This requires a complete redesign of the system, which the devs surely wont afford.
It looks like a very clumsy system. It would be way better if you had overlapping elo ranges and your vote would count on every range you are in.
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And BTW, why is arena and fortress both in map pool? Just like last week BF and michi. It sucks. Please give us solo players at least 2 bans. Just 1 is not enough. Im willing to wait 3 min longer, still shorter than go into a stupid map and wait 5 min and quit.
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For me Yucatan is an annoying map. There are too much sheep to handle and too much straggler trees to build buildings. The space is also limited by big wood lines. I personally also don’t like the walling aspect of that map. Amazon Tunnel on the other hand is imo less annoying and more strategiyally interessting. It is easier to wall, but Ressources are in the middle to fight for. Its a fair map because there are less surprise attacks.
On Continental the scouting can be annoying, but beside that I rather liked it.
I had some Deathmatch 1v1v1v1v1v1 on Michi and these games were pretty good. I would not mind it in 1v1 ranked. I think it is very strategical. How do you build your defense? What army composition do you go for, when do you onager cut? It comes down to such startegical things more and it is less decided by who can surprise the other one first with a rush. It is a bit of a different game but since most maps are much different, I am absolutly pro Michi for the variety.
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Imo voting should be limited to ranked players only, maybe also by introducing a minimum amount of games played.
For Quick Play they could use a totally different map pool as it’s currently the case in AoE 4.
And most importantly: hide the percentage of votes before the final result is in.
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Can you somewhere see the number of votes? Isnt it just only show the %?
How will this work for 1499 rated players? Cant they be matched against 1501 rated players anymore? And what happens if you just cross the barrier? Does your map pool change all the time? I dont like this idea.
To be fair, i have no idea why you want to play these games in quick play over ranked. There are two differences between them:
- Ranked uses a rating to match players on rating and thus skill. Quick play is completely random. Games on quick play are much more unbalanced.
- The victory condition for ranked is conquest only. Quick play offers relic or wonder victory as well. Relic or wonder victories usually dont really matter in most games at all. So this difference doesnt really matter.
Because of (1) quick play is mostly death. Last time i tried i was in the queue for 15 minutes and still got no game. Thus i left quick play and went to ranked again. I got a new game in a few minutes.
Oh, and if really needed: you can count the games in ranked and quick play both, i stead of ranked. That doesnt really change much.
I dont think this is considered as reason why players dont want certain maps. Every player has a preferred play style and some maps feel boring to play. The majority of ranked players like to play more fast pace aggressive maps. They dont really like slow paced booming maps. That is why Arabia is the most played map.
So the question isnt “can you adapt to this map?” But “is it fun to play?”
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I dont think this is considered as reason why players dont want certain maps. Every player has a preferred play style and some maps feel boring to play. The majority of ranked players like to play more fast pace aggressive maps. They dont really like slow paced booming maps. That is why Arabia is the most played map.
I like aggressive maps too, but Arabia isn’t that aggresive. More aggresive are maps with some extra food in the middle to fight for like Greenland and Valley. Arabia has nothing special except some ponds who rarely get used. Fast Castle makes more sense on Arabia then on many more aggressive maps. I think Arabia is popular because people are just lazy and want to play the same all the time. But for me it is the opposite.
So the question isnt “can you adapt to this map?” But “is it fun to play?”
Most tournaments use a variety of maps. The explanation must be that it is more fun to watch different maps and adaptation instead of the same all the time. That Arabia is so popular for high elo players must be just a habit I assume. I play the game for just a little bit more than a year, and I don’t understand the love for Arabia. It is a map with no special characteristic.
Because it’s more casual and doesn’t give me anxiety 
Having not much time to play, I use this mode to train and try my strategies, so the fact that I may encounter higher ELOs is not a problem.
On the other side, I hate playing on certains closed and hybrid maps that are actually popular in the pools, so I would hate losing points for this reason. So I may skip weeks in ranked, and I would lose the right to vote and this would lead to me skipping even more.
I think that a more reasonable pool could take me to play more ranked btw.
But that’s not the point, Quick game is an existing game mode, anyone can have any reason to use it.
You could match with anyone you share some map of the pool.
e.g.
Devs gave their fixed map for every ELO pool:
Arabia, Arena, Nomad
Then players vote for additional map:
1000-1500 voted for Baltic, Black Forest, Four Lakes, Michi
1500-1900 voted for Scandinavia, Four Lakes, Acropolis, Runestone
So the Pool share the fixed maps + Four Lakes
If the 1499 and 1501 players don’t ban these map, they could match
Of course this would be a great implementation, but it could solve some issues. We are here just to propose, discuss and speculate.
This would be even more complicated, since you would give some players the chanche to vote in more than 1 pool, and some other players could vote only in 1 pool.
