1v1 Arabia random Civ que

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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Like what i already said: I am not against some changes at matchmaking. I think it is great if they improve matchmaking so even more people enjoy matchmaking. Matchmaking needs to be the quickest way to find a nice game. It needs to so accessible as possible to play a game by match maker.

I think it is good for the game if you encourage people to play other maps than only Arabia, without forcing them. I understand why people love Arabia, but the game is much more than just Arabia. I think it is good if the game encourage you to stop out of your comfort zone.

One thing is to look at is the map pool for 1v1: What kind of maps do the community enjoy the maps? I think most players want open maps with early aggression and not to much water. If we have a look at the current map pool:

  • Arabia/Serengeti: Favorite for many players and his lookalike that is even more open.
  • Arena: Also a popular good old map.
  • Four Lakes, Golden Swamp and Island: 3 water / hybrid maps. I think this is just too much. Change this to just 1 map. As far as i know there was not really a big community playing this maps, so i would see just 1 water / hybrid map would be better. Maybe a second hybrid map, but a third is just overkill to me.
  • MegaRandom: If i see this map, then i always have one question: Why is this in the map pool? It is in the map pool for maps and still not popular. I would drop this map.
  • Nomad: Less popular as i would except. There were always nomad games on Voobly. Maybe they were team games and 1v1 nomad was never popular. I dont really care if it is in the map pool, just to have a no tc start map. This map is hybrid too. So maybe we can see Nomad as the second hybrid map in the map pool, so we can drop 2 out of 3 maps by hybrid / water maps.
  • Hill fort: I have played this map much. Play rate is arount 11,33%, which is average. Just another semi closed map like Arena or Hideout from previous month is okay for me. It will give players who love more closed maps a second option.

If we do what i suggested, we can drop MegaRandom and two hybrid/water maps. This means there are 3 new spots. I would suggest some maps from ongoing tournaments. See also:

This maps are pretty much open. I think people like those maps more than maps in the current pool. This will give players who love Arabia also some other options. For now: We have battle of Africa as big Tournament. Most maps are pretty open. If the map pool contains more such kind of maps, the call for Arabia only will already be less, i think.

I just reacted to this argument some hours ago. I wont repeat the answer again. Just look some post above your post.

Good point.

Also the ratings of Only Arabia players and All maps players will behave different. A 1600 Elo Only Arabia player and a 1600 Elo all maps player, can have a different level for playing on Arabia. I think - and this is speculating - that it will be easier to get a higher rating for the all maps players, than for an Arabia only player. This means even both players have the same Elo, the Arabia only player is stronger and thus is the match one sided. This also decrease match quality. This is what i mean with Elo isnt transfarable between maps.

Like Fano0517 i think this amount of separate Elo’s is a joke. I hope so
 I do understand why you want it, but i dont think it really works. Every Elo another queue, that is not gonna work. I also think Pick civ / random civ just need to be an option, not a different ranking.

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Again, I suggested in my post to limit it to 14 ELOs, since Death games and other modes are not as popular as RM.

The idea of a “favorite” map doesn’t solve the problem that if say 50% of your games end up being Arabia, then your ELO is meaningless on water maps, closed maps
 It also means you won’t get to enjoy the wealth of open land maps similar to arabia, and you will make it harder for others to enjoy these maps as well. Same problem we had on Voobly. How many games of serengeti or Highlands did you play there?

Also I find the ELO for PickCiv options completely meaningless for RandomCiv games. For players who are masters of huns or mongols on Arabia, do you think their ELO is accurate if they play with Vietnamese or Vikings on the same map? Do you think they would have the same ELO for a Death Match 1v1 Arabia?

If skill level varies a lot based on game mode and map type, then it is only fair to get an ELO representative of your skill for the game at hand. You don’t need to play all 14 game modes, you can only play 1 or 2 of them, but all of your games (after the first few) will be challenging and entertaining for you and for others.

You also can’t deny the need for a lobby ranked system, since some people will want to play explored, or population 500, or a specific map out of the category, or play against their friends or in a specific team against team. Instead of splitting ELO to more than 10 modes, we make the assumption that skill level doesn’t vary that much between such a mode and the settings of the nearest ELO queue.

