I agree with the OP that AOE could be much smarter about how to evaluate a player’s skill level than the elo system. Considering that the elo system basically doesn’t make sense at all for team games, and that an increasing number of players are primarily or even team-game only, I think it makes a lot more sense to start thinking of rating systems other than elo.
Many players don’t so much care about a ranking, so much as just being matched against players of similar skill levels to enjoy a fun, fair game, and maybe slowly improve over time. And we have much better ways of figuring that out today than they did in the 1960s. We can use complex statistics of how someone actually plays to model a player’s skill level which would be a much better reflection of their abilities.
I made a post on this a while back that’s relevant to this discussion. Check it out.