I’m a low-mid ELO player who usually play team games. There are two maps I absolutely hate playing: Arabia and Arena. Now, Arabia is actually a decent map which can be fun. But it rarely is, at my elo. If you play pocket, you’ll see a flank fold under feudal pressure from one opponent. If you play flank, you’ll get 2v1s and pocket will be happily booming away. This, of course, isn’t always the case. But it happens often enough to drain any fun out of the experience for me. Also, I really dislike the thin treelines which makes me spend half the time looking if there are new holes I need to patch up.
You can ban only one map in team games. That in of itself wouldn’t be a huge deal, except that you get the other one like 3 out 5 times. Queue dodging is now such a huge deal that you get 1 min, 5min, 10min, and now 1 hour ban on ranked queue. The other option is to resign after 5-10 minutes, but that sucks for everyone else playing.
“Why don’t you just play lobby games?” because ranked games are actually balanced. Lobby games have 800ELO players going against 1600ELO players. That is the opposite of having fun.
So here is my question: What is the expectation here? Am I supposed to play through something I really don’t enjoy, and therefore won’t play well? I have played several hundred arena and arabia games, I know I hate those by this point.
You have only three options with this system: 1) dodge queue/early resign, which may earn you a temporary ban, 2) Play somewhat normal and lose organically as fast as you can 3) play a game you don’t enjoy, while already knowing you won’t enjoy it.
This system has terrible incentives, which makes everyone’s experience worse. So, just let us ban 2/3 maps in team games. We’ll wait and put up with longer queues if that is the trade off.