Ladder.

[Spring_]

People sign on to the ladder to play the setting they like or vs an enemy at the top level on a setting they want to practice.


Forced map pool = no one gets what they want.

The big lie is that by not forcing variety that the variety players will have to wait longer. In reality the variety players play a bunch of people who are bad at variety or only play 1 op civ on the imbalanced "variety" map. While the single mapped focused players are forced to play vs mediocre variety players on their setting that only know 1-2 playstyles on their particular map (for us arabia players its the Mayan 100 games in a row guys). NO ONE WINS

What happens to the ladder? Single map / competitive players leave while the variety players keep playing vs weaker and weaker opponents and get ego boosted.

How does it end? Our overlords squeeze the viewer base Microsoftly until they can't take our money anymore with dlc's or ad sales.


Voobly certainly had its problems but atleast they didn't take all freedom away from the players to play on the ladder. People will wait longer to get what they want but they will leave if forced to wait for something they dont want.

 

[NextLever]

I don't think the ladder should be seen as practice grounds for certain settings. I mean it can be, but the goal is and should be the opposite of that.

 

[SouFire]

I am pretty sure the one to blame for such system is adam isgreen the head of the aoe franchise as the aoe games share the same silly concept, his ideal of telling the users how to play and what to enjoy from the game is just a demonstration of abuse of power, little men always find a way to force their beliefs.

The price of their decisions are having a negative impact in all their games, i never saw such stubbornness, it is like they want their games to fail.

 

[AoeWololo]

I am pretty sure the one to blame for such system is adam isgreen the head of the aoe franchise

I would not be surprised, this is the same clown that proudly contributed the defaulted accelerated right click drag scroll which everyone turns off immediately.

Really, someone at the top is completely ****ed in the head for removing control over maps in a game where these have an extreme impact on gameplay. Just consider how many hours each day get wasted because of this, it's a crime against humanity.

 

[Spring_]

I would not be surprised, this is the same clown that proudly contributed the defaulted accelerated right click drag scroll which everyone turns off immediately.

Really, someone at the top is completely ****ed in the head for removing control over maps in a game where these have an extreme impact on gameplay. Just consider how many hours each day get wasted because of this, it's a crime against humanity.

OMG the first thing I did on HD was freak out over the drag scroll and I almost had a seizure until I turned it off, this makes so much sense.

 

[Snizl]

Personally I do not have an issue with the ladder system for 1v1s. I actually quite like it.
I can understand the other side of it and I definitely can see how for higher level players this becomes even more of an issue, but here is a suggestion:

Fix it yourself!
There is a lobby system, the game is very community focussed, you guys know each other. It works for team games, specifically BF and worked for Nomad team games long time before as well. Why don't you organize a discord for all the 2k+ players to match up for 1v1s. Have a separate channel for each map and just organize some games. To give some variety in opponents while keeping active play happening, you could make it the standard to play a best of three, then ask again for a different opponent. You can agree on all the settings, civ picking etc.

I know its frustrating that the devs do things you don't like, but it really should not be to hard to fix it yourself.

 

[Memeluke]

3 years passed complaining about matchmaking, tg elo abusers, map pools, dodging, altf4... and still nobody made an alternative community elo system for lobbies, it really puts into perspective how much of a non-issue these things are and that nobody really cares except for like 10 aoezone users.
I guess there is no demand for it.

 

[Influenza]

and still nobody made an alternative community elo system for lobbies

untrue, Taiwanese community made one for their lobby games.

 

[MrIster24]

Thank you for tuning into this week's episode of old man yells at ladder. Tune in next time to see how OP reacts to getting Hideout 3 times in a single day!

 

[LowEloNobody]

nobody really cares except for like 10 aoezone users.

Yep. Basically this

 

[LowEloNobody]

 

[Spring_]

One of the problems is the idea of PVE vs PVP.

There is a huge "casual" pool of players who actually prefer to just build up things and play vs the environment and escape reality for a while into a fantasy land who don't really care about the maps or civs they are playing other than for the experience of being involved.

PVP players want action and the more the better. They want alot of interactions and excitement to compete with other humans at the highest level they can achieve. The problem is when you give the PVE guys the ladder and tell the PVP players to kick rocks. The ladder is for PVP and the campaigns + tournaments are for the viewers/casuals.

(the two philosophies balance differences)

PVE players want more closed maps, boom civs, walls, defense structures ect.
Low apm, consistency in progressing through the game fully.

PVP players want more open maps, fast aggressive civs, smaller walls, less defensive tools.
High apm, consistency in ending games that are over asap.

