I already posted why unlimited bans arent great for matchmaking / elo. If you have unlimited bans, you get back to the situation of Voobly and HD.
This doesnt mean ranked ladder is completely fine. It really has some drawbacks. It really can have some improvements, but i think unlimited bans isnt the one of the improvements.
So what? I mean then I guess the best think for the community is everybody playing **** maps for 5 years long. Is that what you say? You want us to play maps we don’t like, do you?
I think I’d prefer different map pools you could opt for rather than unlimited bans.
As in there might be one pool of
closed maps: BF, Arena, Hillfort etc, (maybe even fortress regicide?),
open maps: Arabia, Serengeti, acropolis, ghost lake, maybe highlands/lombardia etc.
water/hybrid: Islands, Baltic/Mediterranean, Cross (Four lakes), Scandinavia etc
You could have a separate ELO for each of the pools. I think it’d be best not to make too many separate ratings, and I’d still prefer it to be a pool without not unlimited bans.
->It’s just an idea for matchmaking that could make some players a bit happier if something had to change.
As another random idea for an alternate to elo in a lobby, you could do an XP system - as in like how fps games tend to have, you gain XP for wins, don’t lose points for a loss. You could then have various rankings that way and show a win/loss ratio with the XP. I presume it could still be a reasonable way to balance teams (in terms of how experienced the players are - it’s still not on any one particular map)? Just another idea to throw out there.
I just fully disagree and It doesn’t make sense and nobody gives a **** about separete elos. I am talking about playing the map I want. Not of I want to play open maps or things like that. NO. I want to play maybe arabia with friends. Maybe i wanna play arena with friends or alone and now you can’t decide that becouse some people like you think that playing the map you like isn’t important. Well it IS very important to me becouse some maps are simply way better than others.
@francisco2002
Have your ever thought about thinking about your wording before posting? It is not really a constructive conversation if you speak about ‘*** maps’ and ‘nobody gives a **** about …’ Even when you disagree, you still can be respectful. I just give arguments to my opinion and i got this as response? I dont think this is really polite.
There is already a lobby where you can host whatever game you want. It is not like you cant play the settings you want any more. So it is not like you cant only Arena games if you want to play only Arena.
We already have topic on this.
We are not discussing about elos.
Yeah but to be fair, you can still play the maps you want to with friends.
You just can’t do it ranked; and changing the matchmaking and ranking system from the way it is will affect more people than just you. I expect there to be compromises on both sides if changes are implemented.
There actually are far more interesting maps these days than just the ones that’ve been around since 1999 too. A lot of the tournaments in HD and DE have showcased some interesting strategies and games. Some civs even shine on these maps that wouldn’t normally on Arabia and Arena. If anything caring about the maps is caring about a large variety of maps rather than just one or two no?
I think saying ranked/elo/rated are sometimes interchangeable though.
Oh nice its only me that wants to play arabia… I guess I am a bit lost and I should not have bought this game.
But it’s actually not like that. I am not the only one that wants to play rated with whatever map they want. We all should have freedom to choose what maps we wanna play, come on.
I don’t care (not saying bad words) about compromises. I just want to play like real aoe 2 was
You want to keep playing the maps that are in the map pool? You would still be able to play them
I disagree that unlimited bans would lead to worse matchmaking. In my opinion, playing something you find boring is more detrimental to the player experience which lead people to leave the game or, at least, the ladder — which results in worse matchmaking and less players. This is actually your current suggestion to a poster above - leave the ladder if you do not want to play random maps.
My suggestion is to allow players to play what they want (knowing they will have a longer queue), from the pool that has been given (and BF should be fixed there as its the #2 map) so more people actually join the ladder.
When the ladder doesn’t match player expectations or provide good experiences you start to see alternative ranking systems poping up - like nC for TGs. I would not be surprised if someone opened up a website for 1v1 Ladder for DE Arabia at some point.
I personally don’t mind waiting long queues but when i find a match, I enjoy the match. We all have different preferences. There is peolpe that wants to play bf 1v1 rated and now they can’t and there is no reason for that.
Matchaking was a nice idea but only providing 4 bans is awful.
The issue is ‘I want to enjoy the game’ means somethings else for everyone. What i like, can be boring to you. What you like, can be boring to me.
I already told my experience with the ranking at Voobly and HD. I also started with playing just one map (BF) and i started to get better into that map, so my rating increase. After a while i got boring of playing the same map over and over again. So i wanna play other maps (like Arabia). This map is completely different to what i used to play. Players at my own rating would steam roll me, players of a lower rating wont play me. So you are kinda stuck with playing only one map.
So the ladder at Voobly / HD was only good for ‘one trick ponies’, players who just wanna play the same map over and over again. The ranking was pretty bad for players who wanna switch from one map to another map or for players who like map variaty and play at different maps everytime.
For me, as someone who likes playing different maps, the current matchmaking / elo rating is delightful. I like how i can easily play different maps against equally skilled opponents. I feel like the match ups at DE are much better than on HD or Voobly. Note: I mostly play 1v1s, there seems to be an issue with team game ranking, same as for the hidden unranked ranking. See:
I feel like if you have unlimited bans, it will be the same as voobly / HD again with drawbacks i described above. Some of you would love that, others dont really like it. At this moment i just dont see any good solution for everyone. It is ofcourse the dream to have just only AoE II DE and everyone enjoys the game, so we dont have any need for Voobly, HD or even Gameranger. If someone has the ultimate solution to this issue, i will immediately vote for that solution. It is ashame it is non existing at this moment.
