Board Game Arena

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.

I don't disagree with your idea in general. You can adjust settings (per game, from the old lobby) to keep your opponents closer to your rank, though that only works on Bronze/Silver/Gold/Elite/etc. so yes, once you're in the Elite league, you get wild variations in the skill level of your opponents. And yes, as someone who dabbles in lots of games, but am not a super strong player in any, there are games where I know that where I'm playing against a high ELO player, we are playing two different games, and I don't think either of us are enjoying it. That said, I'm pretty sure this part of your post is incorrect:

Propaganda Panda wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 00:27 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.

As far as I know, demotion isn't possible across any leagues - I've never gone backwards from Silver/Gold/etc. once I've reached those levels. Demotions do happen between seasons, but even from Elite leagues, and as you mention you're guaranteed a spot for the rest of the season, I don't think you're talking about between season demotions.

I'm actually not sure why I play Arena anymore, but I still do like to play it for most games. I originally liked the challenge of seeing where I could get along the rankings, but as you've noted with Ark Nova, not all leagues exist for all games (in fact some go straight from Bronze to Elite, but I think that has to do with the number of players in Arena for that game) so there weren't always many rankings to go along. I was never expecting to end up anywhere near the top of the table, so Elite league is actually kind of boring for me. I know some people play Arena because they've said you get more committed opponents who actually play and don't vanish, and on reflection, I think that is probably true and probably part of why I keep playing there.

I'll also add you can also setup games in the Simple (non-Arena) area with ELO restrictions, so if you're looking for higher level opponents, that might be the way to do it. Arena is supposed to be a challenge among people every season (six weeks or so?) so you're only considered if you're actively playing, which is why ELO is somewhat ignored for match ups there.

I second this request. It would be much better if the leagues were either completely eliminated (and everybody can filter by Arena points) or, if you want to keep them and hide the EAS ("Elite Arena Score") for everybody who is not Elite, at least make a correspondence between the EAS and leagues, so that people can go up and down according to their level.

It's maybe not obvious to set what "Elite" means in terms of EAS as it may vary quite a bit in different games, but I think 1700 would be a decent starting point. Of course, if the player base is very small and you can't easily find opponents inside your own league, nothing forces you to set such a restrictive filter. But at least you give the opportunity to do it for the players of games with a gib enough layer base or with enough patience.

Propaganda Panda wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 00:27
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.

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:

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.

I concur wholeheartedly. But wait, you're actually getting matched against players in the "Elite" category? At rank 2 in arena on Lost Ruins of Arnak (late last season), 70% of my opponents were not even in Elite League (and in fact, I dropped one game, which cost me like 50 or 60 points, which was absolutely ridiculous).

I'm pretty sure BGA just focuses on filling tables asap without consideration of arena rank/points.

You can restrict tables by Elo rank, to Master only for example. What am I missing here?

ErikLevin wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 12:56 You can restrict tables by Elo rank, to Master only for example. What am I missing here?

You can't. In Arena you can restrict only by leagues. It would be nice to have in Arena similar restriction as in Simple game.

FelixTHM wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 11:39

Propaganda Panda wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 00:27
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.

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:

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.

I concur wholeheartedly. But wait, you're actually getting matched against players in the "Elite" category? At rank 2 in arena on Lost Ruins of Arnak (late last season), 70% of my opponents were not even in Elite League (and in fact, I dropped one game, which cost me like 50 or 60 points, which was absolutely ridiculous).

I'm pretty sure BGA just focuses on filling tables asap without consideration of arena rank/points.

In Arena you can filter your search by league. I read sometimes of people reporting issues about it, but it has always worked for me. (Maybe the filter turns off after some time if it doesn't find a suitable table, but that's not an issue for popular games)
The problem, as observed by OP, is that pretty soon in the season everybody who played enough games is in Elite, so the filtering becames mostly useless.

Grey Lord wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 14:21

ErikLevin wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 12:56 You can restrict tables by Elo rank, to Master only for example. What am I missing here?

You can't. In Arena you can restrict only by leagues. It would be nice to have in Arena similar restriction as in Simple game.

I can restrict by Elo and start a table search in Arena.
https://u.cubeupload.com/levine/uyEPeV.png
https://u.cubeupload.com/levine/uCZ7gs.png
Have not verified if it actually restricts. Is it known not to work?

nik592 wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 01:35

Propaganda Panda wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 00:27 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.

