Board Game Arena

I am confused here. Two of my favorite games have different numbers of arena tiers.

Earth: 3 tiers: Purple, silver, bronze.

Aquatica: 4 tiers: Also had a gold between purple and silver.

Earth has a much larger player pool, a much higher rate of game play, and a higher Elo spread.

Why does Aquatica have more arena tiers than Earth?

"Who decides?"

We can say who doesn't the decide: the players, and that includes gurus for a game. It's not something gurus can vote.

Like many things BGA it is an opaque process with undisclosed criteria.

Meeplelowda wrote: ↑03 April 2026, 01:28 "Who decides?"

We can say who doesn't the decide: the players, and that includes gurus for a game. It's not something gurus can vote.

Like many things BGA it is an opaque process with undisclosed criteria.

All these opaque processes. Whoever came up with these wasn't thinking clearly.

The FAQ claims it's based on the number of players, but that's evidently not true.

Maybe the tier count updates each season according to the previous season's player count?

There would be a lot of issues to change the number of tiers mid-season and it is possible that a game's participation suddenly increases due to, for example, a lot of players migrating to BGA from other platforms.

charliec247 wrote: ↑08 April 2026, 16:54 Maybe the tier count updates each season according to the previous season's player count?

That's how people have been testing the theory, and they haven't been able to find any connection.

Two games I play have had roughly the same amount of players each season, and yet they've had different tiers for a while now. They also came out around the same time, so it doesn't seem to be based on that either.

It could also be based on what the breakdown is between real time and turn-based games during an arena system, as well as length of time turn-based games averages.

If people play fewer games I can see having fewer tiers.

charliec247 wrote: ↑08 April 2026, 16:54 Maybe the tier count updates each season according to the previous season's player count?

There would be a lot of issues to change the number of tiers mid-season and it is possible that a game's participation suddenly increases due to, for example, a lot of players migrating to BGA from other platforms.

By any measurable metric, the game with fewer tiers has more players, more games, more frequency of games, etc, than the game with more tiers. I don't even think it's close.

AquaRegia26 wrote: ↑08 April 2026, 20:27 It could also be based on what the breakdown is between real time and turn-based games during an arena system, as well as length of time turn-based games averages.

If people play fewer games I can see having fewer tiers.

Exactly. Hence, my confusion.

I believe it's supposed to be based on the size of the player pool but also is manually configured by someone (or several someones). Hence, it's not consistent. Most games don't seem to get updated all that often in terms of how many tiers.