It is a compromise, as will any solution be. The main compromise here is that you have to limit the number of categories, so hundreds of different map types can get played in each mode, instead of only 9 per month.
14 ELOs instead of 4 is not a stretch.

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It would be more meaningful than having a rate of 1600 on Arabia/Open Land maps and a rate of 1000 on closed/water maps due to just not playing in those queues, there is some level of skill transfer in AoE2, it’s not like closed maps / water maps are different games entirely.

I think it’s very meaningful, the civs aren’t that different. Will I be less good if I random a civ I’m not familiar with? definitely. Will the difference be more than 100 Elo? very doubtful.

Deathmatch is an entirely different game mode and rightfully has a separate Elo ranking.

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Without forcing them, really important.

Personally I love arabia and I kind of hate serengueti because serengueti is like way too open for me. Sometimes I have a civ like burmese and i want to FC into arambais, in serengueti is always harder. Anyway, everybody has different tastes. Its not as easy as saying “open maps, closed maps and water map”.

I still like to play islands but I don’t like that swamp map with gold in the center.

I still like to play arena but I hate black forest.

Some other “options”. Options are those ones that you can choose or refuse. I like arabia, but will i be forced to play serengueti for example?

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“Without forcing them”. There we go, those are the key words right there. The current system force us to choose at least 5 maps, which is way too high to be enjoyable for most people. A good improvement would be to lower it down to at least 3.

And I’m up for trying out the “at least 1” option as well and see if things really turn out as bad as you say they will. They can try that out for one month, and if it’s not good, revert back to “at least 3” the next month. And if it actually is great and people are very happy with the change, we keep it.

We won’t know until we’ve tried.

Also, I don’t think matchmaking necessarily needs to be the quickest possible. As I’ve said already, many people wouldn’t mind waiting a bit more if it meant getting matched on the map they liked.

As for the last part, “encouraging you to step out of your confort zone”. Well, that’s very subjective, and why should it be necessary to encourage people to step out of their confort zone? They can decide for themselves if they wish to do that, or just play the game the way they enjoy it most.
We also need to define what “encouraging” signifies exactly. Forcing is definately a bad choice.

And if we go by your logic, we would have to mix in 1v1 and TG and DM, and have the matchmaking pick randomly between those 3 modes for you. Yes, because you know, AoE 2 is way more than just 1v1, or TG, or DM. So people shouldn’t be able to pick what mode they want to play, and should step out of their confort zone and play TGs even if they prefer to play 1v1s; or conversely, they should step out of their confort zone and play DMs and 1v1s even if they only enjoy playing TG ? Let’s make the system randomly choose everything for you, cause it knows what’s best for you !
Nah more seriously, people know what they want from this game. Noone should force them to step out of their confort zone if that’s not how they want to play the game.

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You are missing the wonder game mode and regicide, also free for all games. Aoe2 is way more than only 1v1,TG and DM.

Get out of the confort zone guys!
(sarcasm)

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I have thought about the multiple elo ratings for different kind of maps. I think it can really solve the issue. Elo isnt transferable between all maps, but i do think. Elo will be pretty much transferable between same minded maps. Let face it: The difference between Arabia and Serengeti is much smaller than the difference between Arabia and Black forest. Having different ladders for each kind of map, makes it possible to have accurate elo for matchmaking and it will gives players more freedom over the maps.

The difference between random civ and pick civ wont be really that big. I also think there would be many players who enjoy both on the ladder. So this is no reason to split the ladder. There are pretty much two difficult questions to answers:

  1. Which ladders do we need?
  2. Where to place every map?

Open and close are pretty much guarenteed as different ladders. Do we need a water/hybrid ladder? For e water/hybrid maps are closer to open maps, than closed maps. Fast feudal and some water war is the play in these maps. It is not really about booming. Other already said about open and close/water maps. So they put water/hybrid maps more together with closed map. I think this is much more based on there preference (of playing only open maps). So i think having a water/hybrid map is needed.

Than we also have maps like Nomad and MegaRandom. Can we just merge them into hybrid maps? Nomad is to me also a hybrid map and MegaRandom can be everything? But if we had Nomad, we can also add other no TC starts for some time to the queue. It seems a bit strange if we have land nomad in the water/hybrid map pool. This is something we need to think about.

