Veteran and competitive players should should be able to play various maps. If you prefer only one map, you cannot be high rank just because of knowing to play only map. That make sense.
So map pool is a great idea 
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Agreed, why can’t I play team island ranked, black forest ranked?? I don’t need to be forced to play a map I don’t want to play, just let us host ranked games, I really don’t see what the issue is and why they made this very silly change.,
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I think all but one of the biggest tournaments every year are hosted on a mix of maps where players need to be able to play many different styles; open, closed, mixed… and a system that allows players to get a high elo playing only one style does not sufficiently measure a player’s ability for these major tournaments. Age of Empires II is an incredibly diverse game with many, many different settings. If someone wants to play ranked, 60 minute peace treaty, gigantic map for a 1v1 on islands, how does that help tournaments figure out if that player’s elo is accurate or not? Having elo for every different type of setting that players enjoy does not seem plausible either; players have so many diverse tastes. What happens when players sign up for tournaments is they say oh I’m 1.7k voobly but in reality i only play Black Forest so I’m really probably 1.5k - 1.6k. And then in the actual tournament it is found that the rating they said they were really wasn’t true either because organizers just had to take their word for it or rate them at their black forest rating. And because tournaments use SO many different maps, one of the characteristics of a good aoe2 player is their ability to play many different styles of maps fluidly.
I don’t know what to say about getting fun but even games on specific maps except join a clan where everyone knows everyone’s ability and can form up teams based on player’s ability for the specific map played. My clan does that frequently. Even on Voobly or HD you couldn’t really know if a game was going to be fun and equal beforehand. On HD you can’t see the number of games played so anything 1500 - 1700 was a crapshoot. Around 1800 - 2k there were so many 2k+ smurfs that you had no idea who you were playing against. On Voobly you could play an arabia game and get a bf or arena player or nomad player join and they not be able to play at the level of the game. Or vice versa. You could be a 1.7k player in one map and then want to try a different one and then the host has to decide do I take the player’s word for being at the level they think they are on this map or not? It causes so many problems. I strongly disliked both Voobly and HD’s ranking system’s and though DE is not perfect, I have hopes for improvements to be made and it is already better than either of the two platforms we had before.
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Having fun is much more important than helping tournaments to decide who may get eliminated by Viper at the first round.
Also have you ever heard of Arina tournaments, there had been quiet a lot of them in the past. How do we decide who gets to be eliminated by Viper on Arina?
I haven’t read all of the posts here as there are over 50 fairly long passionate posts to get through but I wanted to add my 2 cents. I like the current ranked map pools.
Age of empires 2 needs a standard ranked mode in order for the rating to mean anything. eg one person gets 1700 elo playing black forest team games and 1 person gets 1700 rating playing 1v1 arabia and 1 person gets it playing 2v2 highland every game. those people are all 1700 rating but if you throw them all on any other map in a different set of rules and the ratings mean nothing again as that’s not the standard rule set where they gained that rating. I think there should be a different queue for the modes people are wanting such as 1v1 arabia or black forest/arena team games so someone could say hey im 1700 rating at 1v1 arabia and their rating for black forest team games might only be 1400 or maybe they have never even played it. I hope this rambling makes some sense to someone.
Yes, I’ve watched the last two MoA’s. But I understood listening to the Viper and Memb that it really isn’t considered a major tournament but more of a minor tournament.
And having fun being the most important thing to you is an opinion. The problem is, a lot of people have opinions on both sides of the issue and as I’ve pointed out, they can’t really fulfill both of them and they chose one that the game developers thought was most important.
Which thinking about it, usually money is what companies view as most important. On the one hand, having people have fun is important because they buy and play the game. But the games that make companies the most money, that probably comes from viewership and sponsorship in major tournaments. I think part of the hope with DE was to take aoe to a little higher level in terms of its eSports footprint. Which in that way, major tournaments and true rankings become a pretty important thing.
