THIS is what is so wrong with Agricola ARENA community

[jehlinger2er]

I just played a game of Agricola "Arena" , game went quite normal, the lowest ELO player didnt have room parts so when fg pops 1st room grows 1st, 2nd room 2nd and I was 3rd room spot so I make 2 rooms and jump the 4th player since he couldnt build when needed, from there I battled with feeding but managed to survive (was a constable game). Here comes the interesting part: round 14 starts I am on the lead, 1st growth is close 2nd and 2nd growth is on 3rd place by a decent margin. I get sheep (5vp because of constable) after me the low elo gets 3vp field, then 3rd spot has to fence (with fences he gets constable and he didnt have parts for reno/fence and me and lowelo guy have reno parts) its his best move by far and the only way he secures 3rd place, he decides he will just go plow/sow to "block" me and risk the fences, after that 1st growth goes sow/bake and wins the game because I cant sow. I then reno/fence to force low elo to fence and secure 3rd place for himself, but he decides he wont do it because he preferes 4th place because I "took so long" on my turns (TIMER WAS NEVER RED and I only twice in the whole game went under the 1 min mark). So as you can see from the game after I got the sheep round 14 I had 1st place, 1st growth had 2nd place, 2nd growth had 3rd place, and low elo guy had 4th place, we all palyed decent and I got the lucky break from double growth, no one made hideous mistakes, all makes sense right...
But no, 2nd growth decides he will block me to go to 4th place himself so I dont win and go to 2nd place, right there he is making his position one spot worse and kingmaking the other player and he is OK WITH IT... in the end he ended 2nd because lowelo out of spite decided to go 4th and let him get 2nd but that doesnt affect the point that he blocked instead of just ending 3rd and doing his best... that is unsportsman.
And then the cherry on the cake is the low elo deciding to just go 4th because he is late for dinner and he wants to make him win over me...
Low elo never said, I am in a hurry, please hurry up, nothing, he just spites out of nowhere...
1st growth won the game and he played well, nothing to balme him on, if he picks the sheep to deny my constable I wouldnt be angry because he is doing it to win the game and it is part of it, we all want to WIN, but the attitude of the 2 other players I keep on seeing a lot of times, its like they just have to block no matter what, they just have to sink someone, no matter what.
That is wrong, and its super common here and BGA doesnt care, they just say that if you get teamed give red thumb, if someoen kingmakes just give red thumb, but its really really frustrating and not fun.
If you want to see the game its on my profile:
buldozer "1stGrowth" 46
troloyolo "2nd Growth" 45
jehlinger2er 43
Caerulus0 "LowElo" 28 (with fences was +11 and troloyolo -11 )

[sorryimlikethis]

Kingmaking is unsportsmanlike, and wrong, and annoying. I think we all understand that.

But you cannot claim this is commonplace on BGA when you have played 1 game in the last 9 months.
From 59 games this season (i.e. the last 2 months) I have witnessed 1 count of players getting angry over an early (unwarranted) sheep steal. And they both continued on and played the game out normally.

Your scenario is not commonplace. And although what they did was annoying, they are entitled to place their workers wherever they want. They have made legal moves.

The simplest solution is to red-thumb the players involved so you don't ever have to play with them again. It's not like there are countless players waiting to grief you around every corner.

[jehlinger]

Kingmaking is unsportsmanlike, and wrong, and annoying. I think we all understand that.

But you cannot claim this is commonplace on BGA when you have played 1 game in the last 9 months.
From 59 games this season (i.e. the last 2 months) I have witnessed 1 count of players getting angry over an early (unwarranted) sheep steal. And they both continued on and played the game out normally.

Your scenario is not commonplace. And although what they did was annoying, they are entitled to place their workers wherever they want. They have made legal moves.

The simplest solution is to red-thumb the players involved so you don't ever have to play with them again. It's not like there are countless players waiting to grief you around every corner.

