I’m going to preface this by admitting that I’m a rather harsh critic of certain changes or additions to Age of Empires II if I’m not fond of them; for example, just yesterday I ranted in the official Discord server about how much I don’t like The Mountain Royals’ main menu artwork, and to this day, I would really like to know why there has been no word on the fans’ request for changing the Persians’ architecture from Middle Eastern to Central Asian, of which I am a staunch supporter.
Regardless, I do remain excited and appreciative of when changes do arrive which I like.
The bi-monthly public vote for upcoming ranked map rotations has always been a little off to me. Initially, it was exclusive to the forums, and while the move from here to in-game was great, it still left a fair amount of problems, such as votes being made public before the vote ends, and developer-chosen maps being the same few maps every time, thus making map choices bland, and a waste of potential for the myriad maps that are uncommonly seen beyond casual games.
The most recent hotfix, which removed the game-breaking Relic duplication glitch, silently added a major overhaul to the user interface for ranked map rotation:
Not only has it moved from the main menu itself to the “multiplayer” section, thus potentially (if only slightly) deterring non-ranked players from participating in the vote, but the map icons have been shrunk, so you no longer need to slowly scroll all the way down just to see what the potential maps are.
The biggest change, however, is the fact that you can no longer see how many players have voted for what map until after the voting process has closed. This was one of the major changes I had requested, as it just seemed to prevent players from voting for their preferred maps if they knew it wouldn’t win the vote. I believe this can influence the players’ choices, and while there still remains the problem of developers sticking to the same maps (beyond the permanent ones like Arabia & Arena, of course,) this is still an update that I wish was notified to those on the Discord server and other places where the hotfix description was provided, as it is a very welcome change to the UI, and I am very thankful.