I would be most in favour of infinite bans but since this very normal idea (which worked perfectly in the Voobly days) seems to be so controversial, I think 5 bans for 1v1 is reasonable. And leave Team Games bans as they are.
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I think 1v1 needs more maps and a better map pool chosen from competitive players/casters every 4 to 8 weeks, not more bans
If you introduce more bans, you will increase the waiting time
If you change the map pool every 2 weeks nobody will care to learn a different strategy for different maps outside Arabia and Arena
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No. Make people play maps other than arabia and arena. If anything, team games needs more bans.
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It only increases the waiting for a minority of players who refuse to play the most common maps. But it keeps the vast majority happier. So it is more democratic and representative.
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If that’s what the majority want to play, then just let them. Arabia/Arena banners can play each other. Everybody wins.
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That minority of players are the one who complain about not having enough bans, then they will complain about long waiting times
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Except the game itself. You don’t want a game’s player base to be fragmented like that. That is disastrous over time. Game companies have learned this a long time ago.
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It wouldn’t be fragmenting the players at all. In fact, infinite bans would bring a ton more players to the ranked ladder because lots of people are stuck playing lobby games right now because they don’t like being told what maps they can play. Imagine if a big chunk of those lobby only players came to the ranked ladder. And there is other stuff fragmenting the player base like Quick Play and Empire Wars. We might even get some apprehensive single player / campaign players to brave the ranked ladder if they had a safe space where they could be 100% sure which map they’d be playing, so they could prepare for it.
In the current system, we have a ridiculously small number of maps to choose from and we also limit the number of bans so that forces players to compromise, so either nobody is happy or at least half the player base is unhappy with the map every game. So we should have more like 20 maps and 15 bans (or infinite). More maps = More chance there will be good maps = More chance of a match.
We used to have a system which was effectively the same as infinite bans for nearly 20 years before 2019 and it worked fine, there was no need to change it. Same with Death Match; we should have just kept it. There was nothing wrong with it and I bet most Empire Wars players preferred Death Match anyway.
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That’s the thing though, you need to be more self-aware when you are a minority. E.g. I have a minority taste in music, so I accept that nobody wants to listen to my kind of music at work in the office. And that’s ok. I don’t force my minority view on the majority the way these Arabia dodgers do.
This I agree with 100%. I don’t understand why the Devs decide to keep the map pool so atrocious and small. I haven’t found a single person in favour of keeping such a small number of maps in each rotation. Surely they must be aware it’s an extremely unpopular decision. It’s almost as bad as showing the map voting results before you vote.
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well you found one now, since I support a smaller number of maps (I think 1v1 number of maps are great rn).
I think smaller number of maps helps players not needing to learn to play a ton of maps at the same time.
idk, currently seems better, why do comp players and casters get to vote and not others? Also making it a month or two makes the game seems bit more stale. Also for those that only play certain maps, if a map isn’t a pool, or they just don’t like the current pool, that means they’ll leave the game for 1-2months, enough time to just drop the game entirely.
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The most popular maps (Arabia/Arena) are never dropped from the pool, in case you hadn’t noticed.
We could please almost everyone with infinite bans and more maps. The majority who want more maps and the players who don’t like being forced to play maps they don’t know or don’t like.
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If your map isn’t Arabia/Arena, then your map might not be in the pool every two weeka anyway; that’s why I proposed more maps in the pool (at least 4 more)
Also, voting every two weeks makes people tired of voting so often. If you change it so that people vote every 4, 6 or 8 weeks, then people may be more interested in voting and playing that new set of maps (similar to seasons in other games)
If you have a new map in the pool but you will only play that map 3-4 times in two weeks, there is no point in learning that map or developing new strategies around that map if it will be changed again in two weeks; more time in the pool will lead to new strategies and the meta might change a bit
Right now, the only maps to learn how to play are Arabia/Arena because they are always in the map pool, and the meta is built through those maps
-4 maps chosen by the developers
-4 maps chosen by the pros (players/casters) → trying to lead the game to a competitive scene
-4 maps chosen by all of us (why not)
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If you’ve been in AoE2 communities, you will know what kind of players are usually talked about. Are there huge discussions about lobby players vs quick match players vs ranked players? Do the casters streaming games talk about this? Are there threads about civ balance in ranked play vs lobby play? NO. This is not the fragmentation.
What people talk about is arabia players vs arena clowns. Then there are water players, black forest players, nomad players, weirdos who enjoy michi, etc. That’s the fragmentation. That’s the groups caster talk about, and that’s the groups reddit makes memes about.