At this moment i would go for the following:

  • RM 1v1 open
  • RM 1v1 hybrid
  • RM 1v1 closed
  • RM team open
  • RM team hybrid
  • RM team closed
  • DM 1v1
  • DM team
  • EW 1v1 (?)
  • EW team (?)
  • Maybe add also something for other games modes if the player base is big enough. Someone mentioned wonder race, but i doubt it will be popular. I havent seen such game in DE in the lobby. Dont have MM for wonder race, i would say. On the other side there are always lobbies with KotH for example. So having something kind of rating for KotH in the MM queue can be good. I really think there will be more KotH games than just DM games.

If we have such system with more ladders, i would even go as far as saying unlimited bans isnt an issue anymore. Since elo between the maps in the map pool is pretty much transfarable, this is no issue any more. I even think it will attracked people from unranked, since some of them just wanna play balanced 4v4 BF games for example.

Expand RM from 2 to 6 ratings can be good for the game. 6 isnt to much, but each elo is meaningful. Thing is: for this they might need to reset Elo and i dont know if the devs want to do this. On the other side: Currently there seems something off in the elo calculation of team games:

If they found the issue with elo, they might consider resetting, since some players have some odd ratings at this moment and therefore cant get good team games (issues seems to only happen in teamgames / unranked to me).

Drawback of multiple ladders is having longer waiting times. I think for most players it wont really matter that much. Mostly impopular maps will really suffer.

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I absolutely thought about it, but ultimately, I think it should be the players choice to extend the wait time if they want to play specific maps. The waiting time does not increase if one player chooses to ban no maps.

Yes, it will most likely benefit arabia players as it’s the most popular map, and those who want to play other maps have to wait a longer time. But that is how it should work IMO. Popular maps are not just popular because they’re popular, they’re universally much more liked.

In the end, it should be the players choice to play whatever map they prefer. Regardless of the maps, I think only 1 rating system for 1v1 games is necessary. I don’t know much about lower levels, but somebody who is e.g. 1700 at arabia is also very likely 1700 in mixed maps and also 1700 at water maps. There might be a slight variation on how well they do on closed maps, but IMO not enough to justify adding a new ladder for it. Adding ladders adds the problem of requiring people to play more games to settle the rating for each specific ladder.

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The difference can be huge. I already told my own story. I started playing BF at Voobly and HD. Than i switched to Arabia. At my level of BF i just couldnt win anything. The difference can be really 200-300 points. To get nice Arabia games, i had to loose 20 games in a row on purpose. So yeah, there are big gaps.

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Maybe if you practised some build orders against the AI beforehand instead of going straight into multiplayer trying to FC and boom on Arabia you wouldn’t lose so much?

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So you reached my same conclusion. The question is whether RM ELO should be 6 as you listed, or 12 if we separate the ELO for RandomCiv vs PickCiv.

I would argue the difference in skill level between games where you play your “normal” civ that you know inside-out, and games where you start and are assigned a random civ out of the current 35 (or future 44!!) is huge. Especially for lower ELO levels, players find it hard to remember the team and civ strengths of each civ, and sometimes they use units they are used to, that are very bad for this civ (e.g. using cav archers for a civ without bloodlines, building towers for a civ without arrowslits
). I agree for higher ELO players they can usually adjust, but you’re talking about the top 25% of the ladder, not the majority of casual players. The difference in performance could be huge at lower ELO levels. There is also more variability for RandomCiv in hybrid/water maps, given the civs are not balanced for water the way they balance on land.

One other thing I want to stress here, is that having 14 different ELOs don’t mean much longer waits and fewer players in each queue. Similar to right now in MM where you check 4v4 and 3v3 and 2v2 and 1v1, you are put in all queues, and join the first game in any of them. Similarly, I can check 4v4 RM Closed Maps for PickCiv and RandomCiv, and be entered into both queues. The difference is, I will be entered to each queue with a more accurate ELO for my skill in that game.

More queues and ELOs don’t mean longer wait for a game. Me being picky on the details of the game I want will lead to longer wait.

Another advantage of multiple ELOs is that we can use/update the same ELO for lobby games. If a game is set to OPEN/PickCiv/Team/RM game but has a higher population or is set to explored map, we can use/update the ELO for OPEN/PickCiv/Team/RM ladder games played by the same player, with the assumption that such non-standard settings don’t affect skill that much.

