Developers, a CALL TO ACTION. Mutliplayer needs FIXING!

Age of Empires III: DE III - Discussion
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NOTE: I am not asking for quickmatch to be removed. I think quickmatch is great for 1v1.

Problem:
Ranked has been stripped from custom games.

The reason this is a problem:

  1. Obviously a lot of players are going to abuse this and farm wins against noobs

  2. 3v3 players want to be able to:

A) Make the teams fair. E.G.two Port/Japan players on the same team is an instant loss in 2v2/3v3 situations against competitive players.
B) Customise the map: Most of the maps have food far away from the TC, which encourages rushing. Only certain factions are good at rushing(otto, india, russia). This means for competitive ranked you HAVE to play a faction which can rush or hunt villagers with hussars. There is no counter to this strategy; there is a ‘age 2’ meta which has no work-around on most maps.

  1. The ‘No rush’ crowd (very different from the 3v3 crowd) are annoyed they now can’t see ranks and make fair teams…(they can’t even play quickmatch, they used to make up a good 20% of the community).

  2. Quickmatch has a lot of maps which are uncompetitive for most factions in 3v3; The main reason people loved Deccan is factions like Port, Dutch, France, Spain, China actually had a chance.
    To elaborate, most maps(remain after their balance changes) have food wayyy too far away from TC, this means as the game gets longer, villagers have to go too far out to get food and suceptible to villager hunting. To avoid this players rush the opponent on most maps.

  3. We can no longer avoid ‘problematic’ players from the lobby. We can no longer avoid racist/BPD/rude players. Furthermore we can no longer avoid the inevitible cheaters which will come into the game; after the money dries up in a few years and there’s nobody to mod this game since it’s made by a indie studio, we need players to have a degree of authority which custom games offered.

  4. There is now no MMR punishment for leaving custom games whenever you want.

  5. Quickmatch was in aoe3 multiplayer, including TAD(the asian dynasties) and nobody ended up using it.

  6. Quickmatch is unsustainable; as more players leave, search times will increase. Aoe3 benifited from a slow stream of revenue for 15 years. Does DE want the same?

Solutions:
A) Add ranks back to custom games.
B) Add in ‘must be X rank to join y lobby’ option. This will prevent players joining the wrong lobbies!

Arguments against this:
Q: You shouldn’t be able to see your opponents civs ahead of time.
A: In 95% of ms+ or lt+ lobbies the teams would be random, so you can’t predict. You would only split double factions, e.g. double port.

Q: Leads to Stat Padding
A: People are going to smurf in quickmatch the same amount
A2: You could hardcode in ‘can only increase by max X mmr per match’ to counter this anyway.

Q: Quickmatch makes the game more competitive.
A: It does for 1v1 AND a small minority(mainly new) players which don’t mind the dull/repetitive meta of age 2 otto/india/russia/rushing or hussar/sioux villager hunting.
A2: The real competitive part of aoe3 for most people was 3v3 Deccan or GP, either of which we can’t solely search for now!

Q: People don’t want to play 20min games!
A: In LT+ or even MS+ games, I would say a good 80% of the time people still rushed but the great thing is you could counter with walling/turtle or just having really good timings against their rush. This made all the factions competitive except maybe Spain and Inroquis. Lead to really fun and dynamic games with lots of variation.

Q: Treaty sucks, they should just ‘get gud’
A: I never played treaty, but why should anyone tell people how to enjoy the game! :slight_smile:

Q: Ranked custom games will lead to people getting kicked.
A: Add in ‘must be X rank to join y lobby’ option

Q: Why make Custom games Ranked, I want to play casual
A: Sure, Add a ‘unranked’ opion when hosting a game!
A2: I know for certain a lot of people will enjoy being able to abuse a lack of MMR in any game, so be careful what you wish for!!

Context from old aoe3 multiplayer: (rough estimations!)
Around 20% of players play 1v1. (maybe more, I hear some played on the ESOC patch)
Around 20% of players play NR/Treaty(No rush)
Around 20% of the players play 2v2.
Around 40% of the players played 3v3.

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LoL
I see. This is your real purpose.

Another one-map-only player who just want to grind elo in his favorite map and try to ruin another RTS, but not really care about the game balance and diversity.

I like this game and hope the devs make the right decision this time. If not, I am always ready to quit this game.

You can stop spamming the same topic now, dude.

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you just want to grind elo in his favorite map and try to ruin another RTS

For the aoe3 multiplayer community, rank meant almost nothing above br20, and certainly above br23/24.

I know in most games, ‘grinding elo’ is something people do but for us the main objective was to have fun and win that game by being more skilled, elo was simply a way to balance teams but wasn’t something people ‘grinded’. It was a very small community and we all know each other, ranks didn’t play a factor in how we saw each other.

Most of the community does not want forced maps(do you even want to be forced to play certain maps?).

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I think it is just your personal opinion, not the opinions of the majority of this game. I agree people should be able to play this game with any settings freely, and I also agree there could be a sort of function allowing people to check the profile of each other to make a more fair match in the custom lobby, but it should be unranked.

I like Standard maps. This formal maps set provides various competitive maps and diverse multiplay experience for all players. And new players like me can clearly know which maps we should learn and be familiar with. I don’t see any problem with it.

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Fully agree with OP.

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[quote=“CkoTT, post:1, topic:104978”]
Quickmatch was in aoe3 multiplayer, including TAD(the asian dynasties) and nobody ended up using it. [/quote]

Only because it wasnt possible. I couldnt invite a friend for 2v2 or 3v3 ranked quicksearch. Check Age of Empires 2 DE - everyone uses Quicksearch.

