There is no reason to find a compromise, when both players could have not been matched in the first place.
OP does not have to accept your compromise. He wants to play a map which 100s of people are likely playing atm and a proper matchmaking system should be able to recognize that. The only people to blame for the situation are the devs behind the matchmaking.
If it wasnāt a competitive ladder then yes, but it is.
Agreed. They either need to make each map have itās own rating or they need to tell people to grow up and play whatever map the RNG gives them, and undo the nonsense theyāve done with preferred maps.
Doing neither is unacceptable.
You donāt see the big picture, premades control the maps for us the solo players, by having more bans, if they ban arabia,bf and arena its guaranteed to get nomad, some players manipulate the system for 1x1 aswell, just look how high goes some ppl rankās when 4 lakes is on the pool.
The sytem will never work as intended, the only toxic behavior comes from the devs, they are the one causing this chaos by implementing not competitive maps in the map pool, the game is 21 years old, its community has already chosen the maps they want to spend their time, by banning arabia you are denying the most common map, that is being beyond selfish, cause nomad is an awful map, not competitive and with very very low play rate, donāt worry it is the same as bf or cba or even dm, you belong to a minority and it is ok, problem comes when the majority is forced to play maps they have never liked before and things get worse when getting terrible allies because the MM couldnāt wait longer and had to fill a room for a premade team.
For people like you suggesting punishments, then they should make arabia unbanable as it is the most common map, so playing other maps would be based on majority preferences, that would be fair for people who thinks that his 2% play rate map has the same weight as arabia and that their preferences should be enforced to others.
Aslong as this systems with bans and favourites stays, Iāll keep pressing alt+f4.
The reason behind it is pretty obvious: Most of the time the mappool is dull. At the moment you have only 1 water map (migration) and 0 hybrid maps in 1v1. Itās 4 iterations of arabia. I donāt enjoy that, so I usually donāt play it. No, you canāt make me. Be angry, despise me, call me a noob, coward whatever. I donāt f*cking care. Itās a game, I only do things I enjoy.
The suggestion to punish those who alt+f4 is not a good one, because your ELO is not something that needs to be as high as possible to show everyone what a wonderful person you are. Really itās not. Itās a way to match you against players of your skill level, so you have competitive games that both enjoy, even if you loose. If you lower my elo for alt+f4ān, you better start apologising to my next opponents. If you punish me with even longer timeouts, I would stop playing ranked altogether.
A good start would be to give people a choice before the games start, so they donāt have to alt+f4. Make the settings more diverse, so everyone has to comprise to a certain degree. I donāt want to play arabia-civ-pickers, they donāt want to play water, so maybe blind random map?
And for the love of god get rid of fixed positions in TG. Iām so bored of britfrankmaya vs britfrankmaya on arabia.
I do see the big picture, the problem is you are either really bad at math or purposefully ignoring reality in a feeble attempt to strengthen your argument.
Here is the really simple picture: there are 9 maps in the selection at any one time. As a premade team you can ban 4 of them. That leaves 5 maps that are left to choose from. So letās go with your example and say they ban Arabia, BF, Arena, and team Islands (this is often what I do when leading a premade team). In the pool right now that would leave MegaRandom, African Clearing, Crater, Crossroads, and team moats. Unless your team bans the other 4 maps besides African clearing (which is a Nomad map) then you are not guaranteed to get Nomad. So this disproves your manipulating the system argument, which by that you really just meant you donāt like it when other people ban the map you want to play. Using your bans is not manipulating the system, it is literally part of the system. Do you know what IS manipulating the system? Hitting Alt F4. They didnāt make an in-game option for quitting when you see the map on purpose. By doing this you are enforcing your preference on others, as you complained about. You are a hypocrite.
Why are you not willing to play any of those other 5 maps? (MegaRandom, African Clearing, Crater, Crossroads, and team moats) And while weāre at it what is wrong with 4 lakes? These maps are competitive, but what I think you mean by competitive is your sweaty, super practiced build order for Arabia that you googled doesnāt work as well on these maps.
Banning 1 map is not selfish, even if it is the most popular map. I am willing to play all the other maps, sometimes even Arabia and I never hit Alt F4 or quit immediately. Youāre selfish for effectively banning all the other 8 maps and doing it in a way that wastes a lot of other peopleās time. That is straight toxic selfishness.
Letās see these stats, post a link with statistics about peopleās map preferences. Sounds like some people who like Arabia think nearly everyone likes Arabia. I guarantee you this is not the case. If all these other maps are so unpopular then we wouldnāt have an Alt F4 problem, because everyone would agree on Arabia. It is only because people have strong and varied preferences for maps that we have this issue. You are just biased and assume a great majority of people have the same preference as you.
Hereās the thing, the game modes are called RANDOM MAP and TEAM RANDOM MAP, random is literally in the name of the game mode. So donāt queue in this game mode if you are not willing to play at least 5 of the 9 maps in the pool.
