3 wood. -2/-1/1 in Dark/Feudal/Castle Age.I really don’t see the problems of the above changes.
These are definitely acceptable of what I always emphasis “gradually”.
Even you build 30 x woodwalls it just costs you 30 extra wood only.
Do you think Hera being that good just by his APM?
I have been in this forum for almost year and half and I found that it’s really hard to communicate with causal players.
They always mixing up their own preference and game facts.
For example when we talk about nerf walling, causal players just denying it at the start without further discussion due to their “preference”
But I am talking about gradually increase the cost like this patch from 2 wood to 3 wood. It’s a scenario that pro players can have more accurate insights than casual players.
Can’t blame him, though, for trying to turn the game into something he’ll be the best in the world at. It’s a great strategy if you can get away with it.
Hera hates walls so much, that I fully expect him to cry for more walling nerfs if he even so much as glimpses a full wall in KotD IV. Which is likely, when KotD Arabia sometimes has easily wallable map gens, and passive boomy play is still doing okay enough for several players to try it.
But funnily enough it only worked so far if both players were greedy.
I haven’t seen a single greedy victory so far.
Several people tried it and every time memb cried “that’s a mistake” and membstradamus was always right.
Is this the goal for Arabia? That you must play 1 TC all in with it?
For me, Arabia was always a “balanced” map type where all kind of strategy were viable. Now the formerly most versatile map of all restricts you in the most basic of all strategic decisions - how many TCs you want to add.
And I don’t understand it. I don’t understand why people just “claim” it would be a “agressive” map type. We have “agressive” type of maps like Atacama and Socotra. Arabia always was the map with the most strategic variety. That’s why it became the favourite of the community. As it allowed all kind of differnt minds to play against each other and nobody had a disadvantage just because he was “agressively” or “defensively” minded.
And I really dislike the constant attemts of the “agressive” part of the community to slowly make arabia “their” map. It’s already a huge burden for defensively minded players to climb the ladder, as it is so much harder to play successfully defensive at that map already. More and more people climb the ladder by just skipping the whole strategy part of the game and dumbly learning buildorders and unit control. Which is fine, it’s a part of the game.
But it’s only a part of the game. And if the devs continue that trend the game will lose it’s strategical aspect and become a total buildorder/unit control grind except for the very high levels of play. And a hard separation of pro level and the reminder of the community.
We are already in that process of separation, cause even in pro level the “meta perception” of the game is eforced by some influential people like Memb or Hera which promote agression over everything else. But the devs must begin to acknowledge that “defensively” minded people usually are also more reasonable. They don’t demand all the time “the game is way too agressive”, instead they try to find ways how to survive against that agression, they take it as a personal challenge to overcome the general superiority of agressive play which is already in the game.
Which leads in the current ladder to the odd phenomenom that defensively minded people are vastly underrated. They are paired with opponent they would totally stomp if they play agressive. Then often the more agressive people don’t see that they are indeed paired with a player that is just better than him. A player that for example can quickwall like a god, a player that safes his damaged vills from death. Then they complain about defenses being too strong. But it’s just not the case, it’s the opposite. They have just been paired with a defensive player that is underrated.
This phenomenon is totally independent from the balance of “defense” vs “offense”. On the ladder you will always be paired with players that are defensively minded or offensively minded that give you an equal fight. If defenses are nerfed, the rating of the defensively minded players will fall. So the agressive Players will get some easy wins in the beginning but when everybody gets his new elo he will be paired again with defensive players that give him an equal fight. They are just even better than the defensive players he formerly played against. So he will again lose against defensive play and he will again complain about “walls op”. But it’s just not the case, it’s a characteristic of the matchmaking system that you will be paired with players that give you an equal fight.
And to say the least, the most interesting games are always those of greed or defense against heavy agression. The other games are repetitive as they heavily restrict the gameplay and diversity. If both players share the same general attitude they have the same winning contitions and usually one single fight (or raid trade) decides the game then. The rest is snowball.
And that’s also the thing we currently saw in most of the kotd IV matches. Very agressive, yes. But also boring cause most games are decided quite early in feudal and no comeback potential. Some of the players like dark gave a hard fight, but it was just not possible.
If we want diverse games with high strategic variety we need to have a fair balance for greedy defensive play and agression. Also defense is always harder to play than agression, so we can’t even take the pro level to graduate. They are the best defensive players. So if even pros see that you can’t play greedy anymore at arabia, the whole defense vs offense balance at that map is totally in shatters already.
It’s a terrible state of the game, that is currently in the process of losing the basic strategic diversity it made it so great. If we follow that path further, I don’t see a perspective of the game. Playerbase will separate in “agression” vs “defense” and only play the maps that favor one over the other. We are in the beginning process of a faction separation of the playerbase, but the reason the game survived so long was the opposite - it allowed to play all kind of people to compete under somewhat “fair” conditions. We shouldn’t follow the political commodity trend of splitting communities.
Please let Arabia be the map it was, the most versatile of all maps where all strategies were viable to some extend!
Villese’s first game as Tatars had the best chance to win with greed, but he threw away too much army in Castle, and didn’t add a meat shield for his CA. Otherwise I suppose I mean that even if greed is the weak play that simply cannot win KotD, Hera would get walling nerfed more anyway, because players are still trying it, and Hera despises walling that much.
Also it’s mildly disturbing how on day 2 of KotD, Memb was praising that he never saw a Fast Castle build. It’s like Arabia is “his” map now, as you say. It’s such a disgusting display of ego, that I’m now honestly hoping the rumors of the pro scene migrating to AoE IV after KotD are true. This backwards thinking of reducing variety on the game’s most variable map is a mindset AoE II can do without!