The Alt+F4 Multiplayer Problem

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
262

There are different ways to approach to this issue, but the worse is adding punishments to a forced system, there is no reason to explain that, it is simply wrong.

If you go around that false solution, the next two options are just resign immediately once the game just started, this will make even more people angry and will cause reports on certain player, but he has all the right to refuse to play the match and for guys with little more knowledge i will just disconnect the net temporally to force a disconnection, so not resigning=no reason to report and still making people angry about it.

So as you can see those who ask for punishment will lose even more time and their beloved points, also there will be less player willing to play in such a nazi system.

Being said that, the clear solution are allowing x4 more bans to solo players, kill team games from match making, since it hasn’t worked(there is no reason to prove this, we don’t have top players interested in the ladder and 3.4k elo inflation lol), reset rating and add a ranked lobby for team games ladder, since matchmaking is only working for 1x1, there is no reason to keep forcing players to play with unfair teams and undesired maps.

1 Like
263

i feel like you are way to bias on this answer as there is a middle ground and just ignoring it wont solve it

1 Like
264

There is no middle ground in a forced system, what are you talking about, we have had team games running for like 18 years and never had this issues, the current system is causing this issues, you can’t attempt to patch it if it hasn’t worked since its release more than a year ago, going around this will cause more troubles and complains, the solution is simple but fair enough, keep complicating things, not being rational is affecting the game negatively and causing players to avoid the game.

265

First off, I’ve had a better time with this system then previous systems.

Secondly, I agree that punishing alt-f4 is the wrong answer (though I sympathize with the frustration)

Thirdly unlimited bans in 1v1 seems obvious. That way the Arabia only gang can just go play Arabia only, and not alt-f4 anyone.

So I’d say team games is where the solution is harder to find. What if we split the team que in prebuilt teams and random teams. The prebuilt que has a limit on bans, the random teams ladder has no limit. So if you que with your buddy’s your only allowed to band 1 or 2 maps, so atleast if you get a map you dont like you wont alt f4 because your pal might like it. If your queuing by yourself then if you only want Arabia you can wait for that option by yourself and not effect other players game times. This also fixes the issue of random teams getting paired up against prebuilts on team speak.

Idk just an idea, maybe a bad one lol.

266

@SouMexican I strangely enough trough all these years I have always agreed with you, vocal of my opinion, not today. We are talking in the end about people who just wanna play one map (or just that can tolerate a few ones, how did we come to this?).

A habit carried over 20 years doesnt mean its good. I played ara huns for 5 years. Map variety gives such a richness to our game. Matchmaking should have enough variety to content both sides (players that like more non aggression maps, and players that like to attack early and manage eco at the same time).

Punishment needs to come to the system, no matter if its ALTF4 queue or ingame ALTF4. I support this nazi system, time has spoken, we deserve it. Matchmaking (both 1vs1 and team games) needs to stay, and be representative of an overall ability (no map dodging, no 1 map specializers, no player dodgers).

They need to fix TG elo. And the lobby must be an alternative for those who wanna play 1 map only or very specific settings, we need to be able to make balanced teams there too.

267

You are talking about your perspective and it could have been the same that FE devs were thinking, lets make the game to grow better in skill terms and if it would only involves 1x1 i wouldn’t complain.

But the big base of players of this game are not kids anymore, you have to adapt to your users, the majority doesn’t have the same amount of time to spend playing the game, the system has failed, lets say you had only 2 hours or even less to play and in the past you had no trouble finding a casual ranked bf/ara(ranked works to get fair and fun games), but now even if you set as preferred your map, you might not get to play it in your reduced time, what you got was a megarandom or a nomad map that is not on your tastes and your team mates aren’t even close your level or the enemy’s, at the end you just wasted your time playing to have a terrible experience.

That is my case and i know a lot of other players are in the same spot, i don’t play that much anymore i rather to spend my time playing other games doing the things that i want, instead of having a bad experience and playing maps that i don’t really want, in comparison to the last year having the same free time i am playing way less, even less than in voobly having no free time at all.

