Make a separate ranking for Custom Games

NOTE: I am not asking for quickmatch to be removed. I think quickmatch is great for 1v1.

Problem:
Ranked has been stripped from custom games.

The reason this is a problem:
A) Obviously a lot of players are going to abuse this and farm wins against noobs

B) 3v3 players want to be able to:

  1. Make the teams fair. E.G.two Port/Japan players on the same team is an instant loss in 2v2/3v3 situations against competitive players.
  2. Customise the map: Most of the maps have food far away from the TC, which encourages rushing. Only certain factions are good at rushing(otto, india, russia). This means for competitive ranked you HAVE to play a faction which can rush or hunt villagers with hussars. There is no counter to this strategy; there is a ‘age 2’ meta which has no work-around on most maps.

C) The ‘No rush’ crowd (very different from the 3v3 crowd) are annoyed they now can’t see ranks and make fair teams…(they can’t even play quickmatch, they used to make up a good 20% of the community).

D) Quickmatch has a lot of maps which are uncompetitive for most factions in 3v3; The main reason people loved Deccan is factions like Port, Dutch, France, Spain, China actually had a chance.
To elaborate, most maps(remain after their balance changes) have food wayyy too far away from TC, this means as the game gets longer, villagers have to go too far out to get food and suceptible to villager hunting. To avoid this players rush the opponent on most maps.

E) We can no longer avoid ‘problematic’ players from the lobby. We can no longer avoid racist/BPD/rude players. Furthermore we can no longer avoid the inevitible cheaters which will come into the game; after the money dries up in a few years and there’s nobody to mod this game since it’s made by a indie studio, we need players to have a degree of authority which custom games offered.

F) There is now no MMR punishment for leaving custom games whenever you want.

Solutions:
A) Add ranks back to custom games.
B) Add in ‘must be X rank to join y lobby’ option. This will prevent players joining the wrong lobbies!

Arguments against this:
Q: You shouldn’t be able to see your opponents civs ahead of time.
A: In 95% of ms+ or lt+ lobbies the teams would be random, so you can’t predict. You would only split double factions, e.g. double port.

Q: Leads to Stat Padding
A: People are going to smurf in quickmatch the same amount
A2: You could hardcode in ‘can only increase by max X mmr per match’ to counter this anyway.

Q: Quickmatch makes the game more competitive.
A: It does for 1v1 AND a small minority(mainly new) players which don’t mind the dull/repetitive meta of age 2 otto/india/russia/rushing or hussar/sioux villager hunting.
A2: The real competitive part of aoe3 for most people was 3v3 Deccan or GP, either of which we can’t solely search for now!

Q: People don’t want to play 20min games!
A: In LT+ or even MS+ games, I would say a good 80% of the time people still rushed but the great thing is you could counter with walling/turtle or just having really good timings against their rush. This made all the factions competitive except maybe Spain and Inroquis. Lead to really fun and dynamic games with lots of variation.

Q: Treaty sucks, they should just ‘get gud’
A: I never played treaty, but why should anyone tell people how to enjoy the game! :slight_smile:

Q: Ranked custom games will lead to people getting kicked.
A: Add in ‘must be X rank to join y lobby’ option

Q: Why make Custom games Ranked, I want to play casual
A: Sure, Add a ‘unranked’ opion when hosting a game!
A2: I know for certain a lot of people will enjoy being able to abuse a lack of MMR in any game, so be careful what you wish for!

Context from old aoe3 multiplayer: (rough estimations!)
Around 20% of players play 1v1. (maybe more, I hear some played on the ESOC patch)
Around 20% of players play NR/Treaty(No rush)
Around 20% of the players play 2v2.
Around 40% of the players played 3v3.

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13 posts were merged into an existing topic: Display Rating/ELO/UnrankedELO In Lobby