Hi there,
I was surprised there wasn’t already a thread about this.
Yesterday there were very huge changes to the matchmaking announced. I was very critical of a lot of things about DE in the past (I saw the positives too though^^), but this time I have to say it looks like we’re going exactly into the right direction. Great job devs!
The most important thing to me is the prefered map option, which lets you choose a map and this map is going to be much more likely to be played (as long as the other person doesn’t have it banned, but the system seems to look for players where that’s not the case).
That is a really good solution for players, who like to be more picky with their maps, while still keeping everything in the same que. It will probably make it slightly harder to find games on non Arabia maps, but that seems okay to me, as Arabia is just the most liked map and it will still be easier than before DE on voobly ;D. Also it’s nice, that to system works for whatever map you like. I love it!
Nearly as good as that is the new random mirror option, which has been proposed by the community (myself included) quite a bit - now it’s here. When enabled, all players will get a random civ. It’s not quite clear to move if all players need to have it enabled for that to happen, or just the majority of players - in any case this system seems really good to me. Leaves picking open to those who want it, but also gives the option to agree on a random mirror - yay! 
In addition to that the map pool rotation is going to happen every 2 weeks and will be based on community votes. That’s also a nice improvement, does seem more like a quality of life thing compared to the two above - still good.
Also there is going to be a campaign mission with a leaderboard based on high-score. As far as I understand that is linked with an event about Mongols. I wouldn’t be surprised if they will put up more missions like that if it is well received. Not that important to me, but a nice idea nontheless.
So overall I’m extremely pleased with this announcement and can’t wait for those changes to go live. What do you guys (and girls^^) think?
New Matchmaking Customization (and more) coming this July! (AoE2)