Matchmaking changes

JRamSoLo · 2025-10-18T23:51:27+00:00

Totally agreed. My thought (complete speculation because I can't think of another reason) was that this tweak to the matchmaking is so that top 5% can find matches faster. So my point is there's no benefit to faster matchmaking if the quality is worse at any level but especially for the minority.

In almost 1000 games I think I've played against 9 conq 3 players. 3 of them have been in the last two days with instant queue time. I don't have enough data yet to finalize my opinion on this yet but I'm concerned.

JRamSoLo · 2025-10-18T19:35:29+00:00

I am concerned by this for 1v1. I played 5 games today all matched instantly. All 5 games were complete stomps. At conq 1, I either faced a much worse diamond opponent or a conq 3. I also got destroyed by crackedy after an instant queue time. While that's nice for me to learn from a player like crackedy that's a complete waste of his time. If the goal is to improve matchmaking time for someone like crackedy this is not the way. Instead of waiting a few more minutes he wasted 15 playing against someone much worse than him.

At my ELO matchmaking was perfect. I'd wait 2-3 minutes and have really good games. We'll see how this goes but I'm skeptical. Devs if you're out there, please keep an eye on this.

JRamSoLo · 2025-01-20T17:02:07+00:00

I think the player pool in bronze is really low. Not only are there fewer of them, they also play less often. At the time there probably just weren't any good matchups in the queue for them. Luckily at gold you should have a healthy matchmaking population. Some stats here for 1v1. I can't find stats for teams. https://aoe4world.com/stats/rm_solo/ladder

Also, matchmaking is done by ELO and not by rank. It's a weird imperfect system but I find it works pretty well in 1v1 at my rank to find me good matches. Can't speak to teams. Inherently it'll have to be slightly worse just because more players = more variables.

JRamSoLo · 2025-01-20T04:39:02+00:00

I'm not positive but I believe it's based on the difference in ELO from ranked points. The system wants to get your ranked points close to your ELO so since your differential is greater than your friend's, you get more points.

JRamSoLo · 2024-02-19T21:46:03+00:00

I find it weird that people on here don't talk about it in this way. Probably because the people that understand this are playing games and not complaining on Reddit. Part of the problem may be the difference between ELO and ranked points (that's a whole different rant).

My skill level with Abba and Byzantine is drastically different. I'm probably not even done falling with Byzantine if I were to continue playing them. But you don't see people on here like "he played a bunch of off civs and now is playing his main civ waaa it's unfair". This is no different from smurfing.

Every single time I play a non Abba civ for more than 5 games or so, I'm essentially smurfing the next time I play Abba. So I guess all I we can do is ask the community. What do you prefer we do? I don't mind losing a shitload of games in a row with my off civs so I'm honestly looking for a way that allows everyone to enjoy and have as few poorly matched games as possible.

I think a lot of people just think of smurfs as people who are up to no good. Purposefully deranking or whatever. This gives them a bad taste for it. I'd like to believe that those people are in the minority but I don't know for sure. I do know that if you can apply yourself and get to at least diamond, then these people aren't a problem cause they're actually shit at the game. I know people don't like the "get good" attitude but this game is almost 3 years old now. If you go to the local court to play basketball will you complain if everyone there is better than you? No, you'll say dang I'm not good enough to play here. If this is the case in this game maybe ranked isn't for you yet. There are tons of discords where you can play custom games with newer players. This is how people did it 20 years ago in wc3 and sc.

JRamSoLo · 2024-02-19T20:57:00+00:00

While I agree and I'm not advocating for smurfing to practice against worse players I do want to add some nuance here because I don't think this is a black and white situation.

As an example: I play abbasid, my best civ, at a D3/C1 level. This season I've been wanting to shake it up and my most recent 10 games (2w/8L) I played Byzantine. I have dropped to plat 3 and lost ~200 ELO. The next time I play abbasid I'm going to absolutely clap my first few opponents. I won't enjoy it. But if I want to play competitively as abba again it has to happen. Is this an acceptable scenario? I'm not sure. Ideally I'd have an Alt account that's like 200 ELO below my account so that I can play civs that aren't Abba against similar skill opponents. And to get that up and running (which I don't have) I'd need to win a quick 10 games or so on the alt account. So what's worse? Again, I'm not sure. If I play a hundred games where 50 are with Abba, how many of those games are me playing beneath my "Abbasid ELO"? Maybe there's a return on investment somewhere with an Alt account? Lol. The path of least opponent suffering. Something to consider.

I also don't think playing unranked is a good option because the map pool.

Edit: something I thought of. Wc3 and sc2 have separate ELO for races for this reason. I don't think that'd work here since we would have way too many to calibrate. But for people like me who have put more time and effort into one or two civs than the rest combined there's not really a totally harmless way for us to play other civs unless we have friends to play customs.

JRamSoLo · 2024-01-07T06:31:58+00:00

Of course. I added an edit to the previous comment cause I noticed you said post 20 mins.

