What if a user block every high profil players in arena to make easy points?

[Eldawyrda]

What if a user block every high elo/arena profil players in arena to make easy points?

I do not know how BGA can adress this issue. I did not know players could have such a dishonest behavior.

Winning in arena means winning against everyone, that's why it is difficult. However in the small community of players of the game I love the most, we noticed that one player had us blocked. I never played him/her, yet I'm blocked. I started arena again this season and haven't played arena for month/maybe a year. Yet this issue was already noticed back then with the same player. I was already blocked.

They usually climb the arena ladder gather lots of point only playing low elo players and stop playing staying #1. Same goes for Elo points.

We can't change dishonest players. But we can try to compelled them with rules. I would be glad to lose against them, and see them earn their #1 rightfully. Or know why only high elo are blocked.

I hope I'm wrong about them, yet if I took the time to write in the forum it's because I'm pretty sure about the dishonesty at play.

How BGA team can adress this issue?

Thanks for all your work,
Elda

[nik592]

Winning in arena means winning against everyone, that's why it is difficult. However in the small community of players of the game I love the most, we noticed that one player had us blocked. I never played him/her, yet I'm blocked. I started arena again this season and haven't played arena for month/maybe a year. Yet this issue was already noticed back then with the same player. I was already blocked.

You can't be blocked by a player unless they have played you (not necessarily recently, but at some point). That said, the problem you describe does happen and unfortunately some people are like this. This is one of the reasons BGA say they implemented the power levelling fix to prevent users from winning against a small pool of players, but it depends on the game - even blocking all higher skill players may still leave you with a decent pool to play against. The problem with the power levelling fix is it does far more harm to honest players. Unfortunately, a lot of automated options to address cheating tend to harm honest players more, as the cheaters will just look for other loopholes to exploit.

[Meeplelowda]

Winning in arena means winning against everyone, that's why it is difficult. However in the small community of players of the game I love the most, we noticed that one player had us blocked. I never played him/her, yet I'm blocked. I started arena again this season and haven't played arena for month/maybe a year. Yet this issue was already noticed back then with the same player. I was already blocked.

You can't be blocked by a player unless they have played you (not necessarily recently, but at some point). That said, the problem you describe does happen and unfortunately some people are like this. This is one of the reasons BGA say they implemented the power levelling fix to prevent users from winning against a small pool of players, but it depends on the game - even blocking all higher skill players may still leave you with a decent pool to play against. The problem with the power levelling fix is it does far more harm to honest players. Unfortunately, a lot of automated options to address cheating tend to harm honest players more, as the cheaters will just look for other loopholes to exploit.

They also announced that they were going to stop red thumbs from having an effect in Arena for this season. but then never implemented this change and never explained why they didn't.

I may not agree with everything in the massive ELO change thread, but I definitely agree that BGA has exhibited a pattern of lacking transparency. Anecdotally, it seems to have gotten worse after the founders left the organization.

[nik592]

They also announced that they were going to stop red thumbs from having an effect in Arena for this season. but then never implemented this change and never explained why they didn't.

I mean, there was pushback on that because people said that red thumbs let them block people who quit at the end of long-ish games and frustrate the rest of the players at that table. Though it's surprising that BGA would respond to such pushback when the pushback on power levelling has been much stronger and basically ignored. There was talk about doing some kind of red thumb decay or "orange thumbs" (whatever that meant), but neither of those ideas have really been explained or developed either (as far as I know).

[Eldawyrda]

You can't be blocked by a player unless they have played you (not necessarily recently, but at some point). That said, the problem you describe does happen and unfortunately some people are like this. This is one of the reasons BGA say they implemented the power levelling fix to prevent users from winning against a small pool of players, but it depends on the game - even blocking all higher skill players may still leave you with a decent pool to play against.

I have no memory of playing this player but maybe it was a long time ago.

For levelling fix does it means that the player will not be able to play arena if too many players in the arena are blocked by them? We have only 20-30 players in our arena.

[ErikLevin]

Winning in arena means winning against everyone, that's why it is difficult. However in the small community of players of the game I love the most, we noticed that one player had us blocked. I never played him/her, yet I'm blocked. I started arena again this season and haven't played arena for month/maybe a year. Yet this issue was already noticed back then with the same player. I was already blocked.

You can't be blocked by a player unless they have played you (not necessarily recently, but at some point).

Really? You can just go to any profile and give a red thumb and nothing prevents a person from going through the top Elo list and doing that for everyone. I think I have preemptively red thumbed one or two people based on things like unpleasant attitude in the forums, without even playing them. Does that block not work until I have played them?

