Allowing Civ picking in Ranked makes no sense, now that we can't pick our map anymore

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
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All arguments that was previously used against map picking can be applied to Civ picking.
Monotony, One-trick Ponies, Abusing the strongest civs is the result of it, the only counter to it is civ picking yourself.

Much like the pinned “Alt+f4 problem” there should have been a pinned “Civ picker problem” Thread made long ago - and sanctions made against them. If you want to pick civ, make a lobby or Quickplay, Ranked is for player with skill that can play 39 Civs, with 10+ build orders.

Sure, Alt+f4 made other players having to restart the queue, but it can be argued that picking civs is as bad as it has a negative effect on those who like to play random civs. Besides your awfully bad matchmaking system made it this way instead of just removing that one player that dodges and replaces it with another. If you would have made a proper system all players are put in a lobby with not host and pre-set settings. People can leave and get the penalty, but all other just stay in that lobby.
Instead, what a great implementation, everyone is kicked and has to queue again + it seems like the queue “lose” the other 7 players and given by the time how long you have to wait, it throws everyone off again, starting from scratch (as seen when streamers queue at the same time)

If every map favor is taken into consideration then I demand that every Random Civ option, in an 8 player example, has a 12,5% chance to make all civs random.
This is exactly how the map selection works. This change limits Civ pick cheaters and put them in the Elo they belong.

Why is Map Selection not a majority vote but Random Civ option is? You even reduced the amount needed for All Random from 8 to 5 - now following the same logic, every Random Civ Option should also count, much as every Map favor is considered.

It is either all random or nothing random, No in between.

Civ pickers are literally ruining the game into a boring monotonous ridiculous meta containing the same 10 Civs and since the balance team seems to be doing a bad job, it will continue to be like this.

And after 2 years the game still doesn’t Save my Random Civ option and I have to set it every game, jeez

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I swear I saw a post about random civ not long time ago (maybe in reddit)… people DID complain about it

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Well obviously, everyone has different tastes, and they might also evolve.
Some months ago I picked only, now I only play random.
Rule of thumb suggests that taking away choices is more easily seen as a bad thing though.

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Yep, is boring. Playing solo tg-s in 2v2/3v3 mode, you get only 1 ban and then im forced to play arena or bf, which I hate both. In 1v1 I just pick a civ that I wanna play and leave random open. I wish there was a possibility to ban some civs, lets say 3 civs in 1v1 that you/enemy wont get on random, I dont like playing water heavy civs(malay or something) on arabia etc. Every nomad is persian/malians/spanish fiesta, some bans would change that also and making matchups more unique.

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I don’t think that civ picking should be forced. It will force a lot of new or low elo players away from the game I think, because they will initially only feel comfortable playing a few civs. I think it is better to let people develop as players and choose their civ at first, but then play random later if they want to. That being said, I think it could be an option if they let people pick civs, but added incentive to go random civs, such as gaining more elo or losing less elo if you go random and the other person picks. That’s kind of how I see it.

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I prefer random as well but if you want to have it competitive it’s more fair with civ picking than without.

I also agree with the previous post that it will scare away new people who are trying to learn the game.

Maybe giving every player/team some bans could help preventing these boring matchups.

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Not picking civs would make it awfully random. Imagine for example playing on a naval map and having the Cumans or the Aztecs as a random civ, against the Vikings or the Malay.

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Why you ever bother to reply to someone who thinks that civ picking=cheating

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There’s actually a secret way to see one of the unpopular civs in your games. Pick it.

It also makes winning more fun, when you’re an underdog like Portuguese on a land map.

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People around these forums hardly play real games, so they will never understand your complain, for them koreans are still weak ignoring the silly balance design that has been for 9 months or more with the WW two castles meta in all walled maps.

They probably just watch viper/hera or t90 community games, they ignore completely team games, despite being played 3 times more and involving way more players, i have read comments about “balance should never be around team games”, imagine if you wouldn’t balance around your most played game mode.

