Make Gurus more consistent
Posted: 21 March 2025, 16:58
I've been struggling with this for a while, so it's about time I wrote down my thoughts.
I think that the Guru system, while being a great concept, has some serious problems. To sum it up in one sentence, it seems to be really hard to say a BGA Game Guru for a long period.
My situation:
I'm one of the top players in Tapestry, with over 1000 games played (mostly Arena and public tournaments), and having consistently been in the top 10-20 ELO throughout most of the past 3 years.
Yes I am not currently a Guru for Tapestry! I have been a Guru on and off about 5 times now.
I've also been a Guru in some other games temporarily.
At the moment, I am a Guru in Gaia in which I have played 11 games (private tournaments only) and I barely understand the rules.
How the Guru system seems to work
Of course I cannot say exactly without insights into the code. But here's what it feels like:
- To become a guru, you have to play a decent amount of games and/or win a decent amount of ELO
- To stay a guru, you have to keep playing that game like every week.
- Once you're taking a break for just a few weeks, you're not a guru anymore
- Afterwards it seems to become even harder to become a guru again, even if you start playing a lot again.
It's hard to in down exactly, and it also seems to heavily depend on the popularity in the game. In some less popular games, I've become a guru after just 3 games. In others it is way harder.
But either way, consistently staying a Guru for a long period seems to be almost impossible. Just take a few weeks off and you're out. And then it takes months to get back in. I've played like 40 games in the past month, and increased my ELO to >600 again. Still out.
Why is this a problem?
I wouldn't care about this, if it was merely a status symbol. But Gurus are the ones to decide about the Arena format. So if you're out of the group, you don't get a vote.
It's also really hard to get any good discussions going with that kind of incosistency. Once every few months you see a burst of activity by a few people in the Guru discussions, but this quickly dies down again as those same people get kicked out of the group, and/or lose motivation to discuss things in a place where they don't know who can even read it.
This turns many Guru groups into a bit of a farce, and Arena rules get voted on by a very small minority of the active player base.
At the moment, many Tapestry veterans are unhappy with the Arena rules, namely the outdated, unbalanced version of Civilizations that is being used, as is being discussed in this thread. Some of those veterans - like me - are skipping out on the current Arena season because of that.
Of course this makes it even harder for those people to become gurus again, and thus there's an increased risk that the format is gonna stay the same again next season... (maybe I'm wrong on that part, I cannot see the current state of the vote)
What's my suggestion?
Again, it's hard to suggest exact numbers (or even a full algorithm), without knowing the current ones.
But I propose the following principles:
1) It should be significantly easier to stay a guru once you've become one (e.g. requiring months of inactivity to lose the status, not weeks)
2) It should be easier to regain the guru status after losing it (e.g. just playing a few games)
3) Top players by ELO (e.g. the top 50, or the top 5%) should always be gurus, unless they're completely inactive
Happy to contribute and dive deeper into the math, if you're willing to publish it.
I think that the Guru system, while being a great concept, has some serious problems. To sum it up in one sentence, it seems to be really hard to say a BGA Game Guru for a long period.
My situation:
I'm one of the top players in Tapestry, with over 1000 games played (mostly Arena and public tournaments), and having consistently been in the top 10-20 ELO throughout most of the past 3 years.
Yes I am not currently a Guru for Tapestry! I have been a Guru on and off about 5 times now.
I've also been a Guru in some other games temporarily.
At the moment, I am a Guru in Gaia in which I have played 11 games (private tournaments only) and I barely understand the rules.
How the Guru system seems to work
Of course I cannot say exactly without insights into the code. But here's what it feels like:
- To become a guru, you have to play a decent amount of games and/or win a decent amount of ELO
- To stay a guru, you have to keep playing that game like every week.
- Once you're taking a break for just a few weeks, you're not a guru anymore
- Afterwards it seems to become even harder to become a guru again, even if you start playing a lot again.
It's hard to in down exactly, and it also seems to heavily depend on the popularity in the game. In some less popular games, I've become a guru after just 3 games. In others it is way harder.
But either way, consistently staying a Guru for a long period seems to be almost impossible. Just take a few weeks off and you're out. And then it takes months to get back in. I've played like 40 games in the past month, and increased my ELO to >600 again. Still out.
Why is this a problem?
I wouldn't care about this, if it was merely a status symbol. But Gurus are the ones to decide about the Arena format. So if you're out of the group, you don't get a vote.
It's also really hard to get any good discussions going with that kind of incosistency. Once every few months you see a burst of activity by a few people in the Guru discussions, but this quickly dies down again as those same people get kicked out of the group, and/or lose motivation to discuss things in a place where they don't know who can even read it.
This turns many Guru groups into a bit of a farce, and Arena rules get voted on by a very small minority of the active player base.
At the moment, many Tapestry veterans are unhappy with the Arena rules, namely the outdated, unbalanced version of Civilizations that is being used, as is being discussed in this thread. Some of those veterans - like me - are skipping out on the current Arena season because of that.
Of course this makes it even harder for those people to become gurus again, and thus there's an increased risk that the format is gonna stay the same again next season... (maybe I'm wrong on that part, I cannot see the current state of the vote)
What's my suggestion?
Again, it's hard to suggest exact numbers (or even a full algorithm), without knowing the current ones.
But I propose the following principles:
1) It should be significantly easier to stay a guru once you've become one (e.g. requiring months of inactivity to lose the status, not weeks)
2) It should be easier to regain the guru status after losing it (e.g. just playing a few games)
3) Top players by ELO (e.g. the top 50, or the top 5%) should always be gurus, unless they're completely inactive
Happy to contribute and dive deeper into the math, if you're willing to publish it.
