So all the reasons have been said before. I think 3k are abominations that don’t belong in the base game and I don’t have high hopes of MS changing course.
There might however be a workaround.
The most competitive players don’t care about thematics.
Some competitive players are concerned about heroes.
Lot’s of players don’t want the thematics of the game to tarnished.
Some players specifically want 3k in ranked.
So we need somehow to have 5 new civs, 3 of the new civs be 3k, but also none of the new civs to be 3k.
However I think if there was a limited civ ban (which would apply to you and your opponent, you can’t ban a civ, but then pick them yourself) option when match making, then everybody mostly get what they want. So if you could pick 5 civs (5 is important I’ll come back around to that), then if you, like I, have an issue with the 3k civs, you can ban them with 3 of your five civ bans.
So if you don’t like 3k but your opponent goes full random, they’ll get something besides three 3k. they’re next matchup against someone who goes full random, they might be 3k.
If you don’t like 3k, but someone else will only play 3k, you won’t even be matched together.
And you can use your bans for any civ. So even if MS 100% backtracked on 3k, this could still be useful. If we get another de launch cumans, ban them. If armenians or romans are an eye sore to you, ban them. If monaspa get bugged again, ban georgians.
5 I think is enough for the vast vast majority of what I’ll call conscientious objectors, to not have to play civs they really despise. And if you’re on a 4v4 team game, even if every players bans a different 5 civs, then there’s still 10 civs left for 8 players.
If you’re the person that wants to ban more than 5 civs, you’re probably just trying to ban all civs that are good against your preferred civ(s)/playstyle.
So to summarize when picking civs for ranked you’d have three options
- I’m fine with playing this civ
- I don’t want to play this civ but i have no issue if the opponent plays that civ
- Limit of 5 civs I DONT want to play as or against.
Again I think the smarter plan from the beginning would have been to create thematically cohesive content from the get go, but I think this could make the most people the most happy.