That is just incorrect.
Take this rotation for example: I banned Arabia, Runestone and MegaRandom since I wanted to play at least a few water games now that two maps were available in the pool.
I got (in the last two weeks): 6x TeamIslands (my preferred choice), 6x Four lakes, 7x Arena, 6x Golden pit. The latter two maps I really don’t like (actually less than Arabia), but it’s a price I am willing to pay to increase the chances to have some water play. About 50% of matches on my “home maps” seems fair to me (and yes, I also got ALT-F4 on Team Islands a few times).
Arabia lovers currently get >90% of the matches on their preferred maps. I am already happy with 25-50%. Now who is being selfish? It’s not about getting to play what you want every single time, but about having a decent chance of getting preferable maps in at least half of the cases.
Yeah, arabia only people who complain about not being able to play ‘their map’ 100% of the time dont realize people who want to play other maps only get that map about half of the time, and that is before taking into account the alt-f4ing.
Said something similar on the pinned alt F4 thread, but it got buried pretty quickly:
The main problem with infinite bans or separate map queues is that the matchmaker would have to compensate for having fewer players in each queue. The matchmaker would have to either:
Increase queue times significantly
Increase the acceptable ELO difference between players, creating more unbalanced games
More than likely it would need to do some combination of both. Leaderboards would also need to be split because the best players in each queue would never meet each other.
If AoE2 was a much more popular game, like SC2 at its peak, then I’d be more inclined to agree that splitting the queues is a good idea, however it’s not. AoE2 multiplayer is as popular as it has ever been but at ~15000 concurrent players on DE on Steam (most of whom are in singleplayer), it’s nowhere close to the ~200000 in 1v1 ranked alone in SC2, which is well past its prime.
I’m a ~1000 ELO player at the moment, which is exactly in the middle of the bell curve, and so should have the shortest queue times, yet regularly have to wait over 2 minutes to get a game. I can only imagine the queues get much longer at the higher and lower ends of the ELO bell curve.
In 1v1s, having 3 bans and a favourite gives you a ton of influence over what maps you’ll play most of the time while also guaranteeing that you’ll always have at least one map unbanned, no matter who you get matched with. I think it’s a great compromise. I would rather play on a variety of maps, with short queue times and fair matches, than play only one map, waiting forever in queues and have more unbalanced matches.
People who Alt+F4 waste the time of the majority of players who put up with the current ranked system and recognize why it is the way it is.
It seems you are the person you complain about.
I’m sorry you don’t get to play Arabia the amount that you would like. I would like to know how much % of the time you’d be happy to play other maps though.
Genuinely, I’m interested, what would an acceptable situation look like to you? Is it 100% Arabia or nothing? Or is it 70% Arabia ok?
With the tool I presented it’s up the to player whether they want to accept longer queues. The more boxes selected the shorter the queue. I could see having a longer queue if you only play empire wars or random map pool (excluding Arabia/Arena) but I doubt it’s a drastically long queue. Currently empire wars team games have a bit longer queue and the matchmaking is less precise. But it’s my choice if I want to play that way.
I’m not sure I agree that the times would be longer for everyone even for arena or Arabia only players. If people could play specifically arena many of the unranked games would be able to be played in ranked. If you check the lobby browser you will find many 4v4 noob arena games. Most of which will be terribly unbalanced. This solution I presented would really help players like that as well as the “Arabia or die” elite players.
I have already suggested similar ideas before, punishment on ALT F4 it’s like forcing people to accept the bad arrangement.
separate open map (Arabia) vs close map (Arena) into 2 queues.
separate solo players vs premade into 2 queues. (I swear to god I wont argue with anyone here if they think it’s fair to match with solo players and premade teams)
even there are 2 similar elo players queuing in 1v1 at the same time, it won’t have the match immediately, it always need to wait few mins to have the match up. Same as TG, separate 2 queues in theory seems increase the waiting time, but we actually dont know the player base, many people here claiming the playerbase is not enough to support but actually no one gives out the stat.
There are many players like me who doesnt do ALT F4 and willing to play both open and closed map. So you are not either choosing open, close in 2 options only, but also both, total in 3 options.