Again, it is a compromise, but it is more accurate and will negate the need for unranked lobbies entirely. Players of different ELO can still play against each other if they want, and with non-standard settings if they want, ELO won’t change that much unless the weaker player suddenly wins. Yes this can be abused up or down, but any ELO in the world can also be inflated.

Out of this, you get more players into ranked MM/Lobbies, you get more balanced games regardless of the map/mode/PickCiv
 I can have fun experimenting with another game type/map without having to lose 10 games in a row, and ruining the game for 7 other players in each of these 10 game, just to get down to my true level. It is also easy to program.

Nomad games would fall into the Hybrid/RandomCiv/Team/RM ELO, unless it is played with PickCiv then it belongs to Hybrid/PickCiv/Team/RM ELO.
Some effort will need to go into categorizing each map into one of the 3 categories.

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Nobody cares about you being bad at arabia. Nobody cares if I am bad at black forest. NOBODY.

If you want to become better at arabia then just face it: you are bad. Thats it. But now DE forces us to play maps we don’t like. WE DON’T LIKE

I did it my self trying to learn water maps. But you know what? I was kinda forced because thxs DE. But nobody should be forced to learn how to play maps they don’t want to learn.

I only played arabia before and when i switched to arena i struggled a lot, but I was NEVER forced, I actually enjoyed learning because thats what I wanted.

I think everybody had the same problem once in their aoe 2 life. Thats part of the game. Some players have different tastes. I don’t care if you only played Black forest, it is fine to me. But you should still be able to only play Black forest if thats what you really want. I mean, who cares??The only important thing is that YOU can have fun with the game.

Why will i be forced to play serengueti if i like arabia? Doesn’t make any sense. Even if they are open maps they are still different and you can’t judge everybodys tastes because you simply can’t.

You talk like if you know what everybody wants but thats not true.

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I dont really agree with this point. You will reduce the number of possible matches, the waiting time will increase.

I must admit there seems to be some ‘fixed’ waiting period into the queue. I always get matched around the same time. If the number of players is high enough, you wont even notice some increase.

I think elo is mostly used for match making and thus part of ranked. I dont really see why we need elo for unranked. I think it will be even better if we can get most players of unranked to match making, because it needs to be a better experience. I feel like lobby is just for:

  • playering with friends. For this you dont really need some ranking.
  • tournaments. Matches are already fixed. We dont really need Elo to balance team or something like that.
  • Play against AI. It is just different to human vs human and not really part of match making to me.

In the end you play ranked for every other game. That needs to end goal to me.

I got your point. You want to play only Arabia and you dont care about anything else.
You dont even got the point of my post right.

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  1. You see? You think you know what everybody wants but I will repeat it again: you just don’t know.

I don’t only want to play arabia, I only want to play a map when i feel like it. Is it too much for asking?

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You only think about what’s good for you. Your solution has some drawbacks. Can you also think about a solution what will fit for not only you, but also for other players as well?

So how do you think of having multiple Elo ratings (based on the kind of map and maybe even pick / random civ) combined with unlimited bans in matchmaking? This must sound good to you, isnt it? If you want you can just ban 8 out of 9 maps, you are guarenteed to play Arabia, Arena, Black Forest, Islands, 
 (whatever maps out the map pool you want). We even introduce a system to have equally skilled match ups, so your games wont be one sided. Sound this good to you?

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Of course man. I thought you just wanted to change the map pool and make some strange ranked system.

I really don’t have a problem with the elo and ranked system (make whatever you want) . Only by having unlimited bans is enough for me. I don’t think thats a lot of work for the devs.
I am talking for my self yeah but I am not the only one.

Doesn’t matters to me at all. If devs do that, it doesn’t matter to me.

Of course. I have been saying this all time. Maybe I might sound like I say the same 100 times but thats really the only thing that I want (and I am not the only one).
And I still don’t think this will hurt matchaking because people play popular maps for a reason: they are simply better (for most people). But you can still play the other maps in the map pool if you want to.

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I can’t help to notice that this is quite hypocritical of you to say that.