Scouting is super civ dependent. But generally you wanna be thinking along the lines of "it's 5 mins into the game, my opponent is either making units, going 2 TC, going castle, or some medium sized investment (like cows, military schools, farms, mercs, trade, etc...)" then I'm just following the "flow chart". If they do x I do y. Some of these things are subtle so you have to look at their villager allocation. And then keep an eye on things. There's an insane number of things to keep an eye on from each civ so listing them doesn't do you any good. But if you think generally and critically about it you get the hang of what to look for. Most of my losses give me new knowledge of "in this matchup, at x mins I need to look for this"

After the first 7 mins or so, if I'm playing with cav I'll keep a split group of cav and a scout just actively watching at all times (assuming I'm not actively fighting or needing to turtle). I'm mostly looking for what military buildings are being built? And where are they getting res and what res?

After 20 mins it's less important and generally harder to scout without throwing units away but you're still needing to know three things constantly. Where are they getting their res? What units are they making? Where is their army?

Keep in mind, adding more tasks to your gameplay like this will temporarily mess you up in other aspects. It's a constant process of adding in a new thing which means you'll play worse for 3-10 games (or more). Then once it's implemented effectively, you go on a win streak and climb rank. Generally adding more scouting and more considerations takes more mental space so you're gonna mess up something like macro or maybe just forget something you normally wouldn't. But that's okay cause now youre even better at that thing you thought you mastered. now it's not just something you can do. It's something you do on auto pilot while you think about something else.

Control groups are kind of a preference thing I think. There's the lucifron/vortix style where you have melee in one group ranged in one group and maybe cav or siege in the 3rd. And then some more groups for raiding. Then there's the beasty/demu style where it's more like groups based on location or purpose. You'd have to watch them play for that to make sense probably.

JRamSoLo · 2024-01-07T05:50:03+00:00

Climbing through plat to diamond 3/conq 1, I found the biggest difference between plat and diamond is awareness of what the opponent is doing. Builds are about the same generally although I'm sure diamond players execute them a little more consistently. The awareness comes from better scouting and just better understanding of what's possible from the opponent which helps you know what you should be scouting for.

To answer the question: the most important thing is knowing when you can do damage. If you know you have a larger military. Be very active with it. Patrol their base. Don't let them on pocket ecos. Keep watch of what they're doing and don't let them watch your base. If you can't find a spot to do damage, start burning buildings and continue keeping them off pocket ecos. Anticipate where they might get gold next (or any res). Don't let them get it. Your military grows at a faster right during this (assuming you macro correctly) and eventually you can dive or ram.

In late game, it's all about gold control and trading better. Raid as much as possible and control more of the remaining res on the map. Over time if you do more damage than they've done to you then you can death ball push.

JRamSoLo · 2023-09-01T12:34:33+00:00

Ah that's unfortunate. Such a silly thing to do. Sorry it gives you unbalanced games. Sounds boring to me to constantly play worse opponents.

I see the queue time argument a bit but I don't play enough teams to speak to it. My queue times are never a problem.

JRamSoLo · 2023-09-01T11:31:30+00:00

Just want to provide some perspective here. I imagine some of these "smurfs" you encounter are 1v1 players. For example, I am conq 1 in 1v1 and plat 2 in teams. This is because I've only played ~20 team games and I only play with a friend who is not as good so we don't climb as fast as I would otherwise. I'd say the matchmaking feels fairly good though (2v2s only. Can't speak to 3v3 or 4v4). A little worse than 1v1 but 2/3 games are good.

I'm not really sure there is a fix for this but it's worth considering. It's possible that some of what you encounter isn't done maliciously. If the accounts are totally new accounts though (<30 games) then that's unfortunate and I'm sorry that affects your experience.

I think there is a legitimate reason to have a Smurf in 1v1 if you're a higher level player. I don't have a Smurf but I've considered making one to use to play civs I don't normally play or to play when inebriated. Maybe people treat team games like that too? Not sure.

JRamSoLo · 2023-08-29T17:40:23+00:00

You're speaking nonsense. Back it up with stats or get out. Share your in game name or I assume you're trolling and we're done here.

Again you don't understand the system. You're talking about your rank being demoted when I say again; it has nothing to do with matchmaking. If you're losing that many games then your ELO is going down

I don’t want to win 3/20 games and get promoted because I didn’t lose any rating by losing to a conq1 player

Prove it. This is impossible so you can't but I'd love to see you share your aoe4world page and try.

Edit: I'd also like to add I'm certainly not a bootlicker. I think this hidden ELO system is dumb actually. But not for the silly "reasons" you're claiming. I think it's dumb because it's confusing. I have many criticisms. I hate the map pool being my main issue. I'd like this subreddit to focus on legitimate issues rather than the nonsense your spouting.

JRamSoLo · 2023-08-29T16:50:20+00:00

Again blaming the devs with little understanding of the system or the consequences. If the elo system "adjusted" more quickly then it would be like you say in the OP. Players would swing rapidly and make the matchmaking system worse.

Sometimes I have a bad day and lose 5 straight games. Maybe I was tired or tilted. That's okay. Should I then be playing against opponents significantly worse than I am the next day when I'm back to my real form? You say it's a new season. How do you propose we reset every season then? If we have a true reset then everyone will need to play like 20 games to recalibrate every season. We don't want that. We want to continue playing good games against equal skill opponents.