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I think ranked should be a test of age of empires 2 skill. not 1v1 islands giant map 1 hour peace treaty, or 1v1 arabia small map. or free for all 12 player black forest. It should be a pool of settings that cover the most popular and practical settings and you get ranked on your average performance over the pool of available maps/settings, with at most the ability to veto/prefer a few of the options to lower the chance you have to play on a map/setting that you just absolutely HATE, that’s the cost of gaining a ranking that you can then use to show your skill in custom lobbies to get fair even matches on the map/setting you want. The variance in having a large pool of maps/settings would average out over time so i think that mayeb after 20+ games then your elo should be available to see in custom lobbies. This would kind of prevent smurfs, s unless they want to waste 20 games worth of time throwing the match to lower their rating will be fairly accurate and will show your skill at age of empires 2, not some specific setting/map.
If you want to play a specific game mode, then ranked is not for you. That’s my opinion.
The only other option would be to have several seperate ratings on several seperate map/setting combos and the problem there would be that the player pool is not deep enough to support such a structure.
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So maybe we should have 2 different elos,
-Git gut elo: for people who want to proove how they mastered every map on AoE2. For true
Duke Amiel du H’ardcores of AoE2.
-Nomad4Life elo: fake elo for casuals who want to play fun balanced matches with the settings they enjoy. They won’t get leaderboard, they won’t any get recognition from other players, all they get is fun which is pathetic.
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Alright, I think I read most posts here and I also want to share my opinion.
I do get the idea behind a map pool and I also get the argument, that people need to be able to play different maps for developing skill. I really do.
HOWEVER, I hate any type of water map, even hybrid, and I hate watching pros play there (from what e.g. T90 always states I am not the only one). Why? Because I feel fish vs. farms is too obvious for fish and on e.g. highland not-fishing and not-contesting water either means gg or a 2 hour game. WHY AM I FORCED TO PLAY THIS?
I do get the skill level argument, I really do. But if I prefer playing non-water maps - and I absolutely dont care if its arabia, cenotes, mongolia, ghost lake or any other land-only map - making anybody play maps they dont want is just destroying our beloved aoe2 community. I fear that we will have 4 systems soon (CD offline, HD, Voobly and DE) and an even more stratified pro scene. [I do have a question here: Am I the only one who would LOVE a larger pro scene? Who is kinda sad that YouTube content is basically done by the same few people over and over?]
Finally, I want to say something about the ELO/tournament argument. Does anybody believe that people will qualify for tournaments WRONGLY because of elo only? Dont we have, for most competitions at least, qualifiers? E.g. for Hidden Cup, I really enjoyed having qualifiers helping me to have an easy entry into understanding the idea behind it while still being able to skip matches I dont care about. So why exactly does anybody believe that we will have wrong participants if people play only one map? Further, why would we have Eddie kicked out of Arena tournaments? He sucks on other maps but even won this tournament in the past? I still enjoy watching them and I will never understand why he sucks in someones eye only because hes a one-map-pro exclusively.
Summarizing: PLEASE let me play games without water. PLEASE. I am begging you. I dont want to go back to ■■■■■■■ HD and Voobly unfortunately never worked with my WiFi 
Latest Edit: I missed another argument against this mappool: Everybody (pro mappool) is arguing here, that ELO should represent skill on a wide variety of maps. Okay, but why not a wide variety of civs?! Nobody here argues against civ picking, and why exactly it is representative if I play cumans on every single map I dont know. Thats even more of “Same strategy but who does it better” compared to e.g. random civ arabia, where at least different strategies will apply (e.g. spanish // mayans, which will need completely different strategies compared to e.g. cumans vs. cumans).
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Dont like to play water in Age of Empires 2? can you give any feedback on why is that? its a part of the game, mentioning T90 is not a valid argument 11
Thank you for your question. I know its part of the game but I never perceived it like that (I mean… William Wallace campaign is also part of the game and I would still not play it…)
It somewhat depends on the map (cross > e.g. medi for me) and how much of a water focus, but basically whenever theres fish, all the “exclusively-land-only”-maps-strategies (what a term, sorry for that :D) lose against the water strategy for same-skill-level players [obviously, this is simplified. There are instances of landings winning on islands, especially since dark age transport etc.pp.]. I dont like fishing simply because it takes longer than “standard” fast feudal while you HAVE TO fish in team games etc (given same skill level, obviously you can standard rush people as well).
