Board Game Arena

I'm kinda new to BGA in general, but here is something that as a competitive BGA player I find really hard to rationalize.

Arena rankings on LUCK based games are so messed up. They heavily favor lower ranked players purely because of the scoring system. I play Farkle, a lot of Farkle actually. I've been world rank 0 all the way to world rank 1, currently rank 32. It is 98% a luck based game. You can't do anything about having "bad runs of dice" and the same can't determine or prepare for "multiple thousands scored in one turn"

When an Elite Ranked player wins a game you get around 10-25 points.... if you manage to crack the top 10 you start only getting 8-9 points towards ranking (NOT ELO). Meaning you're being rewarded less for winning and that is fair. But losing is disastrous. Between ranks 1-10 you lose 34-40 points per loss, rank 10-50 you lose more than you gain in a win.

I've tested it this season after playing already 142 games of Farkle. Roughly 7% of all the Farkle games on this site this season

Here's the problem. If an Elite player losses 1 game, it means winning 5+ games just to get back to where they were. And if you lose 3-5 games you're talking about having to wing 15-20 games just to make back arena rankings. In a strategy based game this makes sense.

In a game that is almost purely luck based it makes no sense at all. The penalties in ARENA points for losing in a lucky based game needs to be adjusted.

If a game is 98% luck, then you probably don't deserve to stay near #1 anyway. It was mostly luck that got you there, so you should drop accordingly when you lose. Easy come, easy go.

The implication of 98% luck is that the elite players aren't much better than the lower players, so they don't deserve to stay up there.

Or perhaps I just don't understand your reasoning.

I think I complained about this long ago. IMHO the problem is not the ELO algorithm, it's that the player matching algorithm continue to match top ranked players with rank newbies. In high luck based games, you really need to be matched against players close to your level. At that level, the better player probably only wins 5-10% more games when playing someone close to there ELO level. Against a a low level player, they probably win 3 out of 4 games, but win arena points when the win and loose 16 when they loose. After a couple of bad experiences I gave up on arena play.

Strode wrote: ↑08 May 2025, 20:38 If a game is 98% luck, then you probably don't deserve to stay near #1 anyway. It was mostly luck that got you there, so you should drop accordingly when you lose. Easy come, easy go.

The implication of 98% luck is that the elite players aren't much better than the lower players, so they don't deserve to stay up there.

Or perhaps I just don't understand your reasoning.

Yes, you're correct in your logic. But the scoring doesn't match... it is NOT EASY to get to the top because the drop off in point values for wins is so small. The point value for loses is huge.

Therefore not easy come easy go.