The recent addition of the “favourite” function and regular mappool updates have been an improvement but have brought some new problems to the game.
Many games get decided before the game even starts
What do I mean with this? Well I am pretty good on water maps so I always favourite the water map in the mappol. Great what’s the problem? Well I don’t always get to play my map because sometimes my opponent bans it, so my Elo Rating is inflated compared to other players on Land maps and the opposite is true on water maps so the number of close games has gone down.
“Arabia only”
A lot of people have set Arabia or Arena as there home map witch is fine but I like to play a more diverse set of maps so I have 2 choices, ban Arabia and Arena or play 85% of my games on these maps.
Small number of maps in the Mappool
There used to be 9 maps now there are 7, I don’t know why but I hate it. The repetition of the favourite system doesn’t help here and sometimes there is multiple maps with very similar gameplay (Valley Arabia Cenotes for example) reducing variate even more.
Voting every 14 days is to much
I like having a changing mappool (especially when it is this small) but having to vote all the time gets people disinterested (at least it does for me) I would much rather have a bigger mappool and only vote once a month.
How can we fix these problems without introducing new problems for Arabia/Arena only players? Well here is my Idea A pool of Mappools (minus the bad image editing)
This would give players that like to play 1 style of map more control over there maps while also increasing the available numbers of maps for people like me that like to play on a bigger set of maps.
This would also allow for separate Elo systems for different kind of maps just like we have for DM and RM giving us more close games across all map types.
The only problem with your idea is that you’ve taken the 4 queues we have now (1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4) and turned them into 24 separate queues.
I guarantee you that more than half of these queues would be dead on arrival from lack of players, any games that take place on anything but the most populated queues would likely be unbalanced, since there are less people to choose from you are not as likely to get someone near you rating.
You’ve also not taken into account Deathmatch, which maps are available for that queue? or do we need to bring our grand total of queues to 48 in order to accommodate that side of the community?
You can sign up for multiple queues when looking for a game and I would use the same mapools for 1v1, Team game and Deathmatch or maybe make an extra pool for death match and combine Water and Mixed maps. But yes if you are only looking for Water/Arena Style maps you will have to wait longer if you want to play Arabia or DM it should not change much at all.
This should not be a problem for players in the 800-1300 Elo range since there are lot’s of people there and for a 1400 player like me that likes to mix many map types it would also change nothing. If you are not average rated and only like 1 style of map you wait longer but you get to play the maps you like.
You can do all of those things with the current system as well, which has the additional advantage of only splitting players across how many players they’d like in their game.
As far as signing up for multiple queues, this wouldn’t work as nicely as you might think, given that the queue will put you into the best matching game as quickly as it can, chances are that the game it will find first will be in the queue with the most populated players.
If you queue up for both Open Maps and Closed Maps, you would expect to have a 50/50 shot of landing each one, but if 85% of the community is queueing up for Open Maps, you’re far more likely to find a game there than in the Closed Maps pool.
The above example is exacerbated when you add as many queues as you suggest here, it only moves your current problem of playing 85% of your games on Arabia to playing 85% of your games on whichever map pool you join that has the most available players for you to match with.
This is without mentioning that your proposed system would presumably not have a “favorite map” option, meaning everyone queueing up for Open Land maps only really wanting Arabia would go back to bitching for that feature to come back, and all you’ve ultimately done is make the ranked system more convoluted and confusing for the average player to use.
There is no reason to remove the favourite system in my proposal, The matchmaking system also tries to match up people that have waited longer so if you join and have Open and Water Maps selected this would somewhat counter the open map bias. But I don’t disagree that my system isn’t perfect an alternative is to just put 28 maps in the currant system and just giving people lots of bans and one or more favourite maps, this would not fix the “Elo gap” of Arena specialists against Arabia specialists on a open land map or the other way around and still lead to some unbalanced games.