The only reason you don’t like a queue with 8 map bans (the possibility to leave only one map open), is because you will have to wait longer to play on the less popular maps that you want to play on, being someone who likes “map variety”. You don’t care about the majority who are bored and annoyed about having to play maps like Islands, Golden Swamp or HillFort, when they utterly dislike them.

The current system suits you because you can play all the maps with minimal waiting time. However, it doesn’t suit the majority of people. The system is forcing the majority of people to play those maps, and is exclusive of people who want to play only 1 map or only 2 maps. You have to understand that you are part of the minority here. How is wanting to get what suits your minority, to the detriment of the majority, not egoistical?

A system that allow players to choose only one map, but also 9 maps if you so wish to, or however many maps you like, is intrusive. Everyone can play whatever maps they like. The waiting time is proportional to the lack of popularity of your map tastes. Which is what is FAIR. No one is forced to play only Arabia. No one is forced to play on maps they don’t like either.

As long as you keep ALL maps unbanned, your waiting time won’t changed compared to now. Because all the possible opponents for you on ladder will have at least one map in common with you.
It’s just that you will be matched on popular maps more often than on unpopular maps. If you ban the most popular maps, when you want to play on less popular maps, you will have to wait longer. Which is NORMAL and Fair.

That’s the most “democratic” system, in the sense that it satisfies the needs of the majority than the ones of the minority. However, the minority isn’t forced to do what they don’t like either. They can still play Nomad and Islands. They just have to make some compromise and have a longer waiting time when they abosultely want to tag on those maps.

The reason they have to wait longer is precisely because they belong to a minority of people who like to play the map Islands and have not banned it. Meanwhile the majority isn’t FORCED to play on Islands.

I don’t see how this can be made clearer.

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Seems like they won’t be happy with this because they want to force people to play on maps they don’t like only so that they can get matches quikly on those maps. Yes hipocrite. And under the excuse of saying “the game is modernizing” or some other dumby things

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Nataraja, the system proposed here (Read my entry 38 above) doesn’t force anyone to play non-popular maps more often. The current MM system forces you because it limits your maps banned (as well as the maps available to start with). What we are proposing with the multiple ELOs is to bucketize ALL possible maps (1000s of them) into 3 buckets.
If you play inside a single bucket, you can select 1 or a 1000 that you accept, you can ban none or 999 of them. The more you allow, the faster your game will be. Also, you can check the box for all 3 buckets and play any of the 3000 if you don’t mind. If everyone plays only Arabia, well, this is the only kind of game you will find.

That suits your purposes, as well as anyone who wants variety. It is better than current system cause we don’t need a short-list of 9 maps every month.

Woodsier’s initial answers were just comparing the current DEFICIENT MM system, and the old DEFICIENT lobby in voobly and zone. Both are bad in different ways, and he leant towards the current one, while you leant towards the other. What do you think of the proposed system here?

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The waiting time wasnt even my main point.

My main point was just that elo isnt transferable (See my experience at voobly and HD about switch from BF to Arabia). This issue was kinda solve in DE with the map pool and always playing all kind of maps. It is one of the parts i like of the MM system. If we just introduce unlimited bans, you go back to the situation of Voobly and HD. This mean if you start learning one map, you are kinda stuck on the ladder with only that map. For most players it is kinda hard to switch between maps. Indirectly they are kinda forced to just stick with only one map. Not everyone likes to be (indirectly) forced to play on one map only.

In the end it is all about forcing players to only play one map vs forcing playings to play multiple maps. I think both are bad, so i was also for a solution to this issue. That solution must be goood for both groups, not for just only one group. Some like one map, others multiple maps and we need to find a solution that is working for both. We need to do justice to both groups. Only then we have a good solution. I do think we found this solution with multiple ladders (open/closed/hybrid). This fix my issue with unlimited bans and switching between maps and let players play only one map if they want to do so. How do you think about that idea?

Waiting time is just a secondary argument. If we have the multiple ladders (which fixes my main issue), i wont really care that much about waiting time. In the end it is all about making MM enjoyable for as many as possible. If we add unlimited bans and a more detailed rating to make the game for almost everyone much more enjoyable, than i dont think a bit longer waiting time will be an issue for any one. Especially for the most popular maps wont change waiting time that much. I even think some unranked players will join ranked if you have more control about the maps they played. In the end waiting time can end up the same for popular maps.