I do agree with you. preffered map lets me play the map I want almost every time.
This is not the goal of the map pool, the map pool is to get players play a lot of different maps.
Spice the game up a bit
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Exactly, i even feel nowadays that we have only 1 map in the pool not 7!
Sure, and if this were a game where both players could unambiguously agree on the settings or this wasnāt a ranked setting, this would be fine. Instead, this is a ranked pool of maps selected randomly (random map) and it is ranked, and therefore the rating should be derived by how well you play a random map. Itās almost like itās in the name.
when you can apply weights to which maps get played, you are automatically devaluing any rating derived from the system as it applies to oneās skill on ārandom mapsā (thatās what RM stands for, guys) and playing a predetermined map 80% of the time is hardly random.
If you want to play one map forever, you can host the game. nobodyās stopping you from playing games against literally whoever you want, wherever you please. when you queue for random map, it should be random. forget the map preference nonsense. when at least half of the game is predicated upon very distinct map types making for totally different gameplans and a practically refashioned balance, itās vitally important that said aspect is central in the rating system for matchmaking. writing that off because āpeople want more control about their map picksā is foolish. what you want is irrelevant to the purpose of having a rating system that means absolutely anything.
if you guys want to make unrated a āselect maps you want to play modeā Iām all for it, and then thatās fine, because ratings arenāt then being dolled out to the kings of the one true map. right now that happens in spite of their incapability to effectively water boom on a hybrid map, and it means some people who suck at AOE 2 get to be coddled by a system that saves them from spooky maps theyāve never looked at.
Ban arabia then 
whaaaaat! No ways! How did i work that one outā¦ Wow i musttbe a geniusā¦ 
But seriously. If you have an issue with too many peeps getting arabia. Then ban it. It means when i prefer arabia Iāll usually get it, but the odd times i face the minority like you weāll end up playing something i havenāt banned, but also wonāt play arabia
head exploding
My prefered map is Arabai, but the prefered map system killed the map pool already.
I mean we could lawyer thisā¦ We could argue Random map refers to the generation of that map.it is still predominantly randomly generated.
On top of that, the game is very skewed in numerous cases outside of arabia. Even though it isnāt perfectly balanced at least the defect between Bulgaria v Italy doesnāt exist like it does on a water map.
Or the massive levels of cheese on arena.
This is also arguable. Arabia if anything rewards diverse strategy /tactics /skill or whatever over the uber cheese plays in some of the other maps.
Black forest player is more skilled than an arabia one? Spam stone wall and britons to win.
The cheese fest of socotra? Itās literally who can cheese the most.
In general the closed maps are far more forgiving than open ones (including arabia)
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You are talking like Arabia has no cheese strats, you can pick Incas and reach 2k ez with trush
According to who? The minority? The same minority that refuses to ban arabia?
I literally just gave you the answer. But instead you want to force other players when they arenāt even facing you, to play something they donāt want toā¦ For reasons?
Why are you talking like i wrote the topic just for a specific map?! The whole idea was about the alt-f4ing, in my perspective the old map pool without the prefered map choice make the alt-f4 less than nowadays and more interesting
you could, and youād be wrong, so why bother.
if you can choose which maps to play, or even what maps not to play, within a ranked pool, you are making your skill on that map either much more or much less relevant in terms of your overall rating, which distorts the rating evaluation of players within the system. this is inarguable. some players will have a rating predicated upon those maps you do not prefer, and while you may be matched against these players itāll result in extremely one-sided matchups based on which player gets the map of their preference.
this will happen. itās unavoidable. and itās made worse by the current system. it can only get worse, not better, the longer this distortion of the rating system (would be considered a blatant abuse of it if the devs hadnāt decided to make it how the system worked for reasons unexplainable) can occur. never should have been a thing, still shouldnāt be a thing, should stop being a thing.
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a punishment for people who leave will be way betterā¦
Because with your solution, you punish every one
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This is a non issue. ELO is way more distorted by civ picking than map picking (e.g. Hoang and salicum who qualifies in tournament by inflating their ELO by at least 300 points picking a single civ, just to get their back kicked in 1st rounds), yet I see few people complaining about that. Ladder already fails in giving a reliable assessment of player skills and flexibility, just let players play which map they prefer then.
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False, alt + f4 has become more frequent just because now everyone know about it, while one year ago few people knew it was a thing.
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In the end we need a good system that is fun for as many players as possible. Fun is pretty much subjective, but i tried to come up with some statements to which almost everyone would agree:
- Get into a game quickly.
- Get into a balance game.
- Play with the settings you prefer.
- It needs to fit as many players as possible.
Point 1 and 2 are pretty much done by using some kind of match making system. Match making makes is much more easy to get into a game compared to a lobby. Before DE i have played at Voobly. Getting into a game was much harder. Lobbies much be filled, sometimes the host went AFK. I always felt people were lurking into the lobby room, instead of making their own lobbies to get into the game. Match making pretty much improve the rate at which you can get into a game.
A rating system will make sure that games in match making are balanced. A good rating system will lead to balanced games. I feel like ratings at DE (1v1) are as accurate as Voobly. At voobly there was a pretty big gap between communities that just play one map only (for most of the time). At DE this seems to be much less an issue. Ofc the rating system at DE can be improved. Currently the TG ratings are bugged:
Also players will have better at which they preform better compared to other maps. Black forest plays different compared to Arabia, which also plays different then Four Lakes. If we really want it, we could expand the current ratings. Currently we have just 1 RM 1v1 rating. Just change this to some ratings:
- Overall rating
- Open land map rating
- Closed land map rating
- Hybrid map rating
- Pure water map rating
This will result in much more accurate ratings. Also Elo itself is pretty old. Microsoft already developped TrueSkill rating. Glicko is another kind of rating. Both are much better suited for TGs as well as far as a know. Moving on to such system could also improve the match making system so we get even more balanced games. Note: I am not saying that things need to change, but if someone says that we need to get rid of preferred map choices, because ratings are distorts, then changing the ratings calcultion seems to be a much better approach.