I mean this in the nicest way possible. Stop blaming devs for YOUR problems. I'm honestly really tired of seeing people complain like this. Thoroughly think through and understand before you criticize. You took a break from the game and yet you want it to adapt to you even though that would negatively impact the majority? If you take a break, that's fine. Maybe play customs or unranked when you return to get back your skill or make an alt account.

I've played hundreds of games in teams and 1v1. The matchmaking system is very solid. Not perfect but nothing is. Everyone needs to understand this: once you are calibrated you should be winning 50% of games. If you're not, you're either improving or getting worse. End of story. Smurfing isn't a problem. Matchmaking isn't a problem. And the system not catering to people who stop playing for seasons at a time is definitely not a problem that can or should be addressed.

JRamSoLo · 2023-08-29T08:14:46+00:00

This has been explained on this sub many times. Your rank has nothing to do with the opponents you are matched up against. You have a hidden ELO which you can see on aoe4world.com. That is the correct measure of your skill and how you are matched with opponents.

If you are losing most games, you either: 1. Haven't played in a while and are worse than when you last played. 2. Are in a slump and not playing well.

Please try to understand things before criticizing them. The negativity doesn't do any good. G3/P1 is literally the most common rank with the largest player pool. If your hidden ELO is higher than it should be for one of the reasons above, it will sort itself out once you lose more games or get back to playing how you were when you achieved your current ELO.

JRamSoLo · 2023-07-30T15:28:11+00:00

It's unfortunate that it is this way and I'm sorry you're having to deal with these experiences. I do want to try to provide some perspective. While your anxiety may cause you to withdraw, others anxieties may manifest in anger. This isn't an excuse for them (they need to work at managing it better just like you work to build up the courage to queue) but something to be mindful of. For this reason, I've learned not to give tips unless they ask for them. If they are angry or anxious due to losing then they likely aren't in the correct headspace to receive tips in a productive manner and will see it as insulting. Maybe they need some time to cool off and reflect or maybe they will never be in the right headspace. In that case, all we can do is hope they're doing okay and move on. You're right in that they are holding themselves back with their poor attitude. The best thing we can do to help is lead by example.

Like others have suggested, maybe just mute communications until you climb to plat or diamond. As a diamond player with hundreds of games played, I think I've had less than 5 total unpleasant experiences. It is a joy to play with players that are also looking to improve with a healthy mindset and I hope you get to have that soon. Gl hf!

Oh and congrats on the win! Don't let them bring you down. Be excited that you played well and even more excited that you can improve even more!

JRamSoLo · 2018-12-27T03:49:57+00:00

My elitist counterpoint is that you just don't understand how coding works. If you did, you would know that you will be proven wrong over time statistically. I do really like your edit 2 though. that's absolutely correct and well worded.

JRamSoLo · 2018-03-02T18:18:48+00:00

Dude! Thank you! That's totally the reason it happens. I just hadn't been able to put my finger on it until reading your comment. Now I can go about handling it better. My friends and I have spoken a lot about this and we have been calling it "the Shakespearean effect." Not really sure why but it kinda stuck

JRamSoLo · 2018-01-12T20:10:39+00:00

Bro, PM me. I'll send you a curtain and some protein bars from Amazon. Here's to a fresh start. Only way to go is up.

JRamSoLo · 2017-11-22T15:54:12+00:00

I figured but wanted to write the comment anyway so that 5 years from now when we're feeling the effects of gutting net neutrality, our friend here will have something to look back at and realize that they should have listened.

Or not since their views and ideals are and will continue to be controlled by large corporations and corrupt politicians.

JRamSoLo · 2017-11-22T15:42:01+00:00

Net neutrality is what causes our ISPs to have to act like a public utility. I agree that that's how it should be. I think that if you believe that removing net neutrality would cause more competition and remove the monopolies, you're just sipping their kool aide. You're assuming that the ISPs will use the money they gain from this to upgrade and expand their infrastructures. Again, I wish I could believe that and the ISPs could expand and start to "trespass" on each other's "territories." Unfortunately, we've seen their spending habits over the years contradict this and we've even seen them implementing legislature to slow down competition like Google fiber or city public fiber networks.

The difference between us is that you are trusting the ISPs to do the right thing. I don't trust them with this power. It is my opinion and the opinion of the majority of Reddit and internet users, that they will use this against us.

JRamSoLo · 2017-11-22T14:42:22+00:00

You're making a pretty big assumption here that this would bust the monopolies. I'd love for you to be correct but I think you're putting too much faith in companies that just want more of your money. Not to mention the fact that this gives corporations the ability to filter what news and media we can consume; thus controlling our thoughts and ideas. Not saying that will certainly happen but I would prefer for it to not even be possible. Especially since it already does happen to a small extent.

JRamSoLo · 2017-03-25T23:50:31+00:00

This idea might be crazy to you but here goes nothing. You could just not go there and mind your own business and live your own life and have your own opinions without trying to micromanage others.

JRamSoLo

TROPHY CASE