And this is what tons of people have recommended already…
All of this was very well said
Because devs are lazy and decided somehow one elo value represents every 1v1 match up conceivable and even more ridiculous that one elo value represents every TG match up conceivable… Therein lies the root of the problem. Until that is resolved there is no easy way to balance these map pools
Realistically there should be at minimum an elo for random civ and picked civs. In a perfect world there would at least be an elo for each civ or match type (ie water maps/open maps/closed maps) so even if you went into the same queue as always, you would be matched according to your rightful elo depending on the actual map /civ…
Other games do it. AOE can sure as Heck try harder…
You’re idea is good but it would not work as nicely as you think.
For example, water map is played by only 1-2% of the player, and “water map” map pool likely dead for the lack of player. Your system looks like people who have preference on some minor map (such as water map/mixed map) end up just playing 85% (or more) of Arabia because they cannot wait to matchmaking in their favorite map pool.
The current system is much better because people who have preference in minor map they just can ban Arabia/Arena and they have more chance to get their map. Your suggestion is much better for people who only want to play Arabia.
I am one of these Water map players. The realty is that in the currant system many people just Alt F4 on the Civ selection screen, give up minute 1 or just don’t know how to play water and lose in Feudal Age so the games aren’t very fun.
Measuring skill by civs and maps is not very accurate, having a separate ELO for civ/map would suggest that these are entirely different games, I am not great on water maps but being 1300 on land maps would suggest I could probably beat a 1k player on water maps when it came down to it, but that’s probably what my water map ELO would be since I don’t normally play them, it would create more unbalanced matches on anything but your most played map.
There is a lot of skill that is fundamental and very transferable between maps/civs, I personally think this approach is a step backwards, separate ELO for 1v1 and team games makes sense, more than that does not. You might be better at playing one civ over another, or you might perform better on land maps vs water, but I highly doubt that this has an impact on your overall skill in the long term.
Ultimately I think that everyone in this thread is trying to fix a problem that doesn’t really exist. If you normally underperform when a water map comes up, you should take this as a signal that you should work to improve your play on water maps so that you have better chances of winning when you get matched up on them. If you’re not interested in doing that, that’s what your bans are for, and if you get a map rotation with too many water maps in it, tough luck, work on becoming a well-rounded player and suddenly all your matchmaking woes will disappear.
I had a similar suggestion during the last beta which was also well received by other beta participants. How this feedback got still ignored is beyond me but I fear a similar fate for your idea.
Unfortunately, lots of feedback from last beta was not implemented.
I think OP is on to something. Every game is arabia/arena irrespective of favourites/bans because some1 will dodge if its not arabia/arena, then the queue breaks and you have to restart the process all over again. I think they should add another playlist, well more specifically break up RM queue into two… One being the more standard ‘competitive’ open/agressive maps with little to no rng elements (think arabia/socotra/gold rush). The second having more unconventional/or less popular maps (water maps/megarandom/nomad etc). I feel a split something along these lines would help alot, especially considering it’l be a more meta play queue with standard build orders, unit choices etc vs more rng based, guess work build order or niche build orders etc. Another way to think of it is like how a FPS game might work or other games in general, you have a social playlist and a competitive playlist with proper comp settings. Currently on DE the only option for a more relaxed game setting is custom browser but that really doesnt hit the spot in terms of balancing, game types, setting and just ease of access. Im sure there is a much better way of doing things than this example, but I would love to see some sort of change… or maybe if they just fix the current system that would be fine also.
You just proved the rest of your own argument wrong maybe you should go have a think about what elo actually is. Your water elo should be lower than it actually is if you keep losing on water maps, not “oh you better git gud noob”. Literally the point of elo is to give a 50% win rate. So everyone has a fair game. Elo is specifically there to allow newbs to have enjoyable games along with pros in their respective match ups.
The play styles between black forest and acropolis and islands are vastly different. We’ve had many people admit they are useless on open maps but can boom and win easily on black forest due to the completely different playstyle… There’s multiple reasons why people Alt-F4.
But whatever man if you don’t want to listen to reason or proof that has existed in other games (you haven’t even bothered to consider how starcraft has different elos for each civ) im not gonna argue with you and waste my time further
