Queue Dodging Timeout Feedback

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
191

So the team effectively reduced the number of people playing in team games. Where is the win in that?
The community dwindles in numbers and this is where it starts.

The next major complaint thread will be that no one is playing in ranked team games. The pool was reduced to mitigate player’s decision to not play maps they don’t have fun on. And now it’s just an arabia and arena rank lobby.

So much for diversity.

This is failure to effectively make the community stronger. It is doing quite the opposite. This reeks of ignorance or of arrogance. Or most likely of both.

3 Likes
192

25% ?

What degenerates Alt+F4’s with both hands? It’s all on one side of the keyboard, and we have opposable thumbs. For the AI in the forums, turn your joke detectors on.

We’ve discussed this. Multiple times. You know exactly what’s bad about it. ELO meaning absolutely nothing. Being totally unusable as a proper evaluation of skill, which we need it to be to find fair games between evenly matched opponents.

We’ve been over the other options. Rework ELO wholesale, and divide it at the barest minimum by map type and then reset it, or scrap the entire system and do something totally new. This is the easier solution, and it solves the immediate problem of games not being played because they didn’t get the one true map.

If you can’t imagine the absolutely massive impact of unlimited map bans as you’ve suggested, you won’t be able to be convinced this is the lesser of two evils. This is significantly less destructive than unlimited map bans.

Game player statistics are totally flat since the change. We’ve not lost an appreciable amount of players in absolutely any respect, according to Steamcharts. We have seen a lot of complaining by a vocal minority, however.

1 Like
193

that’s not even the actual problem, Elo ratings work fine, I’m going to link this article in this thread for the third time, maybe someone will actually comment on it: Why good matchmaking requires enormous player counts

The ranked system is good at what it does, the problem is that for a any ranked system to work well there needs to be a set of established rules, and someone is almost always not going to like the rules. Matchmaking systems simply do not work well when you give the user too much customization, because the pool of players needs to grow exponentially for each additional customization you give, and AoE2 simply cannot sustain that.

I think this anger needs to be aimed at the poor lobby system, which should be enhanced with community features from previous platforms like voobly so that players who wish to play competitive multiplayer ARE able to have their personal preferences met without completely gimping the automatic matching that is honestly a godsend for those of us who don’t want to spend 20 minutes browsing lobbies to find a game that meets whatever hyper-specific criteria I care about.

2 Likes
194

Can people please stop complaining that they are “forced” to play a variety of maps in ranked? Yes, the way ranked works at the moment does encourage a variety of maps being played.

But you aren’t forced to play ranked. If you tell yourself that’s the only way you want to play multiplayer, then who’s forcing who?

5 Likes
195

You missed half the sentence in the quote. I did not say “what’s bad” but “what’s so bad that we want to lose 25% players”. That changes the argument, see below.

AFAIK the current system already has this issue and there’s no sign it’s going to be fixed (speaking for TGs). At 2 years of development. So you’re suggesting that we should lose 25% players to protect something we don’t have, and won’t have until probably many years.

Yeah I can imagine that since it is exactly what we have right now, except to get unlimited bans you need to close the game and create a smurf from time to time, so everyone wastes their time, and we create more problems.

Again, you seem to evaluate DE in a illusory state where it has accurate Elo in TGs, a good report system to detect early resigners, a magical smurfing detector, no random disconnections due to bug, etc. Right now, we don’t have that, and I’d say there’s a good chance the game will end development before ever having any of those, so PRACTICALLY, all the downsides you’re mentioning are irrelevant, we’ll have them ANYWAY. Ironically, devs will be even less able to fix these downsides now because they’ll be too busy fixing the much more complicated issues that a timeout system introduces. What is the correct value for the timeout? When to reset it? What to do when the game bugs out? etc.

The change did absolutely nothing to address Alt-F4, I hope you’re not delusional enough to think it did. A penalty system does nothing when you can recreate an account for free in literally less time than the penalty itself (I’m not exagerating: 2 minutes to create the account, 1 minute to copy settings/mods, 2 minutes to start the game and the ranked benchmark test).

