Addressing the issue of ELO-hell.

I heard you like anecdotal evidence.
If i /l'ed after my teammate dropped after 1:30 i would have lost.
We sucked it up and gave it everything we got and we won.

Should have /l’d dude, that’s how you get better ranks.

Yes, that is an essential skill in teamgames, being able to carry weaker teammates. Therefore in your example the guy who can carry will receive a high rank while a player who individually could have average skill but is bad at carrying will get a potentially lower rank than his skill. It makes perfect sense for 4v4 and it’s not like 4v4 is a competitive game mode.

It makes sense, in CoH2 reality, but it isnt nessesery a good one. Because it ultimatly only leads to frustration, cheating and overall some of the playerbase dropping the game.

For instance, if player lost the game due to him being outplayed, be might think "Oh well, I might need to learn how to play against it" he will potentually start watching tutorials, good players play and so on.
On the other hand, when you know that if you had better teammates you would have won, but yet you've lost because you was unable to carry them, it automatically swifts player perspective. From "I need to learn" to "Why even bother". Now we can freely add plain unfair MM on a regular basis, premades vs randoms, total assymetrical balance, really annoying and cancer meta and we end up with a bunch of problems which are harmfull for the game in a long run.

Some players might be able to endure it, get over it and become better, but its a small persantage. And while 3v3\4v4 arent competitive as 1v1\2v2, they are most likely the gamemodes which will be chosen by new players to learn the game.

To put it simply, there are no shortterm harm, but such problems are really harmfull for the game in a long run. After all, we dont know how many potentual good 1v1\2v2 we might have lost, just because they desided to start learning from teamgames and then said "fuck it" and dropped the game.

It’s neither a relic nor a matchmaking issue.

I honestly disagree. But as a matter of fact, its still the developers obligation to provide fair MM. CoH2 MM would have worked if there was huge playerbase, but game doesnt have one, yet not a single solution was implemented to adress MM for smaller player base, resulting in a riged games. CoH1\2\3 never had (and never would have had) player base of Dota2\AoE, but yet developers desided to make MM and systems behind it, like if there is simular playerbase.

Logical solution, which a lot of competitive RTS\FPS do is to just have seasonal ranks, with resets on a season base. This or CoH3 really should have huge online, otherwise it will be all over again.

I mean like, even from a common sence perspective its just more healty for the game, just because new players will have easier time learning and they will know even if they get shit rank, at least it wont stick to them that bad, so the chances are that they will keep playing the game are highter. Same pattern can be seen in a lot of modern games.

It is clear you do not read the text walls or you would know. Or you are really dumb. Lets go with the first option.

SUMMARY
Soviets suck balls in 4v4 and is hit hardest by ELO Hell.

Graph 1: Axis is OP as balls in 4v4.
Graph 2: Soviets are the worst performing faction.

YOUR ONLY ARGUMENT SO FAR
Here, I have formatted an easy response for you to use for all of your following posts:

I agree with your sentiment, I would not call SOV as a shitty faction. Change the title to USF or UKF and I agree with you 1500%.

Sorry, I actually played in the last 4v4 tourney and I know for a fact the Sov/Sov/USF/USF comp was the meta. Soviets Maxim build alongside USF airbourne was absolutely insanely good. Even teams not running that comp always had Soviets since their tools are way too valuable to pass up. On top of that, Soviets are incredibly strong with IL2 bombs, katy, ISU152 and mark target. I am not even gonna entertain your dumb notion of soviets being bad in 4v4, they are a top 2 faction in every single game mode.

Graph 1: Axis is OP? Maybe the players just suck at playing allies and actually using their tools? I wager 99% of the playerbase that complains USF sucks would change their tune in a hurry if they actually played USF Airbourne cancer.

Graph 2: The playerbase sucks at playing Soviets. Plain and simple.

Mate you may be a decent player but your statistical understanding is so underpar it hurts reading your comments.

First off, "I know for a fact the Sov/Sov/USF/USF comp was the meta" is laughable.

Second, you cannot disregard solid numbers and statistical proofs just because you think different. I would make a big techinal proof of why you are wrong but I am pretty sure I would waste my time.

First off, "I know for a fact the Sov/Sov/USF/USF comp was the meta" is laughable.

Second, you cannot disregard solid numbers and statistical proofs just because you think different. I would make a big techinal proof of why you are wrong but I am pretty sure I would waste my time.

1) I was IN THE TOURNAMENT and chatted strats with numerous teams in it so I know what people were thinking about Soviets power level.

