my rant/whine about team games, stream sniping and more

[don_artie]

hey everyone,

I felt the need to make a rant about my experience with DE. Perhaps i'm just bitching and people are not experiencing similiar things as me, but maybe people can relate and we can work towards a solution. First off I wanna talk about team games. Some of you probably don't know me but basically I've always enjoyed team games the most and I was generally about pr32 on RE playing only team games (almost exclusively 3v3, rarely 4v4 or 2v2). Being able to just join a team lobby and splitting the best 2 or worst 2 players in the lobby was a very important feature that we had on RE.

On DE however team games are quick search only which has caused me to play a lot of unbalanced games. I believe I have currently played about 170 team games on DE, I would say about 30 of those were close and 140 were won or lost in loading screen. Someone like me (a pr 32 pleb) got nothing on the big boys 40pr+ and easily stomp the 2nd ltt/1st ltts. Generally speaking when I load in and see opponent names that i'm not familiar with, chances are they are noobs and it will just be a stomp win for me and my team. If I see the big boy names as opponents, depending on my mates I will have either no chance or a low chance. I think playing a game that you are sure you are going to lose or one that you are sure you are going to win is a very unfun experience and feels like a complete waste of time.

Another problem I have with team is that in the current state it is impossible to play without mates. In my experience if you queue alone you'll end up with 2 random players that often are just sergeants or something vs a 3 man teammed up squad, no win chance, no fun. For me personally I play to have close and fun games, where it feels like both teams have a fighting chance. winning vs noobs doesn't give me any fun.
I believe that the current quick search team system is something that can only work with a bigger player base, which we dont have. The player pool isn't big enough which causes skill disparities to be too big. I believe it should be changed. I have 3 possible solutions in mind, which perhaps can be mixxed up together or something.

Solution 1:
Just like on RE's quicksearch make it so you can put a minimum and maximum of rating you want your opponents to be. I would much prefer to set my opponents average team elo on 1600-1800 and be in queue for a super long time than to end up matching against total noobs and get a free win after a certain amount of time (it seems like if you spent 7+ min in queue you will just match noobs)

Solution 2:
Make normal hosted games ranked for team (just like on RE/EP). I know people take issue with this because it can be abused, if you can host a ranked lobby you can obviously eloboost and people will rise to the top of the ladder that aren't actually good. For me personally I take no issue with this, the player base is small enough that we kinda know who is legit and who isn't, if someone wants to waste their time boosting to get an erect epenis for being high up on the ladder, just let them, fuck the ladder.

Solution 3:
Make it so premade teams can only match other premade teams and people queueing team alone will find other people playing team alone. So in combination with solution 1 this would mean you can just queue for a 3v3 by yourself and if 5 other people are doing the same the system should create a game in which it mixes up the teams in such a way that the average elo for the team is about the same. Having the possibility to queue team alone again would be nice, currently if I have no mates online and I wanna play aoe3, i'm forced to play 1v1's.

Ok so that's it for my rant about team games, now a small side rant about stream sniping. It's been happening a lot, sometimes just to match up and sometimes even to check out what the opponent is doing. Both are a problem, the latter obviously a big one. A friend of mine asked me to stream today, so I did. I was playing 1v1's because I had no mates online to play team with and at some point basically got sniped by the same person over and over, someone that I personally don't want to play against. Also any hidden vills/buildings will magically get found out. So for me I feel like i'm better off just not firing up the stream and not deal with that, but I think that is a problem. Perhaps other streamers don't mind like I do and it's just me bitching, but if more streamers experience the same issues this could mean less streams, less aoe3 exposure, fewer new players etc. I think it's important to keep streaming culture alive and make it enjoyable for the person streaming. After being sniped in 1v1 for many games in a row , jailed asked me to play team and I joined him. The guy that was sniping me in 1v1 was now magically playing 3v3 and we got sniped 2 games in a row by people better than us and had no chance of winning, it was very unenjoyable for me and that's how I ended up writing this post. When i'm playing a good opponent in 1v1 it can be somewhat okay because I still feel like i will have a couple % chance of winning if I play my best game. But in team games if you're playing 3 players that are all better than your team sometimes it just goes down to 0% and it's a complete waste of time for all 6. I can't imagine the winning side getting much joy out of taking the free win and gaining elo, so why does it happen? I would like to hear other peoples thoughts/input but feel free to just reply with 'get better noob' instead, that works too.

[Mitoe]

Lots of good stuff here. I'm not going to comment on most of it at the moment, but for the stream sniping maybe you could put a 30-60 second delay on your stream?