In the paragraph you’re quoting I’m actually more judging the intention rather than the acts, because I don’t have any serious belief that DE team will ever find a way to discourage Alt-F4 without massively hindering normal players, it should be obvious to anyone that if you introduce only a minor penalty against something that 25% people use, that people will find 5 different ways to work around it. The only patch’s achievement so far seems to be legitimate people getting TO’d for game bugs, which if you remember was one of the consequences I predicted in the past. My next prediction is that smurfing will increase even more, people will still Alt-f4 just as much (because the penalty is too small or because they want to purposefully ridicule the devs), every day there’ll be a guy trying to appeal on the forum that he got TO’d for unfair reasons, and within 1 year, there will be at least one massively bugged update where people get disconnected due to the game’s fault and they’ll be punished because the TO won’t be able to determine it was due to a game’s bug. Place your bets!

Fixed, expect even more AIs to come.

2 Likes
196

Would you feel the same way if the ranked map pool was changed to exclusively “Forest Nothing”? All the points about not being forced to play it still hold, but most players (myself included) would still be unhappy about the map pool.

The fact is that the lobby system is not effective at producing balanced games. Ranked is the only reliable way to find good matches, and I think people have valid concerns about being restricted to a handful of maps that they don’t enjoy. Alt + F4 was never the solution, but a real solution would be nice.

Edit: We should take a step back and evaluate the current system as a whole. It seems like too many people fall into one of two categories:

“I like these maps, you should be forced to play them with me and punished if you don’t”

or

“I don’t like these maps, you can’t make me play them”

I want to see more discussion of what a model system would look like. Maybe that is unlimited bans, maybe its not. Maybe its something completely different, like every player orders the maps according to their preference and the matchmaking tries to pick one that both like or compromise on.

8 Likes
197

thank you. i feel either complete control of maps should be given to player or no control should be given. if ranked was truely a measure of skill then surley the game should force us to play whatever map it wants and civalization choice would be forced to be random. but since that is obviously not the case then the ranked que must instead be just a place for players to play fun evenly matched games. in such a case players should have the ability to choose the maps they want to play on

1 Like
198

Great ! You found a way to make me play less. After few drops or early resign because of other players dropping I’m up to 4 hours of banishment now. Please make the pathing even worse so I don’t touch this game ever again.

6 Likes
199

careful. next time you drop you will have a 20 hour banishment. best solution is to make our quams known to the devs until the realise their error and fix their “solution”

200

Great, just make sure to buy aoe4 :slight_smile:

201

You have failed to show there’s been any appreciable loss in players as the result of the change, and right now it’s had the most unfortunate errors since it’s brand new. A poll does not reflect reality, and reality tells us the change in players is flat (I.E. no change) so unless you’re going to prove that 25% of players straight up quit, and show why it’s not represented in the player statistics, it’s bunk.

I saved you the trouble of debasing your own argument by cutting out the exaggeration. Thank me.

A result of preferred map, which I’ve already indicated was a bad decision to implement that we should gut if we had any sense about us. Hopefully the timeout change will address this slightly. You’re comparing problems on day 1 of timeout versus a month or a year down the road, and as such you’re sensationalizing it. I don’t blame you, but at the same time, you can’t expect me to agree to your critique when it’s the result of a problem the timeout system is intended to help aid, less than a week after release.

image
image1122×372 85.2 KB

Oof. Again. There is absolutely no statistical corollary to your claim that 25% will quit. Either you’re wrong, or it’s brought back an equally large number of people who absolutely cannot stand the alt-f4 nonsense and are happy to actually be able to play. I’m not ignoring 25% of the players. Your assertion of displacing 25% of players is bunk. Get over it.

Damn, what’s with all these complaints about people not being able to ditch games all about then? Weirdly, while there’s a lot of one-true-map believers in here, about 30% of the thread is literally people complaining about how there’s game-crash bugs giving them a timeout. Which is a legitimate problem, but blaming Timeout for that problem is a stretch to say the least. Which is exactly what you do again, with Smurfing by conflating it with Timeout.

Oh damn? So… Timeout is the issue, and not the ease of smurfing… That’s what you take out of this? Again, you blame the system you oppose because you don’t like it as a result of problems that aren’t caused by it. I hope you’re not delusional enough to think removing Timeout solves these problems.

