Meeplelowda wrote: ↑17 April 2025, 19:36
But the unanswered question is what, besides number of players, determines the XP reward for the tournament. I'm in two tournaments, both completely full with 32 players. The only difference between the settings is one has 7-day rounds and the other has 10-day rounds, and their playing hours are offset by one hour. Yet the tournament with 7-day rounds was assigned 77 XP and the other was assigned 108 XP.
To clarify, are your 77 XP and 108 XP tournaments for the exact same game with same game options? Are they functionally identical except game duration? Completely full means 32/32 so that factor should be fair between them.
I don't have a complete theory on the XP reward for tournaments but I have made plenty of tournaments and have some observations. I would ideally make every tournament 300 XP so it's good to know some of the details. Here is a good place to post because of the Subject line so why not.
The following things affect tournament XP:
Major Impacts
Which Game - It seems that shorter duration games require more players to reach 300 XP as longer games. Faraway is a game that requires somewhere between 64 and 100 players to reach 300 XP. It's an easy game to fill up tournaments so no big deal. See here:
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=365337 64 players and
https://boardgamearena.com/tournament?id=375139 100 players. For contrast, Vale of Eternity (where I do most my tournaments) used to reach 300 XP with only 10 players almost always, but lately I need 13-15 players to reach 300 XP on my tournaments. This factor seems to be based mostly on game length, number of turns, complexity, and is hard coded by BGA or developer. It might also be slightly affected by popularity, but this appears to be a minor effect unless anyone has a good example otherwise. This popularity factor seems to be updated periodically based on my very limited observation with Vale of Eternity.
Number of Players Signed Up - A minimum 10 players is required to get any XP. Some games might give you 300 or nearly 300 with only 10-12 players, some start very low with 10 players just over 50 XP. Each player seems to increase the XP by a fixed amount (i'll call y) based on which game along with a bunch of various "minor impacts", which are difficult to determine. My theory is that 10 player minimum triggers the start of the XP calculation which is something like 50+y*(n-10), maximum 300, 0 if n<10, where y this mysterious XP factor and n is the number of players signed up, counting the first 10 players. Some games have a higher base XP value which often makes y high enough to reach 300 XP or close (close to y=25) with only 10-15 players and others require closer to 100 players for 300 XP. I am unsure if the first 10 players are multiplied by y or not or if there is even a 50 XP base for the first 10 players or if it calculates directly from 0.
Minor Impacts
Maximum Tournament Size - Larger maximum tournament size reduces the XP per player by a small amount so I would recommend keeping your maximum tournament size realistic for best chances of 300 XP. Don't list everything at 512 or 300 max players.
Tournament Type, Number of Rounds, Game Duration, Overall Tournament Length - All of these seem to have a minor effect on XP and it's hard to single them out because different tournament types have different number of rounds. In general, longer tournaments with more rounds and longer game duration tend to award slightly more XP per added player which has a minor effect on number of players to reach 300 XP. My estimate is that this only makes a roughly 20% difference so its hard to notice.
How to Estimate XP?
Easy, just go look up tournaments for that particular game. Look at finished and current for definitive values and keep an eye on how XP changes for upcoming tournaments as players sign up. If you want 300 XP you will need to target a player count near the tournaments with 300 XP.