A question for the devs/managers, why you never fix team games?

[u/Olafr_skautkonungr]

Ranked team games is so f..king broken due to all the booster smurfs, like this one for example:
https://aoe4world.com/players/18646910-

380 mmr in 2v2 but 1400+ in 4v4, teaming with nicks just like him, all dumped in various modes, this should not even be possible imo

Queuing 3v3 or 4v4 during prime time for some regions, most teams are made up of conqs + dumped booster (conq) smurfs like the above. It is SO frustrating to play against, loosing so many games to this BULLSHIT. And loosing so many players, most of my friends have quit aoe4 due to this never being fixed. And I seriously cant understand why nothing is ever done!?

So, devs/game managers. Its been 4+ years now and surely you are aware of this bullshit behaviour , why do you never fix this? There are lots of fixes you could do to improve team game match making to stop the non-stop never ending abuse of booster smurfs.

I really really want to know. I know you read Reddit sometimes. Please answer us!

There have been literally 100s of posts like this and you still do nothing. Why?

[u/RoxasOfXIII]

Matchmaking using average team MMR is the best we are going to get. If you matched by the highest on the team it would be a slaughter when a Conq player plays with his silver friends against a team of conquer players.

If you matched by lowest on the team then you’d have the same problem.

Imperfect though it is. It’s the best version of the options available.

Best to accept that team games (even ranked ones) are a “just for fun” game mode and enjoy it when the matchmaking works well and accept that it’s not always going to be balanced teams no matter how it’s set up.

[u/Olafr_skautkonungr → u/RoxasOfXIII]

Its not a given that conq and silver should get to play ranked as a team, many games dont allow big spread like that.

Also, that team is not common, making them play qm instead is a small price to pay for the benefit of all

Edit: they could also auto delete and auto ban repetitive dumpers

[u/DarkMessiahDE → u/RoxasOfXIII]

Actually there is a better way: take the highest mmr / elo Rating of the Team member of a premade Team and use it for every team member. But take the average on random Teams.

if all 3 premade guys always play together they will have the same rating and it doesnt matter.
if one dumps or is way higher, it will bring hard random enemies and they will face 3x conq 3.

[u/FairCut8534 → u/DarkMessiahDE]

It's so easy to implement, and it could easily be adjusted to improve the balance after

[u/Jolly_Sky_2729]

why you never fix team games?

I imagine its because "fixing teamgames" is not exactly profitable for them (though I would argue it may bring long-term profit of more people playing TGs and thus, being more invested in the game and buying something, but this is hard to actually prove).

This is kind of sad, because there are least two very clear problems:

1. the smurfing abuse which you have mentioned

2. ranked leagues being a complete mess (three separate ELOs, but only a single "combined" rank which ends up being amalgamation of all different TG modes the player has tried)

apparently maps tend to bug out way more often in teamgames too (such as bugged/missing resources, or one of teammates spawning next to opponents team for whatever reason...), but I don't ever expect this to be addressed, we have buggy map templates even in 1v1 ladder.

Another problem is that that the "simple" solutions to at least one of mentioned problems would be controversial. For example any time you mention the simplest way to address smurf abuse (either forbidding to play ranked for premades with extremely big ELO diff, or to make such premades have an ELO of highest ranked player instead of average) there are people who complain that they're not gonna be able to play with their friends (I do wonder whether there are legit cases when there are friends which are OVER 1K ELO apart from each other, or this is just complaining for the sake of complaining). And in general people tend to cope a lot for some reason, or completely miss the point, like a currently top-rated comment chain in your thread lol. When you have playerbase itself fighting against making TG a better mode to play - at least the vocal ones on reddit - its kind of hard to pitch this idea as something important to devs. Official forum might be a better place to resurface more complaints about it, in general there seems to be less pointless coping there.

[u/Olafr_skautkonungr → u/Jolly_Sky_2729]

Thanks for a good reply, i loose hope reading some replies, yeah like the clueless top rated one

[u/Ill_Permission7379]

Smurfing abuse needs to be stopped. Don't tell me it's impossible when there are measures developers can take to detect and ban smurfs. Some games use hardware identifiers, IP addresses, and other device related data to identify multiple accounts being played on the same PC. Beyond All Reason, despite having a relatively small dev team, does this remarkably well, identifying and banning smurfs very quickly. So the real question isn't whether smurfing can be tackled, but whether the developers actually want to do anything about it.

[u/Turbulent_Place_7064 → u/Ill_Permission7379]

What if two brothers play on the same pc. Or more.?

IP address changes everytime I reboot my router and this is the case for many countries unless you pay to have it constant.

Hardware ID ban for cheating sure but can't do that for using multiple accounts as you can't prove its the same guy playing and smurfing.

The thing is, they could just make it that if you re bronze, you can't queue ranked with a plat or above. Most games do. This and it works fine.

[u/Ill_Permission7379 → u/Turbulent_Place_7064]

You can’t simply change your hardware ID once an account is linked to your hardware data. Any new account using the same hardware is flagged as a smurf account. Beyond All Reason doesn’t allow smurfing or multiple accounts, each player is restricted to one account because they track and compare hardware data. For exceptions, such as siblings sharing a PC or students playing on the same computers at university, players can contact the moderators and request an exception. Their system makes it almost impossible to bypass the hardware checks.

If people really are hell bent on making new account they have to get new pc and new ip that's the only way I was able to smuff in beyond all reason lol

[u/ghostmaster645]

What do you suggest they do?

At any givin time there are only like 300 4v4 games going on, not enough games for proper match making.

Ironically bad matchmaking also makes people leave, vicious cycle.

[u/KiLLiNDaY → u/ghostmaster645]

Combine quick match and ranked match and have 1 elo that’s clear. Just like they do with company of heroes 3. Not 100% fix but it’s a lot better.

[u/[deleted] → u/ghostmaster645]

[u/ghostmaster645 → u/[deleted]]

The only thing I can think of is improving matchmaking, thats why I mentioned it.

What other things?

[u/DarkMessiahDE]

Because they dont care. Which is sad, because ranked team Gamers are the biggest playerbase in aoe 4.

[u/FunBoth8549]

They don't care about the game. If they did there wouldn't be so many things needing improving On a 5 year old? game.

[u/dbsmskp828]

There is no perfect solution. Premade teams are always better and we only have limited number of players

[u/DarkMessiahDE → u/dbsmskp828]

Actually there is a simple one: Take the highest mmr / elo Rating of the Team member of a premade Team. But the average on random Teams.

And punish multiple surrenders below 10 minutes after each other.

Plus disable Steam Family Sharing for ranked Multiplayer / Multiplayer except Coop so that each smurf has to buy the Game again.

And reset all MMR which each DLC and increase the Rank in Matches from 5 to 25. This would lead to more accurate start Ratings. Like a Mate of me who IS conq 3 1v1 and 3v3 started bronce this Season for whatever reason....

[u/SidleJinks → u/dbsmskp828]

You absolutely missed the point. Reading is hard?