If you let people get stuck to their maps, they will start viewing AoE2 through those maps alone. You don’t want that, because that’ll then lead to infighting about balance changes and falling outs. Look, I absolutely hate arabia and arena. But people should have to play both of those at least once in a while. Or similar maps at the very least.
Appeal to authority fallacy. Back up your claims with numbers. Look at the actual data and you will see there are a lot of Lobby players, many of whom just want to play single maps. Lots of things are not often talked about, doesn’t mean they are not relevant.
And therein lies your bias.
They aren’t relevant, because they are not talked about. Devs will change things when people speak up. Also, what authority?
And yet I want to force myself, and others, to play those maps. Do you read beyond the first line?
I’m trying to have a reasonable debate here, but yet again you try to reframe everything by stating your opinion as fact. Appeal to authority is “I haven’t seen any casters or content creators talking about it, therefore it doesn’t exist” with the authority being the casters. Again, just because you personally haven’t seen anyone talking about Lobbies and you disagree with it, doesn’t mean you are speaking for everyone when you dismiss it without consideration. Are you a Dev? Do you have the inside scoop? Do you have access to information which we don’t know about? Because that’s the way you come across. Guess what, we’re talking about Lobbies right now. So you heard it here first, apparently.
There are a ton of unhappy people right now and it’s not just the pathing. Its the map pool, the map voting system showing the results before voting, the small number of maps, the limited map bans and just the general treatment of the player base like they are babies who aren’t allowed to play the maps they want to play competitively. If you are happy with the small map pool and only 3x map bans, you are without question in the minority. I watch enough pro streamers to know I’ve seen many of them curse when they get a map they don’t want. So it’s not just me.
You know what, I might be wrong, sure. But I can only speak of things in terms I understand. Can you show me like 3 example where there is a huge split between, say, lobby players and ranked players? I don’t mean things like “if you drop within 5 mins, go play lobby”. I mean something like, “I play lobby, so this civ/civ balance/strategy doesn’t matter, or I play ranked, so, this experience while playing the game is different”.
I also watch them. You didn’t understand my point. My point is, it is fine that they aren’t happy playing a map, as long as it isn’t that frequent. I will play arabia and arena now and then, even though I hate those maps.
None of this has anything to do with 1v1 map bans.
On the other hand, I have seen dozens of threads saying that this is not fine. You’ll find a comment supporting this every week on reddit.
Why haven’t you changed your mind on this, then?
I wasn’t really talking about civ balance, so not sure why you brought this up? I wasn’t suggesting civ balance should be determined by lobbies. My point was that lobby players tend to avoid ranked because they don’t like the lack of control or the randomness aspect of the maps on the ranked ladder. Obviously I’m not saying everybody would stop playing lobbies and join ranked if we had infinite bans on ranked either. Sure there are plenty of lobby players who are just friends playing private games or people experimenting with custom scenarios of course. But I do think infinite bans and a bigger map pool would encourage a good chunk of lobbyists to start playing ranked, which would help you get more opponents matching with you on ranked, especially for unusual players like you who often like to ban the most popular maps.
Why should you be forced to play Arabia and Arena if you don’t like those maps? With infinite bans and more maps to choose from, you wouldn’t have to.
You are keep repeating your theory that “Vast majority of players want to play only 1or 2map. So we need unlimited ban. It is democracy” But you have any supporting evidence regarding that?
In fact, Arabia is only barely above 50% play date in 1v1 ranked ladder
Maps - 1v1 Random Map | ALL - aoestats
If majority of players only want to play most popular map, the play rate should be much higher. More majority of players also accept to play Arabia but also want to play other maps. That’s why Arabia play rate is not that high.
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I don’t think those figures are accurate at all. Only 8 games of Nomad? I’ve played that map more than 8 times in one weekend. There’s no way that’s right.
Even if they were accurate, Arabia is still by far the most popular map. Arena the No.2 map is only 16.89%
I didn’t say that. I said the vast majority of players want to control which maps they want to play. In some cases it might only be a single map, but its purpose is to give you the freedom to choose as many (or as few) maps as you want. I think even the most ardent single map players wouldn’t necessarily ban everything. The key thing about more bans is giving us the choice to play what we actually want. Not waste time on maps we don’t like. This whole “I’ll scratch your back if you’ll scratch mine” attitude is just not optimal; nobody really wants to do it; but they go along with it for the sake of sometimes playing the maps they do like. It’s a compromise for both sides which we shouldn’t have to tolerate. Adding more maps to each map rotation means it’s way more likely that every player will find a decent number of maps they like in each pool and therefore less likely to ban everything.