Problem: Team ranked games don’t have enough players playing in them, causing wide ELO disparities and unsatisfying/aggravating matchups. Who wants to lose some ELO due to a bad matchup or a bad teammate that can’t pull their weight?
Most people don’t play enough ranked games to get a more proper reflection of their actual skill level.
This carries into casual lobbies as well, where people roughly estimate a player’s skill level by seeing their casual rank and ranked performance. You can already spot mismatches from the start. And if hosts could try to balance lobbies based on skill, it would be much more fair and satisfying in-game.
Proposed solution: Incentivize people to play ranked games.
For example, if you play 5 ranked games, you can get another profile picture (the same ones from weekly rewards).
Or if you play 3 ranked games in treaty, you can get 2 Home City customizations for free.
Or push out time windows where there is 1.5x or 2x experience offered from ranked games, so players can level up their home cities faster and get more customizations faster.
Any other ideas are highly recommended and welcome.
Ideal Results:
Less waiting time for ranked team games, due to more players playing ranked team games
More proper ELO placement, due to players playing ranked games more consistently
Casual lobbies benefit with better matchmaking due to seeing a better assessment of player’s skill levels. It’s not just “NOOB” or “NO NOOB” anymore, which is highly polarized and poorly reflects the differing skill levels of all the players
*Another note: STILL wanting the ability to see other player’s treaty decks in casual lobbies. Don’t let this frustrating flame die out.
I simply want to ask the devs, why not implement this? Is this to stop noob bashing? I feel like it would actually help if more experienced treaty players give tips to newer ones on how to make a better treaty deck.
I wish there was a good solution where we could merge the casual and competitive community. I worry that if the userbase declines ranked lobbies will die.
The skill gap in both casual and ranked games is a frustrating experience for all involved. You are right that “noob” and “No Noob” lobbies aren’t cutting it. I like the ELO system in place for ranked, but the problem is there are not enough players playing ranked matches. If this game had the active base that AOE II had, it would not be an issue.
The setup of legacy addressed this well. I would like to see something similar in DE, either an enhanced casual ranking, or just allowing ranked lobbies to be hosted.
Being able to see decks in lobbies prior to launching the match is a must. So many matches start only after X amount of time someone resigns because they don’t like another players deck. This is especially true in treaty. Again, bad experience for all involved. At least seeing it in lobby allows everyone to air their grievances prior to match start and wastes less time.
Also… Another thought on why players don’t bother with ranked… and this is coming from someone that loves this game dearly. This game’s track record with bugs and stability has not been the greatest. Even with the latest African expansion many are still many experiencing D11 crashes. A lot of people have played ranked matches, only to experience a crash and then lose the match and ELO points. Stability issues have turned off a lot of people to even bothering to try ranked.
Well I’ve read somewhere that this new September update is incorporating multi-threading. So maybe that could enhance gameplay. Maybe… we shall see.
But I think you hit a major point spot on though - stability really is priority. I’ve had a game where I beat someone 1v1 in ranked, but right before it ended, my game crashed and I actually lost. I too understand what it feels like to have your efforts thrown away due to something not your fault.
Regardless, stability should be first. When that is well established, there should be some kind of push to get people into ranked lobbies and have them populate there. I feel like some of the skill balancing issues can weed itself out a little more after that.
I still believe the old legacy system as well already was the answer. Clear, defined ranks; checking decks; and seeing the separation between treaty and supremacy skill levels. It’s frustrating why they don’t give us reason why they don’t want to go back to that.
If we had a much larger player base… sure… but this already small community can’t afford anything that further reduces the amount of players available.
I think that’d be a nice feature. But if the system already tries to select someone near or at your ELO, then the problem must be the lack of available people to choose from.
Still a cool idea to implement, but there’s just got to be a way to push more people to play ranked to increase the player pool.
To incentive ranked games, ranked mode needs improvements, you should be able to see the tech tree and customize your deck while in queue, as well even when you find an opponent, you should be able to still change the civilization you want to use here, also a ready button.
They could create distinctive icons for each player’s profile, representing what the ranking system was like in the legacy game. For example, if you have a rating of 1200, you will get the First Sergeant Badge.
Also when played casually, in case of enabling ‘classified maps’, the game may count as a classified game if the opponent is considered worthy of being a rival.
The customization and tech tree before the game is a good idea.
But if I remember reading correctly in another post, the reason why they make the game automatically start when you find an opponent is because many people wouldn’t take a matchup if they saw a civ they didn’t like.
Coming from TAD, people would host rigged lobbies that had ideal map and civ combinations (like Ports on water). Who would want to play against that? So thus, they made ranked games have random maps and an automatic ready-up when you find someone.
Just adding reasons to insentivise the ranked games : TBH Im a not so much ranked player myself. But , coz I can do the same games in casual, its less of a risk, and that too with my friends n teams by my choice of map and type, all so transparent.
Also would like to add, now that we haave a casual ranking, and a ranked ranking as well , AND pre available cards, whats the meaning of HOME CITY LEVEL ? it just misleasds players alot. especially the new players, LOL they agree to play against PRO port oh CH lvl 4 rather than a noob HC 70.
Hahaha agreed. Not the first time at all where I’ve seen lvl 5 Home Cities win the game against lvl 100+ Home Cities. The Home City level is not an accurate assessment of skill. It just doesn’t reflect an experienced player who knows the civ but just hasn’t played it a lot on DE.
I feel like this is one of those issues that isn’t game-breaking like an OP civ or game-crashing bug, but I personally think having more skill-balanced games will make the game much more enjoyable. I just don’t feel satisfied winning a game against people who didn’t know how to defend a rush, nor when I play treaty and the game is over in less than 10 minutes of fighting. I don’t think the devs play the game as much as we do (since they’re making bank actually working on it), but it would really mean a lot to us players to enjoy consistent similar-skill level matches.
Not only that, I’m tired of playing games defending lesser experienced teammates because they don’t properly counter or use artillery. I just hope I get evenly matched games where I feel like I’m playing chess with someone on my own skill level.