Devs: You are ENCOURAGING people to make smurfs

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
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Instead of looking at the dodging action, we should instead look into why people dodge.

Players want either a win (even if its unfair to others, so long as its not us) or at least have a fair chance of winning.

So let’s be fair, a team of randoms aren’t going to beat the best korean team. Knowing the caliber of you koreans, you’re going to beat almost every premade team anyway.

Imagine you’re a casual basketball player, and after a long day of work, you just wanna score some balls but you’re always up against kobe bryant pre-made team with his pro friends over and over and over again. And if kobe is AFK, it’d be michael jordan and his friends. Truth is I don’t know much about famous basketballers. Premade friends or not, against these pros or even semi-pros…

If people really wanted to play a competitive game to get better, they would and should and do play 1v1’s. When it comes to playing with friends and enjoying themselves, they’d want to first at least have a slight chance of winning.

You can hide player names to prevent dodging, but if you think this is actually a fix you’re wrong. The weaker team would get even more frustrated and leave the game.

The emphasis shouldn’t be at all on the dodging part but making games more even. Sadly, the skill gap between pros and semi pros are big, semi pros and good players bigger; good players and casuals even bigger. The quick search system just doesn’t work at all for this sort of game. You guys seen “Darious I”? Just desyncs the game every time it’s over. System can’t even account for cheaters. Certainly wouldn’t account for maphackers. Players need to be able to decide for themselves what’s a fair match and who are dodgy players and who are smurfs. The only way to do so is how it was done 20 years ago in aoe2, all the way back in msnzone where games were actually a lot more fun and balanced. No quickmatch system can account in for so many variables. “Ranked custom games/table”

The current system is even worse because players are now split between ranked and quickmatch, as if player count isn’t bad enough. And seriously what’s the difference between the two? Some worthless medal that only encourages dodging even more. Top players (not really top, but anyway…) still fight for ladder ranks.

Now, another very discouraging factor is how ELO is calculated every game. It seems that, if a team with 200 elo lower beats a team 200 higher on average generally, the amount gained and the amount lost for each side is the same. So to beat a stronger team, you may win 20 elo, and if u lose against them, you also lose 20. For equal elo, you win 15, you lose 30, or something like that. In short, if you win, you win less, if you lose, you lose more. This is not even accounting in desyncers where you can just lose 49. Imagine how long it’d take to regain that if you are all playing on your mains. Sometimes its not just the desyncers, because this game is actually amateurish buggy, seeing people crash isn’t uncommon. (hello devs, 4k res + high quality, ez crash devs, when fix?). Not even the ability to rejoin the game like what a modern typical 2022 game should be capable of doing. If anything would encourage smurfing/boosting it would be this. If you have a lesser chance of winning, it should at least be rewarding, but nope.

To continue on with ELO issues, have any of you noticed some teammates would gain 12, while you gain 1 all in the same match? I’ve observed this long enough and i can tell you it’s not about player score, its not about kills, its not about who has higher/lower elo. It looks entirely random. I think the devs don’t know what they are doing at all.

With regards to boosting, aoe2 already had a system for this, when you mix super low + super high elo. the high elo player wouldn’t gain points or much points against the same average. What we have right now is people resigning just 10 games to get their elo down to 300. You see it in a few of those top 30 players.

Instead, they spend their energy on balance changes all the time instead of actually fixing issues. And what for exactly? Beasty and marinelord received huge changes when they switched from sc2. Didn’t stop beasty from being a beast and marinelord from being a lord. Good players will remain good, and I’m sure you koreans will remain good next season. These balance changes aren’t going to draw much newer players and make things exciting for most people, they are at best refreshing. The real issue is the worthless matchmaking system that we have now, and there is really just a simple fix: Disband quicksearch.

Energy and effort should be spent on the matchmaking system, not the players, not the dodging. Dodging is the consequence of a failed system. If you think hiding player names is going to fix anything, well has anyone come across the all famous Lord Oakshield? If he thinks game has no chance of winning, he just resigns. Ruins the game for 3 of his other players. Then you’d end up wanting to dodge oakshield as your teammate anyway. Ultimately, people will just resign at minute 0, then you’re going to want to start adding penalty for leavers at 0-5min which also does little. If people can’t dodge, can’t resign at minute 0, they will just quit the game. We should be encouraging new players and having players stay, not discouraging people from playing.