Personally i hated to search for custom lobbys, or host themselfs with players leaving cause they didnt want to play random land maps but the next rounds great plains again…
Over PR 30 it really became long waiting times, as we topped out at PR 40-41 we waited up to 40 mins to get games, just to get stomped by like PR 43/44 ppl (top of the ladder) or stomp some PR 3x Team… or waiting for the next team because random settings doesnt fit their gameplay or they didnt like french or russia as an enemy back then 2006/7

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I think it is just your personal opinion, not the opinions of the majority of this game.

Statisitcally I’m correct. Most 3v3 players played Deccan, with some occasionally playing GP or NE.

Forcing players to play maps they don’t enjoy won’t work. The replacement rate for this game isn’t high enough relative to the amount leaving to sustain multiplayer long-term unless action is taken; 3DE hasn’t enjoyed aoe3’s commercial success(and isn’t on track to) so they have a much smaller initial ‘pool’ of players which will return back to DE over the next 10 years to keep the population in multiplayer healthy.

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No they dont force us, I for example just stoped playing the game. will check from time to time if they update/ return ranked lobbys

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I for example just stoped playing the game. will check from time to time if they update/ return ranked lobbys

I feel as if a lot of players are doing this. Most are now in their late 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. These people don’t have time, energy or patience to sit around lobbying for it to be fixed.

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yeah but game will be dead if they wont fix it, cause most ppl will stop playing without proper multiplayer / non working ranked matchmaking.
if there are no players left -> microsoft cuts down developer ressources -> game died.

You cant release an rts with competitive multiplayer without hotfixing the most crucial problems. Otherwise you loose 50%+ of the player population right away.

Just imagine the uproar it would cause if Riot Games killed ranked que with a Patch in League of Legends or Valve in Counter Strike. There would be a ■■■■ ton of ppl complaining and player counts would drop rapidly by 50% or more, cause most ppl dont play unranked for long. It takes away the carrot / you dont have a target to focus on.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe3/comments/jj161j/ranked_quicksearch_isnt_working_since_last_patch/

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tbqh in aoe3 once you were lt(20) or maybe 23 nobody cared about MMR, why try to grind it??

Especially in 3v3 there are a lot of factors which went into your MMR besides skill, half of which are outside of your control.

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A ladder is a ladder. If you take out the competition, whats left?

Why do people try to win a soccer or football match?
Why do people track their running paces?
Why do people track their degrees?

I like to have some sort of progression or improvement for myself and like to compare it.
If there is no ranked, i dont play it. Neverless if someone cares about it or not.
So i dropped from 20 matches a day to zero as soon as i recognized they dont count.

Its like playing poker without some pennys as minimum stake.
i would just go all in alot faster, because i cant win or loose anything?
So you get rushed at age 3, playing without rating and its quite a hassle to surive.
Just surrender, next game, cause you dont even loose elo rating?

You could even watch netflix on the second screen and play without hotkeys mouse only. Who cares about improvement / rating or how you perform? Loosing 80%? so what.

i hate stagnation and i hate having a non competitve multiplayer enviorement.
Would play Singleplayer Games which are not a buggy mess if i would like it. (didnt for years, with the exception of red dead redemption 2 because it was a good ride, like a cinematic).

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played yesterday, some 3v3 and some 1v1. Actually some wins and one loss got counted.
But no Teamgame at all. Its broken for 1 week now, fix when?

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A ladder is a ladder. If you take out the competition, whats left?

That’s why this thread exists, because ranks are not currently in custom games. Unfair custom games is bad for everyone.

The point of ranks is to create somewhat fair team to facilitate fun/enjoyment. It’s not to ‘climb’ MMR, the end goal should always be satisfaction from the match, not validating your ego by having a higher MMR.

As I alluded to, a lot of things go into your MMR other than skill, including:
• How much you’ve played the game relative to others
• How many smurfs play the game
• What faction you enjoy(you shouldn’t base what you play on solely what’s best)
• What time of day you play(less of a ‘pool’ of skilled players at primetime so games are easier on average)
• If you rage quit
• If you make others rage quit via bad communication
• How many cheaters play the game

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thats not like i know ELO ratings like from chess.

personally i dont like MMR systems which take 100 factors into account.
it should be transparent and based on enemy elo vs your elo.

a loss is a loss, not important if i had to alt f4 because my little dauther is crying or someone else is raging. its only dependend on the difference between enemy / own elo.

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not sure if anyone else is having this issue, but i have the game from the microsoft store and i cant seem to invite friends with the steam version to ranked matches. we can join games in casual lobbies together, however when we try to invite each other to ranked we never get the invites

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i cant seem to invite friends with the steam version to ranked matches.

In TAD(the asian dynasties) you would only play against stacked teams in custom games with the explicit understanding prior to accepting, which you can’t do with quicksearch.

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they didnt, because you can search together at steam.

Would be unfair if they disabled it in Windows 10 Store / Gamepass Version, but didnt disable it in Steam Version :smiley:

If they really disable it, it will be an instant refund for me, because playing quicksearch ranked with my mates is one of the key advantages over the old age of empires 3 back then 2005. its working without problems in Age 2 Definitive Edition in 2v2/3v3/4v4/ Steam or Xbox App invite and go.

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The lack of “promised support” on launch is going to start insta-refunds real quick. dunno what they are doing…