As someone who regularly hosts 2v2v2v2’s, I would like a way to reliably balance these games. Without such an Elo it is impossible for me to determine the skill level of unranked players that join my lobby. The skill level of unranked players varies significantly. I have experienced good as well as bad unranked players, but the game currently treats both the same by not showing a 2v2v2v2 Elo, meaning that I am not able to decide whether to keep or kick an unranked player. This Elo would affect ranked players as well. The host creates a lobby, chooses the 2v2v2v2 lobby type and is able to set a rating for players that are able to join. I came up with the Elo calculation after looking up my 2v2v2v2 games on aoe2companion.com and concluded that this is how the Elo in 2v2v2v2’s is currently calculated. It can be seen as three separate 2v2 games from the perspective of the winning team. Elo is given based on a player’s individual Elo compared to the average Elo of the enemy team. Example:
Team 1 (the winning team) consists of player 1 and player 2.
Player 1: 1000 Elo vs. average Elo (aE) 1200 (+8) vs. (aE) (8.9) 1300 vs. (aE) 1400 (+9.5) + 26.4 Elo in total
Player 2: 1200 vs. (aE) 1200 (+5.3), vs. (aE) 1300 (+6.7) vs. (aE) 1400 (+8) would be +20 Elo in total.
How much Elo each individual on one of the losing teams would lose also depends on the individual’s Elo. If the team with 1200 (aE) that lost 13.3 Elo in total is made up of a player with 1100 Elo and a player with 1300 Elo the 1300 would lose more Elo than the 1100.
Just letting you know in advance, but the game doesnt support ranked and unranked lobbies in the same page. So devs would need to create a new option on lobbies called “ranked 2v2v2v2” that many, to not say most, wouldnt care to know about and you’d have a smaller pool of players than you do now.
You can’t balance 2v2v2v2. As such you can’t have ELO for 2v2v2v2.
Try this thought experiment. You start the game, you and your ally and in the North, there are two players enemy players on the East, South and West corners of the map. Standard set-up right? In this game, the players from the West and East attack you and your ally. You’re both fending off two players, while the enemy team in the south omega booms and out of nowhere floods you with paladin, completely destroying you. How much Elo should you have lost? When you were essentially 1v2 or worse odds the whole game. So let’s say you lose 10 ELO. The players West and East after fighting you and your ally and then in turn crushed by the South team’s fully boomed untouched eco. They lose, what is essentially a death match game, except their enemy has unlimited resources and they are out of gold. How much ELO should they lose? For argument’s sake let’s say 20. Now the winners who had mentally exhausted, resource deprived opponents. They gain 50 ELO each for the sheer luck that no one attacked them, and to balance the ELO lost.
The point of this thought experiment is explains that no skill on your part can determine who attacks who. Hence the distribution of any ELO on what essentially is who didn’t get attacked isn’t fair. Hence ELO would not serve to provide any help balancing.
3 Likes
I dont agree with this tbh. Part of the skill in any FFA game (and 2v2v2v2 is just an extension of that) is diplomacy. Elo can still be accurate in FFA games, it just measures different things: Instead of micro, macro and decision making it measures mostly diplomacy because thats the most important part.
I still dont think we need a ranked system for such a rarely played mode, but it would easily be possible to make one.
1 Like
I just want to state that I want a 2v2v2v2 with locked teams. If some people want such a mode with diplomacy that would be possible as well. I obviously know that diplomacy is also a factor in locked teams.
That is totally fine for me. My idea is simply to introduce something that is already calculated in the game and make it possible to balance teams based off on that.
1 Like
Why should the team from the south attack the furthest opponent? In this thought experiment assuming the team from the south looks at the score it should attack the team on the west or the east. Since the team in the north has the lowest score and is the furthest away, there is absolutely no reason for team south to attack it.
This is not what would happen in a game with equally skilled opponents. Team west and east would have an economy of themselves that would be able to keep up with the team south.
There is trade in team games.
I explained this in my post.
Finally, I want to say that it seems to me that you don’t play 2v2v2v2’s yourself. While it definitely happens that a team gets attacked by two teams at the same time it doesn’t happen that often. Furthermore assuming your thought experiment is correct (which it isn’t) team south would then have to play against stronger opponents which then leads to the team losing more often, correcting it’s Elo. Additionally, in future games team south will most likely experience your unrealistic thought experiment out of the perspective of team north meaning being 1v3ed.
I also like to play 2v2v2v2, but only in single player against the AI 
.
The biggest issue with this idea is the player base. Is there really a large community? Otherwise every rating system will fail. Currently there are just 5 lobbies open for this type of game. That isnt really a lot.
Which means more lobbies than deathmatch which has its own lobby Elo. i just hope the devs think about this idea considering the fact there is already an Elo calculation for 2v2v2v2’s.