First of all, great work (devs) for the last two updates. I think the QoL additions, balance changes, and continued work on bugs have taken the game SO far in a positive direction from when it was first launched. I appreciate all the hard work and the determination to make the game better, even when forums were pretty toxic. Yet you guys still persevered to make it better. Thank you.
This post is dedicated to keeping the flame alive on a topic that is still blotching player satisfaction in multiplayer games: Uneven skill levels in team games, more specifically, the custom lobbies. I’ve talked to many players in-game on and on the forums about this, but hopefully the polls capture player opinion and turn it into data.
Why is this a problem?
1. Uneven skill levels are blotching player experience in both ranked and casual team games.
Common thoughts:
“Why am I gonna waste 40 minutes of my time in a 4v4 treaty game when I see that 1 of my teammates have rush decks?” Exits game, screwing the rest of his teammates over, more.
“Why am I in this 3v3 rush game, getting pancaked 3v2? One of my teammates can’t seem to manage his economy and send proper support… AND I was doing well on my own!” Proceeds to lose to something outside of his control - very aggravating.
Of course there will be skill disparities everywhere - it’s not a perfect world. But we have already experienced a world where most of these imbalances were mitigated (AOE:3TAD), and it lead to many super-stimulating, back-and-forth, really enjoyable games.
I’m not talking about the B.S., high-level, 1v1 games where snotty hosts rig a certain civ and map to climb rank. No. I’m talking about the core chunk of players who get home from work/school and just wanna jump in a good ol’ game of AOE3. These balanced games brought out the best in out of all players AND squeezed the most enjoyment out of the game. Nowadays, it’s a dread.
Every time you play a custom game, you dread readying up in a lobby, never knowing who’s gonna bring a rush deck into a treaty game. Or if playing a rush game, you never know who’s actually super bad, only to age up super late, and now can’t help defend or assist the push.
This is common nowadays, but this should not be the norm. It feels like the game is degraded because of this. It doesn’t feel optimized in terms of player satisfaction.
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2. Did QS or casual ranks fix this? Complicated answer, but generally agreed that it needs improvement.
It has been discussed before many times: QS is good for 1v1s because it eliminates rigged games and is mathematically easy to find games. QS has complaints for ranked team games, such as awful skill disparities among teammates, difficulty in finding games, and the unexplained, strange ELO gain/loss point system.
Casual ranks are generally agreed to be inadequate in determining accurate player skill level. There is somewhat of a reliable distinction between bad players and good players when you see many gold bars on someone’s rank compared to someone with just 1 or 2 gold bars.
And many players don’t play enough ranked games to allow other players to gauge their skill levels. Also, it is harder to find ranked team or treaty games to play, so it’s harder to even get stats displayed.
They both DO not solve the major issues of accurately determining skill levels to create more balanced games, or stopping players from bringing rush decks into treaty games.
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3. What do the players want and why?
Just please let us have the functionalities of the original game in multiplayer. People have asked for the same functions such as being able to whisper other players again.
That re-implementation was a great re-addition, and I know the player community is dying for the old stuff back (old rank system, win percentages for the specific type of games they played, being able to see decks before going in-game, etc.).
Thank you once again for all your hard work, and please consider these thoughts and these polls in future updates. I hope this discussion can bring about a change and can better the game.