Board Game Arena

ELO System Updates
Post by lordalx » 13 December 2023, 09:41

"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."


What was the update in relation to Red Thumbs?

Red thumbing a player does not prevent you from being matched with them in Arena or Tournaments.

MANNY-OLIVIA wrote: ↑20 July 2024, 11:01 ELO System Updates
Post by lordalx » 13 December 2023, 09:41

"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."


What was the update in relation to Red Thumbs?

Despite this announcement and it, rightly, being noted that red thumbs are being abused, this change was never implemented.

Does anyone know why the change wasn't implemented?

MANNY-OLIVIA wrote: ↑20 July 2024, 18:39 Does anyone know why the change wasn't implemented?

Yes. Insiders at BGA.

If you can Red Thumb Players for tactical purposes then in my opinion that isn't fair competition.

Cile wrote: ↑20 July 2024, 16:44 Red thumbing a player does not prevent you from being matched with them in Arena or Tournaments.

It always baffles me how people can be so wrong, so confidently.

I can't believe they know about this problem and won't change it. I'm getting stiffed in Fluxx because two of the most regular players, who are consistently in and around the top 10, refuse to play me.

It would be nice to have a response from BGA Administrator lordalx or one of his team.


Blocking players is not only unfair competition in Arena, but it also creates longer waiting times for less popular or lengthy games.
This results in players deleting and creating new or multi accounts. Spades is an excellent example of this.


This is the reason why I haven't renewed my yearly subscription.

When I see an evidence that multiple accounts belong to a single player, I routinely red thumb all but one of them.

If you want this Red Thumb evasion so much, then do something about the Dwarf Accounts as well!
As the player above me said, it makes sense to block some accounts like X1, X2, X3, X4 (copies of X, with X being a same many-letters word).

If you care so much about the Red Thumbs' power in Arena, you should also be at least concerned about these many accounts of the same accounts, made most probably to dry an Arena Top 20.
I read some comments that (and I paraphrase) "a player must be smart if they manage to do this, so it's acceptable" - I disagree.

Another suggestion besides the removal of Smurfy accounts: make the names of the players in an ARENA games incognito; basically, if you RTed someone (for example) for calling your grandma ugly, then you at least won't have to deal with the psychological torture of playing with them in an Arena game; because you won't see the name of the ones you played against until after the game.
Or make the chat disabled in Arena or something.
Someone disapproved of this idea of mine, saying "but some players prefer to play a certain way against SPECIFIC players..." - I don't find this argument strong enough against my idea.

I don't know... but Arena versus Red Thumbs... there are so many pros and cons.
I think with the Smurfy Removal and with the Incognito/Chat-Ban Implementation, it could be ok.

Do my ideas seem so unreasonable?