Thats a bigger bridge to cross over, because in no way will they find a easy method to a: reduce skill level caps especially when it comes to 1000-1500. And B: the way the rating works makes it difficult aswell as rusty player start or continue in a elo they might not fit in
When it comes to random tho. My personal take is that i would prefer random as its skill expressive to be deceicive even as a weaker role as teamplay and communication is key there to make a random assembly of civs work
Basically you want games to be predictable and within your comfort zone. And you donât enjoy improvising or adapting your play according to your civ and its synergy with your team matesâ civs. A big part of the fun of the game is solving the puzzle of civ matchups. Itâs very unlikely that both pockets will be meso. And flanks can go knights too.
Good idea, but there should be an extra step during lobby, that already counts as game (loss of ELO when leaving). Step where you can choose positions after the civs have been revealed.
Little advice to be a less annoying human beeing: If you are not sure about someones motives, dont assume - ask.
I ofc hate predictable games. Predictable is pretty boring, i want games with huge surprising plays. But those plays need some balance to be able to happen.
Meso pockets simply have nothing going for them in feudal. There is no âpuzzle to be solvedâ, there is only hoping that your opponent messes up. If that happens, the game might still be fun, but if both sides play more or less clean, your flank just dies early feudal. You can go feudal eagle, who lack the speed to jump on archers. Or you can go FC and let your flank die. Or you can go archers, but those lack to mobility and you run into problems if the opponent adds a few skirms.
Whatever you choose, if your opponent just goes scouts+archers and reacts to what youâre doing, you lose. This makes those situations so frustrating, you have no agency and can only hope the other team messes up.
Meso pockets can go FC full eagles and delay their extra TCâs to fully commit on 5x barracks production. With Squires, EWs can chase down crossbow and get a good surround. Knights are not a perfect counter either because knights pockets will be adding TCs and wonât have enough resources or stables to match the eagles in numbers. You shouldnât be fighting alone in team games anyway, so as long as your other pocket has complimentary units, you can take decent fights. Overwhelming an enemy flank with arson will force their team mates to defend their flank and gives your other team mates respite and chance to catch up on eco. You have to commit and be aggressive. Delaying TCs for a while is not a big deal if the aggression gets you ahead. Eagles are good because theyâre fast and nobody ever wants to go Longswords in team games.
Yeah, sure they can. If you read my post, i even mentioned that possibility. However, its a losing play vs an opponent who does not make huge mistakes. You simply cant naked FC on open maps (khmer might be able to pull it of with a nice map generation, but even then it relies on opponent beeing a bit slow to realize). Either you or your flank will simply die before you even reach castle.
You can if you team wall. Or just small wall your own base. You can even afford to tower your own gold if youâre not adding TCs in castle age straight away. And youâll be making units while still in Feudal on your way up to castle, so you shouldnât ever be in a position where you have no walls and no army.
I agree. It should be the default setting of every game
Sorry, but you are getting further and further away from reality. Team walling is even more ressources invested into something that isnât army, so you will die even faster.
Im not sure what level you play on, but your ideas on how to play meso pocket just reinforce my point that forced random in team games is a bad idea; if you have to go for strategies that are basicially suicide vs decend opponents, then there is something wrong.
If people enjoy picking civs, who are you to stop them? You say most people prefer it so deal with it and wait till more people who prefer random show up so you can queue with them instead.
Team walling is much less resources than everyone walling their own base. You can go eagles + monks to defend against knights. If youâre that against walling and you canât handle the vulnerability of FC, then you can go 3x barrack feudal eagles with upgrades and delay your up time and use the market to get up as youâll be floating gold from the eagle production, similar to Hoang and Noboru etc.
And regardless of walling or not, where are all the high level (or even medium high ELO) players complaining about pocket meso civs being unfair? Are there any? They all play random and adapt. The top level players are much better able to identify unfair balance issues than any of us plebs. And if they havenât identified any problem with it, any of us lower level players having a problem with it is a skill level issue, not a balance issue.
high level players mostly play 1v1s. if they play team games itâs either in a tournament setting with civ picking or Nomad, where there is no position picking
That would be a good point if it werenât for the tons of high level 4v4 games on Twitch and YouTube which donât fall into either of those categories.
No high elo player post in this forum, because the average poster has no clue about the game and proposes to go FC on teamgame arabia 
On a more serious note, ofc nobody complains about it because right now, we are not forced to play meso pocket; its your proposal that we were in the future, but thankfully, thats not reality yet and therefor there are no angry forum posts about it.
Most if not all 22+ TGs are nomad.
And there are simply no pro players playing Arabia TG nowadays.
(arabia TGs are more common at 17+ elo but it is mid level and also full of civ pickers)
I (as a 20+) personally dont find arabia TG to be fun enough tbh, its so boring regardless of civ, just two 2v2s.
do you have any proof of that? All of twitch is 1v1s, community games and custom scenarios. with the occasional Nomad 4v4
I think the ranked games should work like in the wololo tournaments. Each team picks a favorite map, a favorite civ and some civs to ban. Each team member going one round at a time.
Just like in ranked match for league of legends. Much clearer way to assess the oponents and prepare for outcomes. Thatâs strategy, allright!
Either implement some draft system or allow people to queue only random civ.
I think the aoe 3 method is good. You pick a civ before knowing what map you get. So once you see the map you canât change civ anymore. So that will reduce the frank brit picker on arabia etc, because they know it might not be arabia, so they will pick a more general civ. Also for example turk is so common on arena because players see arena, and pick turk. If they pick before knowing the map is arena they mostly wont pick turk
This would hardly work for AoE2, because some civs work on all/most maps and some are specialised. E.g. Lithuanians are good on open maps, top tier on hybrid maps, strong on island maps (full naval tech tree, good landing potential), and still decent on closed maps thanks to the Leitis. The system you propose simply means that the generalist civs will be the picked a lot and the more niche civs will be picked less.
It also would create huge problems for premades: As they have more bans, they can mostly predict what map/type of map will be played and can pick accordingly, the randoms they might face on the other hand will not have that knowledge and will have to pick more generalist civs.