Board Game Arena

I can understand why the overall ELO rating system does not take into account how frequently someone plays. However, I think Arena should work differently, since the whole point of Arena is to be a competition over a limited period of time.

In my opinion, there should be some kind of rating decay for inactivity. This would encourage the top-ranked players to keep playing and actually take the risk of defending their position.

At the moment, the more you play, the more you expose yourself to losing points by finishing 2nd or 3rd in a 3-player game. And the risk/reward seems particularly unbalanced: a win often gives fewer than 10 points, finishing 2nd can cost more than 10, and finishing 3rd can cost more than 30.

This makes maintaining a high ranking while continuing to play particularly difficult. Meanwhile, once some players reach one of the top positions, they can simply stop playing for several weeks and keep their ranking.

For a permanent ELO ranking, I can understand that. But for a seasonal competitive mode like Arena, shouldn't the system reward players who actually keep competing throughout the season?

A small, progressive rating decay after a certain period of inactivity could make the Arena ranking more dynamic and encourage top players to defend their position rather than simply stop playing once they reach it.

I think this has been talked to death on various games on the website for years.

I don't think anything is gonna change now because people are used to these issues. Arena is about encouraging addictive behavior, not about fair competition. I don't like it even if sometimes I'm in the mood and play some. But if you want a healthy environment, tournaments (with rules that you decide) and standard games are the way to go, I believe.

All rating decay does is make it most sensible to play all your games in the last week or two of the arena.

Instead of building up to a nice ranking in the early weeks then stopping people would do the opposite- don't play at all for the first 80 days of each 90 day season.

Also why should points from wins at the start ofnthe season be slowly drained away whereas points at the end dont? Surely if I play 30 games and win 25 of them it shouldn't matter when in the season I played those games should it?