I won’t mind if the number of bans will be increase by a bit. Unlimited isnt the right call, i think, but lets say 6 for 1v1 is pretty much possible. I really dont know about teamgames, since you need to match multiple players into one game and if you all have many bans, i dont really think it will work. Multiple bans in teamgames can also lead to some issues: You join the queue with 2 friends for a 3v3. If everyone has 3 bans, you can ban every map, so you end up with no valid maps. So you need to avoid such situation.
I also dont really know how easy it is to increase the number of bans. Maybe the match making algorithm needs to change. I guess it will pick 2-8 with around the same elo from the same part of the world. At the end it just randomly pick one of the non banned maps. If you increase the number of bans, there is a risk of having no valid maps. So matchmaking needs to consider also the banned maps of all players and check if there is a valid map. This means they have to change the algorithm and can result in much more waiting time.
You agreed with Hardwell it was MegaRandom. But yeah, doesnt really mattter 
Yeah, i have some some really interested maps in the past tournaments. I would love it if they add those to map pool at some point.
I have no issue with existence of MM (beside the bad TG matchups), but why can’t we have a Ranked Lobby alongside it?
Will it change the game too much?
Actually yes, for different games like RM, DM, Regicide, KotH, EW, each Team games 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, and even with different partners in team games should have each separate ratings for them.
This is what happens in Starcraft 2, which I find its MMR (our Elo rating) to be pretty accurate, at least that’s what I see for today’s AOE2 DE.
They have a party invite feature which I find it amazing that you can host and invite your friends to join your party to play together in team games, queuing for ranked team games, having each separate Elo rating for different team mates each time. In a party, you can also watch replays together. I do certainly hope the party feature is introduced soon, then this would help to ease the “different ban maps” issue as stated by @WoodsierCorn696 above, where the host will ban maps and start queuing. But that’s another topic to see another day.
I see where is this topic going after scrolling through 75 replies, that there’re players who don’t like different map variety hence go to lobby, but don’t like to be overmatched or having huge skill level difference among players for ruining the game hence wanting lobby elo, I do get that. But tbh, ranked is for competitive play and promote community to go tournaments by encouraging variation in different strategies and meta on different maps and it’s really interesting to go in this direction. Some players who love to stick to one map forever I’m not sure if this is healthy, but lobby is the correct place to practice and have fun with friends. Maybe banning player feature can be your answer to refrain high level players from joining your games?
I even hope to see ranked rating vs AI, where it allows everyone who wants to play against AI in team games can queue and team together and beat the AI, with AI difficulty adjusted with the total team AI Elo as matches go. But that’s another feature we hope to see in another day, can be a party mode too.
Yeah. But will that be an issue?
I already explained that going one map for ranked is a bad idea.
Also, I mostly intend to have different game modes in ranked.
Sure, if they added all these game modes, I’ll not see a reason for Ranked Lobby mostly
For different game modes like RM and DM are still ok, as they’re more or less the same. Let’s discuss each mode as below:
Random Map: Current tournament standard.
Death Match: Increased resources of RM.
Regicide: more towards boom to imp for they have 12 villagers and a castle built at the start, much like closed maps such as BF, Arena
King of the Hill: much like Wonder maps but in the middle of the map, a fun mode. If only conquest is the standard mode, this shouldn’t be in ranked.
Empire Wars: much like DM.
Team games: party feature can be introduced to ease map selection and bans by host and faster queuing. Different rating should be used.
You are trying to say all mapmode are the same and there isnt much difference between the game modes?! Different game mode really played out different. It is not like you go for a scout rush in DM… I also like how you compare EW to DM. For me EW is more like RM, but with an head start. I also dont know how you compare KotH to Wonder maps. What is Wonder map?
I never got into SC II, so i dont really know that game and there MM system. So I have some questions for you about your suggestion / how this is done by SC II.
I feel like a MM system is only great if you have enough players. In your suggestion you already have 5 game modes and 4 different team. This is already 20 different ladders. I dont really know what you mean with ‘Different partners’. Does this mean i have another rating if i play with you instead of with ArshiaAghaei? Or do you mean other match ups, like FFA, 3v5, …? How does SC II deal with this amount of ladders? I really dont know if SC II has many game mode for example.
If i know have a look at DM 1v1, there are only around 1000 players on the ladder. The number if pretty low to have a good ladder. I dont know how popular maps like 4v4 Empire wars or 1v1 regicide are. Do we really need that specific ladders? Are there enough players so a ladder make sense?
I would love if they add more game modes to match making. Regicide, KotH and EW seems all fine. For EW i would just add a solo and team game ladder. Not 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4. I dont know how many palyers play Regicide. Is this still in teams or is this more FFA? For me KotH is really a FFA kind of format. All other players against the one who controls the middle. So maybe KotH only needs a FFA ladder.
So i would love to hear more about the ranking / matching system at SC II (you can also link to a good source, so i can read it from there).
You can invite friends and play ranked now though? Or is it more the other stuff, like watching a replay together that is missing? So does every pair of players get a separate rating or how does it work?
That does sound kind of cool, matchmaking for vs ai 