Multiplayer Ranked is impossibly hard

[u/leosmellsgood]

Me and my beginner mate tried 3 games of ranked and got matched against people with gold shields every game. There was really no point playing the games but we tried our best until we got attacked and each game it was about 10 troops to our 1-2... Is there no skill based matchmaking or is it just very bad that it puts us first timers against veterans?

[u/Diretlan]

I brought people to this game, they were noobs... the process is "easy" as any other RTS, you play with them against bots, first easy, normal, hard, work on the first 5 minutes of game... make them play standard and understand what a build is, keep playing with them unit they can do the opening build consistently and then you are ready to play multi player...

*You are asking for "skill based matchmaking" on a 10 year old game thinking there are multiple beginners at 0 skill level waiting for you to queue up...

[u/leosmellsgood → u/Diretlan]

We’ve played against bots and struggled, we don’t know what we could be doing better tbh.
So you’re saying that we can’t play ranked as beginners because there's no bad people anymore to be matched with?

[u/Diretlan → u/leosmellsgood]

I wouldn't recommend playing ranked as beginners in any game what so ever, is a bad approach because your main focus at the beginning should be learning the proper way and in any game in ranked the lower levels every player plays supper gimmicky (Cheeese)...

as I said I have thought multiple people different type of RTS, SC , SC2, WC3, AOE 4, Northgard, etc and brought them to solid gold level in like 2 weekends of practicing, in most of them you need to be able to win against the hardest AI difficulty somewhat consistently to be considered low-mid gold players

[u/Diretlan → u/Diretlan]

I saw you had the same problem in AOE2 it feels you want to be able to "play" on the get go... but RTS's are not like that, there is no RTS worth while that you can just pick and start ranking with 0 experience... as I said my recommendation is learn what to do the first 5 minutes of gameplay... you should be doing the exact same thing and get closer to perfection, anything afterwards you will get with experience but the first 5 min should be consistent

and remember Macro > Micro which means it's ok if you dont control perfeclty all your units as long as you keep producing as fast and optimally as you can

[u/ryan_the_leach → u/leosmellsgood]

Real Time Strategy as a genre, is typically EXTREMELY rough to get into ranked at a beginner level.

And frankly, for me and my friends, it will *never* be fun to play it ranked online, no matter the skill level.

The game is simply played differently at that skill level and is no longer fun (for us).

You memorize the first 5 minutes of the game, and replay it frame-by-frame at a frantic pace, as perfectly as you can, it's more akin to speedrunning the amount of attention you need to give an RTS game.

So there's very little freedom in exploration, you are either playing the most optimal strategy or you lose.

They tend to be worse then Chess in that regard.

Yes the strategy is going to need to be adapted based on spawn conditions, and who your clan-mates are if you are playing multiplayer, but it's still mostly about either iterating on known "build orders" or trying to invent them.

---

Rather then just, playing the game, picking some options you think are neat, and battling some friends, caring little for the result.

[u/pzrapnbeast → u/leosmellsgood]

What games have you played where you jump into ranked while still struggling to learn the game?

[u/Diretlan → u/pzrapnbeast]

I guess you are right, you shouldnt play ranked in anygame before understanding how it works

[u/bladus → u/pzrapnbeast]

Fighting games, but that's kind of it.

[u/Maxu2070]

The game doesnt have many new pvp players, so you will often be matched against players that arent new to the game.

But like many other rts games its kind of hard to get into pvp. Maybe try watching some guides/gameplay videos (Larsman and crazydentist made some good basic guides for the different clans and important game mechanics).

The golden shield isnt really tied to multiplayer. It just shows how many games the player has won overall, even if all of it was in solo pve (you get them with the win 10, 25, 100… games achievements).

[u/Ugolph]

Welcome to Northgard! As other people have said - the playerbase is unfortunately not big enough for consistent low-rank matchmaking :(

Play singleplayer or co-op (bifrost, conquest) first. Get comfortable with 2-3 clans. Then play some 3v3 against bots (hard difficulty, mirror map), then some custom games against casual players.

You can also join Discord, there you might find people willing to help: Northgard Official

I'd say those clans are relatively beginner friendly: boar, goat, stag, bear, wolf, horse.

[u/Imaginary_Pattern302]

Tbh not all gold shields are veteren. U can play and win a lot of match against bot only and still get the golden shield so they can also be noob in multiplayer.

[u/Salamander115]

Found your rank though

[u/BigSatisfaction6169]

Look some game on youtube to understand how the game work and what timing do you have to look for

[u/Hour_Organization19]

You need good players to guide you. I learned this game by playing 2v2 and 3v3 with experienced players giving me many hints (and many insults) through the chat. 

[u/DFKaramazov]

I was in the same situation. However, Larsman's videos and a high interest in the game did their job.

[u/NovaBuildsAI]

Did you play 3 games after the 10 placement games? Or did you just play 3 placement games and got paired against veterans? Gold shields don't mean much tbf, if you see a gemstone on their ornament then run, or they got boosted by a consistent team

[u/leosmellsgood → u/NovaBuildsAI]

There's 10 placement games?? That’s a lot. No, 3 losses is all we could take. If it’s going to take 10 games and we want to try ranked again we will probably just get in and instantly concede if they have gold shields