(imagine the differences in the civ/unit/map balances)

Competitive players want to grind for hours a day on settings they find challenging and the fact that there is so few of them is why we need the ladder in the first place. How many players online can play at 2200+ on arena specifically or arabia specifically at any time of the day? not many... giving them an avenue to find each other on the ladder keeps them involved in the game. if you say "go make a lobby" your telling a 1%ter to go and hope another 1% is around waiting. This is what the huge pool of 1000-1600 elo players can do without a problem because they can host a game/map they want to play and have a person around their rating online at every second of the day, the 1% player absolutely cannot. I do think though with lobbies if it was normalized could help out alot for the 1% players like in voobly days, but we don't even have that. We have a fake elo system where you can only gain elo by wasting your time and not an insignificant amount just to get fun settings. RM 1v1 Lobbies allowing ranked is a bare minimum first step but one i think alot of players would appreciate.

ELO should find two suitable opponents on a map they both want to play not ego boost whoever has the most time to spent playing settings they hate vs lower ranked players.

 

[-R-]

I'm heavily in favour of legalising drugs, but Spring's messages over the last year are a strong argument against it, ngl.

 

[NextLever]

That's A LOT of assumptions about who wants to play what, lmao. Wouldn't it be better if these PVP "Chads" used a completely separate lobby from rest of the peasants anyway?

 

[HelloWorld]

Absolutely true, what I consider matchmaking to be, it just matches your elo player on the same map. It's not a tryharding playground because the unranked lobbies are not a good way to know one's skill to balance the matches.


Ranked lobbies are much better than matchmaking because you can set your own rules and play people only with your set of rules. Fun for everyone.

 

[Spring_]

That's A LOT of assumptions about who wants to play what, lmao. Wouldn't it be better if these PVP "Chads" used a completely separate lobby from rest of the peasants anyway?

Cats and Mice my friend. id love a cat ladder, no wall mod, boa2 arabia. lets GOOOOOOO

 

[Snizl]

if you say "go make a lobby" your telling a 1%ter to go and hope another 1% is around waiting. This is what the huge pool of 1000-1600 elo players can do without a problem because they can host a game/map they want to play and have a person around their rating online at every second of the day, the 1% player absolutely canno

I agree that lobbies should have a ranking as well, but while they have none, It is in fact the other way round.
The 1600 elo player can easily queue up in the ladder and find an opponent, while opening a lobby will lead to infinite waiting times, and having no idea what skill another player has.

The 2000 elo player however likely has played most people around his rating already and has some idea about their skill level. There only are 300 accounts higher ranked than you right now. I am not suggesting to open a lobby and hope that another one of close to your rating joins in. I am suggesting that you guys open a discord server, where all high level aoe players can join (make the cut off somewhere at 1900 or 2000 peak elo) and organize games.

The whole thing can look something like this:
Categories in the server:
Low tier
Intermediate tier
Top tier

Channels in each category:
Open maps
Closed maps
Nomad/misc maps.

Players on this discord can join specific channels to their liking. They then decide if they are up to playing people of all tiers or only a specific tier. They can then post in a channel with ```@channel anybody up for a HC4_Arabia at 15 GMT/Now. ``` and that way find someone to play with.
You can even implement a custom elo system to this, where you post the results into a seperate channel and at some cutoff point you get added to a different tier. Sure this can be abused, but abuse should be quite obvious and you can simply not accept games with people that abuse the system.

 

[SouFire]

3 years passed complaining about matchmaking, tg elo abusers, map pools, dodging, altf4... and still nobody made an alternative community elo system for lobbies, it really puts into perspective how much of a non-issue these things are and that nobody really cares except for like 10 aoezone users.
I guess there is no demand for it.

This is not exactly true, these complains already exists on their official forums, but they all have been ignored and then buried by the own devs, they downvote controversial topics or lock them, so all you can read in front are civ suggestion and balance nerfs to the mayans.

The devs have ignored the community demands for quite sometime, we lack of the support from the aoe public icons to put any pressure on them, i am tired of such apathy for the game by those rock stars, at the end we are all losing.

 

[MrIster24]

You seem to take this all VERY personally just based on two posts in this thread @SouFire

 

[AoeWololo]

You can notice a few things amongst people who are against creating a more flexible MM system:

• They have no problem telling others how to play the game.
• They like to downplay the situation and pretend as if it's only a few people complaining, impressive dishonesty considering 2 years of constant complaining and the prevalence of map dodging which proves the opposite.
• They will refer others to the lobby, a suggestion which is not an equal alternative (can't rank, hard to find opponents) and only hurts the MM system.

Somehow they feel the need to put blame towards the player. Why so unable to put yourself anothers position? They have arguably nothing to lose from going to max bans/opt-in, yet will behave like this. Why do they want to keep dealing with map dodging and as a result inaccurate elo for eternity?

