Board Game Arena

Hello,

Today we can allow people to join our table in function of the status (master, expert, strong, good, ...). However, sometimes there is a big difference between 300 ELO players and 499 ELO players whereas both are strong players. Same for experts, there is a big difference between 500 ELO and 699 ELO players.

That is why I think that allowing people to join our table in function of ELO would be better than in function of the status.


For example, personally I prefer to play Tzolk'in at 4 players. By default I open the table for experts and more. When we are only 3 players waiting since 20 minutes we have several choices:
- To wait again..
- To start a 3 players game even if Tzolk'in is very unbalanced at 3 players, but that is another item..
- To open the game to strong players.

And for this 3rd point, this is not the same to have 300 ELO players and 400+ ELO players. So for this example, it would be better to allow 400+ ELO players in place of strong players.

I know that for most of games the filter by status is enough but for Tzolk'in it would be nice to filter in function of ELO.

Tell me if it's not clear, my english is not good.

Amau

The ELO system is very approximating, and for some games, you can't rely on the 500 ELO displayed.
It could be a "young" player who climbed the ladder very fast but who is not that experienced, or a "very old" player who doesn't care about their ELO.
This is quite common, and I would say more annoying in cooperative games.

I think the filter by ELO range (beginner, strong player, expert, …) is intuitive to use, for a newcomer to BGA, who is not familiar with the ELO concept.
Maybe adding 2 or 3 more ladders to it would be a good start.

I would also like a filter by number of games, which would be a good combination with the ELO IMO.

I agree with amau. Maybe add an option to set your preference of elo at the table to a certain number rather than status. In some games elo run very low and this is even helpful in the 100s range. So for average players and strong players this is helpful.

And black better than number of games would be when accounts were opened. I had experienced a trend of people sabotaging games and every time I went to their account it was created recently. It is easy to reach average status because it only requires a few victories to do so and you never fall below 100. (Some of these accounts had a lot of games in a short period of time)

The account creation is not related to a game. What if you are on BGA since 5 years but start to play to a new game?
If the account is new, then the number of game is low btw : )

Blacktango wrote: ↑21 April 2023, 18:11 The account creation is not related to a game. What if you are on BGA since 5 years but start to play to a new game?
If the account is new, then the number of game is low btw : )

The overall game count for these accounts are low indeed. But typically they will play only one or two different games and play that game a lot in a short period. So while they have only been active a few weeks to a month they may have played a specific game more than someone whose been active for years. Off the top of my head I can think of 3 games I play which I’ve seen this (bang, Catan, & spades).

Also an account that was created 5yrs ago but doesn’t play much isn’t likely to be one that is deliberately ruining games. I would hope no one creates an account with plans of using it 5 yrs later just to mess up games.

Some of the new accounts are also new because the person behind them already has bad reputations on other accounts.