At present, it’s actually not fun for us conq3’s to beat up golds and plats… but i can tell you, in terms of perspective, it’s even less fun for them. It’s not like we can specify: “1600+ elo only games”

I don’t have much faith in this game honestly, the devs can’t be bothered communicating with people, i’d like to see some response in this thread, but i know better that wont be happening.

As such, we just keep playing until game becomes truly unbearable and we move on. I do think aoe2 is still the superior game, but I really don’t want oldschool graphics or old netcode anymore. It’s just a real shame this game has the potential to outgrow sc2 if only better decisions and design happens.

My proposal:
We have people host custom games. We are able to specify elo-range. Quicksearch would send players into rooms with criteria filled (maps, elo, etc). In these rooms, we can also decide who goes on which team so that game is balanced. Then we would see jazbaz+3 vs victo+3, unless you wouldn’t mind losing to victo 10 games in a row right with jazbaz+3 vs victo+siral+cz+bum9. You wouldn’t complain right?

It’s a simpler system to design, manage with my proposal.

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There are some good points and some are flawed, and dare I say, mentally weak argument (sorry if this sounded offensive). Though I say that, almost all of what I say here is agreeing to your ideas.

Your first statement is good = “we should look into WHY people are dodging”.
I think almost all top ranked TG player will agree that we understand why Gold/Plats dodge against us. The ridiculous match making starts when the first match gets dodged, and it’s always Conqs/Diamonds. Any Conq/Dia team has a chance to beat a Conq3 team. Notice how I said a “chance”. If you know you are a weaker team, you may want to try an all in strategy, or an eco cheese, etc.

The whole thing about a “fair” game is a very subjective idea. Is Brazil vs Korea in RO16 of the World Cup “fair” considering Brazil is a much better team objectively? If it’s “unfair”, why is it still being played? I think saying a team of 3 Conq3s vs 1 Con3, 1 Conq1, 1 Dia3 is a good comparison of Brazil vs Korea national football team.
You can argue that the stakes on the line is much bigger than a video game. You are right. But so is the effort to play a video game than to play on the national stage.
EVERY game is “unfair”. One team will be better than the other even if they are in the similar ranks but why do we played them?
The reason I say it is still “fair” is because the rank points you get by beating/losing considers the rank of the two teams. I think you do talk about how this is also flawed but because I don’t 100% understand the ELO system, I can’t say much. As far as I know, rank points and ELO points are different.
You may say “who cares about rank points”, but it’s something that should be cared for a good healthy competitive scene. In the end, we are all playing a video game right? and the rank points should be the bragging rights in this small world we sometimes hop into.

Imagine if Korea after getting into RO16 in the World Cup complained to FIFA that the RO16 is an unfair match because it is against a stronger opponent?

I personally would LOVE to play against a pre-made pro players…

The whole thing about a weaker team getting frustrated and leaving the game is just a weak mentality problem (except for Plats and below… that is where I draw the line). In every match, one team is weaker than the other whether it’s by a lot, or by a small margin. But by que-ing into ranked mode, you are agreeing to play a game in a competitive mode. You may end up with a weaker opponent or a stronger opponent, but it’s what you’ve signed up for. Though I say that, there should be a line for this and that’s why I’ve been saying ELO range should be reduced so Conq should never get matched with Plats or below.

I can tell you that NO high ranked TG player will dodge a team of pros (let’s say ML, Beasty etc) because when we que for ranked game, that’s what we agreed to do. Play whatever game is given to us. Also, it is POSSIBLE to beat them, though unlikely. But hey, in the ideal world where people care about rank points, it’s a low risk/high return scenario right? (and if the system works properly and we lose -1 while have the chance of getting +50?)

Making the game even I definitely agree and I have been saying that. I’ve been saying that everything including hiding name/rank, reducing ELO range (making games more even), and hard punishments for dodge/instant leaving has to be done at the same time. I have never suggested that hiding name/rank will solve everything and is the only thing that needs to change by the way.
Players definitely should NOT decide for themselves what’s a fair match or not but right now, the system isn’t doing a good job hence to some degree, dodging is understandable. But if the system is fixed for a better match making system which is the ideal scenario, players needs to be able to trust the system and play whatever is given if they que for ranked mode.

