With the influx of new players old and new alike are not happy with the starting ELO. Newcomers find it entirely too difficult and the oldheads are stuck with people that barely know anything about the game (for some they join ranked as their first game ever). I’ve seen similar threads and the thinking behind it, however I strongly believe the best way is to simply ask new players where they want to begin.
A simple “Have you ever played an Age of Empires game before?” before their 1st game would be a huge step. If no, ELO starts at 800 automatically.
If yes, inform them of what they are signing up for: "Age of Empires 2 is an easy game to learn but a difficult one to master. We want all players to enjoy their experience as much as possible. Before entering ranked, we suggest you practice against AI and use the Quick Play option until you feel you are ready to be challenged by more experienced players.
Repeat this again the first time they click Ranked and let them choose.
600 (Novice), 800 (Intermediate), 1000 (Average)
Maybe include a statement about the average ELO being difficult for some even after playing offline or in Quick Play. Maybe give them a one time readjustment choice after their 1st game (which I guess assumes someone didn’t DC/quit early) but yeah.. something.
It’s tanking the experience of old and new alike. I don’t imagine it’s much of a problem with 1v1 but for team games surely this would help at least a little.
Perhaps there should be an option for players who select that they are new to be instantly taken to the William Wallace campaign, perhaps The Battle of Stirling so they instantly get an idea of how to play a Random Map game. Then, players who select that they are intermediate can get taken to The Art of War.
Hi, changing the starting ELO does not solve the problem
1000 ELO is supposed to represent the average/median/mean player (can’t remember which), if you change the starting ELO, over a period of time 1000 ELO now will be 800 ELO in the future and the experience will be the same. Not sure if you’ve seen the following video:
Elo should have self assessment of 800 1000 and 1200.
And to fix elo rating back to 1000
If you choose 800 starting elo, for your first 100 wins you get 2 extra elo points from thin air.
If you choose 1200 you lose 2 more points on you loss for your first 100 loses.
It changes only your first experience match not to be against 1000 players.
Then there is no need for placement matches which ruin the average.
That is my idea. my 7 cents
My beef with this is team games. It is a real problem that neither side enjoys. We can address it or pretend it doesn’t exist.
I wholeheartedly disagree with the “it will just change the average ELO” argument. The point of a ranking system is to try to make sure everyone gets games with people around their same skill level. If there’s an influx of new players, sure the “average” ELO should be lower. That’s how averages work.
If I remember correctly, is this exact video sotl explicitely said that although lowering the starting elo would decrease the average elo over time, it would require an obscene amount of new players to buy the game.
While it is definitely the most apparent way to fix the elo issue, it is definitely not the most effective. If we reduce starting elo to 800 then 800 will just become the new 1000 elo over time. Essentially, lowering the starting elo is just putting the finger hole of the dam, it doesn’t permanently solve the problem.
Better way: Make all new players play a game against an ai difficulty of their choosing. The difficulty they can win against will correspond to their starting elo.
Eg,
Easy = 600 starting elo
Moderate = 900 starting elo
Extreme = 1100 starting elo
which is exactly what I’m saying. there was a huge influx of new players when AOE2 got so much press after 3K update (being 25yo game with so many active players/still supported). It might be the games last surge of new blood, but if not this “choose your difficulty” option for ranked could alleviate much of the pain points being experienced by both new and old players.
edit: noticed you said AI. AI can be cheesed easier than real players. I simply think a starting ranked option would + guidance would solve it.
bumping because this needs addressed. players are surviving in the 1K range IN TEAM GAMES far longer than they should (by teammates carrying when possible). the experience is almost worse than playing against smurfs. 30%+ of my games lately have suffered from this and I hope the developers do something before they shun away the influx of new players.
if it is supposed to be the average Elo of the ranked players, then no, the average should stay at 1000.
if it is supposed to be a more absolute meadure of the skill, that evolves over time, then yes, it should decrease when new lower skilled players come and increase when the player base improve. This could be done by having ranked players play against AI (only those willing to) to figure out hiw good the hard HD AI is (as the DE AI get updates).
It would be nice to allow different entry levels of new players, and not have them all start around the average level (1000 or 800).
Technically, it should be easy to achieve: in addition to the won or lost points, we just need some players to gain or lose one extra point, to have the average converge with the desired value.
And to make purist happy, we call the number of points “MMR” (Match Making Rating) instead of “Elo”.
Perfectly happy with 1K being the ‘average’ ELO, entirely to do with rankings on team games. It creates a mudslide that pulls other players down since it is after all a team game. The fact that multiple people have independently proposed a system like this (where new players can self-assess lower) highlights both the want and need for it. It’s unfortunate most new players will never join the forums (as fresh players anyway) to chime in. I do hear it in online matches quite a bit though - their favorite descriptor is brutal.
