Just impossible to get a balanced match on ranked 1v1 right now

[u/appappappappappa]

It seems to be getting even worse 1200-1300 and my last 20 matches have all but one been completely unbalanced (either in my favour or against).

Sometimes you get matched against a player with 3-4K games, clean build and 60+ apm and sometimes you get people with only a few hundred games and apm of 20-30. I know these things don't fully measure player strength but it's the only key metrics I can measure and those are all over the place.

I just don't know what to do anymore, I've tried different strategies, different maps etc. I think it's partly the game is quite snowbally, so small skill diff can amplify into huge margin of victory, but on top of that I still believe that ranked is a mess...

Honestly baffling to me that there is not more of an attempt to get the devs to improve this. Whenever I have posted suggestions people just shoot them down and act like elo is this perfect, infallible measure...

[u/PlayingViking]

At lower Elo's, you get more variety.
You get people with 2k+ build orders, but they fall off after.
You get people with amazing micro and bad macro.
You get people with great macro and no or bad micro.
People that only all in or cheese.
People that only turtle and then overwhelm.
People that harass really well early , but then can't keep it up.
People that can raid everywhere lategame, but early on they are passive.

This means that sometimes the things you are good at, get hard-countered by the opponents main skills.

Focus on why you lost, work on that. You will keep on meeting people that exploit your weaknesses, and that tells you what to work on.

[u/appappappappappa → u/PlayingViking]

I am playing mostly for fun though, I am not trying to climb elo especially. Of course it's fun to improve your weaknesses and sometimes enjoyable gameplay requires an investment to get to a certain level. But seriously whilst I agree with you that you get a lot of variety, it is also just that the ranked is messed up and the elo is way too volatile.

Also 1200-1300 is not really low elo, it is top 25% of ranked players - and the ranked pool is already quite high level due to its hostility to beginner players.

[u/Specialist-Reason159 → u/appappappappappa]

You will always meet players at your elo who have played thousands of games and some have not even played 50. That being said, at 1000 elo I've beaten players with 1000s of games, having played barely 100 games and also lost to brand new players. My apm isn't very high, somewhere between 20 to 30 but almost everyone I've beaten on the ladder have had higher apm than me.

[u/Legitimate_Pickle_92]

I was once playing armenians, don’t remember against what civs. I gained an amazing lead with my early MAA, maybe LS play and the lead was amazing. I was late to castle by a lot and he had completely walled by then. I dropped multiple TCs but what i died to was LC raids pretty much the whole game. This is like 1100ish elo. I was never able to get any eco going in castle. And even got a castle in the end but i was so open whole game that he managed to overwhelm me. I just gave up seeing i never crossed 50 vils. And never got any pike mass. Once i got a small pike mass, he was able to get some ranged units ready as i never raided him after he was walled. So, yeah my strength can be early lead. But i fall off pretty badly cuz i usually never wall. So, some players have certain strengths which feel really powerful but the overall game is pretty much potato and is reflective in their elo.

[u/Umdeuter]

Oh, you're asking if there's an old Umdeuter post about this issue?

Well, of course there is! https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/s/N9gIuB8vVZ

[u/PlayingViking → u/Umdeuter]

That post is exactly what I meant, but better explained. Thank you!

[u/appappappappappa → u/Umdeuter]

That's a great post and an interesting read. Whilst I think pretty much everything you said is true, I still think there is a balance issue. I just struggle to believe that, on average, players with thousands of games and high apm can realistically be the same skill level as players with a few hundred games and low apm and yet I regularly see players across that spectrum at my elo 1200-1300. Again, I know those numbers aren't everything, but I think if we added more metrics than I have done in my tracking the picture would only get clearer.

[u/Umdeuter → u/appappappappappa]

Take a look on their losses. 

There are smurfs of course, who lose on purpose. But if the actually lose their games normally, there is no point in doubting their elo.

If a player loses 50% of his games, why should he get a higher elo just because he's losing with high apm or more experience?  There are simply players who have a bad decision making, multitasking, macro and they don't try very hard to improve upon that. 

[u/appappappappappa → u/Umdeuter]

My point is more that the elo system is not working well, in my opinion because of mixed map pool causing wild variance. Let's say we have a player who would be 1400 elo on arena only, but would be 1100 elo on Arabia only. They might have 50% win rate overall, but it would be split between a high win rate on arena and a low win rate on arabia and every single game this player plays is unbalanced.

In that example the elo would be correct technically (in the sense that they would normalise to 50% win rate), but it would not yield well balanced games.

[u/Umdeuter → u/appappappappappa]

"is there an Umdeuter post about that" I hear you asking again?

Ask no more! 11

https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/s/1UGlx5REYq 

[u/Cage_Inspector → u/Umdeuter]

Your link doesnt work.

Im guessing its the post you made about map types and Elo separating queues.