I have many times waiting for a TG queue, keep waiting for 5 to 10mins and people doing ALT F4, at the end I wait more than 30mins for a single game. So, 10+ mins really mean nothing to me.
Finally, rather than considering a longer queueing time, I am more prefer to have a quality game which the team is fair. I am not coming to study the BO, playing a game which is always ended up within 30mins, totally one-sided game because the match up is unfair at the start. It wastes me 30mins of the game, 10mins+ waiting time, again, really mean nothing to me.
I don’t think it would be worse than playing versus players which are not interested/motivated in playing a certain map or don’t even know the build order for it.
if they wait too long, they can choose to keep their single open or close preference, or choose “both” to shorten the queuing time.
Again, can you gives out evidence or stat why my suggestion is not workable? Unless you have the 24 hours player queuing stat, otherwise I dont see the point why you are so sure it’s not worked.
when you doing a ranked game queuing, you are allow to choose 1v1, 2v2, 4v4 etc in RM and EW,
lots of choices are able to choose.
now I mentioned both? are you joking?
This thread it talking about how to improve the ALT F4 issue, and I am suggesting one of the possible one is sperate open and close map queue so people are more able to choose what the maps they want.
I really found out people here really likes to make arguments because they just like to against.
It’s really full of negative comments here.
they put down the DM ladder very mostly due to the playerbase issue.
I played DM before, there are not matches lately and even a game could start, the elo balance is terrribly bad. always mixing the top 100 with the the DM elo below 1500.
Soon or later EW will be put down as well as I dont see EW is on a right track as well.
To me, there shouldnt be too many options about 2v2, 3v3 in a ranked game just like other competitive games. Just letting people play 1v1 and 4v4 in ranked is fair enough. But this is totally my personal preference.
I’ll put things easy for you, of 20 games i had preferred arabia i got it 3 times, 8 times arena, 4 times megarandom, 4 times bf and one baltic and lots of alt f4.
As you can see i have to play others maps most of my time, doing things i get boring and don’t enjoy with teams that are so bad that i have considered to uninstall the game.
But with latest change uninstalling seems the right choice or just abandon the only game mode that i like.
The truth is neither of us know how splitting ranked queues would affect queue times. Only the devs have all the data to understand the issue, and so far, they haven’t done it, so I assume they’re not keen on splitting up the playerbase.
Having said that, if we’re speculating, it’s in my opinion more logical to assume that queue times would increase across the board, especially for the people who prefer the less popular maps in the pool. I doubt there’s enough players who would jump over from lobbies to ranked to make up for the splintered playerbase. I could definitely be wrong though, so maybe your system is worth a try.
I also would just like to ask what you think should happen to leaderboards? If I only played arena and become the best arena player in the world, I might get enough elo to be first on the leaderboard, but because I never encounter arabia only players, it’s not really fair to compete on the same leaderboard. Should players have separate elos for each mode? I think that could be interesting, but the playerbase needs to be there.
The number of players who don’t know a build order for more than three out of seven maps in the pool is likely a tiny minority. I’d say in the current map pool, every Arabia player should be also able to play Ghost lake, Market place and Acropolis with not such a large skill gap to pure Arabia.
Archipelago and Arena might be a different story, but you that’s what the bans are for.
I believe it would be much worse. Simply because it is my impression (by experience) that most players do have a preference for Arabia but are willing to play some other maps once in a while if they get such a match. Still, these players would generally queue Arabia-only if it was possible, just out of convenience. The set of players who refuse other maps than Arabia entirely is a relatively small (although rather loud) group. Just my guess from experience: Otherwise Alt-F4 would be much more prevalent in 1v1.
I don’t care about the leader boards that much. To me ELO is just a tool to get fair matches. I guess if you are stronger on arena than Arabia but want to play some of both you would have better matching with a split up leaderboard. I don’t feel strongly about this point.
You may doubt the playerbase will be enough or not, so do I.
And Yes, devs get the stat and they should know this could be executed or not.
the only one point I am not quite agree about assuming Devs would do it before if it’s workable.
as I dont think the devs has enough manpower to make changes, espeically smurf has been talking for many months and yet they have just let people know they are “handling” it.
Separate 2 queues as you mentioned can making the elo rating more accurate as lots of people who plays BF, arena etc are really doubtable playing as good as open map like Arabia.