If you happen to be in the same scenario than me well the game is pushing you to avoid it, to not playing it cause it is no longer fun, now if you add to that punishments to some one who doesn’t really want to invest his time playing things he doesn’t want for whatever reason, then you are only shooting at your foot, you are losing players for no reason and the game doesn’t really have good numbers in the active high and mid level players, what kills a multiplayer game is the lack of players, bad decisions lead to huge loss in active player base, just look at the performance complains, there are users every single patch that can’t play the game anymore and they have to wait to test at the next patch, those are active players you are losing focusing resources in making challenges or time events that doesn’t increase or improves the multiplayer experience.

The guys who are demanding punishments or bans to dodgers they all need to understand that the game is lacking enough active players on different levels, also the game isn’t even stable it crashes randomly so you people might get banned cause of a faulty game, i can’t think on a worse scenario than that, they are angry cause they want to play games whenever they want despite they might be forcing other players to play things they didn’t want to but had no other choice, also they are not being realistic with the real size of the active player base, this game is not cs go or another healthy multiplayer.

2 Likes
268

I think the biggest issue here is the Arabia-only players. About 65% of ranked games happen on that map according to aoestats
 which indicates alot of map dodging. Better to just make their own lobby at this point, with a separate ELO

269

Hello there.

I dont think it would be a problem if more maps were well balanced and provided the same number of strategies and opportunities as Arabia. However its impossible to make a game balanced with the amount of civs and maps this game has.

Open land maps are usually Arabia variants OR heavily favour scout play due to bad woodlines. Close land maps play out as boomfests like Black Forest, which isnt very interesting for 1v1 and full water maps lack in variation as there are 2-3 civs clearly stronger and only 1-2 units to play with
 Last you have the RNG maps where there should be no balance, but most often then not they have the same gimmicks which heavily favour cavalry play.

Arena might as well be a Empire Wars map as there isnt significant variance in builds and strategies until everyone is 22 villagers in. You cant lame, you cant attack in dark age and only a selected few strategies work in feudal. Mostly its 10-15 mins of solo playing and then the game ends in another 10-15. Bear in mind the average Arena game is 26 minutes long, according to aoestats.

Nomad and its variants are pure RNG. In Team Games its a complete mess as you can start in between enemies and be dead by minute 15.

Mega Random, which should be full RNG too has Mongols as the top pick (8%, whilst 4.5% overall) with 54% win rate and Huns, Franks, Magyars have a 65-55% win rate on it
 Too many “random maps” have the same gimmicks (additional food or bad wood lines), making scouts play very strong.

Having said all that, if the objective is to have better players overall, then instead of 9 maps we should have 4 per rotation, with 3 bans allowed, so that people could really learn them, practice all match-ups, all build orders and how they interact with the different strategies. When you have maps so different that most strategies do not overlap, you end up not really learning much.

270

Well, most players favorite Arabia too, as far as I know. Thats what happens at the top level (perhaps 90% of the players) and I assume thats what happens as you go down the ladder too.

If you add up the other open land maps, you should see about 75% of the games played. This map rotation there are 3 Arabia-like maps (Ghostlake, Acropolis, Gold), so clearly its what most people want to play. If you then analyse the votes other maps received, even without dodging, the percentage wouldnt be too far off. Its just that the game is trying to force people to play stuff they dont want to.

271

Hello,

I always prefer open maps such as Arabia. That is my preferred map, but I am open to playing maps such as ghost lake, gold rush/pit, valley, acropolis, serengeti etc. However, the map pool cannot always prevent closed/water/nomads at the same time becaus the number of bans are not enough (especially for team games such as 3v3).

For that reason, I always do alt+f4 when I get megarandom or nomad because there aren’t enough bans, and they remain available. At this moment, I really do not have any other choice than doing alt f4 (or I’ll stop playing this game). After all, I play this game for fun, this is not the world cup or a tournament. You might tell me that I should go to lobbies and pick Arabia, but I don’t want to waste my time looking for an opponent. The matchmaking system is good because it’s relatively fast, and I like playing ranked games because I receive opponents closer to my level/elo, which makes the game fun and competitive. I don’t care about how high/low my elo is, but I care about three things: (1) playing the map I want; (2) playing against opponents at similar levels; (3) and not waiting for opponents.

