4-player games for Arena mode

[dornado]

Why isn't this a thing? CATAN's official tournaments in person are all 4-player games.

I'd also like to see the friendly robber turned off, but I could live with it if the games at the "highest level of competition" were 4-player!

[Jontia]

Why isn't this a thing? CATAN's official tournaments in person are all 4-player games.

I'd also like to see the friendly robber turned off, but I could live with it if the games at the "highest level of competition" were 4-player!

Both of these options have the same problem. They make the game take longer to play.

Catan has a huge player base. So there's little variation in the people who play the most games. They are those with preferences that make the game go faster.

People who play the most games get to be gurus and get to pick the settings they like for Arena. Which is 3 player, whacky numbers, friendly robber fast mode.

Would be interested to see what options even come up during the format votes periods for Catan gurus and how the voting there breaks down if anyone can share?

[DVC]

Man, tell me about it. I've been banging on about this since the game first went live on Arena. We had about 4 weeks of 4-player, which was great, but then a new season started and its been 3-player ever since - never swapping it out for 4 even for one season. Instead, the gurus decided to add friendly robber and random numbers instead of the spiral setup, so as you say, it's now far removed from the official tournament mode.

The net result of this is that serious competitive players stay away from Arena BGA, sticking with Colonist and other sites. It's a wasted opportunity and all down to the 3p-obsessed speed gurus. Base game is really unbalanced and random with 3, but here we are.