Picking civs on team games has been hardly criticized basically since release, it has been the same civs, indians khmer, franks as pkt and britons, mayans, sara, ethiopians and maybe vietnamese as flank on arabia like maps, nomad is all about spanish, persians, malians, water maps well only viking+vikings, italians and portu, the game has a terrible balance cause those civs are above the rest and their bonuses stack hardly, somehow arena and bf have more civ diversity given that siege is most important there, but yeah 39 civs and playing with the same all day is beyond boring, its actually fun killer.

If you want to play civs go and pick them on lobbies, picking civ in ranked team games has been forbidden since the release of the original games, exclusively tournaments and game practices you could pick civs cause of obvious reasons.

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exactly this

minority of maps

1700+ matches and consider the game should be balanced around the overwhelming MAJORITY of matches… ie arabia

imagine designing safety for a car based on the minority of incidents as opposed to the majority…

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I agree with incoherence of map restrictive and civs free to play. Anyway, I think that the way to go is make both free to play, but if you want some restrictive settings, they should just work in ranked, not in quickplay, and give menus a good design that orient new players to go first for quickplay instead of ranked games

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In a reasonable world we wouldn’t even have this debate, because there would be an option that lets us choose beforehand whether we want to queue against opponents who civ pick, or not.

In the actual world, devs will never implement that, because that would mean rewriting matchmaking which they are too lazy to do, as they try their best to show patch after patch. So just like they did for DM, and are now doing for Arabia-only/Arena-only players, they say “screw the minority” and only implement the majority option (here, civ picking).

Have to admit, the civ picking issue was handled very smartly, with this “Random civ” button, which basically lets the lobby vote and enforces it to everyone, that way you are guaranteed to have the game Alt-f4’d if you click on it in TGs, but at least now you can’t say devs didn’t listen to your complaints, if it doesn’t work, it’s just the fault of the community for Alt-f4’ing…!!

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I agree. Civ picking should be like how the map pool works: Weekly/bi-weekly rotation of available civs you can use with a ban/favorite system like the map pool. Let’s make it happen!

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You’re absolutely right, but dont expect them to change it, developers try to keep the majority satisfied, most of the players are civ pickers / noobs and very much clueless, the developers count on us as a community to show some sportsmanship, sadly it doesnt happen cause the que system is anonymous and the lack of trust and dignity has got out of control.

It’s less about ELO for me, even though I agree that Civ pickers have much worse elo than they currently got, aka Hoang, 200-300 less if they went random civ. For me its about diversity, it’s boring to play 1v1s against the same top5 civs, and when it comes to TG’s its totally dead, only Franks and Brits, zzz

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civ picking is fine for people who are still learning the game

but there should be a separate queue for random civ games

the monotonous meta comes more from position-picking than civ-picking. that setting should be removed.

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I support the path of free choice for both, maps amd civs, but I find your idea really interesting to have a more fairly data income about civs performances. Of course only for ranked games. Quickplay should stay totally free

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Dodging and Civ-pickinh are incomparable in the way you have. The former makes play impossible, the other doesn’t.

If this bothers you, in 1v1 simply choose mirror and have random civ box selected. That way you either play as strong a civ as your opponent (so it comes down to strat and execution, not civ strength), or you both have random civs.

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But mirrors are boring too - First it should be shown who goes random civ and hoe doesn’t (like a little yellow ‘?’ in the bottom right corner of the civ badge

Also the former, as previously stated, doesn’t have to make play impossible - it’s just the queue starts from scratch each time someone leaves - that’s just bad implementation and not an alt+f4 problem.

Yes civ picking doesn’t prevent games, but from a quality standpoint, the games are less thrilling, monotonous and overall feel the same, with, as the playrate suggest, players always choosing the strongest civs to get their elo to places they don’t belong

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The big difference between map picking and civ picking is that there is only one map. But both people can pick their own civs.

Consider it as not getting to vote at all vs getting to vote when you turn 20. If the former you’ll fight for your right to vote, the later you’re less likely to fight for you to get the vote at a younger age like 16.

But personally I like civ picking and the +50% vote for random civs system.

PS I don’t know what you mean by this quote? If someone is picking random they can also hit the random civ for all tick box. If they don’t it’s likely they want to go random but either don’t mind or don’t want their opponents to go random. Which is a good thing imo, more options.