First thanks for answering Sorryimlikethis and I apologize for not explaining this part properly: I was on my other account, my main is jehlinger (exactly the same without the 2er) and I play like 25+ games a week (I had 111 games last month) and I have experienced this like one out of every 5 games, you can check my games there, and what is worse is that when I point it out at least 75% of the times people don't show any regret or guilt or anything, sometimes (around 25%) they say their arguments and it's clear it was a honest mistake, no bad blood intended, but many many times (around 75%) I hear first player was so ahead I am playing for 2nd, or I had no better move than denying you this and so on, there is no regret or conscience that it's wrong, they just do it, they are happy doing it and they will do it again and again. In my last 100 games I had one rage quit because I got a triple block (which seemed just ludicrous) and then realized the other 3 guys play together almost all the time, I stated that its super wrong and of course I got triple red thumbed and a 60% Karma Cap because how is it possible that all 3 opponents red thumb you when they blatantly cheated. Apologies again for not explaining I have the other account with 25+ games a week every week.

[RicardoRix]

The short answer is don't play multiplayer games, stick to 2-player.

You have no idea what your opponents are thinking, the psychology of the moment, or what their true intentions are. Are you really accounting for the cards in their hand you can't see?
You're only accounting for times when you get blocked, and not when things fall your way. I'm sure then you don't even register a thought about it. So you're not really mentally taking the ups with the downs.

The other line is - play better, when you're in the lead then getting blocked only ruins their game.

What exactly is the point of having 2 different accounts... that's more suspicious.
It's not really fair on the other players when exchanging ELO with a player that obviously has a higher rating.

[sorryimlikethis]

First thanks for answering Sorryimlikethis and I apologize for not explaining this part properly: I was on my other account, my main is jehlinger (exactly the same without the 2er) and I play like 25+ games a week (I had 111 games last month) and I have experienced this like one out of every 5 games, you can check my games there, and what is worse is that when I point it out at least 75% of the times people don't show any regret or guilt or anything, sometimes (around 25%) they say their arguments and it's clear it was a honest mistake, no bad blood intended, but many many times (around 75%) I hear first player was so ahead I am playing for 2nd, or I had no better move than denying you this and so on, there is no regret or conscience that it's wrong, they just do it, they are happy doing it and they will do it again and again. In my last 100 games I had one rage quit because I got a triple block (which seemed just ludicrous) and then realized the other 3 guys play together almost all the time, I stated that its super wrong and of course I got triple red thumbed and a 60% Karma Cap because how is it possible that all 3 opponents red thumb you when they blatantly cheated. Apologies again for not explaining I have the other account with 25+ games a week every week.

Right, sorry. I did recognise your name. Should have worked out it was a 2nd account.

It's kind of shocking to me because it doesn't match up with my arena experience at all.

But then again most of my games don't feature much discussion about the game in chat because I don't instigate it.
Do you call people out for making bad moves?
This would have to be the #1 reason someone decides to go out of their way to block you.

Like, I enjoy some in-game banter. But if I had someone telling me I made a stupid move (when I thought in my head it was fine) I'd be pretty annoyed and probably look to get in their way more than I normally would.

[msclark]

You're using an alt (which is rather frowned upon) and your main account has a terrible reputation with multiple abandonments and timer penalties. I'm not saying what your opponents did was right, but perhaps look to remove that plank of wood from your own eye first?

[Ranior]

I mean the situation you describe is annoying.

But I don't exactly think you're a paragon of the Agricola Arena community at the moment. Utilizing multiple accounts in an arena season should be a ban worthy offense in my opinion, it's unfair to do. Given your regular account has so many timer penalties and such a low reputation, I find it a bit hard to take a thread you make about what is wrong with the arena community too seriously given all those factors.

Regardless, for others reading this, I don't think the community is like this hardly at all. The bigger issue is quitters, that is annoying enough. But I rarely find purposeful kingmaking players, although one of the few ways you'd actually know such a thing is happening is by trying to chat it out, and I'm guessing based on this thread that jehlinger was a tad abusive/obnoxious in chat and a player decided to target them. Targeting and kingmaking isn't cool, but neither is yelling at players for making moves or mistakes.

