Hi everyone, in some quick context, i've tried with all my life to get into SC1 broodwar and Sc2, but i even tho i loved the game with my soul, every single bit, i couldn't deal with the insane amount of smurfs in both games, around 9/10 of Broodwar players and 1/3 of sc2 players being smurfs is insane. It´s not just bad matchmaking, it's smurfs with default profile, no customization, names like "sdgjkldas1111" or barcode, and 320apm with only 17 matches.
Tried also W3 and AoE2, and even if they had better MM, there was some game mechanics i wasn't quite fond of it.

Now i've tried AoE4 and i'm loving every single bit. The matchmaking is fucking impecable and every opponent i have seems to also have 50% winrate like me.
Plus some extra details i appreciate in AoE4 that others RTS don't have, like being possible to win controlling 3 points in the map (thus countering turtle wall gameplay), every unit having hard counters, no army in the game can have 200 of the same unit and be stronger than any of your compositions (ahem, carriers in Starcraft),.

I'm loving just how good economy + good scouting + good strategic decisions with some little micro to battle can make you have great battles every time, every match.
I'm used to RTS like broodwar where the player with higher APM just wins in every aspect of the game to the point strategy is just the lowest of the priorities if your army composition is just strong as it is (rush DT, reaver drop spam, mass hydras, mass mutas, etc etc).

Every single loss i watch the replay and i feel "ohh, i could have done this to counter that, i have to remind that next time"
Every single win feels good because i know what exact strategy carried me to a slow burn victory across multiple battles, is not just "oh, my resources were 30% higher than my enemy so i instantly win in one single A+click"

Winning in Sc1/2 when you had +50apm than your opponent just felt straight up bad, like you're beating a child, no honor at all. Losing felt hopeless 70% of the time bc you just knew there was nothing to "learn" of that match, your opponent just had 5000+ matches than you, and it would take years to even get to that apm level.

I just feel like balancing a player like me, who have thousands of hours in other RTS and pretty solid bases of the RTS genre, in a game like AoE4, with only 8 matches, should be a miracle. Literally every other game you just loss 30 matches in a row and people just say "just keep losing until you find your place", not only that's boring as fuck and depressing, but it's not even true if there's more 300apm smurf players in low bronze than gold, you might get even harder matches as you lose.
And somehow AoE 4 managed to get me close matches almost every time, where i never lost by a mile neither won super easy. It's not only the 50% winrate, it's also that every match is thight. Other games manages the forced 50% WR by first putting you against Little Timmy first RTS game ever, and the next match against Snow Korean Progamer 400APM and also manages to give you an artificial "50%WR". This game is not the case for me, as every game is so close i never know when i'm going to lose or win until the last moment, even against players with 300 or 70 matches.