The overlapping should not be in the vote, but in the matching: as I said, if 2 pools share some maps, player with similar elo would still match, as already happens today.
but this is a huge change from the current system: at the moment every player can get a match with any other player
Nope: a player already can match only with players that share at least 1 map in the pool
Simply, with the current number of maps in the 1v1 pool, it’s impossible that 2 players don’t share at least 1 map, since you can ban 3 maps out of 7.
With separate ELO pools there would be this option, but only for players that belong to different ELO ranges.
And it would be an option, since if 2 different range players could have still some map in common, like in the example before
In this case, even if 2 players bans 3 of theri maps, they would still have at least 1 map in common.
The only scenario this would not happen is if 2 ELO ranges votes for a totally different map pool.
if both players ban 3 maps, that’s at most 6 bans. 6<7, so at least one map is not banned. you share at least one map with each player
I don’t see this as a problem. You would vote once and your vote is counted for seversl ranges, typically 2 ranges if you use ELO ranges such as [0, 500[, [250, 750[, [500, 1000[, [750, 1250[, …
I dont see it as more complicated fir the devs: everything would be the same as now, except for the map choice, which would be from the pool that best fits both ELOs (or the team average ELO).
If 2 consecutive pools have at least one different map, there is a chance that two players of similar ELO from these 2 pools cannot be matched.
Currently the system first chooses the player, then the map.
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That’s exacly what I’m saying, with the current system it’s impossible not sharing at least 1 map with any other player.
But you cannot play with that player on a map you banned.
So, actually, you can play on shared map. And this would not change.
What would change is the fact that you could have no map sharing with players from others ELO ranges, but the possibility to match them in the current system are already low since it involves only players with an elo near the “borderlines”
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I cannot agree with you more
this would change. using your pools:
say player 1 (1490) bans Arena, Black Forest, Michi
player 2 (1510) bans Arabia, Nomad, Four Lakes
then there is no map available to be played
so as I said: in the current system any two players can get matched, in your proposed system that’s no longer the case
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I love this REPEATED conversation, the same arguments the same opinions, the same “because I played this way”
I wonder if should I copy all the previous opinions here, to make it a complete conversation To Nowhere…
Maybe we just hope that this time the people opposed to whichever is my or your point of view will not participate and that way we may feel that something is going to be done or not done…
In simple words, everything in this conversation has been discussed before, EVERY single comment, we are beating a dead horse.
Let’s go back and enjoy the game. 
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This is a bad idea because if you are close to breaking through a barrier, say you are 14xx and going up to 1500 however 1001-1500 map pool is mostly closed maps and the 1501-1900 map pool is mostly open maps then any prospective 14xx player is going to get wrecked at 1500, as the meta shifts in a way they have no experience in.
Another user suggested overlapping elo ranges so avoid this hard transistion and I agree that could be a better approach however it doesn’t stop maps popping in and out of your map pool when you are close to a barrier.
Overall I don’t think this is a solution to the problem.
If I had to put forward a solution.
- You can’t see the current votes as that biases your votes. (shouldn’t need to explain this)
- If you have NOT played ranked in 4 weeks (could change, eg. 2-8 weeks) you can vote but your vote is discarded. This eliminates the odds non-ladder players influence the outcome, without they seeing the option greyed out (or however else you envision non-ranked players not being able to vote).
- Map voting is split into 1 hybrid, 1 open land, 1 closed land, 1 water so that they selected maps can’t be
all closed land maps like BF, Fortress, Michi etc.
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I would like to see the following changes:
- Map polls follow the tournament scene more closely. Players (not just top players) appriciate being able to practice/experience tournament maps on the ladder.
- Map votes are allowed to those active on the ladder only (as long as you have played 1 game recently and have a rank on the leaderboard).
- The map vote UI should not have a scroll bar, and votes should be hidden. Because of the poor UI/UX design (also generally for the game), many players don’t realise you can scroll down to vote for more map. Maps listed first recieve more votes, generally speaking.
Overall I think this will result in less complaints about not having enough bans, as this is just a symptom of a larger problem: bad map polls.
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I think this is a bit controversial. Tournament maps are designed for providing games that are exciting to watch, not necessarily fun to play. Often these maps make life deliberately harder for the player (terrain you cannot build on, awkward hills, etc), in order to force mistakes, make the game more intense and also more stressful.
I’d say for the majority of players the game is already hard enough, so that the map doesn’t need to add extra challenges to it.
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############################################
Viper and Masmorra tackle this in the latest episode of their podcast
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Ok the link is getting sensored, thanks DE, but just search for
Town Center - AoE Podcast with TheViper & ######## # ### 2
Imho, even Arabia, Arena and the “staples” should be put in the voting system instead.
Boring maps.
I’m half trolling here, but I’d really love to see how much REAL love gets Arabia in a vote.
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