The devs are not being toxic, they are just not giving YOU exactly what you want. I think they made a decent system if only people would be flexible with what maps they play and not be so selfish as to use Alt F4 then we wouldnāt have any problems. The devsā job is to try to please as many people as possible and this is clearly what they are trying to do, they just need to close the Alt F4 loophole. Devs actually do a great job matching teams by skill, kudos to them for that.
My preference isnāt even centered around open or closed maps, I donāt care for BF or amazon tunnel, but every once in a while it can be fun. I like variety and playing new maps, I donāt want to play the same map over and over. I do concede your point that Nomad maps are inherently less competitive as there is a much greater amount of luck/RNG. However, in my opinion, they can still be a lot of fun due to all the resources on the map allowing for epic comebacks. It does feel bad to get screwed in the beginning due to luck though, so I can agree with you there. Just ban Nomad if you hate it so much, you always have at least 1 ban, problem solved.
To get to the real difference behind our map preferences it probably comes down to build orders. I donāt want to spend time practicing build orders and I donāt want to play against people that have looked up the best build orders and practiced the crap out of them. It is much more fun in my opinion to have to figure it out on the fly yourself. Screw all that sweaty practice, Iām not playing for money, Iām playing for fun. Iām guessing you like your build orders, Iām also guessing you have practiced them a lot. This is the real reason you want to play Arabia exclusively and the reason I love MegaRandom, 4 lakes, and any new map.
It seems like there are 2 types of AOE players: people who like build orders and people who like winging-it. Build order people just want Arabia or maybe Arena. Those that like winging it probably have a wide range of different maps they like and so their preferences as a group are divided between all the maps. This likely makes Arabia and Arena the most popular maps, but if you split it up between build order maps (Arabia and Arena) versus all the other maps you probably get two pretty even groups of people. If you take a poll of all the AOE 2 players and ask them if they would like to only play Arabia or keep the system as it is now then I bet you would be clearly in the minority. Your map preference does not represent the vast majority of AOE 2 players.
To summarize, the reason you only want to play Arabia is that you lose a lot more on all the other maps and you care way too much about your elo. You stand on the shoulders of whoever developed your build orders because I bet you didnāt figure out that math on your own. Your elo is inflated and if you had to play maps besides Arabia I bet it would come crashing down.
The day is coming when the devs fix the Alt F4 loophole. Iāll be able to ban Arabia forever.
First off, I agree with basically all of your map preferences and most of what you say. But using Alt F4 is not the way. You are wasting other peopleās time. No one cares if youāre scared or a noob or whatever, they just care about their time and you ruining their experience. It would be hilarious and sweet justice if you and SouMexican match up with each other over and over so you can just continue to Alt F4 each otherās map choices forever. What a fun time on AOE 2 that would be for the both of you!
I agree, ELO is not what should be punished for exactly those reasons. Well said there.
I like the time limit punishment since you said it yourself that it would get you to stop playing ranked random map games. Getting the Alt F4 to stop is exactly the goal, nothing personal. Everyone else should campaign hard to the devs for these time limit punishments. I believe you when you say you donāt care if we call you names/ be angry at you. Believe me when I say no one cares if you stop playing ranked.
By giving āpeople a choice before the games start, so they donāt have to alt+f4.ā I think you mean splitting the queue between map types? Doing something like giving people a choice between joining an open map queue and a closed map queue is feasible, but it would make things worse in some manner. Either it is going to take much longer to get a match, which is the problem in the first place, or there would be a bigger difference in skill between players. Something has to give there and I donāt think we should make those sacrifices.
Iām all for compromising and the blind random map though! The problem is itās fine with me but I bet our friend SouMexican would Alt F4 faster than you could say your favorite insult.
The problem with the timeout is that it pushes player away from the ladder (which increases queue time) and ultimately away from the game. Considering Steamās system, it will also incentivize smurfing.
If you take other game as examples, like League of Legends, where dodging had a points AND time penalty, on a much larger playerbase, it STILL had negative effect and happened often enough that devs implemented lane picking. Same happened in Overwatch, with role picking.
Devs from both games resisted it for a while but after a year or two gave in because its what players want.
I personally think we are the same position. Dodging has been an issue since launch, so much that they do not allow you to go to other tabs anymore (it was the way people dodged when the game first launched).
In AoE2 the key factor that players want to decide is map first, civ second. For 1v1 the 3 bans + preferred map system seems to work well for most of the playerbase. For TG it gets way more complex because you can have up to 8 players all wanting to play a different map.
I am afraid that a āI want to stay in queue longer but only play preferred mapā button is required, where matchmaking pair you against an opponent, compare maps, if your preferred is banned it keeps you in queue.
Shouldnt be a total revamp of the MM system to implement this.
I disagree concerning the part with wasting other peoples time. Actually, Iām protecting them from having a really bad time. Because if you somehow force me to play a map I really donāt want to play but for whatever stupid reasons I cannot ban beforehand (maybe because the mappool is as bad as it is now and I already banned 3 other, even worse maps), I would resign the first moment itās āokayā.
Because my ELO does not matter to me at all. But this brings me back to my earlier argument: If I would just play the game instead of alt+f4, I would lower my ELO making the next matches on a map I like even more boring, because Iām āunderratedā.
