Dear players,
Playing on our platform can fit many players' expectations, from casual play and friendly games up to the most competitive way through limited ARENA seasons.
The best way to assess your experience and skill in each game is through the ELO system, which adjusts your ranking points after every non-friendly completed game.
ELO ranking allows to classify players in 7 distinct skills levels: Beginner (0 point), Apprentice (1-99 points), Average (100-199), Good (200-299), Strong (300-499), Expert (500-699), Master (700+).
Source : https://boardgamearena.com/faq?anchor=faq_account_elo
Unfortunately, over time, we have identified several biases in this system that lead us to adjust it in several ways, keeping the focus on your game experience rather than ELO grinding.
In the past update, we already updated the ELO for cooperative games to prevent players from cancelling their game to prevent any ELO loss – you must concede the game instead. We now force`no time limit` games to be played in Friendly Mode only, as previously discussed at length.
We know that ELO is not only a tool to assess players’ skills compared to the whole community, but it is also used to rank players within a same group of regular players or friends, so it will be kept, with the following changes:
→ Team play
It is obviously unfair for games that play with teammates to have different ELO wins/losses within the same team. From now on, when playing games such as Belote, Decrypto, Tichu etc, you will not gain/lose ELO from the other players within your team.
Not all games that can be played as a team are currently under consideration, as some of them are not exclusively designed for team play. These require individual consideration and additional dedicated work.
→ Cooperative play and non competitive game
For cooperative games such as Hanabi, The Crew, or Just One, competition is already disabled. However, some players were too focused on the ELO, which led to unnecessary competitiveness in an environment which should instead incentivize cooperation.
For such games, we decided to hide the ELO value of each player and only display their current rank, from Beginner to Master.
This rank is based on existing win / loss games from the underlying ELO system. This way, you will not lose your rank with this change. For some games where chapters or scenarios are played, the more successful chapter will get you to the next rank faster, but you will not know how far from the next rank you could be at a given time.
This also applies to games where competition is disabled such as Chess.
→ Power levelling
We encountered many situations of power levelling, linked to multi accounts, even if we are still fighting against such practices, it became obvious that the current system might encourage it.
To prevent this, any consecutive wins against the same opponent will reduce the amount of ELO points awarded from this victory. This reduction will be gradually higher as more consecutive wins are accumulated. This way, we encourage you to challenge other players to keep the original spirit of the ELO: show your skill at a game compared to the whole community, not just the same ones.
→ ELO Decay
In the past, some of the strongest players refrained from playing as they could lose ELO, attempting to prevent losing their hard obtained current rank. This lead to situations where players kept their rank without playing anymore. We clearly want to encourage you to play to keep your rank. This will also help other players to be able to compete against the best.
Doing so, a regular ELO decay is introduced to slowly drop the ELO from top ranked players that do not play anymore. The decay will be -10% at the end of the Arena Season for all Strong players and above that did not play any ranked game, but this could be adjusted later (both scope and frequency). The decay will not move player from a rank lower than Strong.
→ Red Thumbs for competitive play
One last thing that is going to be changed in a few weeks will be the impact of the Red Thumbs.
You can currently give a Red Thumb to any player with which you had a bad game experience. This prevents you from competing against them in ranked games or the Arena, but not in Tournaments.
This system can, and unfortunately is, used to prevent some players from competing against the best players. Considering that the Red Thumb system is being abused this way, on purpose or not, we will update the way Red Thumbs are impacting the matchmaking for the next season.
As usual, feel free to post your feedback, we will continue to monitor the current situation and improve the system accordingly.
These changes are a first step towards a more enjoyable overall experience for ranking on the platform and that we heavily rely on your feedback during this process. We acknowledge the existing limitations in the current system and will continue to explore ideas for enhancing the team or cooperative game experience.
All these changes are now mentioned in our FAQ.
PS: Some of this changes were introduced silently yesterday afternoon already, in order of us to perform final checks, unfortunately, this lead to unexpected behavior on ELO for solo games that are currently under individual fixes.
