Match Levers, Que Snipers, and Ladder breakers

Age of Empires IV IV - Discussion
1

I’m sensing there’s a lack of systematic approach to the topic listed above. I constantly lose matches to people who are leaving matches after start but before significant damage has been done or any at all. There needs to be a clear threshold for when a game becomes ranked and more severe penalties for those ruining matches. I think it should be codified that if you leave a match with your Town Center standing then you are violating. At least one Town Center destroyed on your team before quitting.

There is also a sense that many out there are “Turing Testing” the general players on multiplayer games and many find that to be acceptable in the 1v1 scene where most of the highest respected players are and this sets up a problem on the multi-player net. You may find it challenging to play AI on 1v1’s and it seems fair that you can pick plays against an AI with near perfect everything to find structural weaknesses in things you scout for ect… and this is rewarding because the AI won’t make handling mistakes or forget to build villagers for any periods.

However, with the multiplayer system, and the AI being rendered from server’s somewhere, there opens up the possibility for foul play. Players now could be experiencing que ups with the same AI cluster playing against itself, or controlling enough player slots the the game is essentially “owned” by the AI offering it’s controller options to illicitly sell elo or ruin matches in fits of spite vs real players.

I don’t believe that 1v1 players consider this enough and most of them are, as expected, focused on their core mechanics and strategy and missing out of the full multiplayer scene by only going in there for a casual dip from time to time or, partnered with a full-que where this won’t show, or as badly, as they have all the player positions accounted for. The serious solo-quer into multiplayer games is at the whims of of those willing to create nets of elo seeking bots, posing as humans, and muddying the entire field.

Please address this issue in some way, and clarify quitting rules, when the game becomes ranked after start (if any time), and time-out penalties or other penalties to those who ruin matches for those that lose elo to quick game-breaking moments, only to have to re-earn it over long excruciating game-hours.

2

In team games there is an easy solution to the quitters: surrender acts as a team.

Same you don’t get eliminated when all your landmarks got destroyed, to surrender, you need to start a vote.

This way, if you are playing a 3v3, a player can’t just surrender and exit from the game, he needs to start a vote and act as a team. If more than 50% of the players agree to surrender, then the whole team surrenders at once.

This is the same behaviour other team games such as LoL has. If you are playing as a team, you win as a team, you surrender as a team, and you lose as a team.

Otherwise, a player who surrenders and exits can still won the game if their team finally won.

And this would solve also the quitters at the beginning.

If in the first minutes of the game (say 2-3 minutes), a guy quits, then it will get a penalty and lose more points than their team.

Also, if anyone crashes or can’t load in the loading screen, the match is a draw. No more situations where a guy just got a crash in the loading screen and you have to wait for 4-5 minutes to not get a penalty and still lose the match.

3

bump

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