Do you think a player who plays exclusively Arena and a player who plays exclusively Arabia, because of map bans/pref map/alt+f4 are going to have a well-balanced game if they both have 1200 ELO on Arabia? How about Arena? Nomad?

The purpose of ELO is to properly match opponents to an equal skill level. Allowing people to play whatever map they want and then gain ELO on the back of that map familiarity advantage spikes ELO gain, and causes unfair matches. Unlimited map bans make this problem worse. You either didn’t read, or didn’t understand the context, so there it is again.

1 Like
202

I think this is far less problematic than you make it seem. Maps are different but they are not different enough to warrant entirely separate Elo ratings, we’re still playing the same game and build orders work across different maps.

I might not be able to beat someone who has practiced arena more than I have (or someone who has played solely on arena), but that’s not a fault of the system, I should have practiced arena more and developed a more optimized build for it if I intended to win that matchup. So instead of coming over to the forums and making a thread whining about unbalanced Elo, maybe I’ll watch the replay and work on a better strategy for next time, or ban Arena in my next queue if I didn’t enjoy the matchup.

Good thing we have a map pool system then, I’m not advocating for unlimited bans, I was just pointing out that “elo integrity” is wayyyyyyy down in the list of problems when it comes to considering unlimited bans or “opt-in” as a viable system.

203

I’m stopping to argue with you now because as usual you seem to read parts of sentences instead of the full sentences, miss 90% of what I wrote and then argue things that I have already replied to.

Why do you keep mentioning player stats, I did not claim that we have lost 25% players, I claim that we have the intention to lose 25% players:

Isn’t the sentence clear enough? I’ll say it again, with this patch DE devs have not discouraged Alt-F4 at all because the penalty is so easy to circumvent.

As usual, fruitless debate, you keep using provoking terms while blatantly missing the evidence, first you said only a minority was complaining, now you admit there’s many people complaining but reduce their complaint to “booh we can’t ditch games anymore”, no need to argue against that, people can just read the thread. The first reply and most liked comment in the thread is TWest saying that he doesn’t like the change because people resign early in his games but yeah he’s probably just a salty Alt-F4’er trying to hide the truth.

3 Likes
204

there is my model system.

1 Like
205

Let’s explain the “pot/kettle” analogy

Pot:

Kettle is black

I’ll always attempt to give you a discussion, because I’m not a quitter, but let’s not start getting prickly about who says and does what, yes? If you don’t want to engage with me, don’t.

206

what about polls who dropped the game cause it’s too annoying to search for 15+ min for one game?

Also, I dont care about 25% of leavers, why should i? 10k or 7.5k does not matter to me.
At least I can play now, and some players will return. May be return more than 25%.

PS seems to work 10/10

207

I would be unhappy about such a change too. It’s kind of a ridiculous example since the current system is nowhere near that bad. Nevertheless, I would still not be forced to play ranked BF. If anything, that system would probably encourage more lobby play, or maybe even quickplay, the thing that is supposed to be what 1mappers want ranked to be but isnt cuz nobody plays there.

Im not saying the lobbies are perfect, but it is not like you cant balance teams yourself. And if you saw Rustycrow’s post recently, you’ll note the MM for ranked isnt perfect either. It would get even worse with infinite bans.

I agree we should change the discourse away from “play my maps!” and “I wont play ur maps!” arguments. In the current system, though, everyone has to compromise a bit on what they want. It’s much better if we all agree to play each other’s maps so that others in return will play ours, because that would be an ideal - if fragile - situation.

1 Like
208

You’re also punished for quitting once in game before a certain time limit, by losing ELO and ban time.

209

IMO the changes don’t go quite far enough.

In addition to the ban, players should be guaranteed the same map every time until they play it past a certain point. This should include not only resignations, but also all your units dying. So if you go afk and your opponent kills all your villagers/buildings, you get the same map again.

If you only want to play one map, you should be playing Lobbies, not ranked. It was good enough for 17 years, it’s good enough for you now.

2 Likes
210

wtf. i can only assume you are trolling. thats the silliest idea ive heard on the topic

4 Likes