BoardGaymesJames wrote: ↑04 March 2025, 21:48
These system may have been a good idea at the start but are simply a inderance, alienating, and causing griefing and gaming of the systems. Stick to facts instead, show number of incomplete games, number of times over time, and let others make up the choice to play.
Furthermore, time limits are very unfriendly to the disabled, and are very poorly calculated for literally every game I have been in trying to calculate my turn. This isn't chess, these are suppose to be fun, and these timers are not.
ELO makes no sense and we've heard of people having multiple accounts, playing with each other to boost ELO to get into tournaments. None of this makes any sense for why it even exists, we do not need to gamify gaming. Tournaments should once again be up to the person setting them up % of wins, % of games abandoned etc.
You're a bit split on your topic of this post, not a big deal. You seem to play quite casually on BGA, trying a variety of games and not focusing on specific games and playing over and over/ This is totally respectable and in line with the idea behind BGA to try different games online to promote them.
Regarding Elo, the competitive arena and tournament scene is probably of little interest to you, but it is for many players on the website. BGA has a wide variety of players ranging from casual gamers to more competitive, technical, serious players that perform well on 1 or more games ("good at games" people). Consider Elo as a tool for yourself and others to quickly identify similarly minded players and choose to play with them and restrict table access.
I would recommend playing at tables with 0-199 Elo players only for all games unless you are looking for a challenge, improve at the game, and learn how to play well from watching better players. This should provide more evenly matched games, which should be more enjoyable.
The Elo inflation/boosting thing is great exaggerated. It is much more rare on BGA than people seem to think it is. Especially with the ability of players to report it and having moderators take action. There is a much better way for any player to boost their Elo in a game, which is just getting good, VERY GOOD at the game and playing regularly against a variety of players, always looking to improve.
For some understanding of the leaderboard and competitive players on BGA, these players generally fit into a particular personality, profession, and skillset similar to other strategy games. Expect all the top players to be highly analytical, slow thinking types with education in STEM, computer science, statistics, data analysis. These players enjoy playing games for completely different reasons than a casual gamer. They will generally be kind people that want to play to win, think carefully, calculate everything optimally, min-max the game whenever possible. This is how they get enjoyment from the game. Lots of these players are looking for "mastery" rather than "glory" of being the #1 ranked player on BGA. They generally want to play their favorite games at the highest level and play against other similarly minded players also trying to play their best and win. If you are going for #1 Elo spot in a particular game, expect your toughest competition to be some engineer or computer scientist with very strong mental calculation skills and perhaps a detailed Excel sheet or custom program to reference while playing (not play for them). To quote Dennis Reynolds, they are trying to see how for they can go (with game mastery).
https://imgur.com/YHjfFrO
The satisfaction comes from playing the game with mastery and succeeding at the game against other strong players, not from simply being the #1 player. Being the #1 player is meaningless with difficult competition. With difficult competition becoming a top player is difficult and well-earned so I see nothing wrong with players achieving a high Elo and ranking that they've worked hard to earn and being proud of it. Of course this rating should be earned fairly, no manipulation by boosting or being selective with opponents. Ideally the top rank is earned by strong performance against other strong players rather than stomping on beginners over and over.
Most of these type of players would prefer to avoid playing casual players because they want to play against challenging opponents. With limited time for games, they would not want to waste time playing a skill based game against a significantly weaker opponent and having an easy win 90% of the time. That would be a waste of time for everyone IMO.
Regarding game design, most games are designed with good balancing to ensure that a variety of strategies are viable and that the gameplay is still enjoyable when played with a table of experienced players all trying to win. Otherwise, games quickly become stale once players discover a simple, dominant winning strategy. Also bad is when the winning strategy is completely opposed to the enjoyment of the player and/or the rest of the table. Most games on BGA seem to be interesting to play/watch at high level I find. Playing many games at a high level actually makes them more enjoyable because you can appreciate all the little details that went into the game.
Regarding reputation penalties, I think yours got reversed? Anyways your reputation seems to be fine. Sorry to hear your frustration with outages.
For time limits, all games should have a time limit unless all players agree to play without timer. This is to respect peoples' time. I find it frustrating when players play painfully slow at a table, less than 2 moves every 24 hours. I would recommend you always turn-based to avoid timeouts if you are struggling with the clock in real-time games. If the game might take more than 1 day, perhaps set playing hours so you can sleep/rest for 12h without running out of time.