2) Yes I can disregard them because low rank win rates and tournament level/1v1/2v2 Soviets perception has nothing to do with Rosbone’s interpretation of the 4v4 stats. He interprets it as Soviets being trash while in reality the playerbase is trash. If they stopped doing dumb shit like Skippy builds (cons t2 maxim cons maxim) their win rates would skyrocket.

I would make a big techinal proof of why you are wrong but I am pretty sure I would waste my time.

Yes, please go back to grinding your ost only rank 500 gameplay, don’t let me disturb you.

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USF riflemen being trash is quite the fun joke, even when the context is 4v4.

But it's true, sorry

Didn't know that. I know that now I guess.

I could derank my 4v4 rank of your choice to a low level I guess and then go up to lv18?

Your thought process in a nutshell:

"Let's disregard statistics and data that show that elo Hell not only exists, but allied factions are way more likely to get stuck in it because I am a good player."

Or, in more plain terms,
"Let's disregard racism/inequality/income distribution because I sit on the top 10% of society. Hence, racism/inequality do not exist".

I told you it was pointless to argue basic logical proposition and conditions to you.

Then they are where they deserve because they are not good enough to rank higher, therefore the system works, there is no ELO hell conspiracy, and we can all go to bed and stop posting nonsense like "Soviets suck balls in 4v4" and "You can't afford to go ISU152 in 4v4 cuz LeFH".

Nobody talked about conspiracy other than you. Maybe you see stuff that does not exist??

The main problem with the ELO system as implemented in COH2 is it makes a lot of shortcuts pairing-wise in order to get over the 5000lb elephant in the room that is low player count. That's all.

Your thought process in a nutshell:

Come on, I'm sure you can do better than a strawman.

"60% of the playerbase is stuck in ELO hell"

uhhhhhhhhh

okay yeah goodnight, this is too dumb to argue against.

I agree. You do not have basic understanding of elementary logic. This is my humble and final attempt to help you out:

Just because YOU do not see/experience/feel a certain phenomenon X does not mean that the phenomenon in and of itself DOES NOT exist. This is why science exists. In order to help understand phenomena happening outside one's experiences. Statistics/mathematics/logic are all based on understanding the non-intuitive aspect of life.

Just because you happen to be a good player and don't experience ELO Hell does not mean that the problem is not there. Don't forget that we are talking about a game with peak players at 5k. Ofcourse there will certain never always be a match available for anyone's rank. That does not mean that what is happening is right.

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I trully wish you have, because the only thing I want in life is for logic and science to be spread as far away as possible to the maximum number of people possible. But from what you are saying here, it does not show.

Have a good one, I won't argue this further.

Just because YOU do not see/experience/feel a certain phenomenon X does not mean that the phenomenon in and of itself DOES NOT exist. This is why science exists. In order to help understand phenomena happening outside one's experiences. Statistics/mathematics/logic are all based on understanding the non-intuitive aspect of life.

Thanks, didn't learn that in my studies so it's very useful.

You forgot to add interpretation of data is important, but I'm sure that's of no concern to you.

Just because you happen to be a good player and don't experience ELO Hell does not mean that the problem is not there. Don't forget that we are talking about a game with peak players at 5k. Ofcourse there will certain never always be a match available for anyone's rank. That does not mean that what is happening is right.

Huh? Did you miss the part where I said I went back to 2v2 and 3v3 after learning the game and I picked up my super low ranks from when I first started playing and effortlessly got lv16? When I was rank 120 Ost in 1v1 I started playing 3v3 randoms with Ostheer to prove a point to people like Sander93 who said we didn't understand teamgames. It took me about 2 weeks of playing to get from lv5 to rank 3 and I had about 95% wins.



Nice ELO hell btw.

If you can't carry, you don't deserve a higher rank. The rest is just tears from low level players like you whose ego it too big for their rank.

The main problem with the ELO system as implemented in COH2 is it makes a lot of shortcuts pairing-wise in order to get over the 5000lb elephant in the room that is low player count. That's all.

That's made up for by the fact there isn't a big skill gap between levels in 4v4. The distance between me and a top 1v1 player in 1v1 skill is about the same as the distance between a level 16 4v4 player and a level 7 4v4 player. It's up to you people to get better and climb.

This is all for 4v4 btw, there is no ELO hell whatsoever in 2v2.

I'm proud of myself. I gave a good entertainment to a pretty empty forum.

I demand my wage admins.

Example:
You have about an hour to play. That means 1 good game or 2 fast games. And you wont have time to play for a few days.

The game comes up and its you and 3 monkeys vs a premade team of killers.

Ill hand it to you going up against 4 man premades is usually unwinnable, but even those games i tend to ride out. If they really do play that well its a 15 minute adventure and i will spend the rest of my free time doing something else.

