smurfing is a problem in any online game, and this wont make it any easier or harder for someone who wants to smurf. how exactly would it promote this behavior anymore than now? its not hard to resign right after joining a game. besides one can always match them against harder opponents while giving reduced elo gains, meaning they have both a low elo and only fight against stronger opponents just like in league of legends. I would love to hear your ideas on how to prevent it, but this is thread is not about smurfing.
there is no reward, although the match would be slightly easier its no guaranteed win, and if you lose you drop even further down the ladder and lose progress. if you win you just get back to where you where before, losing valuable time and effort for 0 gain.
most people who join ranked matchmaking want to see themselves climb the ladder, not drop down. for every elo you lose, that is a minimum of 2 games worth of time wasted. one just to get back to where you where before, and one to climb if you had potentially played out and won the game you alt+f4. and that is if you win both, with each further loss compounding the time wasted and lack of progress.
because of this it is one of the harshest punishments you can give out, wasting a large amount of their time and greatly increasing the effort needed to climb, drastically more so if they donât win both the next 2 matches. and it works, just see other rts like starcraft, total war and aoe3 where if you alt+f4 when you have map information, it is an elo loss.
The Elo is a tool to have good matches, not a reward for winning. What brings enjoyment and reward is seeing the âVictoryâ after having a competitive match⊠Which when you play 100 Elo lower than you should is what happens.
Alt F4 is partially a smurfing issue, so yeah, this is also about smurfing. A big portion of the Alt F4s happens in the first seconds of the actual game by players that wants to lower their rating, so they can bash noobs / play below their strength. So smurfing is part of the Alt F4 issue. There are already many players that just Alt F4 in the first seconds of the game, so they loose elo and start bashing noobs. For that reason smurfing needs to considered as well in the solution.
I am not a fan of altering elo, because is will mess up the balance. Based on your suggestion i would be able to just Alt F4 50x in a row, have a fictive higher elo and got match against the pros, so i can play against the pros. Would be fun, but they probably kick my ash.
Best way to punish Alt F4 is just to add a time penalty, so they cant join again quickly. As result they cant play the game, which hits only them. That would be the best solution for the Alt+F4 problem.
player behavior tells a different story, with players leaving the lobby when the match is unfavored due to map/pick order/civs or dodging lobbies in league of legends. people do care about their elo, that is why the ranked system works and why people manipulate the system to their advantage. hurting those who manipulate the system directly will greatly reduce this behavior, just as it is nearly non-existent in other rts games. that is why it is the most effective deterrent.
in the league of legends system your ranking would be trash but you wouldnât be matched against weaker or stronger players, just the same ones as when you alt+f4 against. that means even if you resign in the first few seconds every match 50 times, you would still be against the same opponents while having a bottom tier ranking. no reward at all. besides you overestimate how common this behavior is, in reality it is extremely rare and only a very small percentage of the player base engages in this.
manipulating the system by alt+f4 on maps you donât want to play while not losing any progress is already manipulating your elo. by punishing this behavior elo would be more accurate, not less, as it is no longer rewarding to do so and thus the behavior is drastically reduced.
We disagree on the root-cause of the altf4. Correct me if I am wrong, but you believe players altf4 to protect their Elo as if playing on a certain map was a guaranteed loss.
I believe they altf4 because they dislike the map and dislike the idea of playing on it for the next 30 minutes. The decision is made before knowing the result of the match.
Just like players dodge in LoL not because they are afraid they will lose to the opponents but because they dislike the lane they got or their champion got banned.
Also in League you lose LP when you dodge (or at least used to be like that when I played). Even with this punishment AND a 5 minute ban, they still implemented lane picking because dodging was still a thing⊠Mind you this was in season 3, so about a decade ago, when I used to play it.
AOE2 is my favourite game, but I only have a few hours at a time max to play.
I like playing ranked TG, and I really enjoy playing on a variety of different maps.
I donât want to play Arabia every game.
I donât want to play Arena every game.
I use my one ban on one of those two maps (depending on my mood) and favourite the more unusual maps to get some variety.
It takes 30-40 minutes to find a game because every time it isnât Arabia or Arena someone drops. By the time I get a game, itâs time to stop playing.
This is infuriating. Some asshole today even said in chat âI donât play this mapâ before dropping. What kind of self-indulgent, entitled bull is this? You rolled the dice and didnât get the map you favourited, but someone else did. By this logic nobody will ever play a game again unless everyone favourites the same map.
I pretty much just stopped playing AOE2 altogether at the moment because of this ALT-F4 issue.
Itâll never be fixed. Either I find some different way to enjoy the game, or I stop playing it.
Ranking is to show who is how good in playing the whole game.
Rankingâs primary purpose is to ensure even games, period. It shouldnât even be visible to the players. The fact that it is visible is what encourages manipulation. The best the players should see (for themselves and others) is some kind of descriptive category text - maybe 5 ranking levels that you canât move downwards from. Maybe a top 100 leaderboard if the pros need the ego flex.
The game needs to be oriented around players being able to play the games they want. Iâm sure most of the reason for alt-f4 against me is my favourite map is nomad. If I could just play nomad every night against others who want to play nomad and that âinflatedâ my âELOâ because I am much better at nomad than arabia, who cares? The ELO and matchmaking should only exist to help players get even games in the games they want to play.
We should be grateful that people alt-f4 because what is the alternative? Playing an opponent who has no interest in playing the computer-selected map? Who probably goes through the motions half-heartedly, tries to get it over with quickly? Thatâs surely a bigger waste of time than someone alt-f4ing anyway?
The frequency of alt-f4 demonstrates a fundamental issue with the GAME not the players.
Again today, Iâve been waiting almost for 30 minutes in the 3v3 and 4v4 without a successful game. Iâm ready to play anything and any position. Losing hope in this game. At this point, either I switch to 1v1 or 2v2 or just stop playing.
Switch to 1v1 man itâs a tough switch to get used to, but itâs so much more fun without all the negatives of TG and you improve faster at the game also. Iâve been playing a lot more 1v1 and only playing TG with a few friends rarely and I simply cannot stand queueing solo in TG anymore. 1v1 is sick so many more interesting spots in the games that rarely hsppen in TG
There is no punishment to you the individual when you alt-F4. Other games penalise you by losing elo or time-based bans. AOE2, you lose about 15secs being the time it takes to reload the game.
Meanwhile all other people you connected and then dropped from lose their time and get hard reset in queue.
Fix:
Time-based ban for Alt-F4 drops
Re-queue people who get a game dropped on them
Let people ban all but one map in rotation. If they want to queue for 30mins to get a 1v1 BF game, then let them
hopefully the only thing people that alt f4 recive is an time out penality
as it stands and as it should stand that the ranked enviroment is a trial if usage of every map and not just one and that people who dc should be able to reconnect. Aswell as people who forcefully ruin fun with alt f4 should be penalized
We have explained why you cant do this. Basicly you end up with players in a que unable to play each other because niether has an available map. Also this is the ranked que a competitive que ask for map choice on quick play.