It was the best feature from HD and while I don’t hate the queue system, it is vastly inferior to the ranked custom lobbies of HD. It puts the wait time more closely in your hands. Bring them back.
To clarify, I don’t mean replace the queue system. Just do both. Both is nice. Have a separate Elo for both, I think we have the playerbase to do it.
It’s a horrible idea, and I hate when people bring it up. It’s an outdated relic of the past, and it isn’t anywhere near as convenient or modern as a ranked queue is. I’m not really interested in expanding either, people don’t change their view on this usually.
I can at least appreciate you admitting you just wanted to throw your opinion into the internet as though it matters. We’re all guilty of it. It was way more convenient and gave better customisation (IE, better games) and reduced queue time, but clearly you don’t care, you’re already set in stone.
It might, but it also invalidates elo, because you could have a 2k player like Fatslob, or someone who only plays forest nothing or something, but they don’t actually have the skills a 2k player under the current system would. Therefore, ranked lobbies in any sense aren’t really providing an actual rank in terms of skill, merely a measure of how good someone is with their chosen settings. I would be fine if it existed at the same time as ranked matchmaking, but I don’t think we have the playerbase to do both. Also, to address your point about better queue times, how is that good for people like Hoang? Almost no one wants to play against his strategies, so with that model, and indeed, when back on Voobly, people like him find it takes/would take/took a lot longer than it does usually with matchmaking.
Here’s the issue with that. We will have players only playing black forest or other easy wallable maps, which will inflate their elo due to how easy it is to defend.
It is a terrible idea as custom lobbies promote the use of custom settings (advantages as you say), which invalidates ELO as a whole - how do you compare ratings of two people with different settings?
the irony, please try harder next time
there’s a reason almost no other game currently uses ranked lobbies.
but you go ahead, you must be right 
its not like this hasnt been discussed over and over before /s
Other games usually use prefered map system instead of banning. Take cs go for example, you can queue with only 1 map if thats what you desire. Thats basicly best system there is. Pick less maps, wait a bit longer(isnt a big deal in multi monitor setups/alt tabbing while waiting for game)
Gaming should be about fun and playing maps you want.
another point in favour of ranked queue is barrier to entry:
trying to start to play online was a lot easier with DE where you just queue and get a match
in HD people were often unwilling to play against people with no games and it takes (me) a lot more social energy to enter a stranger’s lobby
As it stands now, the ranked queue gives me an evenly matched opponent, and custom lobbies give me the map I want to play. Ranked custom lobbies would bring the best of both worlds, so would unlimited map bans in the queue. Either of these would make me very happy. The lobbies would give more control over other settings, but using the queue would be more convenient, so I think I’d prefer that. And obviously even if we get ranked lobbies the queue should stay for the people who prefer that. But as I said, either of these options would be very good, and at this point I think one of these things would be necessary for me to enjoy DE as much as I enjoyed previous iterations of the game.
Or, alternativly, it will bring the worst of both worlds - an oponent with inflated elo and longer queu times.
Could just have ranked custom lobbies separate from standard ranked though? If you only play one map - Arabia, Arena, Black Forest, Nomad - you’ll be better than others on the same map played. You also have longer queue times now with people who don’t want to play a certain map deciding to just eat the time penalty for quitting. 
I personally don’t mind queue times. I understand that many players do, but (at least in 1v1s) map bans would only increase queue times for those who use them (and ban popular maps), so it should still be possible to find games in as much time as it takes now, though maybe more frequently on the popular maps. And ranked lobbies would only make queue times longer if people stopped using the queue in favor of them. And something only being bad because a lot of people like it is a bit contradictory.
I’m not sure what you mean by an inflated elo, rating manipulation is still possible in the current system, and I don’t think there’s much that could be done about it besides active moderation. And even without any malicious players, things can still get slightly uneven when map preferences are mismatched.
And yes, rating bubbles could form around map preferences, and for example an Arena player would not have the same rating as an Arabia player with equal skill, but that would be specifically because they don’t play against each other, so they wouldn’t be playing bad games all that often. So the only downside would be when players would change their preferred maps/settings after sticking with one for a long time. That is a fair point, it would be a downside, but I don’t think it would happen too frequently.
Maybe in an ideal world AoE2 could have a lot more players and every map could be a separate ranked ladder, but even I see that that’s unrealistic.
The lobby on HD was even worse the the lobby on Voobly. The lobby had so many drawbacks. Most are fixed in ranked. It is a very big upgrade to have ranked over a ranked lobby. Going back to a ranked lobby is a terrible idea to me.
I have had a completely different experience. I find ranked much more convenient and give me a much better experience. It also improve the queueing time by a lot for me.
Yeah that’s my thoughts. Just do both, both is good. Let people who wanna queue, queue, let people who wanna host ranked, host.
Yeah I completely agree that it should exist with queues and probably should have said that from the start. I don’t hate queues, but I wanna play nothing but ranked Amazon Tunnel and still have an Elo to show for it. Definitive Edition is doing well, the Steam charts aren’t factoring in the playerbase of Microsoft store people. Let the people who wanna queue, queue and let me play nothing but Amazon Tunnel because I’m weird
I should have clarified from the start, but I wasn’t advocating for the removal of queue. I think we can do both and should do both.
Yeah, I totally think the correct option is “Do both”, use a separate Elo and do both.
Say what you will, but I admitted to being guilty of throwing my opinion into the internet myself. I ain’t pretending the irony isn’t lost on me.
Others said it, but yeah I think a separate Elo for both would be a good idea. I pretty much only play Amazon Tunnel, I want an Elo for that. Hence why doing both is the best option.
Splitting the player base over multiple systems isn’t a great idea. That is one of the reasons I don’t like quick play (luckily it seems pretty much dead). And I also think the Devs should put more work in completely uniting the player base. So how to get players move from HD, Voobly, … to DE?
Tbf the main reason besides pc performance that people still play on voobly is ranked lobbies. And you might not notice it in these forums bit a lot of veterans of the game dislike DE for not having that feature.
Tbf these are all very niche scarios. Yes that would probably happen but it wouldn’t apply to 95% of the players. Also let’s be real current ladder reflects largely skill on arabia. Most people don’t play anything else. So it’s not like the current mm would provide more diversity in skill than ranked lobbies.
I’m not drawing any conclusions from that and we had the whole discussion a million times already here, I’m just reminding you that the debate is way more complex. It’s fine to advocate for ranked lobbies and there certainly are good reasons to do so but claiming it makes the game more competitive or skill-based is simply (at least in the current state of matchmaking) wrong. Remove map bans and the favorite map option then you can claim that.
It is an amazing idea: You can force random and no team positions. You can ban lamers, smurfs and toxic players.
Definitive Edition has about 20,000 people at any given time. The game was a huge success and we’re actually in an upward trend right now. Compare the Steam charts, there are more people playing Definitive Edition at its lowest than ever were playing HD bar one hump. And that’s not even factoring in people who play on the Microsoft store. Definitive Edition totally has the playerbase to do both, especially since the people who just play hosted lobbies will do so either way, so giving them the option to get an Elo for doing so could totally work.
The people who just wanna host lobbies are going to host lobbies, the people who wanna queue are going to queue, in the end the people would self-select and the more popular system would stay popular. I don’t bother with the ranked queue, just lobbies, it would be nice to have an Elo from them.