I'm proud of myself. I gave a good entertainment to a pretty empty forum.

I demand my wage admins.

Clowns dont work for free

Clowns dont work for free

Then how can you be here?

DOTA2 use it with fairly good success. You even must play a certain amount of game or having a certain playtime in non-competitive lobby before being autorized to hit the competitive button when you're new.
Bottom end of competitive ladder is still full of toxic players but new players are not mixed with them. I don't know what you don't understand with this concept.

DOTA2 has currently about 100x the playerbase of CoH2. It is also free to play which ensures a constant influx of new players to populate those "unranked" matches. I don't really know the game apart from it being a popular moba, so I can't really comment on how many game modes there are and how well they are populated, nor do I have even a gut feeling about how many players play it online vs how many do bot matches. Anyway, the main point is that CoH2's playerbase is already fairly small. It is one of the largest strategy games out there, yes, but there is a lot of singleplayer content, diminishing the number of players that play a) online and b) competitive which then get divided into 4 different modes. The MM does not have an awful lot of players to draw from to create fair matches.

The next thing is, what does a forced unranked system achieve, potential player base issues aside?
- Reduce toxicity?
Surely not. Toxicity is not rank dependent, there are cunts all over the ladder. And even if we assume the majority resides at the bottom, then what: Do new players get 10-20 "toxicity free" games before being thrown into the snakepit? I doubt this helps THAT much. Also this assumes that new players can't be toxic by themselves. Who ensures that those 10-20 initial games are a "safe space"? How do you ensure it? And if you can ensure it, why do you not do that for ALL of the games?
Your argument only works in the first place if you assume that toxic players are mostly low skill players that have a lot of matches, while new players or higher skill ones were not toxic. I don't know what you base that on.

- Diminish ELO hell/create fair games?
How? New players are bad at the game, yes. That's somehow the point of it. Even experiences players with hundreds of hours can still be shite at the game (and believe, I must know...).
I really don't get how this mechanism is supposed to diminish ELO hell, assuming that exists in the first place.


The games that used the system of gating off new players from old ones used it from what I know for a different reason: To protect the establishes community from people that still need to read the description texts of units and abilities. It ensures that players have at least a very minor grasp of how the game works.
If you describe ELO hell as being matched with these players, then I can agree. Although at this point you should be able to take on multiples of them. But we're not talking about that level of play here. We're talking about just heavy misjudgement of tactics and lack of micro, and I have seen players with a hundred games still perform poorly in that regard. You can't block them out.


Much of this could probably be improved by proper match making on Relic's side. I assume though that unless CoH3 grows hugely, 4v4 will always be a vulnerable mode. It is just logically damn hard to find players in somewhat the right skill range.

Then how can you be here?

Im not asking payment.

Your team has a 3 "random" chances to get bad players if you are a good player.
The enemy has 4 "random" chances to get bad players.
Given enough games that difference will make itself clear.

Excellent summary.

I'd like to add though, that Elo hell feels worse in COH2 because there's not enough of a playerbase for consistently fair matchmaking. And you still lose a fair amount of elo against significantly stronger opponents one or two skill tiers above you. Having played a fair amount of competitive CCGs I can definitively assert playerbase is literally 99% of the issue, and not Relic's algorithm. In competitive CCGs like Hearthstone and Gwent in their prime, matches have less than a 20pt spread, like 5005 vs 4988 would already be rare. (even while using the 5k+ mmr system). Whereas there's just not enough players in COH2 to distribute players across the full elo spectrum. In 1v1 rankings you literally go from level 13 to level 16 between rank 201 and rank 199.

I hover between rank 70-150 depending on RNG + matchmaking - I've hit my skill ceiling for a few years already (since I'm in my 30s). When matchmaking feeds me a bunch of rank 200+, I can get a nice win streak going and get to lvl 17. I dropped from 71 to almost 100 in a 4-game loss streak to players ranked 30 to 50. Given the skill disparity (my win rate is less than 15% against players of that skill bracket), I really shouldn't be losing that much elo at all.

Basically it's a half-and-half between what Rosbone and Stormjager are saying.

Yes, you can climb the ranks rather easily if you are really much better (like multiple skill tiers).
Yes, Elo hell exists for sure because the small playerbase guarantees plenty of unfair matches, and the volume of matches needed to grind through a bad run can be fairly large.

Also: arranged teams fuck up the algorithm

I’m not saying you don’t get bad matchmaking where you have very few chances of winning to no chance, I’m saying over a time period of 100+ games that evens out because you have as much of a chance to benefit from matchmaking as you do to suffer from it.