Playing on our platform can fit many players' expectations, from casual play and friendly games up to the most competitive way through limited ARENA seasons.
The best way to assess your experience and skill in each game is through the ELO system, which adjusts your ranking points after every non-friendly completed game.
ELO ranking allows to classify players in 7 distinct skills levels: Beginner (0 point), Apprentice (1-99 points), Average (100-199), Good (200-299), Strong (300-499), Expert (500-699), Master (700+).
Source : https://boardgamearena.com/faq?anchor=faq_account_elo
Unfortunately, over time, we have identified several biases in this system that lead us to adjust it in several ways, keeping the focus on your game experience rather than ELO grinding.
In the past update, we already updated the ELO for cooperative games to prevent players from cancelling their game to prevent any ELO loss – you must concede the game instead. We now force`no time limit` games to be played in Friendly Mode only, as previously discussed at length.
We know that ELO is not only a tool to assess players’ skills compared to the whole community, but it is also used to rank players within a same group of regular players or friends, so it will be kept, with the following changes:
→ Team play
It is obviously unfair for games that play with teammates to have different ELO wins/losses within the same team. From now on, when playing games such as Belote, Decrypto, Tichu etc, you will not gain/lose ELO from the other players within your team.
Not all games that can be played as a team are currently under consideration, as some of them are not exclusively designed for team play. These require individual consideration and additional dedicated work.
→ Cooperative play and non competitive game
For cooperative games such as Hanabi, The Crew, or Just One, competition is already disabled. However, some players were too focused on the ELO, which led to unnecessary competitiveness in an environment which should instead incentivize cooperation.
For such games, we decided to hide the ELO value of each player and only display their current rank, from Beginner to Master.
This rank is based on existing win / loss games from the underlying ELO system. This way, you will not lose your rank with this change. For some games where chapters or scenarios are played, the more successful chapter will get you to the next rank faster, but you will not know how far from the next rank you could be at a given time.
This also applies to games where competition is disabled such as Chess.
→ Power levelling
We encountered many situations of power levelling, linked to multi accounts, even if we are still fighting against such practices, it became obvious that the current system might encourage it.
To prevent this, any consecutive wins against the same opponent will reduce the amount of ELO points awarded from this victory. This reduction will be gradually higher as more consecutive wins are accumulated. This way, we encourage you to challenge other players to keep the original spirit of the ELO: show your skill at a game compared to the whole community, not just the same ones.
→ ELO Decay
In the past, some of the strongest players refrained from playing as they could lose ELO, attempting to prevent losing their hard obtained current rank. This lead to situations where players kept their rank without playing anymore. We clearly want to encourage you to play to keep your rank. This will also help other players to be able to compete against the best.
Doing so, a regular ELO decay is introduced to slowly drop the ELO from top ranked players that do not play anymore. The decay will be -10% at the end of the Arena Season for all Strong players and above that did not play any ranked game, but this could be adjusted later (both scope and frequency). The decay will not move player from a rank lower than Strong.
→ Red Thumbs for competitive play
One last thing that is going to be changed in a few weeks will be the impact of the Red Thumbs.
You can currently give a Red Thumb to any player with which you had a bad game experience. This prevents you from competing against them in ranked games or the Arena, but not in Tournaments.
This system can, and unfortunately is, used to prevent some players from competing against the best players. Considering that the Red Thumb system is being abused this way, on purpose or not, we will update the way Red Thumbs are impacting the matchmaking for the next season.
As usual, feel free to post your feedback, we will continue to monitor the current situation and improve the system accordingly.
These changes are a first step towards a more enjoyable overall experience for ranking on the platform and that we heavily rely on your feedback during this process. We acknowledge the existing limitations in the current system and will continue to explore ideas for enhancing the team or cooperative game experience.
All these changes are now mentioned in our FAQ.
PS: Some of this changes were introduced silently yesterday afternoon already, in order of us to perform final checks, unfortunately, this lead to unexpected behavior on ELO for solo games that are currently under individual fixes.
