I would really like to get some insight from the AOE team regarding the current matchmaking system for team games.
Almost all of my team games are really unbalanced, or at the very least have a huge range from highest to lowest ELO. A large spread in ELO does not work in a game like AOE2, because it goes from being a game of teamwork to a game of can I solo carry hard enough, or can I die slower than the noob on the other team. These games are not even worth playing.
I have basically had to result to looking up my teammates ELO and if they are too far above or below me, I just close my game and queue up again. This is not a good experience for anyone, but it is still better than playing a game with people far above or below my skill.
I understand there isn’t a huge player base, so there is no way to always have perfectly balanced games with short queue times. But that’s not what I’m asking for. I would rather wait an hour for a good game than have the majority of my games be unbalanced (this is effectively what I am manually doing by quitting games).
IMO the best solution would be to cap the ELO range at ~200, yes this would prevent some friends from queueing up together, but that’s a sacrifice I think is 100% worth it. It would also be nice to see your team and the enemy team in the lobby in the 1 minute after matching up before the game starts. I think it would be nice to see everyone’s ELO on both sides as well (the opponents civs would, of course, remain hidden).
Please give us some insight into the current matchmaking for team games, and please let us know you are working on solutions.
P.S. The 1v1 matchmaking seems to work really well 90% of the time, so this is just about TG matchmaking (I have had issues with anything from 2v2 to 4v4).
I feel like the only way to make balanced team games would be to prevent people from queuing as a party, that way the game could attempt to balance the teams by ELO so it isn’t as one-sided. I don’t really like this idea though since it prevents people from playing ranked with friends; it’s a great solution for higher ranked players but terrible for the player base overall. Obviously, letting people queue as a party but having the game split party members anyway could lead to abuse so that isn’t an option either.
As you said, the player base being so small is the real problem. Simply just aren’t enough people at the same level as you playing at the same time.
There already is a huge problem of people leaving in the lobby once the map is shown (on nomad, especially), I feel like having ELO shown in the lobby would only add to this. Maybe in the in game loading screen (when civs are revealed) this could be fine, but there’s currently no penalty for instantly leaving ranked games.
I’m guessing you got to a point where you win a lot of full solo queue team games but get absolutely crushed by the occasional premade. This is pretty much true of any game that involves team.
Today I had a 4v4 on Gold Rush that was almost an hour long (we won because we got middle for some reason) and one of my allies ended the game with 0 units lost and 20 villagers, he was super new, like building a bunch of towers 2 tiles in a circle around his town center new. I also streamed a game two days ago on Twitch that was 4v4 Arena where one of my allies just spent the whole game team-killing with Mangonels. Funnily enough that was a pretty drawn out game that turned into a trash war and after we resigned the other team was all “wow that was a close game.” The teams were pretty imbalanced there I guess.
I wonder if there are people who abused OP Cumans to get tons of ELO and now are ranked way higher thna they should. It might be a part of the problem?
Possibly for a few, but in general for most players I doubt this is the case. From own experience, after over 70 games I’ve only came across one player that I know is better than me (a lot better) and that is Dogao (for reference, I’m arond 1900 on voobly, he is 2500+). All games seems to be quite the lottery, regardless of how long I’d be in the queue. Sometimes I’m up against players who seemingly just started their first online game, but it can also be somewhat more experienced players around. Literally the only team games I’ve lost so far (86% wr) has been due to team mates dropping in the beginning or team mates being very new to the game. Initially I thought this was simply due to myself not gotten my rating up enough, but I’m closing in on 1900 now, and the problem is exactly the same.
Fundamentally, I don’t think MM will work for team games. The player base is simply too small and when taking map preferences into account, it simply doesn’t seem possible. I believe opening up rated games in the lobby browser, atleast for team games, will solve all of these issues. The MMR could still exist.
If everyone who wants to play a team game queues up in ranked queue, it should pretty much always lead to a more balanced game more quickly (in theory) than traditional lobbies, since the system should be able to figure it all out much faster than players manually setting up lobbies and balancing teams
Sounds like a lot of us who mm solo have similar problems. I’ve played a handful of team games and about 50% of the games end up broken with someone resigning early on either side or a teammate being much lower skill and score who gets attacked early because of it and either resigns or never contributes much after that.
Sounds like we all need more friends. Add me on Steam. I’m an 1100-ish 1vs1 rm player who’s been playing since 1999. I can flush by 13 or fast castle by 16.5. Boom and attack by 32. Played over 180 ranked games of DE. And I like long walks on the beach.
-l8WpnsofKungFu
I actually don’t think they need to prevent people from queuing as a party, but they should at least make sure their ELO’s are close enough to each other. In most cases, being together in coms is not going to make your team that much stronger, unless you are actually trying really hard and you have practiced a lot with your teammates.
