I’ve been playing Age of Empires 3 since 2005. Over 3000 hours in the game. Legacy version, thousands of ranked matches. I’ve lived and breathed this game for nearly two decades.
But today, I’m done. And here’s why.
Back in the Legacy days, you could host your own lobbies. You could view people’s profiles, see how experienced they were, and if someone was clearly going to ruin the match, you could just kick them. It wasn’t perfect, but it gave control and led to fairer games. You could actually curate quality matches. It felt alive, like a real competitive scene.
Now? With Definitive Edition? You’re forced into a matchmaking system that is, to put it politely, complete garbage.
Let me break it down:
- You get matched with people who lucked their way into a high rating with a couple of wins, and suddenly they’re in a team with veterans. They have no clue what they’re doing.
- Rage quitters plague the queue and guess what? Reporting them or banning them does absolutely nothing. They just keep coming.
- You get people who clearly watched a “TOP 5 META BUILDS IN 2025” video and copy-paste some lame strat with their clan mates, completely destroying any fun or variability in team ranked.
- You end up with teammates who don’t even speak English and can’t communicate or coordinate. But hey, team ranked is all we’ve got, right?
- And the worst? You queue into ranked, RANKED, with someone who is playing a civ for the first goddamn time. Are you kidding me?
After thousands of games and years of commitment, I’m out. Not because the game itself is bad — AOE3 still has incredible depth and potential. But because the current online team behind AOE3 DE is, frankly, incompetent. They’ve built a cheap, half-baked ranked experience and left it to rot. No community tools. No transparency. No incentive to care about quality matchmaking.
It’s sad. It’s infuriating. And it’s pushing away players like me who’ve been here since the beginning.
I wish it was different. I wish I could still enjoy ranked. But I’m officially stepping away from AOE3 DE online. It’s been fun. But I’m not wasting another hour on a system that treats long-time players like expendable data points.
If the devs ever decide to listen, really listen, I’ll be back. But until then? Nah.
GG.
10 Likes
Hello,
i dont play that much ranked game sup or tr so that’s not important to me but i agree this was better when we could see profile and decks of people before start (even if not ranked a game can be ruined because of this point) and was good to be able to whisper to people also without being “friends”.
Even our friends we dont know if they are ig or out. I remeber in old AOE III red button close to the name the friend is ig playing, green button he is online not playing.
That’s a pity because DE is probably better than original one …
2 Likes
This actually is possible. In a lobby, I think you right click their name and you have an option that adds a “whisper to _____” sort of tag to the front of the message. It’ll show up in main lobby message log, but only visible to you and them. It’s worse than the old system, but is there.
The ability to check people’s decks was massive and it’s absence has probably significantly magnified the exclusionary actions within that community.
I 100% agree to divert team ranked games to custom lobbies because of their horrible matchmaking which will not be solved by the player traffic.
I 0% agree to divert 1vs1 ranked to custom lobbies. Competitive 1vs1 ranked should be in quick match and tournaments.
And yes, much of the ESO interface was clearly better than this one.
3 Likes
Hello,
It doesnt work anymore … always have an error message nowadays when trying this
I’d like to add, imo ranked matchmaking generally needs an overhaul to be closer to the systems of AoE 2 and 4. It’s always annoying deciding on a civ before you queue up.
2 Likes
Wow… really? I don’t believe they’ve touched the game since I did that last. Are you using any mods?
5000 years asking for it and nothing.
2 Likes
Very interesting. I might need to test it again sometime, I haven’t been on much lately.
And having to cancel the queue just to switch civs. Not having all the QoL stuff the other games have tbh
3 Likes
Very good point. It’s kinda silly that I can change civs in ranked team while searching but my teammate who invited me can’t. Even sillier in 1v1
2 Likes
yeah, i feel you. a play mostly 33/44 ranked team games solo q, and games are usually very unbalanced. On top of that, good players are rare to find. Most of my games I end up being the highest elo player on my team, and more often than not when I lose is because my team mates just troll the game. It’s very annoying.
3-5 and to an extend 1&2 can be apllied 1:1 to most team games lol. This is just the nature of team games. If you want to have success(and fun) in any team game you gotta get some friends on Discord/TS/whatever to play together so you can have reliable coordination and no luck factor when it comes to teammates. I like to soloq in Dota, CS etc. sometimes and it’s just as much of a gamble as it is in AoE3.
1 Like
