haven’t had a close game yet. I either crush them or they crush me. feels like a huge waste of time when its not competative. fix your ■■■■
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because there is a huge lack of players. Just check the stats
I feel the same even in quick match… a lot of Chinese players in the last weeks. Not enough players, because the game is dying slowly
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There is a lack of player at some hours
Plus in ranked, I believe it uses elo for matchmaking and trueskill for win/lose of ranked point, leading to a weird distribution of points.
You will very rarely find in a resource based player vs player game, a match that is “fair”. High skill, low skill, random marchmaking, it doesnt matter. By the very nature of the game’s structure, if one player gains an advantage and the player knows how to push that advantage, it is very difficult for the other play to fight back without a major mistake occuring.
Games like Rocket League tend to avoid this issue by creating a system where each step towards the final victory does not in themselves give the scoring player a further advantage. One point is one point, and no other boost are given
If in AoE4 I distrupt the enemy gold income, this would be psuedo-equivalent to 1 point in RL, I am one step closer towards victory.
But this also propels me further ahead than just “a single point” because now I can “get more points” with my gold income advantage more easily and it becomes harder for them to catch up in “points”.
This creates that feeling of “stompy” games. One of the only ways to actively remedy this on the developer side is to add a “comeback” mechanic where if you capitalize on a mistake as the losing player, you get an extra boost to even things out.
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It’s also a function of game duration and player count, in that shorter games allow people to queue more frequently, and combined with a high player count, you get games where opponents are closer in ELO. I’m not saying that to suggest that AoE games should be made shorter, just trying to promote understanding and acceptance that there are some reasons why matchmaking is inevitably often going to have to match people who aren’t that close in skill, unless queue times are made longer.
However, I’m still not 100% convinced that not showing the score during ranked games is the best decision. I totally accept that it’s an artificial source of information that should be hidden for realism. There are also issues with how the score is calculated. But if we assume that the score could be a reliable indicator of who is ahead, it could help people to decide to surrender earlier by making it clearer that the game is lost. This would reduce game durations and improve matchmaking quality as a result. I would also enjoy watching streamers play the game more if the score were visible.
I think showing the scores takes away some of the skill from players. Learning how to get a sense for how far ahead/behind you are is a skill that is cultivated over time.
It would be like removing the need to build houses. Sure, it’d be nice, but does it actually improve the game?
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As others have said, it is because this game is dying. It fell off hard because they spent way too much effort trying to turn this game into an e-sports hyper competitive scene (among other reasons). By the time ranked came in, most people already realised it wasn’t worth the hassle and had abandoned ship back to AoE2. Such a magnificent game at launch ruined by lack of communication and having the wrong priorities. But at least they’ll still have a tournament, right?
Good Comment.
I always get a giggle out of watching streamers check the worker production graph and do the little cursor circle around the graph break. Although quality information sharing is normally always nonexistent in a competitive game at a high level, I’ve always wondered how many different versions of context that graph means to the player base. To understand where the “points” are scored.
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Agreed. TBH, I wish they removed age up notifications as well. The more information that’s provided by divine guidance to the player, the more scouting information is given for free.
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That’s something i asked for early in th beta!! And it’s something i appreciate about China, reaching dynasties isn’t telegraphed with a notification so they have to scout!!
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30k players on ranked are lack of player lol? dont bring BS to the table .
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It’s inflated number, smurfs, player that played only for rewards. Real ranked population of ranked enjoyers will be at least 5 - 10k less. And its still very bad as most popular mods have 36k+ subscribers, which makes modded games more popular then ranked…
hmm , i know that you made the “Advanced Game setting” mod so in the mod part im sure you are right .
5-10k are still a good number for a ranked pool . You are not going to face the same oponent twice i think.
Unless you are top 500, chance for that to happen is very low. Due to how matchmaking works its very unlikely to happen. After you finish game your and opponent ELO has bigger gap then before, which leads to lower chance as you are matched with players closer to your new ELO…
Not going to argue with that 
I play the same ppl and I’m not top 500. Mostly bc even aftrr you lose vs a dude that dude (unless he’s a high ranking player on a smurf) will face someone else and lose and return right back to facing the likes of you later.
I just wish I could win a 1v1
I find that the matchmaking works excellent for 1v1. Almost every match is against an opponent that is about the same skill level as I am.
I think the uneven experience comes down to counter-strat instead of skill. Basically one player chooses greed (2 TC boom in Feudal) while the other chooses to do a feudal all-in. The player that do the all-in will typically roll over the greedy player.
If the greedy player stayed on 1 TC and built military units non-stop until he scouted that the opponent was not doing an all-in, the match would be much more even.
So the uneven experience is more often the result of not scouting, and not changing your strategy based on what the opponent does, than a large skill difference between the players.
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Any tips for 1v1???
I couldn’t agree more.
To many players play this as if it was SC1:Broodwars or SC2.
As long time SC1 player, I see this trend a lot. And BeastyQT also talks about this issue, that in SC, you tend to just stick to 1 strategy and unit builds. rather than changing it completely. You play around the Unit type and how you use it. Rather than changing your strategy to counter the opponents. As games such as SC is to fast pace allowing you to rebuild your compositions completely.
The General amount of people are very competative-minded, so they compare skill rather than strategy. Where they match skill in microing, apm and how well you control your production spam ,facing things head-on, rather than macroing, scouting and planning a strategy.
One of the main reason I enjoy Mongol’s so much in this game is simply because I can play it almost exactly like a Mongol realistically.
Utilizing false retreat to pull french knight blobs into a spear/xbow ambush and so forth.
And opponent simply doesn’t stop producing knights, when starting to go archers and mangonels would be a far better counter towards what I’m doing.
Alternativly against English, splitting their Longbows away from their spears, allowing my horsemen to attack their strælboras, and using my mangudai to deal with spears whenever they turn around to protect their strælboras. Which by then i retreat my horsemen.
Alternativly, rotate raiding between horsemen and mangudais in their base. Running through killing vills with Mangudai until english army starts chasing, and then run in with horsemen Bruning their farms and houses with horsemen, forcing their army to cancel any counter-attack or chasing after my mangudais. and just do a sort of giant circle applying constant pressure.
And maybe it also has Time-frame. I’m based in EU and whenever I play in convenient EU time, I never have issues with matchmaking.
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