After the current discussion of Arabia I just realized that ranked ladders are pretty casual. People are playing solely Arabia while Arabia is like only one of the map in any tournament. Maybe we should add a casual ladder and a ranked ladder, where Arabia is swapped out just like other maps?
(I knew it is controversial, just throwing out an idea)
I don’t think they really have enough of a playerbase for multiple ladders. Especially if people only play a couple of maps.
quickplay is suppose to be the “casual ladder”
x1 are really fine there I dunno why people don’t play it that much.
Team games on quickplay are bad because you cant pick positioning tho.
Having to different ladders set up the same doesnt add anything to the game in my opinion.
They already tried a slightly different set up for casual play (Quick play) but that failed hard. It is terrible to play quick play for anyone. That just shows that there isnt really any need for an almost copy of the current ladders.
While it is true that other maps are played competitively besides Arabia—Arabia is still the most competitive map.
Unfortunately I dont think so. It tests a lot of skills but none to an extreme. It does not test all skills, so a pool consists of Arabia only is less competitive than a hybrid pool.
I hate but I have to agree tho… the player base does not support the split.
It is the most competitive map because it is the most well balanced and most played map competitively.
Also, there have been plenty of huge prize pool Arabia only tournaments over the years. More so than any other 1 map tourney.
I would say ALL 1 pool tournaments are far less competitive than multi map tournaments. Arabia by itself is more competitive than other maps maybe, but itself alone is far from competitive.
Considering that (one of) the most prestigious tournaments is arabia only I don’t see map picking as an huge issue.
I think competitiveness of the ladder is more hindered by the possibility of climbing the ladder picking and learning just one civ, competitive aoe is not meant to be like that (that’s why there are civ drafts, bans, snipes).
Definitely not far from competitive. There is a reason why it is more competitive than other maps.
I agree that it isn’t as popular as mixed map tourneys nowadays, but for many many years it was. Because it used to easily be the most well balanced map.
Other maps are well balanced now but Arabia is still easily the most well balanced map. And I stand by my statement of it still, easily, being the most competitive map, too.
Finally, King of the Desert 1, 2 and 3 would disagree with you for saying that ‘itself alone’ Arabia is ‘far from competitive’…
As we are playing Arabia only, some of the civ bonuses, like Indian fish, Teuton farm etc cannot be exploited perfectly. That is why I think they are corelated - Maps affect civ pick as well.
It is much less competitive than multi pool tournament I must say.
Lack of fully open map, water, fully closed map, fish map, double TC map. All are the skills that are not tested on Arabia.
I would say Arabia is a balanced map, but I won’t say itself alone is on the same level of competitiveness as multi pool tournaments.
Even if this is true it is still the most competitive map.
If we view by pool but not map, single Arabia pool is not competitive compared to multi map pool.
Currently Arabia skills are seen as generic skills while some other maps (Socotra) are seen as niche skills. This is weird to me from a competitive viewpoint.
Even if players are forced to play a variety of maps on the ladder (which at least in theory they currently already do because it’s not guaranteed to get the favourite map), they would have the option to play just their strongest civs on any maps (for example just mayans on arabia, burgundians on arena, italians for water, ecc). Again, not how competitive age of empires is meant to be played.
I would say multi map single civ is at least more competitive than single map single civ.
Would be best if we can have a draft system on ladder which is the most competitive. Tho we can agree that this (and my idea) is pretty impartical given the player base.
But certainly single map multi civs is considered way more competitive than multi maps single civ. That’s why there are a lot of single map tournaments, but as far as I know little to no single civ tournaments.
Well in Arabia you can always pick the strongest civ as well (looking at all the civ pickers…), so I dont consider it multi civ.
You can say that adding civ draft alone makes the ladder more competitive which I can agree to some extent, but uhhh not as interesting as varied map imo
Current Arabia is not competitive. It encourages only a narrow set of skills in the game. It’s nothing like the old Arabia
so share of other maps played should be higher for ranked overall to feel competitive