Map preferences don't have to do with elo or competitiveness. Eg; Casual players could want control over maps because they only feel comfortable with what they know or they can play a variety of maps because they enjoy diversity. Competitve players can grind a specific map over and over just to perfect their build order or they desire to be competitive on as many maps as possible.

The only thing that matters is that people have different preferences and these can change over time. Control/variety. Arabia/black forest. This is common sense however doesn't get accepted by the system.

Why oppose max bans/opt-in, I've heard all the positions from "Elo would be inaccurate", "Only one map will remain" or "Long queu times". Basic logic will tell you an automated system with map pool will only improve these compared to a traditional lobby, a reasonable approach was not enough apparently, everything had to suffer for fastest possible queue times.

 

[KolyaKrasotkin]

everything had to suffer for fastest possible queue times

In all honesty, fastest possible queue times and decently equally skilled opposition is all I care about.
If I have some 4 hours per week on average to play, I cannot afford to loose 1 hour of that to find games.

Call me egoistic, if you want, but with separate queues (or other ways you want to implement your "unlimited ban/opt-in"), several players like me will be gone. Won't hurt you but will hurt MS a bit. And they know that.

 

[Lokalo]

In all honesty, fastest possible queue times and decently equally skilled opposition is all I care about.
If I have some 4 hours per week on average to play, I cannot afford to loose 1 hour of that to find games.

Call me egoistic, if you want, but with separate queues (or other ways you want to implement your "unlimited ban/opt-in"), several players like me will be gone. Won't hurt you but will hurt MS a bit. And they know that.

Well this kind of goes two ways. Because at same time when I want to play 1-2 games if I have an hour free, I don't want to play some dumb map that I don't like, but want to play the map where I feel I know what I need to do there.

Honestly I don't think it would change much for queue times, but in my opinion would help very significantly adding 1 more ban.
Also make proper vote system, god that double login system makes people to not vote at all.

 

[AoeWololo]

In all honesty, fastest possible queue times and decently equally skilled opposition is all I care about.
If I have some 4 hours per week on average to play, I cannot afford to loose 1 hour of that to find games.

Call me egoistic, if you want, but with separate queues (or other ways you want to implement your "unlimited ban/opt-in"), several players like me will be gone. Won't hurt you but will hurt MS a bit. And they know that.

I said it poorly. By respecting map preferences you don't need to wait longer, there will still be the same amount of players. However the distribution between maps will return to it's natural state. Removing the need to dodge maps will have a reducing effect on queue times and unexpected behavior, just consider how many times the queue has to start over atm (mainly tg). Elo accuracy will increase because people are not being thrown into random maps they are unfamilliar with, people aren't constantly tanking elo due to dodging.

People will say only one map wil remain, a quick glance at the lobby shows a variety of maps are hosted. Ideally these lobby people should be in MM, same with people who stick to Voobly/HD because they like picking maps.

Call me egoistic, if you want, but with separate queues (or other ways you want to implement your "unlimited ban/opt-in"), several players like me will be gone. Won't hurt you but will hurt MS a bit. And they know that.

I think mainly you are misinformed, the alternative isn't as you think it is. No way you will leave because of it. I am 100% convinced that if opt-in/max bans were introduced since launch then people would not even question it, map dodging would not be prevalent, MM would be more popular, no constant discussions and hostility. Also consider people who want to play niche maps like islands, currently they have the least guarantee to play it. Allow them the chance to wait the appropriate time and reliably grind these maps. If you retain existing freedoms from a lobby, automate it, present a limited map pool => you win on all fronts compared to lobbies.

 

[LmScar12]

Also consider people who want to play niche maps like islands, currently they have the least guarantee to play it. Allow them the chance to wait the appropriate time and reliably grind these maps.

For those of us who aren't super picky and don't particularly want to "grind" any specific map, the current system is preferable. I favorite Islands much of the time, but I'd rather wait two minutes and get Arabia than wait 20 minutes for an Islands match, only to play versus someone 300 Elo above or below me.

For others who want to play 1 map and 1 map only, no matter the queue time, than unlimited bans is preferable. But apparently Microsoft has decided that those people are in the minority, or at least that the current system is the lesser of two evils as far as keeping people playing the game.

 

[vince]

I would say allow players to choose from a large pool of common competitive maps (with unchangeable preset settings for each map to promote competitive play and nothing cheesy). the player can add in anywhere from 1-8 desired maps when queueing, either with one favorite if multiple maps are chosen, or simply chosen in order of preference.

when choosing them have a color indicator by each map:

green - will likely be matched quickly for your elo range
yellow - may take time or be matched a bit outside your range
red - unlikely to be matched at this time

probably impossible since it would require a lot of reworking of the system, but imo that would kind of be a happy medium, and make most everyone happy