining points so the other player wins sooner. This way you can lose less elo or even gain some... but you didn't play to win. You played for 2nd place. This is wrong.

If your elo system tells you that it is OK to play for 2nd place then some people will play for 2nd place. That ruins games. Only winning should matter.

[el cosimo]

So you want the system changed because you don't want to have to worry about bad tactics letting someone steal largest army and longest road?!

I want the elo system changed because in most games only winning matters.
Sometimes you have 2 options:
You can sacrifice gaining points in order to stop someone from winning. But if they do, you have less points so you would lose more elo for that.
You can NOT sacrifice gaining points so the other player wins sooner. This way you can lose less elo or even gain some... but you didn't play to win. You played for 2nd place. This is wrong.

If your elo system tells you that it is OK to play for 2nd place then some people will play for 2nd place. That ruins games. Only winning should matter.

But that won’t happen. Even at 2nd place people can loose elo. I played maybe 300 games and didn’t had much problems with people that ruin the game. Yeah people that rob or trade bad but they did it mostly already from the start… and sometimes some that trade with leading people just because he think it doesn’t make any difference anymore. But that is just problem in game that people forget other people with maybe 3 victory points in cards or close to get longest road…