Hey everyone. If you guys have ever seen an AOE2 tournament, you may have seen custom maps that are not implemented in the game (only mods). I think those custom maps should be implemented in the game itself and be in the rotation every 2 weeks. From my ladder experience, only a few maps are really interesting, particularly in 1v1. Always arabia and maps like gold rush/pit, arena, island, TI. What I want to say is that there are a lot of interesting maps where the gameplay is really different from what you can see in the basic maps available in the game.
Here are some of the maps me and other french players have been playing for a tournament hosted by OGN and Miaou. As you can see, they differ a lot compared to what we are accustomed to (in terms of build orders and strategies). Another good thing is that these maps have usually less bugs and are well balanced (when they are tested tho).
Devs could even make a monthly contest for the best competitive custom maps and they would be added into the official maps.
I love this idea. I already posted this idea in the past in different ways:
I both of the threads i gave the suggestion to use maps from ongoing tournaments into the current map pool. I do really think we have a great community with many good map makers and it would be nice to make use of that.
One of the drawbacks i see is as follow: Who is responsible for the map? What happened if the map is put into ranked, but ends up pretty bugged? Is this up to the devs? Is this up to the creator? So things needs to be made clear. But i think that isnt really a big issue, but just some work for the devs.
Without a doubt there are al lot of well known and fun to play cutom maps out there. The latest tournaments like HC4 showed us that some of these maps are also matured and balanced.
I realy see no reason why they are not even considered to be implemented in the random map rotation. It was really fun to see the pros compete on maps like Pants and it feels bad being only able to play them in lobby games. I personally do not play unranked games so i basically never played any oft he maps that are planed for The Two Pools.
Not to mention that some oft he standard maps really suck and nobody likes to play them. To expand the map pool with the best community made maps would be more refreshing to me than any DLC or balance patch.
Some custom maps (like Pants/Bay) are not made to be used for teamgames, so I think fewer tournament maps, the way they are now, are suited for ranked play than people would think; but surely some of them are, and a monthly contest may encourage more people to make fun, custom maps.