Me doing alt f4 is also not fair for opponents, because they also waste their time waiting in the line more than once.

My proposal is (either/or):

  1. Increase number of bans or allow “only” 1 map choice
  2. Show waiting time for certain maps (e.g. Arabia 2 minutes, Megarandom 5 minutes etc.). This way people can see transparently whether to ban/pick certain maps.
  3. Show elo for open/closed maps. This way the game could be more competitive. For instance, my arabia elo is about 1300, but I suck at arena and consider my elo at arena about below 1100.
  4. If nothing else above is possible, allow players to subscribe by paying a monthly fee to avoid playing the maps they want. My time is valuable, so I don’t want to waste half an hour until I get an arabia game in the team game.

My point is, in order not to quit playing this game, players need to be given options and they shouldn’t be wasting too much time in the queue. This makes the game unplayable and unenjoyable.

5 Likes
272

Well
so is the time of the people you screw by alt+f4.
If you want more bans, team up with some friends and ban the closed maps.

6 Likes
273

Lets wait for this suggestion after we know how the unranked match making works. It seems like you will have much more control about the maps / settings, but i am not convinced about that setting. Unranked seems to mean TheViper can be matched against the biggest noob. I have no idea how they would handle balance games, while still being unranked


4 Likes
274

I agree that their time is valuable, I already said that it’s not fair for them either, and that’s why I wrote this post. Without alt f4 I’ll play another game though, there are many alternatives.

Even when we team up, there is always a map we don’t want to play, so we quit immediately.

275

Already been mentioned numerous times. There is an unranked elo. It will likely be used for the unranked queue

276

What you want is an opt-in system, just select the maps you’re interested in. It would be the reasonable solution.

The current type of system will never remove alt-f4, sadly there is apparently no shame in letting people pay again to then disrespect their existing preferences.

1 Like
277

I agreed with him

If this game Block Alt +f4, players dont wanna play aoe2
and we lose so many users in long term view and short term views
They don’t have reason to play where they hate (map)

Before you consider “block”,
Please think how make people play where they want.

There is no duty for playing BF, Arena, Arabia for Others except themselves

3 Likes
278

It’s ranked game, so if you commit to a match, you can’t troll or leave without an actual reason

3 Likes
279

I Honestly think there is a reasonable window of punishment for people who would altf4 since it ruins the fun of games in ranked and in TeamGames. because a you Queue in i think you agree to a certain setting the Ranked mode gives you and its not fair to ignore it and just alt f4 out of the game

i too had my reasonable expierence with Maps i usually dont like to play but i stay to the conduct of rankeds and play it through even mirror matches because i wanna enjoy aoe2 and it competitive state aswell as other people to enjoy it

3 Likes
280

This should be common sense honestly. Alternativelly, they could create a ranked lobby but that has issues on its own.

If I’d start to seriously consider playing ranked MP, I’d do that. Ranked tests you on a variety of maps, not only on the ones you like the most. Otherwise ELO means not as much as it should.

1 Like
281

This has been proposed a lot of times and in terms of why you wanna do this, I guess most people agree. Thing is, it simply doesn’t work within the current system so the proposal would need to be “redesign matchmaking system”. Currently, the number of bans from all players combined is 1 lower than the amount of maps so that each time a match happens (e.g. 2v2 has 4 players making 8 bans for 9 maps) there is always at least one overlapping map.

Your suggestion would mean that matches themselves are found not only by elo but also by map preference. I guess, in the end, the question is how much value do you put into the ranked mode. If the prority is to have a competetive ladder you keep the current system if you want to focus on the broader players’ base preference for particular maps you change it.

Btw, does anybody know how that new quick game feature works? Is it part of ranked?

2 Likes