I already badgered the devs for a week or two on inital release about this and I think they’ve seen the arguments but disagree. I don’t think it will be changed.
The devs argument, as far as I can tell is:
We can pick between having tighter MMR games(less disparity in skill) or have less tight MMR games with more options, maps, gametypes, etc.
Having tight MMR(which in their eyes is more fair) games AND more maps options, etc would create unsustainable queue times.
TLDR to the argument against this:
A) In custom games, there was very little difference between a rank 22 and 23 or a rank 20 and a 21. (so a wider skill disparity isn’t awful)
B) To keep it as fair as possible in almost all TAD games, players would ‘split’ the high 22/23 ranked players and the 20/21 players into different teams. With the MMR system, I don’t think this is being done which actually makes the games take longer than custom games did, even with less players on TAD.
C) We really liked playing certain maps(as you said) and not being able to play them will kill the meta(it did) into just age 2 rushing. This makes port/japan/china and others totally uncompetitive, unlike on Deccan where almost anything but Spain worked.
Obviously, I don’t know about how my arguments apply to 2v2 or 1v1 because like many others, I don’t play those modes which IMO offer less variance from game to game, which gennerally is synonymous with requiring less skill because it encourages players to build robotic/brainless ‘systems’ which don’t have to change based on the match. This was aoe3’s USP and I feel as if the devs don’t fully understand that, because forcing us into this age 2 meta limits that match variance a lot.
Since you seem interested, here are the threads I specifically made:
https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/developers-a-call-to-action-mutliplayer-needs-fixing/104978
https://forums.ageofempires.com/t/make-a-separate-ranking-for-custom-games/104505