There are four permanent maps in the team ranked map pool: Arabia, Nomad, Arena, Black Forest. This only leaves 5 maps to cycle, and players only get one ban each.
The game has come a long way, with lots of cool new map designs and features having been showcased in many tournaments over the years. But for some reason, none of this innovation makes its way into almost half of the team ranked maps. I think this is a mistake.
There are other problems with the permanent maps too. Certain gimmicks in team games result in purely cancerous games. Like when a premade is matched against solo queued players, and the premade goes Cuman feudal rams on arena (you’ve all seen it). These kinds of gimmicks prevail because the maps are so figured out and played out.
I understand that in 1v1, people consider these permanent maps staples of the competitive scene. But in team games, why not cycle them out? They can still reappear from time to time, they can even be more likely to reappear than other maps, but I think some change in sorely needed.
I think playing always the same is boring but unfortunately for me there’s people that find comfort in what is known. That not only happens in AOE2DE with people playing a lot of Arabia or Arena. It happens in other games like people playing only Mirage and Inferno for 25 years in Counter Strike and i’m sure there are a lot more examples.
It’d be interesting to poll here if people would like Arena and Arabia to be replaced in the pool ladder for other maps just every now and then.
Bans in team games are per-team rather than per-player. So if you form a full party, the team leader can ban more maps (# maps - 1 then / 2), similar to bans for 1v1. If you queue alone for just 2v2 team games, then you have 2 bans (2 for you, up to 2 for your potential partner). If 3v3 or 4v4 are checked as possibilities, then a player queued alone will only get 1.
What I would like to see, is numbered bans. So, a solo queued player would still always get their first ban, and would get their second ban if all players in the match could get their second bans, and their thirds, fourths, etc. And, when a player forms a party, then their second ban would be considered the first ban of their second party member, the third of the third, and the fourth of the last, like it is currently, but when the player leaves the party, the ban numbers are still remembered in the same order.
It is highly unlikely that this will happen. Those decisions have been finalised following the controversy.
Arabia has been played to death, but there are far too many players who only play that one and get upset if they don’t have it.
Nomad / Black Forest / Arena are imo the best map to play with random dudes on the ladder. They requires coordination, so your performance improves at higher Elo levels or if you’re playing with a team on Discord.
While I agree there needs to be more bans, these 5 maps need to remain fixed. Each of these maps have their own community which only prefer playing those maps. So I’d not recommend devs removing any of these in TG pool. Teaming up for unusual and situationally overpowered strategy like Cuman rams + flemish militia or armenian infantry or Gurjara siege elephant + pocket gunpowder uu are a legit tg balance problem but removing certain maps isn’t the right way to address it.
But I’m banning African Clearing in TG; that map seems to attract the worst trolls, who are only interested in farming or setting up their own fishmongers.
I think the core issue here is that the dev team insists on their arbitrary rule of “we have to be able to match any 4v4 player with any other 4v4 player”, instead of just letting people choose the map they want.
I want a hard-limit Elo match (like 150). My Elo TG is over 1600, but as I sometimes play at times when there aren’t many people online, I end up playing against players with an Elo TG of 1300-1400. It’s no fun.
I have a feeling they did not expect AoE2 to have such a large, ranked player-base when they programed the matchmaking system, so they wanted it to be able to work even with a very tiny number of people in queue. But I guess they haven’t been able to allocate a budget to make a more advanced system since then.
you are right. I mostly see people who love closed (arena, bf) and those who love open maps (arabia, nomad). I just want different ones.