To preface this: I think Arena is a great idea in principle, as it gives us access to quick games as well as a cool ladder system where you can compete against your fellow boardgame enjoyers.
However, and I'll speak here from the perspective of a high-ranked player who is aware that his experiences are not representative of the overall player base: The pronounced differences in playing strength between opponents makes Arena extremely tiresome and frustrating.
For myself, I mostly play Ark Nova, where I am a 700+ elo player and currently on course to finish this season in the Top 5 of Arena. I don't expect to reguarly meet opponents in my elo range, this would be an unrealistic standard. But I would expect from a just matchmaking system that it attempts to create a maximum amount of fair and competitive games, and in this regard, Arena fails completely, at least for the top division.
Elite League, which is supposed to be for the "crème de la crème" by name, is mostly filled with players who do not even meet the criterion of a "strong player" (300+ elo). If I look back at the hundreds of matches that I've played in this season, at least a third of them have been against opponents in the low 200s or even 100s, which accounts for an elo difference of 500 or more. These kind of games are neither fair nor competitive for either of the participants and only result in one-sided stomps, where the higher-ranked player is going through the motions to get done with a game which will usually net them zero elo and maybe 1-3 arena points, whereas the lower-ranked player will be feel like an idiot because they got destroyed by someone who has played a bazillion more games than them.
What's the purpose behind this? Why is it possible that players with 800 elo and 100 elo are in the same Arena division and regularly have to compete against each other? For us top players, it's extremely annoying and just a waste of lifetime, frankly spoken. But even for the lower-ranked players, it is not a pleasant experience - I know that this post may sound elitist, but I actually do not think worse of them by any means. I've chatted with plenty of them after these kind of one-sided matches, and most of them did not enjoy the game at all and would've preferred to compete against an opponent of equal strength, where they have a realistic chance of winning.
In short: Elite League is not really "elite", but instead devolves into a competition pool for players from all elo ranges as the season progresses, which leads to highly unbalanced matchmaking. To me, there are two main issues which create this imbalance:
1) It is impossible to demote from Elite League. You can demote from Gold to Silver, from Silver to Bronze. But once you are in Elite League, you are guaranteed a spot for the rest of the season, even if you only proceed to have a 10% winrate afterwards - which is literally the case for many players who will fall down to even below 1300 arena ranking.
2) There are not enough divisions in some games, and now I am speaking strictly about Ark Nova. Ark Nova is the most popular game on BGA with the highest player base, yet it only has four leagues: Elite, Gold, Silver and Bronze. There is no reason to not implement Platinum and Diamond for a game with so many players, and while I am not knowledgeable about other games, I would assume that this problem occurs not only in Ark Nova.
I don't know if BGA even considers this a problem, I would suppose that there is no willingness from BGA's side to remedy this issue as it motivates strong players to grind through an inhuman amount of games against opponents who are infinitely worse than themselves most of the time, while the rest gets the perk of being called an elite player, no matter if this classification is merited or not.
But if there is, I would welcome other perspectives and opinions in order improve the Arena experience, as for myself, I am becoming growingly burnt and worn out by a system where only a fraction of all games are actually meaningful and challenging.
However, and I'll speak here from the perspective of a high-ranked player who is aware that his experiences are not representative of the overall player base: The pronounced differences in playing strength between opponents makes Arena extremely tiresome and frustrating.
For myself, I mostly play Ark Nova, where I am a 700+ elo player and currently on course to finish this season in the Top 5 of Arena. I don't expect to reguarly meet opponents in my elo range, this would be an unrealistic standard. But I would expect from a just matchmaking system that it attempts to create a maximum amount of fair and competitive games, and in this regard, Arena fails completely, at least for the top division.
Elite League, which is supposed to be for the "crème de la crème" by name, is mostly filled with players who do not even meet the criterion of a "strong player" (300+ elo). If I look back at the hundreds of matches that I've played in this season, at least a third of them have been against opponents in the low 200s or even 100s, which accounts for an elo difference of 500 or more. These kind of games are neither fair nor competitive for either of the participants and only result in one-sided stomps, where the higher-ranked player is going through the motions to get done with a game which will usually net them zero elo and maybe 1-3 arena points, whereas the lower-ranked player will be feel like an idiot because they got destroyed by someone who has played a bazillion more games than them.
What's the purpose behind this? Why is it possible that players with 800 elo and 100 elo are in the same Arena division and regularly have to compete against each other? For us top players, it's extremely annoying and just a waste of lifetime, frankly spoken. But even for the lower-ranked players, it is not a pleasant experience - I know that this post may sound elitist, but I actually do not think worse of them by any means. I've chatted with plenty of them after these kind of one-sided matches, and most of them did not enjoy the game at all and would've preferred to compete against an opponent of equal strength, where they have a realistic chance of winning.
In short: Elite League is not really "elite", but instead devolves into a competition pool for players from all elo ranges as the season progresses, which leads to highly unbalanced matchmaking. To me, there are two main issues which create this imbalance:
1) It is impossible to demote from Elite League. You can demote from Gold to Silver, from Silver to Bronze. But once you are in Elite League, you are guaranteed a spot for the rest of the season, even if you only proceed to have a 10% winrate afterwards - which is literally the case for many players who will fall down to even below 1300 arena ranking.
2) There are not enough divisions in some games, and now I am speaking strictly about Ark Nova. Ark Nova is the most popular game on BGA with the highest player base, yet it only has four leagues: Elite, Gold, Silver and Bronze. There is no reason to not implement Platinum and Diamond for a game with so many players, and while I am not knowledgeable about other games, I would assume that this problem occurs not only in Ark Nova.
I don't know if BGA even considers this a problem, I would suppose that there is no willingness from BGA's side to remedy this issue as it motivates strong players to grind through an inhuman amount of games against opponents who are infinitely worse than themselves most of the time, while the rest gets the perk of being called an elite player, no matter if this classification is merited or not.
But if there is, I would welcome other perspectives and opinions in order improve the Arena experience, as for myself, I am becoming growingly burnt and worn out by a system where only a fraction of all games are actually meaningful and challenging.
