I think for ranked queue, a compromise would make sense. Maybe add 1 additional ban overall (so 1 player = 2 bands, 4 players = 5 bands). At the same time, every time someone Alt+F4s, ban him for 5min. If he Alt+F4s again within 4 hours, increase the ban time gradually (20min, 40min, 1hour etc). 4 hours after the last ban, the ban is reset. Problem solved!
Btw I hate Alt+F4ing, even though there are a couple of maps I don’t like cause I just have played them too often (like Arena). Other then that, I really like all the other maps, for me it’s fine to have some variety.
I know most of you are talking about TG because the queue for 1v1 isnt that long and alt f4 isnt a big problem.
In TG, I will definitely alt f4 if I have a toxic player in my team or Im gonna against a premade team that contains top players. I would like to split the team queue and solo queue and not party me with the players that I muted before. I know this requires a lot of rework of matchmaking system, but you guys gotta know that the alt f4 issue is very complicated and you cannot just punish people for doing that.
Probably we should vote for a solution so it will satisfy the majority.
The math behind the amount of bans is that you have to have one map left even if all bans are unique, so that there is a map to be played.
Thats why there are 9 maps and 4 bans for 1v1… Even if between both players its all unique, there is still one map left.
Thats why a single player can only ban 1 map on a 4v4, but a team of 4 can ban 4. This way you guarantee that there wont be more than 8 bans out of 9 maps.
Bear in mind the matchmaking first find the players according to rating, then decide a server and a map for them.
But if you have 5 bans as a 4-player team, that simply means, sometimes there are two 4-player teams that have no matching map, because all maps are banned by both teams, right? So both teams just have to wait until there is another team where at least one map matches. It would simply mean, that by banning 5 maps, you have to wait considerably longer for a match. At the same time, if you have lesser people that use Alt+F4, you don’t have that many failed attempts anymore.
And for those who are fine with with a larger variety of maps, they can simply ban lesser maps and get into a match quicker.
As it is right now, if you set the prefered star to anything else but Arabia, Black Forest or Arena, if you play solo in TR, the chances are not very high that you get anything else but those 3 maps. And if you can only ban 1, you pretty much end up playing arena 4 times in a row (like it happened to me yesterday), even though you really wanted to play anything else BUT arena, arabia or bf. So I can understand why sometimes people are frustrated, but I almost never Alt+F4, I just try to win as quickly as possible with Turk imp rush or something
The only situation where I Alt+F4 is when I see a player in my team who is on my personal ban list. That’s just for compensating the lack of a ban list.
This is a question of “What IS Age of Empires 2” or “What does it mean to have reached a certain skill level in Age of Empires 2”. The current ladder is meant to show the skill level of players in Age of Empires 2. And that includes being able to play on a variety of different maps. Look at the pro tournaments, do they play on Arabia all the time? No. They even come up with new maps us regulars have never played.
What you are asking for is a specific ladder for only Arabia. I’m not against that. But an overall ladder in AoE2 for me means, that one has to be able to play on different maps, because that’s an important factor in AoE2, more so than in many other games out there. A ranked ladder system in AoE2 inherently needs to include other maps and needs to force people to play other maps, because otherwise the ranked points do not refelect the players ability and skill level in AoE2.
If you only want to play Arabia, no one keeps you from only hosting custom Arabia matches. But if you want to get ranked points, it cannot be that you only play Arabia, because it leaves out important aspects of the game. Unless there is a ranked ladder specifically for Arabia, like an “Age of Empires 2 Arabia Only Ladder”. But you can’t blame the devs to not have thought about that right away, because it sounds a little bit silly.
I am a alt f4 lover as I want to choose the map I play one. If I want to train on Four Lakes / Arabia / Arena it is my choice. If it influences on other player, sorry but it is not my fault if dev refuses to give us the choice to play random or not random. Punishing with penalty will only reduce the community of active players.
Again, I don’t see what keeps you from starting a custom match, if you want to train a specific map? Ranked is not meant for that kind of play, as I just explained, because aside from matching you with evenly skilled players, the ranked elo is also there to show your overall skill level in AoE2 and not only in one specific map. It IS your fault if you play ranked and then Alt F4, because you have a choice to simply play custom and play the map you like, the devs are not keeping it from you. You don’t HAVE to play ranked. This is actually very selfish behavior.