[jehlinger]

Thanks for answering guys.
Apparently the alt thing is heavily frowned upon, my premium ended yesterday and I didn't had my card at the moment so I was in que for about 20 minutes and just wanted to play 1 more game before going home, so I thought maybe it had something to do with my lvl so I just tried with the other account and got a game instantly (that's why the other account hasn't been used in a while). A guy even told me how dare I have an alt with the same name and I explained my other account was nothing to hide and he got angry. I NEVER said it doesn't benefits me, of course, about 2/3 of the times it happens, it benefits me (it's just logical) but it is just as wrong anyway, I'm complaining that many times people when they are not on the lead they just JUST HAVE to do something "unconventional" . Sometimes a player just plays good and gets a lucky break and he deserves the win, I keep playing I try to do my best game but I know I won't catch him, the game ends, I end 2nd or 3rd (sometimes even 4th) but that's it, I don't desperately try a way to sabotage him even at the cost of my points/position. I explained what happened in the 1 game I ragequitted (which I know was bad but was 1 time in 100+ games, but if that negates the value of my arguments for you fine). The idea that this is a part of multiplayer games as a whole is super helpful and I think that might be the Eureka thing here, I just hate it so much I get very tilted (wether it affects me or another player, that doesn't matter) and ruins the whole experience for me, but as you said that will never go away and I have to find a way to cope with it or just play 2ers. I am just surprised no one so far feels the same way, just this week I had the game I posted, another with a guy who had already fenced 12 tight do 3 fences round 14 to lose points (since he also had joinery), a guy making clay oven without grain or grain support and just not using it all game, another clay oven from a guy with a hearth and TWO breeding pairs (he never used oven of course) and a guy spending 3 picks to do a 3 point Reno nada on round 14 from those 5 only 2 of them "affected" me, the other 3 just sunk someone else. One of the games was with this player that only creates practice games, games in which I usually hop in because people tend to be more relaxed (nothing on the line, just playing for fun) and even there the super weird clay oven was bought to block the other player over growth (the blocking player had to fg there, he blocked instead, he got jumped, he lost horribly and super sank the other guy)
I just saw what Ranior posted and maybe I bring this upon me as a side effect of the tilt, that can definitely be true also, but it just feels very bad man = /

[euklid314]

jehlinger, in my opinion, all the situations that you described in your last post, these were simply bad moves/mistakes. It feels that you find it very difficult to accept that bad moves happen all the time and are in general not made on purpose (e.g. building fences for 0 points almost surely meant that this player did not consider the joinery and thought he would gain some points while blocking).

If you ask your opponents in chat why they made these mistakes you are bringing them into a defensive position even if this is not your intent. I would not expect a rational answer to such an "offensive question". Many players will react offensively and even make up reasons for their moves. You can ignore their response as you won*t learn a lot from it. It should not be your goal to teach or correct other players.

As long as you are not playing with friends that you know personally you should never discuss bad moves of other players - unless they ask for advice. Just accept these bad moves. And if you do start the topic, then you should phrase your message as defensively as possible ("I feel that in the end I got blocked. I expected other move sequences because I saw moves for you that I thought were better for you. Perhaps I was wrong, though.").

This is how I think you should handle those situations but I understand if my approach should not be feasible for you because the topic causes too much emotions for you.

[Dinandino]

Let me first say that I don't think that this is a widespread problem. It can definitely happen, but according to my (humble) opinion most players make the moves that they think are best for them.

However just after reading this thread I played this game.
https://boardgamearena.com/table?table=325422288
Its the last round of the game and I am the start player. I have materials for farm development but cultivation gives me 11 points, expecting to get fencing back. I know I could have played differently and put myself into a much less risky situation, but I'll come back to this. The player after me (who is currently 3rd on points) has two 3-points moves (urgent wish and grain utilization) and (I think) five 2-point moves (one of which is fencing).  And as you probably guessed he picked the 2-point fencing move. Next two players choses their best move (farm development and house development), leaving me unable to fence and/or renovate. I do get urgent whish back and we are back at the player after me. This time he has still one 3-point move left and quite a number of 2 point moves. This time he does opt to take the grain utilization and not decides not to block a 3-point plow from teal.

Maybe I should have just fenced first action the round before and don't end up in this situation. Probably the best way to avoid king-making is by making sure you can't get blocked.