As far as I know, demotion isn't possible across any leagues - I've never gone backwards from Silver/Gold/etc. once I've reached those levels. Demotions do happen between seasons, but even from Elite leagues, and as you mention you're guaranteed a spot for the rest of the season, I don't think you're talking about between season demotions.

I'm actually not sure why I play Arena anymore, but I still do like to play it for most games. I originally liked the challenge of seeing where I could get along the rankings, but as you've noted with Ark Nova, not all leagues exist for all games (in fact some go straight from Bronze to Elite, but I think that has to do with the number of players in Arena for that game) so there weren't always many rankings to go along. I was never expecting to end up anywhere near the top of the table, so Elite league is actually kind of boring for me. I know some people play Arena because they've said you get more committed opponents who actually play and don't vanish, and on reflection, I think that is probably true and probably part of why I keep playing there.

Oh well, I stand corrected, then! Besides, thank you for sharing your perspective. While I am speaking from my own narrow standpoint as a boardgame-addicted high-elo player, I think it's important that - despite my own wishes - the Arena system should not cater to the needs of a select few at the top of the ladder, but provide a satisfying experience for all participants, which must first and foremost include the average player who only plays recreationally without any competitive monomania. Hearing you be in general alignment with my observations matches with my anecdotal experiences that players prefer to play against opponents of equal-ish strength, irregardless of their ranking.

But if someone else feels differently and for example enjoys the opportunity to face a top player from time to time despite a steep elo difference, please make sure to make your opinion heard!

FelixTHM wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 11:39 I concur wholeheartedly. But wait, you're actually getting matched against players in the "Elite" category? At rank 2 in arena on Lost Ruins of Arnak (late last season), 70% of my opponents were not even in Elite League (and in fact, I dropped one game, which cost me like 50 or 60 points, which was absolutely ridiculous).

I'm pretty sure BGA just focuses on filling tables asap without consideration of arena rank/points.

BGA is not exactly transparent about this, but it is actually possible to filter out opponents by division, therefore making it possible for you to exclusively match with Elite League players. You can change this in the settings of the old Arena menu - I can recommend https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_QHKEMP7xOE]a video[/url] by the No Wonders boardgame channel which shows in detail how to do this.

ErikLevin wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 18:54

Grey Lord wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 14:21

ErikLevin wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 12:56 You can restrict tables by Elo rank, to Master only for example. What am I missing here?

You can't. In Arena you can restrict only by leagues. It would be nice to have in Arena similar restriction as in Simple game.

I can restrict by Elo and start a table search in Arena.
https://u.cubeupload.com/levine/uyEPeV.png
https://u.cubeupload.com/levine/uCZ7gs.png
Have not verified if it actually restricts. Is it known not to work?

This is actually the first time I've seen these settings! I just tried it out, and sadly, it doesn't work. I tried to restrict it to Strong Players and upwards, but still got matched with an Apprentice. If BGA would actually allow this in Arena mode, I would have no further complaints.

Propaganda Panda wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 23:54

ErikLevin wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 18:54

Grey Lord wrote: ↑09 April 2024, 14:21 You can't. In Arena you can restrict only by leagues. It would be nice to have in Arena similar restriction as in Simple game.

I can restrict by Elo and start a table search in Arena.
https://u.cubeupload.com/levine/uyEPeV.png
https://u.cubeupload.com/levine/uCZ7gs.png
Have not verified if it actually restricts. Is it known not to work?

This is actually the first time I've seen these settings! I just tried it out, and sadly, it doesn't work. I tried to restrict it to Strong Players and upwards, but still got matched with an Apprentice. If BGA would actually allow this in Arena mode, I would have no further complaints.

So in the old lobby (under Play Now), there was never a way to restrict tables to ELO, only to level/league. I suspect this is still carrying over to the new lobby but the buttons are there because the UI is the same for both Arena and non-Arena, except the Restrict to Groups field is missing in Arena. In any case, there is a bug here about it: https://boardgamearena.com/bug?id=81232

That said, I suspect it may not be fixed to make it work since that could allow users to restrict to low levels in order to inflate wins. Arena is supposed to be you can play anybody, though I think there is this concession that you can play only within or close to your own league (which theoretically means as you move up levels, you will inevitably get matched with stronger players), and even if you try to play far from your league, it's far in either direction, which I believe would mean you can't avoid other Elite league players once you reach Elite league (unlike being a Master level player who targets Apprentices for easy wins).