I saw an explanation video about the new matchmaking system and saw that you can’t freely choose the map and other settings to play on when choosing to play ranked. Thinking a bit harder about it, I recon that ranked matchmaking is a delicate decision. One option is to let people be able to choose maps and settings like on Voobly, which gives players their freedom to play what they want but it leads to ELOs that are less useful because they might be niche-cases because some people only play BF while others play only Arabia or only water maps. The second option is what you chose for now: to make ELO really represent something useful, most settings are fixed such that it measures the same things for all people, leading to ELOs being a useful comparison tool, which helps in a better matchmaking; being able to win on several map types is then part of the skill you need to get a higher ELO. So far for my analysis.
However, the map pool for ranked play does not contain most of the maps people play a lot (except for Arabia) and several maps in the current pool are not too different from each other. Choosing maps is something quite important for most people, so it would be nice to be able to play popular maps ranked, such as Arabia, Black Forest, Arena, Islands and Nomad. These are the maps people play most and they are all very different, which makes them a good mix for a ranked map pool, optionally together with a few other maps.
Another option is to ditch the distinction between 1v1 ELO and 2v2+ ELO and make a few ELO categories based on map type, for example:
water maps: islands, team islands, rivers, baltic
open land maps: arabia, acropolis, valley, gold rush
closed land maps: black forest, oasis, arena, hideout
I like the idea of having multiple categories for ranked play. The old system has the effect of players only playing one style map… but individual rankings in other map styles and game types will encourage players to play them
I do like the Map pool. It can be changed when there are tournaments with a distinct map pool, so that the player base can also enjoy those maps & strategize on them.
I think there could be another Matchmaker for closed Land maps. So you get a map pool of Arena, Black Forest style maps for people who can spend hours in an average game.
That’s pretty much what my idea of proper matchmaking is, which I think is the most balanced. The only 2 things I’d change is
Keep 1v1 and 2v2+ separated (so each map type would have different elos for solo and team games)
instead of “adaptive maps” make it “nomadic maps”, and replace megarandom with steppe.
I don’t think megarandom should be inside any other category because it’ll literally get any of the map landscape from the game, so the map could be a land map, a water map, a hybrid, a nomad, literally any of them. If anything, megarandom could be it’s own category.
I understand dat 1v1 differs from 2v2+ in the sense that the latter involves teamwork and opens up the option for trade. But in order to have a decent matchmaking system and ELO’s that are useful, you can’t have too many different ELO categories (that’s why ranked play has all the restrictions). So I thought: to keep the number of categories low, I’d prefer map-based categories over a division in individual vs team games.
I mostly agree with your comments about the megarandom map and having steppe instead for a ‘nomadic maps’ category. I hardly have experience with megarandom or steppe and didn’t even know steppe has a nomadic start.
Maybe, megarandom could be part of a map pool for some future tournaments that focus on testing broad skills.
@moderators: I started this discussion before the launch of DE, but it would be fit to move this thread to the DE forum section. It’s one of the hottest points of discussion, so please take these suggestions into account for the future of DE.
I understand, but separating each mode and making different elos is normal in most games tbh, the “issue” with AoE2 is that it has too much variety, so at the end of the day yeah, it’d need a lot of different elos to properly reflect the player’s skills. Also separating solo from team is one of the things that make elos work.
If anything, I remember people talking abt how some maps are mostly played only in team games (like BF) and some others are mostly played solo, so maybe those maps wouldn’t need to have a solo/team rank for them (so if BF is for team, it wouldn’t need a solo queue)
Still, idk what would be the best option.
I checked how megarandom works in the editor, apparently it gets literally any of the other map’s landscape and then it’ll drop random stuff for the players as well, as in sometimes u’ll start with a blacksmith, or a monastery, in one of them the player doesn’t even start with a TC, instead there were 4 bombard towers around the place where the TC should be. The good thing is that even being random, all players will receive the same random stuff (so all players start with an extra blacksmith, etc)
I actually ended up playing it once in a lobby, the map was super disgusting, it was like a C surrounded by water and there were barely any trees in it, and to make things even weirder the scouts were replaced by a camel (not a camel rider, just a camel, like WTF). The worst is that for some reason the camel would refuse to join a control group, so i was forced to search for him every once in a while so i could make it scout more.
Also you can see which maps have a nomadic start by seeing the “player positions” on the map preview, nomadic maps have a foot instead of a normal pointer.