Board Game Arena

Just been thinking it would be nice to have arena split between real time and turn based games. Not something that is limited to Patchwork of course as other games could have this too. To me, real time and turn based games are very different. Turn based games you could crunch the moves and numbers for hours if you wanted to and had enough time. I’m exclusively a real time player and I’ve noticed that most (maybe all?) of the Patchwork arena champions are turn based players who get like 50 games going at once. I suppose that has its own drawbacks of your attention being split so many different ways. In general it seems like turn based players will always win out if you are dedicated enough due to a much longer time to plan and think moves. Having things separated seems to make sense to me since they are almost 2 different games. Having played online poker a lot, it’s kind of the difference between turbo games vs regular games. They are similar but different. I’m guessing this won’t happen but it would be nice.

I agree. It is the same that happens in chess websites, where each speed category (Classical, Rapid, Blitz, Bullet) has different ELO and thus rankings.

I think in BGA there may be an issue of number of games/players, though. Patchwork is probably fine, but other games with a lower player base would probably struggle to form meaningful rankings if the number of games played are too low.

Completely agree! Had written a bigger post on the topic, but it just dissappeared lol.

Indeed just like chess, thinking time matters a lot in this game. Don't play RT if you want to become the Arena champion, that's pretty much the advice. RT Results is inherently a bit more random. The game is quite deep and lots of stuff to take into consideration. Even good players will miss fairly obvious stuff sometime (but less than mediocre skilled players).

Dont play RT if you want to win Arena. Or get a high ELO. The ELO rankings are partially dominated by good players, but not the best, that only plqy against 200-300 points lower ranked players.

Tournaments are the best indication for player skill IMO. Still want to run Real Life tournaments, those are barely non existing but fun I guess