Remove thumbs up/down system

[Foraker]

One of the things, that are really annoying me in elements.
It doesn't mirror the creativity of arena decks, like how it's ment to be.
Most of the time it just shows, if you had a patient enemy or a raging one.

Or how well you are known on kong or the elements community (imo).
I see it relatively often, that a well known forum user has a higher rating than other forum inactive ppl.
Even when his deck isn't better built or more creative.

Example (my wife's acc):

Spoiler for Hidden:

Rank 6, 7 and 8 are well known forum users and have a worse ratio than my wife.
Now you can argue, that their decks are more crative than panon's mono fire, but I doubt it (no offense).

Imo it's a system that just doesn't work very well.
If there is already a thread about it, then please move this post into it.
I've searched, but I didn't find it. So I thought, it's at least old enough to open a new one.

I'm very interested in the oppinions of other elements players.
Even if you're a lurker! 

[joebob555]

I instinctively hit the down vote(my own deck included). I only go to the arena to grind, and the button on the right is easier to click. It really does not matter how creative a deck is if I am battling it with a boring deck(pdials). There are a select few cards that kill me, and if they are not present I win. Everything else is completely irrelevant.

[Ginyu]

It is hard to go against the lazyness of a lot of players. I remember many discussions about this, and the option I still prefer is to allow voting even if you won (mostly to compensate ragequit-down-votes). Removing thumbs completely might remove the very low amount of decks that are creative completely; they currently get a bit more rating on average from the people who vote for creativity.

[dragtom]

This is a very legit claim, and I agree with it.
However, I still think arena should reward 'creative' decks,
otherwise you almost always get the same few decks, rather than the 'pretty often' it is now.
Can you think of a better system?

One way would be to not show the name of the deck owner,
which means people really have to put in some effort to see whose deck it is.

[Sera]

While it's true that a majority of the players only exclusively vote up or down, I could still see a clear difference of up/down ratio between a creative deck and a plain mono, at least on my own deck samples. Removing it for that reason is not something I could agree with. The claim about popular players getting a better up/down ratio seems valid though, and hiding the name seems to be a nice solution to this. But one problem is that this takes out the thrill of showcasing your arena deck to other players, which actually kind of undermines the up/down system.

Maybe a solution to this is hiding the name of the arena deck owner until you beat it (assuming we still can't rate on win), or if you vote it up after you lose. This might actually improve the usage of thumbs up, and since I really couldn't care less about who's using the 5378th monodark I met in arena, I'd just downvote and move on anyway. Sure, there might still be up all or down all people, but this gives another reason to vote correctly.

[Submachine]

I long ago gave up hoping that anything in the game will ever be changed, that's why I didn't even bother suggesting anything. I agree with you, though.

One solution would be what dragtom said: remove usernames, but only while you are playing. The opponent's name could be either the league that you are playing or the deck's oracle card. It would still allow showing the names in the leaderboard, but at least it wouldn't affect your games.

A second solution would be removing the vote system, but that would also need adding something new, because if the rankings were only affected by the amount of wins and losses, then creative decks would always end up at the bottom (because once players realize what the strong decks are, they start copying them). What needs to be added here is a set of new restrictions. Simply using 5 copies of 1 card is not restricting enough any more, and it also allows people to copy decks from each other if they have the same oracle cards. What we need is "something" that makes it almost impossible for 2 people to build the same decks. What this "something" is, I'd leave it as an open question for others to discuss. (e.g: the Oracle would spin TWO cards instead of one, and both of them had to be included at least 4 times each. Players would only keep one of the rolled cards.) (e.g: every non-oracle card could only be included in your arena deck 4 times. It could be made even more challenging by raising the minimum deck size to 40.) (e.g: each possible oracle card would get power points. The stronger your oracle card is, the less points it would get for winning and the harder it would be for you to reach Rank 1.) (etc.)

[andretimpa]

On Sub's suggestion, the second card could be your pet (allowing a wider range of pets would help too).

[Manuel]

after playing many games, i can say that the rating system is one of the most stupid things i ever seen in a ccg.


for improving the building system, simply use 5 copy of the oracle card, 3 copy of your pet, every fg that u spin as a default card that u are forced to use x2 (all the fg cards should be with the quantum cost over 4, so it can be really hard do a rainbow): 10 cards picked at random, building a mono can be really hard.
only with this people can't build freewyrms, life rush, mono dark, mono aether, flying titan, or at least u should be really really really lucky to build one of these

buuuut zanza is dead 


i don't think that famous players gets more thumbs up; half of the total players doesn't even know the forum, a lot of guys here are level 80 so i don't think a deck can get more than 5 thumbs up because the owner is "famous"

[Higurashi]

Double rating has shown to have too much of an impact on a deck's success. It only became clear to me after the amount of plays in Arena came crashing down. With fewer plays for your deck, it's possible to have a -much- better win ratio than the rest of top 10 and still never reach rank 1. This might've been fine if creative decks could get to top 10 at all, but they can't even get close.

I see two possible improvements to the current system: a very small rating bonus (1, 2, 3 and 4 perhaps) or just an electrum bonus. Ideally the whole system would be reworked, perhaps by removing the thumbs up in normal Arena and creating a separate league for each of the 4 existing leagues that forced restrictive rules on you. That's usually the only way to ensure creativity (see the weekly brawls in Hearthstone).

[Vangelios]

I'm in favor of removing this thing, many (really many) vote by names and not by the decks,
I already did a test and it really is true, if I use an unknown nick the things change considerably... but no problem, however what is ETG today?
is the best card game unknown in the world