Idea for balancing results when Out Of Sync error occurs

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
1

Hello dear community,

I have been suffering lately with a lot of Out of Sync happening mid-game, mostly 30-40 minutes into a match, and about 75% of those happening in suspicious circumstances (ie. opponent just lost 2 castles and about to lose a third, or getting pushed backed finally and having slim chances of winning); and searching this forum and others I have found that to be the case for a lot of people. Examples include some users that in the last 30 games have had 20 matches without results, 9 wins and 1 loss… So we can assume that there is a fair possibility this is a bug that is being abused.

However, this seems to be a difficult issue to resolve, as it touches upon the game code and core functionalities, which could prove even impossible to solve at least in the next few years, since it has already been going on for a long time with no fix suggested.

So, what I would like to propose, is a system for compensating proportionally to the relative score at the time that OOS occurs, meaning if the score (or other factors combined) is 20k to 15k, the highest score player gets 60% or 70% of the ELO rating he would win if victorious, and the player with lower score gets deducted 20-40%. Please understand, I think that the higher score deserves to get rating points more than the lower score player deserves to get deducted - assuming the possibility that he isnt at fault (ie. exploting a bug), which could be assessed by how many times and in which circumstances that occured (always de-sycing in a losing position or not). Since there seems to be no punishment at the moment for players who OOS frequently, I imagine this assessment could be difficult or not possible server-side, but the main idea that a player which has spent half an hour building up a winning position get some compensation at least, that is the most important for me, and I would assume, for the whole community.

Nothing is more demotivating than spending half an hour or a full hour dedicating yourself to a competition that wields no results… of course we play the game for fun, and ratings dont mean much except for the glory of knowing your efforts earned you that merit, but if the dismal of not being able to play out a battle after preparing for so long, at least knowing it wasnt all in vain would be sufficient that players can still find a reason to play at all, safely knowing they wont be utterly wasting their time and find some other game dedicate themselves to.

I hope I have contributed to the discussion and that we can keep the game fun, safe and just for everyone.

Cheers

2

Just don’t take elo too seriously. Also if your skill is at that elo you will always reach it. Losing one game to cheater make you lose some elo but then you will match with some weaker player next game and eventually you will get back your elo.

3

Yes, you are right… Still, its frustrating enough that a match in which you have been preparing for an hour wields no results, be it a win or a loss. Equally so if you have prepared, fought, and won (80-90%), and that doesn´t count for anything either. If it were just to happen once in a blue moon, I figure most people wouldn´t mind that much, as it could also occur in a losing position for you, and balance things out statistically. But there is enough proof out there in the community that this is not the case, there are users abusing this bug and many people are justly unsatisfied that they can get all their effort ridiculed by a push of a button. This is a competitive game, and people invest time and patience which are not unlimited, they do so because they love this game and have fun fighting fair battles and like in any war, receive some form of loot when victorious, and even when losing, there is also merit, be it in recognizing the strength in your adversary, something productive you learnt about what he did or what you should have done, or in learning to accept fair defeat. In OOS cases, there is nothing at all to reap. You don´t know and don´t care how they escaped defeat, there was no merit, glory, strength or wisdom in that, and in the cases where it was a legitimate game problem, you just get disappointed at it and and the time you spent building up to a frustrating non-event.

Compensating ELO in a fair proportionate way would make exploiting this bug less effective, would be less demoralizing for honest players, and further analyzing the circumstances in which frequent OOS happens to users would overall make AOE safer, more fun and just for everyone.

Cheers, and thanks for taking time to consider the matter.

4

the out of sync and players dropping is out of control, literally every 2nd game easily over 50%