Now, here is where we get to the maps we have right now for ranked:
- highlands is an annoying 2 hour game if your opponent wins water and walls in time while you defend your land decently.
- coastal, scandinavia, continent are classic maps where the fishing party usually wins. Especially for TG, you are forced to include water no matter if you want to or not. Playing water-heavy is a classic case of “do the same strategy as your oponent but better”, which I never really cared for (I love the strategy part of main-land-maps afterall).
- and “real” water maps (islands, team islands etc.) are the same instance (same strategy).
Now, it is super important to me to emphasize that ALL OF THIS HAS GOTTEN BETTER WITH THE NEW BALANCE ON WATER AND DARK AGE TRANSPORTS! Its at least not “gally-only” any more. Hence, watching water maps is not as tedious for me as it used to. However, I will never understand why I am now forced to play these 
(btw, had ca. 20 ranked matches so far and exactly 1 time arabia while 4 times continent o.O) Its somewhat ruining the fun for me and unranked is always a fast game, since no (team-)balance is possible.
Again, drawing on my point before: I am 100% convinced that random civ arabia only teaches me more than playing e.g. cumans on whatever map the map pool choses.
Last but not least I remember the good old days, where ranked matched were full of community. Youd see the same players again and again for the same maps, would eventually befriend them and know what they can do. This does not happen with this location pool. It makes things like doubling the best person of the opponent team way harder, since you dont see ELO of anybody… (and I know Elo says little. But if it said nothing, why have a ranked system anyways). Now I have to comment here for community 
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Irrespective of all these comments, Nomad still needs to be considered and opened up for Ranked play. Call it Nomad ELO if you want, but allow it to be competitive.
Nomad AOE2 is a very different game than all other maps, which is why there is a huge player base that essentially play ONLY Nomad.
Have some respect for those who go this challenging route of Nomad
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Well, tbf, he has the freedom not to like it.
Point is, they should give us more options for the maps
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You don’t have to give an explanation for why you don’t like a map. In fact, they should explain why they push a map pool system worse than North Korean hair style pool system. You are at least free to pick one of the hair style from the pool, here rng picks it for you.
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@Ulthos, if you like/unlike things I hope you better have reasons for it 
, actually, he stated he doesnt like water, there it goes quite a bunch of maps… You expressed your opinion on this matter several times and its perfectly clear, if you dont have anything meaningful to add, there is no need to start a spam war
BUMP
Have some respect for the Nomad community and open up proper play
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Just to let everyone know, if you force quit the game when you’re at this screen: https://imgur.com/a/CdsSZAf you don’t lose any ELO, nor will you take a loss. No need to waste your time playing atrocious maps like Highlands, Continental or Rivers for example. It’s unfortunate that it has to be this way, but until map pool gets fixed, this would seem to be the only option…
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You can quit like a minute into the game too and not lose elo
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Hi i am back from vacation, so i will continue on spamming.
On Starcraft Co-op Missions we get extra xp for selecting random map instead of a specific map. elo distribution can be effected by this to reward the player to play different maps but not punishing people who want to play specific maps. Rewards can also include avatars, titles, clan achievements etc. This also can be implemented on selecting a random civ.
For the people who don’t care for fame and glory but just want to play a balanced game on a beloved map, this may work. We still be able to queue for a specific map and get elo for each game we win while we celebrate that there are echelons to aspire to; the hardcore players who play every map and get more elo, titles, achievements per game even though they don’t enjoy it.
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thats not true now, is it?! I have a lot of drops of teammates before the game even starts and I always lose ELO if I also quit making it more viable even trying e.g. 3v4 (super annoying o.O)… Prefer the HD mechanic here of 1min “security time”…
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