The lobby system combined with the rating system made people just play one map only. This pushed the playstyle to the meta of Voobly, where not many maps where played. Since it become the meta and accepted way to play the game, everyone just followed the meta. Not everyone was fan of this meta. Many players want something different, but it was just not possible.
The main issue of the lobby system combined with the rating system is that Elo isnt really transferable between different kind of maps. When i started to play the game, i started with Black Forest. I felt it was the most noob friendliest maps of the popular maps. You can just wall, boom and have a post imperial fight. So i learned how to boom. Starting with FC, making more TCs in castle age. The fighting started in the imperial age. So the first part of the game i could concentrate on my eco, the last part of the game i could concentrate on military. I started to get better and my rating improved.
After a while i decised i wanna play maps with early agression too. So i decided to start playing Arabia. I didnt know how to fast feudal into scouts / archers / MAA / towers. If i played against players of my own rating, i was completely slaughtered. So i wanna play against lower rated players (only their rating was lower, there skill might even be better), but they didnt want to play me, because of my high rating. So after some tried to play Arabia, i was kinda forced to play Black forest again.
DE matching solved this issue with match making system. Your rating is really your average skill. This is needed for Match making to be a success. If you want match making to match equally skilled players, the overall skill level of both players needs to be the same. Otherwise you go back to the situation of Voobly.
I see this as a blessing for the game. I feel like it wasnt only me, but many players want more variety in the maps they play, but they were caught in the system. Now they are free again. There is no solution to me to make everyone happy. I think the current solution makes most players happy, so this is the best for the game.