[don_artie]

Lots of good stuff here. I'm not going to comment on most of it at the moment, but for the stream sniping maybe you could put a 30-60 second delay on your stream?

yeah I could do that, it would help for hiding strat/hidden vills etc but it would suck in terms of interaction. it's something I wish wouldnt be necessary and people that are abusing it to make it a consideration should realise it's harmfull. And being sniped in general (to be matched in game) would still happen

[Hazza54321]

Gotta agree with all of this, stream sniping is also very annoying and makes me less motivated to stream sometimes

[deleted_user]

streaming introduces an externality that compromises the authenticity of quick search

streaming sucks ngl

[Goodspeed]

With AoE3's player base, making ranked team games QS only was obviously not going to work. Even with AoE2 it barely works, so there was no excuse for not knowing it wouldn't. It's like they didn't give it a single thought.

[Kaiserklein]

Obviously need hosted team games to be rated yeah, easiest and best solution.
About stream sniping, it's always been a thing, and whoever does this is by definition a bitch so I doubt they'll care about your rant. You'll have to either add a delay or decide you don't care, sadly.

[Kawapasaka]

The term stream-sniping has been used kind of interchangeably with queue-sniping recently and conflating them creates some confusion. I don't think queue-sniping is particularly bad.

[Snuden]

A justified rant IMO.

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

i think the queue sniping and the randoms vs a team could be helped if ELO was shown and the correct fucking names of the players on the loading screen into a game. If you see you have 1550, 1300 and 1000 elo team vs 3 1600+ players then you would know the situation at the 1 second and decide if you want to play that game or not.

[I_HaRRiiSoN_I]

maybe the previous games culture of top players thinking its ok to smurf has led to a some non ideal culture trickling through into DE but this is very far fetched so dont quote me on it

[Guigs]

The term stream-sniping has been used kind of interchangeably with queue-sniping recently and conflating them creates some confusion. I don't think queue-sniping is particularly bad.

It really is as you're pretty much guaranteed to snipe the person intended. Also you can have civ advantage by counter picking, the only random factor is the map pool

[Kawapasaka]

Yeah deliberately counter-picking is a bit of a dick move for sure but assuming the matchmaking system is working well you're only going to get that person if it's the closest matchup in terms of ELO available which isn't a bad thing.

[aaryngend]

Out of all the suggestions, I like the rating intervals the best. But instead of actual numbers, I would introduce options like rating discrepancy "can be way higher/lower", "slightly higher/lower", "almost exactly the same" etc. so it isn't too precise.

There is no solution to stream sniping tbh, once you stream, you expose information to outsiders. Delay only helps so much, in a longer game, being 1-2 minute behind is not helping that much cause he still knows where you gather all your resources and what you have sent, etc.

Stream sniping is also way worse than just queue sniping.

[dicktator_]

My understanding was that stream sniping = queueing at the same time as someone to match with them and stream cheating/ghosting = using the stream as a maphack, the latter being much worse.

[gibson]

Stream sniping is just going to happen when you stream and have viewers, so you just have to decide if it’s worth it. Fortunately there are several very easy solutions to this, the easiest and most effective one being clicking the button that says “end stream”. If a friend wants to watch you play stream to them in discord.

[aaryngend]

My understanding was that stream sniping = queueing at the same time as someone to match with them and stream cheating/ghosting = using the stream as a maphack, the latter being much worse.

Yeah, that's what I meant! Maybe I used the wrong terminology then. So it's stream sniping and ghosting then, queue sniping is basically the same as stream sniping, just a different way to express it.
Ghosting is definitely the worst.

[deleted_user]

Sometimes when I am watching a stream I get the desire to play. Coincidentally this is when the streamer is playing bad and is mad. All things belie innocence.

[macacoalbino]

I kinda enjoy the potential stream sniping aspect of streaming.
It's basically playing vs a map hacker. Losing the game will mean nothing to me, but winning vs a maphacker is quite an achievement.
The only issue is that you can't always tell who's sniping and who's not

[Riotcoke]

Is stream sniping really that much of a problem, it's quite hard to get the other guy in the queue and honestly it's also kinda difficult to play and to watch a stream at the same time. Also if you're streaming you should kinda expect to play worse anyway.

[deleted_user]

? yes, stream sniping is bad.

[Riotcoke]

Yes but the amount people stream snipe, it doesn't seem to be that common.

[Hawk_Girl]

I can't imagine the winning side getting much joy out of taking the free win and gaining elo, so why does it happen?

i had a blast bashing you

[Narida]

tbh with a 1 min delay its probably not even worth watching the stream to get an advantage and queue sniping becomes less of a problem too

[Lunatic_Fringe]

@don_artie I agree with much of what you said, but I have to disagree with the selection of teams in lobby. That is an old fashion style that led to player discrimination. As an average player, I never felt I could join top games and I would be unhappy to see lower level players join in. With the quick search system, there is no bias. You go into the game without prejudice. Quick search while being able to play with friends is an aspect I thoroughly enjoy in other games like CS, Rainbow six, Fifa etc.

I'm happy you shared your opinion and I hope mine makes some sense. Cheers!