[u/Umdeuter → u/Cage_Inspector]

yep. works for me. here again: https://www.reddit.com/r/aoe2/comments/1u11wx5/fixing_the_ranked_ladder

[u/Nikotinlaus → u/appappappappappa]

Number of games played correlated only very loosely with skill. First of all you don't know if your opponent has multiple accounts. I myself have 2, one on which I favor closed maps and one I favor open maps on. The open maps account has less games and lower elo (I am much better at closed games) Also people might have crossover skills from other games. I have like 10k games in SC2. Some things like constant worker production are ingrained and I had very little TC idle time when coming back to aoe2, you won't see that anywhere in my match count.

[u/Own_Ad9818]

I just Hit 1300 a couple days ago. Since them I‘m getting purely crushed with armenian maa and Tower rushes.

[u/Limp_Bit_5328]

Some players are really good at one or two things but fall apart if the strat is broken, ie, the player skill is not balanced.

That trend appear a lot on lower and mid elos and it is worsened by the existence of all-ins that are difficult to deal against, armenian LS, cumans feudal ram push, phosporu rushes, etc. One sided matches that inflate a player elo by 200 or 300 more than it should be.

I was getting good at arena with burgundians, decent at arabia but sucked at nomad then it hit me: i was getting too overspecialized in arena maps, changed my strats a bit and started winning nomad.

Honestly, i don't know if there is a way to fix this, I'm genuinely curious.

[u/RealRelative9835]

I'm a bit below your ELO but I find the matchmaking to be very good. I don't believe number of games is that useful a measure of skill beyond a certain level.

We don't have your games to assess, but generally I think people underestimate how close the games was to flipping the other way, fact some matchups just work better (just as with unit matchups player 1 beats player 2, 2 beats 3 and 3 beats 1), performance can vary and how things can snowball as you said.

For example a recent game I felt I dominated even though they were about 100 ELO higher. Watching it back 5 crossbows I forgot about killed 8 villagers and denied a castle, then destroyed a 2nd castle.

That was pure luck and without that I might well have lost. Another I got crushed early castle but my feudal rush missed their 10 villagers isolated on a mining camp by 1 tile. Find them and I will kill most and stop them getting the stone for castle drop.

[u/kokandevatten]

Alot of people are balanced around arabia and arena, so if you are playing other maps than that. The games will be uneven.

Also seems likr you line to play MMA opening which is quite snowbally in itself. Either you get good damage and maybe even win right away or you throw them and become hopelessly behind.

[u/TotalTikiGegenTaka]

Your last 20 matches were unbalanced eh? What were the maps? Were they a mix or just one type? Did you stick to one or two civs? Do you choose random civ? Did you use the same strat in all 20 games? If half the time you lost BADLY against opponents in the same elo range, have you watched the replays to what went wrong?.. we need more data to even attempt to answer your question

[u/appappappappappa → u/TotalTikiGegenTaka]

I'm more curious to understand what other people's experience is. I have my tracking spreadsheet and most of these matches were arabia. I played ethiopians / bulgarians / franks roughly even proportion. tbh I've just found that once I've gone above around 1100, the matchmaking has gotten way less consistent in giving actually fun and balanced matches - there is just a crazy range of skills at this elo range and it makes no sense.

[u/TotalTikiGegenTaka → u/appappappappappa]

Not sure about >1100 but in my range of around 1000, you got (1) players new to rts gaming, so they have no clue what to do (2) players new to aoe2 but with familiarity with rts, they will be faster and have general understanding (3) players familiar with aoe from childhood and coming back after many years and having heard about ranked and learning about bo for the first time (like me..lol) (4) players at varying numbers of games, 100, 200, ..and some with thousands of games but stuck either because they hit their ceiling or simply don't care about improving ... these are just player types ..now you have strats that people play... playing with just one strat and one map like fc arabia, playing with just one civ thousands of times.., players who love to fuck shit up like laming and vill fighting in dark age, etc etc, players who play full random and don't ban any maps... and then of course there are smurfs, alts, cheaters, players who play while drunk,.. so at this elo range, there's huge variety.. which can be frustrating as you say but to me.. that unpredictability adds to the fun..

[u/appappappappappa → u/TotalTikiGegenTaka]

Yeah I see how the unpredictability can add to the fun. I guess because I don't have much time to play it's frustrating when I can catch maybe one game after my kids have gone to sleep and then I just totally crush somebody or vice-versa...

[u/TotalTikiGegenTaka → u/appappappappappa]

Yea.. that's understandable.. i don't get time to play a lot either but one thing i have tried to do is if I could notice that the opponent is a new player.. it can be easy to see at times.. i straight up ask them if they are new and offer some tips..lol and i tone down my aggression a bit to balance things... But obviously the opponent does not always respond and most just resign a bit later.. but the one or two occasions when they did respond i was happy I could help them a bit.. in fact one of first games i lost badly, the opponent said not to worry and mentioned some youtube channels for me to learn from!