The whole lobby system is too much of an old-fashioned idea. It can still let players pick and choose teams, more importantly, opponents. Remember what queing in the ranked mode means. You are basically entering a BIG tournament/league. Say joining the EPL, NBA, World Cup, etc. You can’t just “dodge” matches because you think the other team is better than you (and I keep saying, there has to be a line because if you are a casual and not the most talented player, you wouldn’t try to go to the NBA).

What is “fair”? This is a very subjective question. To me, any game with both teams having a “chance” of beating the other is a fair match.

Dodging is definitely a consequence of a failed system. But high level players taking advantage of it is very shameful and pathetic and it is not ONLY the system’s fault.

Your proposal is fine for an inhouse game, but ranked system needs to happen in a search type way. Obviously we need it to improve ranked mode but it should not be dictated by the players. Also, this is where the unknown and break-out players emerge these days. We’ve seen it from Overwatch, Dota2, LoL, even SC2. If the ladder system is strong and healthy, it has potential to bring out young and new players in the fastest way possible. It is how I did “okay” for myself and started in SC2… I didn’t even know about an esports scene in where I live (NZ) but because I hit top 10 on the ladder back in WoL, I got PMed, some of my ladder matches went onto YouTube, and I eventually got the opportunities to play in a few esports events. Without the ladder system, this would not have been possible, or at least, much slower.

To your jazbas+3 vs victo+3 idea. Why would we want to split up? We enjoy playing together not because we are individually good players (trust me we aren’t even close to the top 1v1 players), but our team work has been refined over the last few years (we played together in AOE2) and we are good friends. Yes we have our inhouse games from time to time but winning as a group of friends is a huge fun for us and we don’t mind losing together too. Yes we do lose to other top players who I’m guessing are on the similar boat as us.

Yeah we are aware of Darious I haha there is another guy who keeps changing their name too. It’s shameful isn’t it. There’s a site that is called AOE4 smurf tracker. They have list of de-sync users there you should check out!

Anyways, to summarise:

  1. Definitely agree that match making should make games more even. But what is even is subjective and the Devs needs to put their foot down on what they consider as a “fair” match. Make the system suitable for a “ranked mode”, and players who play it agrees with what is a “ranked mode” and plays the matches given to them.
  2. Players should NOT dictate match making, especially opponents, in a “ranked mode” as ranked mode is basically a (or should be a) HUGE competitive league. Lobby system still allows players to dictate opponents (allies to a non pre-made team) and will not reflect their true skill level on the ladder. Maybe players should get 3~5 “ban” cards on the players they don’t want to be teamed up with (most other games’ competitive mode has this feature) so they don’t have to play with toxic team mates over and over.
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You don’t have a 95% winrate for no reason because you guys are all strong individually and together and you have some synergy and knowing of how each other play. I’m gonna leave randoms out and talk about other pre-mades. Majority of other pre-mades often include plat/diamond players (boosted to conq by playing in a stack)… and they surely falter against your sort. When I watch the replay of some people we play with, it really upsets me how they even do their build order. They don’t even bother fixing their issues. But friends are friends, and friends play together. You happen to be blessed with friends with good mindset. It’s hard to come by.

You cannot use world cup as an example however, because these team players are just people who wanna get together and often play with someone who would carry them. Why don’t you play with us sometimes instead of just your korean friends? You’ll often find most/all of them aren’t as good as you and how would you feel going against a full stack of victo’s team. I am sure you would rage. These casuals who are just looking to play don’t want to lose even more. A lot of my friends don’t wanna play against you guys, they know they don’t stand a chance. For me, I’m tired of waiting for games, I just want to play. These “mix” casuals aren’t looking to improve their game much, I’ve seen one french player whose done 1000+ french only games and never bothered looking into his build order. Absolute garbage. They just wanna chill. Their gameplay is surely not refined individually, much worse in teamplay, and you just admitted your team’s game is refined over the years. Mix teams won’t refine their play much at all.

The strong mindset players you can probably imagine are those who are already playing 1’s. Most others just wanna mix-n-chill.

If you look at louemt and neptune’s team, whom I know are competitive with you guys. They don’t even play much team games anymore.

