i am not sure but i think it happens often in 1650 and below
Hmmm maybe I have seriously bad luck then?.. as for being a lower elo problem, I’m not sure about that, my experience is from 2.5k team games.
My experience is in the median ELO 1v1 ladder. It sounds plausible that it’s a bigger problem in the team game ladder.
Ahh, yeah ok. I don’t think 1v1 has this issue, its much easier to match with just one player who has the same favourited map as yourself.
The problem is that there is not enough diversity in maps and letting vote the mappool (with heavy bias and restriction) doesnt guarantee that. In fact, the current system is very open for trolling and cheating with fake accounts and it reaches just for the part of the community making an forum account just to vote every two weeks, which is so often that nobody cares.
Matchmaking shouldnt have a rotating mappool. Just seven very standard maps like we had in July, a diverse mappool everyone is basically happy with and ensures that there is always overlap on a decent map for both players. Seven maps that we basically have every mixed map tournament like Arena, Arabia, Islands, Four Lakes, Golden Pit, Hideout, Acropolis.
But in addition to that, there should be the option to replace certain maps with your own choice of maps you want to add to the mappool. I hate water maps and like open maps: I ban Islands and Cross and put Serengeti and Valley into it and hope I find other players with those maps in their pool as well. And if you want to play Nile Delta then you can also try to find an opponent with that but most likely you play on a totally fine standard map. With 4 maps of the standard mappool everyone should be fine with at least. And what I add to my semi-global, semi-individualized mappool is my choice and can depend also on what I want to train or play at the moment.
I really dont see the necessity for a global democratic poll every fortnite that forces on every player on the community to play what the majority has decided. Just because it is called democratic it is not good and what maps you play should be up to the two players/teams playing.
If developers want to motivate the community to try out new maps then they could implement new events or adjust some janky mapscripts and make such maps more attractive to be chosen by players. There is more room for creativity than just decide that a more than questionable map is fixed in the mappool before anyone of the community could agree or disagree on.
What also would help reducing the BM in the ladder and the annoyance and hatred in the community to change the prefered map system a bit. I think the prefered map system should only be: You share the same prefered map, ok you gotta play that ofc. And if not than they will play a random overlapping unbanned map of the mappool. Very easy. Currently you play if both prefered maps are unbanned, always one of both, which leads that when one player has a very common map like Arabia banned can cheese the system to always play on his very niche map.
The most important thing about matchmaking is that both parties can agree on playing on an overlapping homemap. And also agree to play and try a map that is not their homemap and give it a honest try and not just resign before feudal age or leave the queue. That destroys matchmaking at its core when people leave the queue and dont get punished. But with very controversial maps in the pool this behaviour is ofc amplified, which is unnecessary and dangerous.
Can we have a map pool like this one?
Add Coastal
, Continental
, Golden Swamp
, Rivers
, and Scandinavia
in, and then I am fine with this list!
Give everyone unlimited bans & preferences, and make them only applied when all players have the same seletions. e.g. If someone’s ban is another’s preference, the effect of ban & preference will be nullified!
For you to match with every player and not sit in queue until infinity there should be: 2*bans+1= maps
I can live with 9 maps 4 bans as well but I prefer the current graphical representation. Unlimited maps could be a bit too much to be added and doesnt really help with matching. There should be some prechoice made by the player and not only all maps he doesnt hate are in the pool. Could be too much.
Regarding your maps I’d say that these 5 maps you can easily add to your additional mappool with space of 3 maps. You just gotta decide if you want to play Coastal or Continental that day or Rivers or Scandinavia 
But for a general mappool I wouldnt say those are spefically valid except maybe Golden Swamp.
ELO is metric to track general skill, it relies on having a large enough sample size of games played in order to be accurate, its goal is to match you up against similarly skilled players for the most even games, splitting ELO on map/civ boundaries would make this difficult if not impossible for anyone but those playing the most popular land maps, due to lack of sample size.
Fair games are less likely to happen if my land ELO is 1300 and my water ELO is 1000, because even though they are different map types it is not such a drastic difference to warrant and entirely separate metric. Noobs can’t have enjoyable games on water maps if they get matched up against someone whose land map ELO is vastly higher than theirs but it wasn’t looked at by the matchmaking system, I think the same applies to closed vs open maps.
To give an extreme example, what do you think TheViper’s water map ELO would be compared to his land map ELO? it’s probably pretty similar, because TheViper is a well-rounded player, but if only 5-10% of his games are on water maps, chances are the actual number the Elo system is tracking has not actually caught up to his skill level and might be in the 15-1700 range simply due to lack of games on that map type. This problem becomes worse if you split it by civ.
SC2 has different ELOs per faction, but they only have 3 factions total, they play so differently that having a main faction is common and expected, it works for them because there really aren’t that many combinations to consider, AoE3 might be able to get away with a similar system, since maining civilizations is common there as well.
For contrast, Dota 2 has over 100+ vastly different heroes, but each player has a single rating to measure their overall skill, while individual hero performance is tracked, it is not used for matchmaking, likely because it would be wildly inaccurate when it comes to heroes you don’t play often, but foundational game knowledge goes a long way, the same is true for AoE2.
This is a discussion, not an argument, I don’t think I’m being aggressive when I make my points, I simply ask players to be a little more introspective when it comes to identifying their losses, as opposed to blaming a system that, quite frankly, works just fine.
Your idea is perfect, let everyone play on his favourite map and style. BUT! This would divide the player base, which would result in an even longer queue time. There is simply not enough players for this. Unfortunately this would only work if this would be the most popular game in the world.
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While i agree with you that tracking elo by civ leads to both, inaccuracies and is pretty pointless, i disagree with the maps.
if you split maps in categories open land, closed land, water, nomad then you would just have 4 categories.
I think that would be reasonable (maybe not necessary, but doable without much problems). If Viper rarely plays water maps his water elo wont be accurate, but it also will rarely affect other people.
But yeah this whole discussion comes down to a lack of players. I think nobody would oppose all those queues if we had infinite players. Unfortunately we dont have, and personally i belief the current system is the best we can get for picks. Only change that i would make is, to reduce the chance of the map being the opponents favourite to 50% even if i did not pick a favourite.
And, well i think you could add elo for map type behind the scenes without creating a seperate queue. You can put the starting elo there to your general elo. Such as: you currently have 1600 elo, the first match on a water map starts at 1600 and adjusts from there
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Exactly, you don’t need seperate mappools to calculate elo on open/closed/hybrid ladders.
This could be beneficial in addition to an opt-in system, with no bans and no preferred selection.
This could satisfy every point OP makes.
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I don’t know where this believe comes from we have over 1000 ongoing online matches right (300~ 1v1 300~ TG 7 1v1 DM rest unranked) now. The 2-5 min long queue times come from the system trying to get a very close Elo opponent from your region to minimize lag. If you increase the acceptable Elo difference or Ping you could have shorter average queue times with my system without sacrificing much.
It’s not like a 1400 Islands and 1400 Arabia specialist have closer games then a 1350 and 1400 Arabia player.