The Alt+F4 Multiplayer Problem

[WoodsierCorn696]

@Equalizer938341

Do you think adding more ban choices will solve the problem especially in tgs? I actually don’t consider this as 1v1 problem because I have never faced this in 1v1 or it is extremely rare, but as TGs yes it is an issue, but imo adding more bans choices will be the best.

I can understand the argument for willing more influence on the maps you can pick in TGs. If you queue solo, you can only ban 1 map, which seems limited. But i am not really sure if this will fix the issue. I feel like most of the current Alt + F4s are because of ‘noob’ allies as result of the broken TG ladder. Most recently opened threads about Alt + F4 have that as reason. Also more bans will lead to less matchess. Already the TG queue will take a lot longer to find a match. More bans will mean less matches, thus longer queueing times. All in all i am not really convinced about that solution.

@anon45959656

Most of these discussions have been worthless back and forth between people who have completely different points of view (because they are bothered by different reasons)

This happens a lot in most discussion. For this reason i already say outside most of the balance discussion, because i feel those are the worst.

@anon45959656

This is a terrible idea. First of all, people can just make smurf and you will have a complete chaos in the ladder, as at that point any meaning of the word ‘rating’ is completely out of the window. Second, people can (and will) just throw games/AFK games on purpose. Third, it doesn’t solve the problem that it takes a long time to queue, so it will just frustrate players and drive them away. We need solutions that are more friendly to the community.

I am not really sure why it will lead to more smurfs and other things you describe. I think it mainly punish those who are selfish and dont understand the rules of MM. If you dont want to play by the rule set of ranked, then go and host your game in the lobby. For some reason people dont really seem to understand this. Their behaviour is toxic and needs to be punished in my opinion. It looks to me the time penalty will mainly hit these players. Also time penalties are part of many other games as well. That is for a reason: They seem to work.

@anon45959656

This might be the best idea tbh, I liked voobly’s system much more than this chaos we have in DE.

Can you explain what was great about voobly’s system? My opinion is quite the opposite. Let me explain my experience with Voobly:

1. Splitting the ladders between noobs and pros (NPL vs main ladder) was pretty terrible and created some kind of barrier to improve. At some point you get stuck. You was too good for NPL, but too worse for the main ladder. For me this was a barrier which i couldnt over come. As result i just played the game for a little bit. Hit the upper limit of the NPL and just stop playing the game. In DE we just have only one ladder. There is no split between noobs and pros on the ladder. You can just gradually improve your rating.

2. At voobly elo didnt really transfer between maps. As noob i started with 4v4 BF. I got pretty good at that map (for my elo), but i also wanted to branche out to other maps. When i tried 1v1 Arabia, i could only play against players with much higher skill (but same elo). If i tried to play against lower rated players (since for Arabia my skill was pretty much lower), then i just got kicked. As result you were mainly stuck with playing 1 map type only. Not because you want to play one map only, but because this was the result of how the lobby evaluates. DE on the other hand gives more easy access to playing multiple maps. It seems to be paradoxical: More freedom in map picks force players in just playing less maps. One of the big benefits of DE is the easy ability of playing different maps against equally skilled players. Going back to a lobby will remove that benefit to me.

3. People tend to lurk in the lobby, instead of joining rooms. In most rooms you saw it really takes a while before a room is filled to 5-6, but after that almost instantly filled to 8 players. But then it still took a while before the game started. This had multiple reason: Sometimes that host was just AFK, so you waited to the lobby to be filled and then everyone just leave the room again. Sometimes a player had issues with fast proxy. Another time the player is tired of waiting and will look for another room. And so it continues. Even with Alt + F4 in DE, you will get into a game more quickly then on Voobly. I think half of the time i was just waiting for a game to start, instead of playing the game itself.

So i am pretty happy with the ranked queue. I wont say it is the perfect system, but to me it is much, much better then the lobbies like we have on Voobly and HD. Even the lobbies of DE are pretty terrible in my opinion. A while back i give it a try, but after 30 minutes i still didnt get into a game. So the issues with the lobbies still exists in DE. Based on this experience i dont want to go back to a ranked lobby system.

Based on your response it seems like you have another experience. Could you share this as well?

@casusincorrabil

Dumb question… Why we don’t have a ranking for each map? (used for matchmaking)

Analyses of the ratings - Spotting the issues

I feel like ratings are a bit off. And i think i am not the only one who thinks there are some weird things into the ratings. So i decided to have a look. I used the following source: https://thbrown.github.io/aoe2-de-rating-charts/ This site only shows data for Ranked RM games. I would love to see some statistics about DM (both 1v1 and teamgames) and unranked maps. I dont really have a guess about DM, but i think the results of unranked are even more extreme than the results for RM team game…

This idea is also posted in this thread. I am pretty blanco for this suggestion. I can see why people want this. You will get better ratings for each maps, so MM would be more accurate, which will lead to better quality. On the other side you need to play 10 maps to really get a ranking. That means you need to play 10 games for each map before you end up with a ranking on every map. That seems a lot. For maps that are every time in the map pool, this will be doable. But some other maps are just in the map pool once in a while. So no one starts with a ranking on those maps. As result the game will be just more imbalanced.

I think a hybrid options would be better suitable: Divide all maps in certain sub groups, like open / closed maps or land / hybrid / water maps. This way you will end up with a rating for maps based on the sub groups.

But in the end such rating system can be to complex to understand for most players. You will end up with multiple ratings. That is not really clear to me. As result i am pretty much blanco for suggestion about splitting the ratings.