The hardest thing for a match making system is to give people the freedom so they can pick whatever settings they want to play vs the match making system to still function well. Some people love to play the same map over and over again. Other players love diverse maps. Both are part of the same match making system and the match making system has to deal with all preferences.
Currently you can already play every map in the map pool in ranked. Deleting the preferred map choice wont really improve anything. For those who like playing different maps, things wont really change. For those who like to play just 1 map, they wont like the change and will even more Alt + F4 to get their preferred map. I really see no benefits for deleting the prefer map choice from the game. I think it is a good thing for the game.
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Why not just change Ā«preferĀ» map to Ā«onlyĀ» map?
If a can choose play random civ or just pick one civ why not just pick one map or play random map? There are many people just like to play arena or arabia, just let them match with people with same tasteā¦ at least in quickplayā¦
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āRandom Mapā refers to the generation of the map, and not the choice of the map as you claim, see Random map | Age of Empires Series Wiki | Fandom
Thatās because the preset to select a map is named āRandom Mapā by opposition to eg. scenario. Pre-DE, the standard ladder has always been called RM even though it was pretty much only 1v1 Arabia.
As for the rest of the topic, as usual, people keep ignoring the causes and think the problem is Alt-F4 when itās just the completely retarded ranked system. We have 7 maps in the pool, yet Arabia has >50% playrate. That just shows the problem is not that people have the option to Alt-F4 itās that >50% of them want to play only one map (be it Arabia, Arena, BF) but the system forces them to play something else.
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lolā¦ Cheese strats work amazingly well on Arabia, Iām sure youāre aware of a very well known player who likes to pick Celts and go for the same strat every game, and yet has a better ranking than most posters hereā¦
it is. itās people who play one map because they like it most and somehow feel entitled to have the rated game system bend to their preferences instead of just hosting their favorite setting game whenever they want to play it. doesnāt seem complicated to me.
everyoneās complaining about being āforcedā to play a map they donāt want to play as if they have absolutely no clue what the word āforcedā means. they chose to play the matchmaking system, and their answer to playing a map they consented to play based on it being in the pool of possible maps is throwing a tantrum and dropping if it wasnāt their favorite.
for like the 90th time, Iām going to provide the kryptonite to the discussion and remind everyone that hosted game lobbies exist, they worked on Voobly for years, and they work now. nothing is stopping you from hosting your favorite game settings for however many players outside of the regulated ranking system with automated matchups. when you alt-f4, you are stopping your opponent from playing a game under no fault of his own. we want preferential map, go host it in the lobby with people who agree with you on the one true map religion.
yeah, hoang and jonslow are the archetypical players that result from the system at play for too long. two very high rated players who literally do absolutely everything differently and the map will almost certainly decide every game because their rating, while impressive, has been weighted to the maps of their preference. itās inevitable. and itāll get worse as this carries on.
I donāt have enough cares about this discussion to provide the effort of capitalization every sentence. the argument from the āI only care about arabia sideā is the pretentious assumption that they only throw their fellow players under the bus to fix a system thatās broken and unfair. itād be interesting if someone could come up with a new argument that isnāt about how bad the system is for only letting players play arabia 75% of the time. just saying, the system does let you do that, and the problem is that players are abusing that factor to deny game time to other players whoāve waited in queue and somehow this nobel-prize winning argument is āwe have to do this because the system is brokenā and it literally is the only argument of the crowd that sees no problem with having three minutes taken away from a player to have them join a game they probably liked to have it ditched by some jerk without a word. but a good half of the players think this is both a good argument and realize itās their only one, so I sift through this garbage every month when another one of these complaint threads about the problem pops up. almost like itās a constant problem or something.
and I remind you, this is what the system, as is, is incentivized to create and the problem will only get worse so long as it exists. taking an ax to it now is almost like a necessary consolation prize.
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I also explained 90 times that the lobby system of DE is terrible and does not provide comparable experience to the one on Voobly, Iām also pretty sure you havenāt tried it yourself:
- no rating / malfunctioning rating that results in completely unbalanced matches
- performance worse than the ranked queue, the game gets borderline unplayable 50% of the time after 30 min, maybe because thereās no enforcement on client performance, or maybe because they are hosted on slower servers than the ranked queue.
- bugs (eg. by default it hosts my lobby in the region āUKā, but this region seems bugged, nobody joins my lobby when I host there, and I donāt see any server in the āUKā region)
If the lobby was working like Voobly your argument would stand but thatās not the case, and thatās probably better for you, because I donāt think people would use the ranked queue if it did.
Yes Iām entitled to play only Arabia/BF/Arena, I was able to do it for 20 years. Can you show me a community poll where we decided together that Arabia should no longer be the standard competitive map, that water maps now deserve a permanent place in the pool, that BF and Arena players can go fuck themselves and are no longer worthy of a functioning Elo system ? I donāt see you telling DM players that their queue should be removed an merged with RM to improve overall queue time, so why are you insisting that Arabia-only players should be merged with random players ?
In another similar thread, I suggested that ratings should be split between map types. So likewise we could also split queues, so those who only know how to play Arabia can enjoy their safe space 
EDIT: just to be clear, I also do not like it when people ALT+F4. I dont like playing arabia, but I will still rather play than have no game at all 