Devs: Please improve the team elo system

The thing is team was the most popular mode to play in AOE3 legacy. Team is what makes most of the regular players keep playing.

The reason for the reduction in numbers are because the devs keep ignoring the calls to shift team from QS to lobby.

Shouldn’t be hard to make an improved ranked lobby for teams where perhaps you are forced to place random competitive maps and a filter that allows you to put minimum elo to enter the lobby to prevent kicking people.

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Since, the problem is the QS system that doesn’t allow people to see who is online at their rank and who is not.

There was many solutions proposed on this forum, for me the best are :

→ add the privat message and show who is online in your friendlist. Then you just have to text people to go QS with or vs them.

→ show how many people are queing in QS at your rank, so you know if you will be match against good players.

→ let players choose an elo range to play with and vs, so no bad surprises

→ if all of this is too much for the devs budget, just add the old ranks to the lobbies system, and it’s all ok like this is what we all played for years before DE.

Yes, you are right to say that the AOE3 community has always been small (1k - 5k) and is unlike a game like COD. But right now, QS is not doing DE any justice with this player size.

I remember seeing on TAD a lot of lobbies that had lieutenants, captains, and higher. They got along just fine and didn’t let lower-leveled people into their games (obviously for the sake of team fairness and balance). But QS fails in DE because it doesn’t see the difference. It will heartlessly match up higher-skilled players up with less-skilled folks without care. Hence, why OP made this post. QS could hypothetically work with a bigger player base like JonOli12 was saying, but right now, there’s just too few players and you’re not guaranteed to find 3-5 other people on the same ELO as you.

I think the only reason why TAD remained popular was because players had more power to choose the kind of games they would play. You could avoid a disaster by seeing player stats beforehand, unlike DE now. It always sucks going in-game to see your teammate have a noob deck and ages up at 9 minutes, even though he had “a little rank.”

(And yes, QS was in the old one too, but nobody really used it because you could find a game in the ESO lobby fairly quickly anyways)

To be honest I don’t see any big problem with the current elo system… The player with higher elo loses more points sounds quite sensible. If it is not like this, everyone keeping playing can get 2000+ elo eventually.

But if losing elo really bother you, I suggest just create a smurf account with family sharing when your teammate is not online.

You don’t understand the problems.

It’s not the elo, it’s the QS system in a small playerbase.

On vanilla, when the playerbase was strongly divided in 3 (Vanilla, TAD and EP), I founded game at any hour, alone, 2v2 or 3v3 at my rank.

Right now with the qs system, at the pike of the day (20-23H) I need minimum 10 minutes to find one correct game, because

→ inactiv players block the QS search. If the game search betwee : top 1 and top 50, but there’s only 5 players playing in that top50 at the moment, you will NEVER find a 3v3.

In the lobby system, you simply will go for a 2v2 or getting the top 51 for the 3…

The other problem, players don’t play alone on the QS system, because they will face premade teams only.

So now, if there is 6 players, but each alone, they will not play…
With the lobbies, one just host and then they all join…

I always play alone in the team matchmaking. There are indeed many premade teams. But just like the random players, some teams are good and some teams are not so good. Actually I don’t feel the win rates against the premade teams are particuallry lower or higher. I don’t see any problem.

Ok, maybe I just can’tunderstand what the actual problem is and the team QS are just broken like you said. But no one is forcing you to play it. Haven’t we already have a lobby with rank system? You can just join a “no noobs” game and have a fair fight, can’t you?

It’s a no brainer and I’m not sure why anyone would defend the current state of team mode in aoe3 de.

Everyone hates it I have not seen 1 player say how great team mode is in DE…not one!

Moving ranked team games in lobby will not only fix team games in sup but will fix treaty mode also which is dying rapidly in DE and get some 1v1 players to be more engaged in the game since it will give them an option to play team games seriously when they want a break from 1v1 instead of playing team games as a form if a meme

But these devs will release some weird content that no one has asked for…like bombard challenges instead of fixing the core of this game first

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In fact I think the events are great, but balance, bugs, functional improvement shall be first priority.

Yes I agree that the player with high elo loses more points makes sense… IF they are favored in the game. A 2100 and 700 team is HEAVILY unfavored vs a 1800 and 1800 team. Thus both the 2100 and 700 elo player should not lose many points.

If it was a 2100/2100 team vs 1800/1800, then yes I should, and do, lose many points.

The fact of the matter is, as I said in my original post, is that team elo takes into account only your individual elo and doesnt care if your teammate is wickedcossack or the literal lowest rated player. You will gain or lose the same elo in either case. This shows the team elo system is fundamentally flawed. In my example, if a 2100/700 team loses to a 1800/1800 team, the 2100 player would lose THE SAME AMOUNT OF POINTS as if the 2100 player actually had a 2300 player on their team and lost. The elo of the teammate seems to not taken into account at all. This makes zero sense, do you have an argument that the system is working as intended?

Creating a smurf is not healthy for the game and is a temporary solution. In fact, i do have an alternative account that I made to test out playing solo and i went back up to 2k elo after a week. At this point it’s not really a smurf and simply an alt account, and I have no interest in creating a new smurf and stomping 1.2k players.

Losing elo doesn’t bother me much at all because like I said its kind of a ■■■■ show right now. There are a couple players I see who play teams who are 1900-2k ish and are far better than some of the 2.2k players on ladder, due to this exact issue that I have posted about in my original post, since they mostly play randoms they are dragged down by unwinnable games with 700 elo teammates in which they lose -30 points despite being heavily unfavored to win.

I think i understand the problem quite well, its both. Both have issues, the QS doesnt work well with a small playerbase and team elo is fundamentally flawed as I have just proved in my original post (team elo doesnt take into account your teammate’s rating when adding or deducting points after a win or loss).

Unfortunately, the custom game system is ■■■■ and that’s why no one uses it for serious random games. I can join a “no-noobs” game, but the last 10 of these games I have joined, were complete stomps. Most of them aren’t anywhere close to 2k rating. And many of them don’t play ranked and as such dont have any rating so I have no way to assess their skill level in custom games, unfortunately :confused:

I don’t want much, just hope that the developers will show as much affection as AOE2, but the developers seem to be difficult.

Still, I am looking forward to the upcoming improvement patch. Perhaps with this patch, we are looking forward to showing them something.

Any additional content is great but not at the expense of less resources in fixing some fundamental flaws in the game.

Team games was the biggest mode in legacy in terms of player participation, and for it to be left in the state it is in is hurting DE in terms of player retention

The chalenges were an attempt to get more people to play the game. They actually are trying to grow the permanent playerbase.

I’m sure they are trying to attempt to grow the base, but just not very efficiently.

They would get more ROI by getting a better understanding if the game they are supporting and where the real issues are and put priority on them.

I have nothing against them bringing new content, but I’m losing patience in watching where there focus is at and not grasping the fundamental issues at the moment with the game.

Great analogy would be trying to install a pool in a ship that has a massive hole that is making it sink

Yes I agree, and as I said twice on Dec last year and final balance patch. My friend playing AOE3DE left from several groups to one group and now only several guys. This is not several additional content can keep the people. Most of guys won’t have patient to wait dev mess up the balance and keep the bugs not fixed.

However what I feel dev also gave up this game.