Arena season 13: Here We Go!

[DariusGalaxyz]

The "gurus" who choose a 3p count for Catan need to be barred from ever becoming a guru for anything as that decision is immensely horrid.

i don’t play Catan on here, so can’t tell you what the gurus were thinking, but I have been a guru for other games that play best at certain counts, but have voted to change the arena mode to a lower number because waittime for tables to fill was too significant at the ideal count and so real-time games were too hard to kick off.

Not only that, but turn-based Arena games would take much longer to play. Plus, even if a game works best at a higher player count, it can be interesting to see the same game with different settings. The job is to become the master of the game, no matter the settings, so I for one like that settings are changed to things that not everybody will like.

[ElThoesen]

We really need better opponent filter methods in Arena. I understand I can filter by league, but we need ELO filters that add onto it, the same as non-arena. It is painful to get second in a five player game and gain virtually no progress because half of my opponents are 200+ ELO below me. Its absurd we don't have something simple like that implemented.

[DrClick]

Terra Mystica has been incorrectly updated. The gurus voted for a setting that had Fire and Ice final scoring tiles off. They have been left on by mistake.

Fixed. Sorry for the inconvenience.

[CalaveraNM]

The settings for Reflection don't match the ones, which won the vote: The allowed objects should be squares and triangles instead of just squares. (Also filed a bug for this, because I didn't notice that this might be the better place.)

[JamesWolfpacker]

Terra Mystica has been incorrectly updated. The gurus voted for a setting that had Fire and Ice final scoring tiles off. They have been left on by mistake.

Why would they do this, plus use just the base map? Haha. While I would prefer the previous settings of F&I tiles and random map, the setting choice is still good for competitive play. Now if for some reason, if enough people became gurus and made the setting for Terra Mystica become 2p, then I'd be super critical!

[Marianne1]

Thanks to all the BGA Team for another great season! So much fun!

[JamesWolfpacker]

The "gurus" who choose a 3p count for Catan need to be barred from ever becoming a guru for anything as that decision is immensely horrid.

i don’t play Catan on here, so can’t tell you what the gurus were thinking, but I have been a guru for other games that play best at certain counts, but have voted to change the arena mode to a lower number because waittime for tables to fill was too significant at the ideal count and so real-time games were too hard to kick off.

I can understand the reason for wanting shorter wait times for live Arena games, but why make the turn based players suffer too?

Not only that, but turn-based Arena games would take much longer to play. Plus, even if a game works best at a higher player count, it can be interesting to see the same game with different settings. The job is to become the master of the game, no matter the settings, so I for one like that settings are changed to things that not everybody will like.

If it's turn based, there is usually plenty of time to finish or to determine if it can be finished. Perhaps it might be interesting at different settings, if they are valid for competitive play. For instance, Terra Mystica made some changes that are still valid for competitive play. However, if they changed it to 2p, I'd scream foul. Catan should not be at 3p. Wingspan should not be at 2p. The funny thing is that Catan with Explorers and Pirates will actually work well at 2p or 4p, but it is not balanced at 3p. Several games are like this.

If the real goal is to become a master of the game, no matter the settings, then there should be no predetermined settings for a season, except for things that are known to be very unbalanced (e.g. one player has board 8 in Castles of Burgundy; if every player had board 8, then it is balanced). You could sign up for a game and it could randomly be 2p, 3p, 4p, or 5p with the chance of several different options or expansions added or not. That, I can actually accept even though I might not like the idea having to play at a suboptimal player count or using options I don't like.

[Capono]

Lucky Numbers Bruno's variant? I don't like it, I like the regular variant. Can I set regular as MY default?

[krayez]

Where can I see where I placed in the last arena? I can never remember.

[OutOfHabit]

I can understand the reason for wanting shorter wait times for live Arena games, but why make the turn based players suffer too?

A major aspect of Arena is that everyone plays the same settings. So, this isn’t going to happen any time soon.

But I get what you’re saying.

FYI - no idea what’s up with Gurus for any of the games listed but for the games I was involved in changed settings, we discussed in the Guru chat that we would want it to swap between the two settings… but it always is out of your hands as to whether or not that will actually happen the next time.

But also, I am with you about maybe needing to re-think the method of picking gurus because if it is strictly based on number of plays, it may self-select people who want to play at smaller tables…. as those are quicker/can result in more plays.