I think many players just mistake the ranked play and its purpose. It’s not simply a match making. Think about it man: For some tournaments you need a specific elo in order to be able to participate. If you only play one specific map in ranked, your elo doesn’t tell anything about whether you are fit for that tournament or not, because most tournaments do not only play on Arabia.
But I agree that it would be great to have a queue for that specific purpose if you want to train a specific map and want to match with evenly skilled players, which can be a problem with custom matches. This should be made easier. I would actually vote for making “quick play” exactly what Alt+F4ers want, where you can ban as many maps as you like (and also the match making there needs to be improved by a lot to make more even matches. And while we’re at it, it should be possible to choose positions in team matches in quick play).
No one force players to play in ranked. If they dont like the settings, then you can just play whatever settings you like in the lobby. So i have no idea why you seems to waste the time of other players, while you already can play the games you want in the lobby.
Agree that “Quick Play” should give the possibility to play the map you want. Agree that ranked should not.
Lobbies are not an option, I have about 300 ranked games in total with 53% rate of victory. Im kicked from all nob games. When It’s “no nob games” Im kicked because 53% is nob rate. + Half of the games are bugged (“game doesnt exist”).
To conclude, lobby games are most of the time unfair with too much difference of level.
Why don’t people who like to play different maps open lobbies and play whatever they want to play instead? The vadt majority of the player base wants to play either Arabia, bf, arena, or nomad, that’s where we should focus in terms of customer satisfaction.
I was queing with a friend yesterday and we had people alt-F4ing 6 times in a row before we could start a match…
But the thing that was even worse was that many times people didn’t alt-F4 right away but waited 40-50 seconds. That increased the time for us finding a match even more…
best way would be hiding maps before the game starts. you cant dodge what you don’t know, and if you don’t want to play the map in the ranked que that you joined voluntarily you lose Elo.
if you just want to play a specific set of maps there’s always custom lobbies. that’s not what ranked is for.
Except this isnt the goal of quick play. Quick play is about getting into a game quickly and dont care about anything else. It wont result in balanced games at all. There is kind of no reason to play in quick play at all.
I have kind of the same experience in the lobby. If you ever played ranked, then some people think you arent noob any more. I wouldnt be surprised if players with 700-800 elo already get kicked if they have a winrate around 50% (which is pretty much possible if you have played 300 games) for being no noob…
And if you never have played ranked, then there is no issue at all. I have seen people with 2500 elo on the unranked elo ladder and a winrate of 80% who still hosting noob lobbies. Unranked elo (=lobby games) arent shown ingame, so people dont see that history. No one seems to have an issue with these kind of players in ranked.
To remedy these kind of issues i have made the following thread with some suggestion: How to improve the lobby?. Improving the lobby might also partially solving the Alt+F4 issue as well. People that dont like the ranked settings are then able to have a better experience in the lobby. So those stupid Alt+F4 users, because they dont like certain settings, will move to the lobby.
People are alt f4ing last second if it’s a widely regarded map that no one likes then they know the probability of someone else alt f4ing is high so they wait to see if they don’t have to do it and have a longer wait time with rebooting up game
I’ll chime in to say that I will continue to alt-f4 when I get a map I don’t want to play (and the unranked lobby is not a good place to get a competitive game). If MS (after choosing horrible maps that we have to play) starts punishing me for doing that, then I’ll gradually lose interest in playing. This will lead to me no longer watching streamers like T90 and Viper because I no longer have an emotional connection to the game. This means that the streamers will no longer get the donations I send them, which will make their streaming business less productive.
One person leaving the community might not affect it, but I don’t think I’m the only one who sees it this way. I believe this game will die again if MS goes down the road of punishing the players and trying to control it’s direction.
Let us ban the maps that we don’t want to play. I don’t care how long it takes to get a match, and it can’t be much worse than it is now with both teams alt-f4ing multiple times because one team likes closed maps and the other likes open maps.
They need to improve the other options, of course.
The fact that a lot of people see all their other options of finding a game to be bad options is indicative of the fact that they should be improving those options.
The best and easiest solution to implement by the developers is to show a small confirmation window to all players before sending them to the lobby system:
If X player does not want to play Arena he can decline and everyone is back to queue silently and instantly except for the decliner who has to queue up manually again. This way no one alt-f4 and everybody play what they want.