By alt+f4n I actually stop lowering my ELO, so when their is another person who likes the same settings as me, we both get a good game.
There are lots of games which found ways to tweak the matchmaking. Adding the button mentioned by BuckledClub644 would be one way. Forcing people to play in a way they donāt want to or believing the player has to change his or her preferences - thatās just bad game design.
If youāre really not willing to play an open map at all then you make a good point on wasting peopleās time. But at the end of your last post, you said a blind random map would be a compromise. So imagine weāre playing in a system where that blind random map is your only option for ranked and you happen to get Arabia, are you going to quit as soon as you are allowed?
Seems like we might be at an impasse here gentleman (had to resist typing Mexican stand-off). deadpool1183 is not willing to play an open map in the current system, SouMexican is not willing to play anything but Arabia or a very similar open map, and people like me do not want to play the super practiced maps Arabia and Arena. Basically, people like deadpool1183 and people like SouMexican are straight not willing to play each other and will Alt F4 every time they are matched together because of map preference.
The current system is barely playable right now for TG in my opinion. It seems to be very likely that there will be at least one of each of these people in most 3v3 or 4v4 matches, the proof is how many times people dodge before you get a real match.
Having a blind random map might work, but that would take people like deadpool1183 and people like SouMexican agreeing to actually play the maps they hate if it is randomly selected. Seems like that wonāt happen, but maybe if they know everyone has to play maps they hate they will suck it up. I doubt this works.
Punishing people for using Alt F4/quitting could work well, but we might lose a substantial amount of the player base. SouMexican/deadpool1183 types will often face very long queue times to get the map they want or they occasionally play maps they hate and likely grief those games. The game would become unplayable for the Alt F4 people, but I say good. However, they might bring us down with them, so maybe not good lol.
Splitting the queues between open and closed maps might work, but I think it would more than double queue times. I think this will feel pretty similar to how it is now, barely acceptable. The āI want to stay in the queue longer but only play preferred mapā button could be a nice solution for all as long as I can still ban a few maps. This would result in a semi-split of the queue meaning slightly longer queue times for everyone and much longer queue times for SouMexican and deadpool1183. Seems like they are down with that though and it would result in almost no one using Alt F4. Maybe we have a winner with this button.
splitting into arabia-like and arena-like leaves the standard RM players without any place to play
we need a queue where we can play proper aoe2 maps that cover all elements of the game where every civilization bonus is relevant. thatās what the RM mode was made for.
if people want to play arena-only or arabia-only, let them do it in a separate queue. but donāt let them waste my time when Iām just looking for a normal RM game
the game is not even balanced for seeing the map ahead of time and then controlling your spawn position and picking whatever civ has all its bonuses stacked together for that setting. either balance the civs for the settings we play on or let us play on settings where the civs are fairer.
Why not just have a ranked lobby system like HD and Voobly?
Whilst this seem to solve the problem, lobby systems are archaic and absurdly slow compared to modern matchmaking and each player that moves to this system is one less on the matchmaking. The time a player spends waiting for others, time players spend browsing the lobbies, time players spend confirming if a game will ever be played is WAY better spent on the matchmaking queue.
Matchmaking also does a few things for you like agreeing on maps, picking a server that works for all players, etc.
This all becomes player controlled and hosts will have advantages as they will always pick their favorite maps and serversā¦ So matches that could happen on the 2nd favorite map of 6 players, in a neutral server, may lead to 6 different lobbies with different settings and no games played.
The current implementation of matchmaking in DE isnāt very good for community development though. Do other games fix this issue?
The fundamental issue is that there is no punishment for āmatch makingā dropping. You donāt lose elo or face a queue ban like you do in other MP games.
There are some easy fixes to improve the QoL for match making.
I was just trying to rebuke BuckledClub644. While matchmaking systems might be more popular and have significant advantages over manual lobbies, my experience with Aoe2DE leaves me to believe matchmaking has a fundamental disadvantage when it comes to community growth. This is more than just the growth of the current player base, but greater engagement of these players with each other. So mrmicahmooshead might have a great point, that a lobby system as used on Voobly would be better (not HD, that lobby is garbage).
Other games might solve this issue. Iām not sure, I only play Aoe2 as a multiplayer. 
The lobby system worked without people constantly complaining about it. People were able to play what they wanted to play competitively with people who liked similar settings. People could play setting ranked FFA and DM, they canāt currently. Sure it may be slower than finding a match currently but there shouldnāt be any Alt-F4s or complaints about the map pools. If the lobby had a way to find matches similar to your preferred settings, I think it could possibly work better than the current matchmaking system. Of course the lobby would need to be well designed like Vooblyās lobby for it to work well.
nah, If the matchmaking is healthy more people will play.
Aoe will get more people playing if there is real punishment for dodgers.
Right now I have wasted 20 minutes trying to play because the alt-f4 issue. So I better change the game, better play CSGO where this BS of dodgers is not tolerated and can have a game in 2 minutes or less.
Good Idea ! CSGO is well know for its intelligent and mature community !
I think this is a separate issue that would easily be solved by implementing a more social-focused UI.