I am not a good player, perhaps better only by playing 1s and more 2s, no motivation to improve to a pro level but different than others I do like hard team games, and much prefer having my best players with me alongside. I would be glad to play you guys over and over if you lack players to fight against.

To summarize this section, I say majority of team players are casuals + mix team. They stand no chance against your kind. They have no incentive either to play your kind because the elo system doesn’t reward well enough with “big wins”. The current system only incentivizes dodging. Weak mentality perhaps, because the strong go play 1v1’s. Your world cup team is not really a close comparison, because like korea making miracle wins this world cup, its similar to you guys winning december team tourney ECL or something i forget the name against the likes of beasty. You guys have that tryhard mentality, and most TEAM CASUALS don’t.

My proposal is more than fine for ranked, because for a fact – it worked and we had mostly good games with only very few unknown kids trying to abuse the system by resigning to each other, whom we SIMPLY ignored and continued playing our “good games”. That was plenty of effort for “abusers” back then but the abusing there is now is far more blatant than it was ages ago.

Couple of months ago, when dodging was well enforced, all people did was resign at first minute. I’ve also heard plenty of comments like “im done with this game and matchmaking”. Have you actually read what people say? “whats with this matchmaking?” I read this daily because it is the truth.

I’m sorry but quick search is a proven frustration, this might be fine for solo but not team games. Using quick search to join a lobby might be fine, but at the end of the day, no system can adequately decide which players are scum, cheaters, drophackers, quitters, smurfs. Far too many factors. We need to decide this by ourselves by looking at statistics or by reputation. If there are actually people just resigning to each other to climb ranks, this can and should easily be reported. It’s a lot easier to report such than having to report Darious I. Why hasnt he been banned btw? In msnzone aoe2, if you resign before 5mins or 10mins i forget, you get an “incomplete”, you also get that if you dc. 5 Incompletes = -100 elo or something. Winner gets 0 elo for such games. So if you’re going to abuse the system, you must be ready to spend extra effort.

Now in response to your summary point #2: i am very much against medals and ranked. I do like ladder, so for me, having a single “quick match ladder” is sufficient. We shouldn’t split up players. Player count is already too few. As said before, I think 1v1 quick search is ok, but not teams.

Come play with us, you will see some failed games occasionally (dont worry we will win most), but i want you to know what it feels like to lose because of not having “refined over the years” strategies. This is how it feels for the losing casual mix team usually.

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95% winrate came from poor match making system where we get matched up with teams with Plats. I think we have about 10 games that were against only Golds too. If we only count verses Conqs/Dias, It will be a lot lower. Imagine if the system was really well put out and pros find playing team ranked fun? that’s what I want to emphasise.

If players were boosted to Conq by playing in a stack, then isn’t it only fair that they DON’T stay on Conq and lose to stacks like us? isn’t that what’s SUPPOSED to happen? If they keep winning through the fact that they are pre-made, then eventually they’ll hit a wall (let’s just say that is our stack). That wall can be the proof on if they deserve to be where they are or not? and this is what RM should be like. Something that actually matters (a little bragging rights).

“Team players who wanna get together and often play with someone who would carry them”? what? if this is the case, then should they really have the right to complain when they lose against a stacked premade team? As soon as you hit Conq, you aren’t a “casual”. You may play casually, but you are in the top 1% of the player base. That is not a casual whether you play just for fun or not.
If you are playing with friends who are at a lower level, you can simply go Quick Match. We’ve actually been doing that at times. Comparing to the World Cup is a very good example because World Cup is not the only tournament. There are your Saturday 35 and over club leagues for casual players. Ranked mode, if taken seriously and well designed, should be a good comparison to the FIFA ranking. While Quick Match can be your answer if you want to play with bunch of your friends who are “casuals”.

Why do you think I’d like to play with my Korean friends and not you guys? If I got to know you guys and we became friends, and I enjoy the atmosphere of playing with you guys, sure why not! Do you really think the only reason we play together is because we are pretty good players? We developed a good friendship throughout the last few years. How is it a crime to play with friends who you developed your skills TOGETHER.

