Dear Age of Empires IV Team,
English is not my native language, so there may be minor translation errors in this message.
Since Season 7, I have consistently been a Conqueror III or higher player in Team Ranked. I have finished two seasons within the global top 100 and have also reached a top-100 rating many times during various seasons.
Over the past few seasons, I have increasingly encountered teams that use deliberately deranked, extremely low-rated accounts to manipulate the matchmaking system. These low-rated accounts are controlled by much stronger players who intentionally lose consecutive matches to keep their ratings artificially low. They then team up with high-rated accounts to reduce the team’s average rating.
For example, two players with ratings of around 2,000 can team up with two accounts rated around 400, even though the actual skill levels of those 400-rated accounts are much higher. This creates an average team rating of approximately 1,200, allowing them to be matched against players whose average rating is genuinely around 1,200.
Because there are relatively few players at higher ratings, high-ranked players are especially likely to be matched against teams using this method. Every victory against such a team is extremely difficult, yet because of the large rating difference, the winning team receives only a very small number of points. On the other hand, losing even one match against them can result in a significant rating loss.
This does not create a fair or healthy competitive environment. In addition, while these accounts are intentionally losing matches to lower their ratings, they also negatively affect the experience of many other players at different rating levels.
I hope Team Ranked can introduce restrictions on the rating difference between the highest-rated and lowest-rated players in a party. For example, the maximum rating difference within a party could be limited to 300 points. This would already be a very lenient restriction.
Players rated above 1,800 could follow an additional rule and be prevented from forming a party with players rated below 1,600. A system like this would significantly improve the competitive environment at higher rating levels and reduce deliberate rating manipulation.
Thank you for taking the time to read my feedback. I sincerely hope the development team will consider this suggestion.
Best regards,
A dedicated Team Ranked player