[nik592]

Winning in arena means winning against everyone, that's why it is difficult. However in the small community of players of the game I love the most, we noticed that one player had us blocked. I never played him/her, yet I'm blocked. I started arena again this season and haven't played arena for month/maybe a year. Yet this issue was already noticed back then with the same player. I was already blocked.

You can't be blocked by a player unless they have played you (not necessarily recently, but at some point).

Really? You can just go to any profile and give a red thumb and nothing prevents a person from going through the top Elo list and doing that for everyone. I think I have preemptively red thumbed one or two people based on things like unpleasant attitude in the forums, without even playing them. Does that block not work until I have played them?

Maybe it's changed? You're correct, I just tried to block you (I then unblocked you ) and it allowed me. But I know I tried to block someone based on attitude in the forums and it told me I couldn't because I'd never played with them. Similarly, I tried to green thumb some RL friends when they joined BGA, before we'd even played a game, and it told me I couldn't do that either until we'd played. So I'm not sure, that was my understanding, but clearly it's incorrect.

For levelling fix does it means that the player will not be able to play arena if too many players in the arena are blocked by them? We have only 20-30 players in our arena.

The levelling fix means players stop gaining ELO if they're constantly playing (and winning) against the same player. It's actually a huge pain in Arena, especially if the player pool is small, since you don't get to choose your opponents (not without deliberately messing with the system, which is obviously not intended) and if the pool is small, you'll hit the same opponents regularly anyway. If a player is red-thumbing half the players to make the pool even smaller to themselves, they're likely to hit more reduction in ELO gains.

[Meeplelowda]

Maybe it's changed? You're correct, I just tried to block you (I then unblocked you ) and it allowed me. But I know I tried to block someone based on attitude in the forums and it told me I couldn't because I'd never played with them. Similarly, I tried to green thumb some RL friends when they joined BGA, before we'd even played a game, and it told me I couldn't do that either until we'd played. So I'm not sure, that was my understanding, but clearly it's incorrect.

You've been able to private red thumb someone for a very long time (going back to when I joined 4 years ago) without playing them. I've applied that frequently to people in the forums. You formerly couldn't give a public red thumb to someone you hadn't played. Maybe that's what you tried to do previously?

But I just gave (and revoked and changed to green) a "public" red thumb to you after confirming we've never played a game. It appears that when they removed the automatic effect of public red thumbs, they also removed the restriction on giving green thumbs and public red thumbs.

[KenFin1]

BGA removed limitations on red thumbs and made the whole system much worse. IIRC they said they got fed up having to spend time reviewing the public thumb infractions even though, (given the number of complaints we used to see here and on other discussion sites) they didn't exactly do a fair and even job of that, according to the posters anyway, and there's been enough of them that it makes me think it' s more than just one or two grumpy folk.

Anyway, in making that change they also removed the green thumb to red thumb limits.

There is still no way for a user to see who they have red thumbed so it's very difficult to remove someone which doesn't help. Some people use red thumb to stop arena continually pairing them with a certain player. I've had arena stick me with the same person 8 games in a row. * is the point of that? If people use red thumb for that and don't keep their own list of who to then unblock later you can end up with a growing list of blocked people that doesn't reset, and I think that is what the auto-resetting orange thumb thing is supposed to address (because BGA see this as a quicker fix than editing the pairing function itself, which IIRC they said the original code is "old and very complicated".)

Someone said anecdotally things have got worse since the founders left. I would say that has been my impression, but weren't they still involved when the new game lobbies were being developed? So it's not black and white. But it does sound like they knew the code much better than the people now here (unsurprisingly since they presumably wrote it to begin with)

*Moderator edit: please refrain from swearing on BGA, this is a family-friendly platform.
My edit. How are three initials swearing exactly? The whole point is so that you're not swearing. Seriously? You edit that?

[Meeplelowda]

Someone said anecdotally things have got worse since the founders left. I would say that has been my impression, but weren't they still involved when the new game lobbies were being developed? So it's not black and white. But it does sound like they knew the code much better than the people now here (unsurprisingly since they presumably wrote it to begin with)

I specifically was referring to my subjective perception that transparency has gotten worse since their departure. But it also wouldn't be surprising that they lost institutional knowledge of the oldest of the legacy code on the site. For example, I believe souridouset (pardon my laziness in not confirming the spelling) said in a Reddit AMA that the in-game chat function was developed by the founding team. So good luck ever getting someone to revise that, for example, to allow you to mute someone in a real-time game.