Strong mind set = 1v1 is also a very weak argument too. I’ve seen plenty of people who doesn’t want to try or improve (which is perfectly fine) or even dodge opponents in 1v1. Not true at all and is case by case for 1v1s and TGs.

I really don’t understand your paragraph “I am not a good player, perhaps better only by playing 1s and more 2s, no motivation to improve to a pro level but different than others I do like hard team games, and much prefer having my best players with me alongside. I would be glad to play you guys over and over if you lack players to fight against.”

What I am saying is Ranked Mode is ranked mode. There’s Quick Match mode too.

Casuals+mix teams, yeah fine we understand and maybe pre-made should only play against pre-mades. I don’t know if we have enough player base to do that, but in the ideal world sure. I think Dota 2 kind of does that? But there are many Conq/Dia pre-mades that still dodges us.
As I said, if you are a Conq, maybe even Dia3, you aren’t a “casual”. You keep saying as if my stack is wanting to go pro and go full pro-gaming mode. No, we have jobs, family, and life. We are “casuals” in that sense too.

For your proposal working - it worked for YOU. I’m sure there are plenty of people who didn’t enjoy doing lobby ranked games. Even you who had a good time with that system says there were a few abusers and I’m sure they ruined other players’ enjoyments. There will ALWAYS be toxic players. The solution is to punish these players so they can’t play rather than having the system to allow ALL players to be able to do unethical things.

I don’t know why you think I’m saying the Match Making is fine? That IS the problem I am addressing AS WELL as dodging. Think of it this way. If I’m playing with cz+Bum9 and meet Victo’s stack (and yes we have!), and we DODGE that to make sure we have 0 chance of losing, is that ethical? What if we met MarineLord’s stack (unlikely, but let’s just say we do) and we dodge because we don’t want to lose and it’s a “sure” loss. Isn’t it pathetic?

All those toxic, cheaters, drophackers, smurfs etc, yes these are all the factors and the system CAN and SHOULD fix this. That’s what I am saying for this game to do well long-run.

Quick search works really well for so many games. It’s literally AOE2 and AOE4 community (especially AOE2) that has this frustration and it IS old fashioned and conservative thinking. Look at literally all the really popular games. Yes they have customs, but Quick Search is the most common way of people getting games.

You don’t think I know how it feels like to lose…? we still lose and you cannot criticise a group of friends who “refined” their strategies and developed a chemistry over the few years playing together just because we don’t lose much.

Happy to discuss with you on discord as posting long posts isn’t the most efficient way of discussing.

But to summarise,
It’s NOT a crime to have friends who are very good players nor the other way. If you have lower level players and you still want to play with them without feeling stressed, there’s the Quick Match mode.
What is a “casual”?
Is a casual a player who plays casually regardless of their skill level? or players who are at lower level?
What is a “fair game”?
Is it where two teams have exactly the same average ELO? if not, where do we draw the line on the difference and how is THAT fair?

There’s QM, RM, AND Customs. I don’t know why it’s so hard to understand that we want these modes to reflect on what they should be.
RM = a competitive ranking ladder to show who is the best player online
QM = a casual quick search mode that matches you with similar level of players but without giving/losing ranked points
Customs = a way to play with only people you know or in a specific setting

You can add me on discord: Jazbas1

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i dont think thats how discord usernames are, but ill add you in game and we go from there

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Maybe one solution is to have players being able to choose what is the max elo difference they can be matched with.
For example if people choose up to 100 elo they can only be matched with players that are either up to 100 elo above or 100 elo below that. Although with team games it can be more complicated than that. Still I think ppl would rather wait a few extra minutes queuing for a game than wasting 20min in a game they have no chance of winning.

If people are doing that when they know there is a timeout period is for a reason, the main focus of devs should be improving matchmaking first and go from there

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I agree with the waiting part. I for sure would rather wait 15mins than get dodged for 30mins.

I think max elo difference is good, but not up to the player. Devs should decide on what is a “fair” match and put their foot down on it. I personally feel 200 ELO is a good range, but whatever Devs decide, I hope is the right decision. I really don’t mind waiting for longer than what I am waiting atm, just to get dodged (just got dodged by 3 Conqs twice lol).

Maybe for QM, the player can get to decide?

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indeed, mm should be the focus. ive never cared for balance changes at all. we just adapt to changes is all there is.

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