Thats why i said, putting in the options for certain maps + the rlm pool is good for me. Since alot of the maps in the match making pool is from the rlm pool. The rlm pool had a high diversity of maps to choose from, breaking the monotony of arabia/arena/bf/nomad.
This is aoe we’re talking about. People more or less main maps instead of races unlike other rts’s. Surely they play a lot of different maps, but they specialize in certain maps: like terror for example: arena clown but is able to play on other maps decently. Or melkor who basically is one of the best on arena, but can hold his own in arabia.
I’m impressed over this game. But the way they implemented matchmaking makes it seem that theyre trying to force things upon the community or that they dont know their community all that well(which i hope isnt the case).
I think it is what we’re talking about cos this is what it boils down to: If 89% of games are on 5 maps, the pool should just be those 5 maps. I don’t get why the devs didn’t do that. Instead, they decided to include mostly maps no one ever played competitively before.
I don’t have a problem with a pool if they make the pool those 5 that were virtually the only games played, great. If not, once the novelty wears off, the community will go back to Voobly.
there are many players who played those maps because they wanted to play a game and it took too long otherwise. the statistics that zero empires used in that video were faulty due to that. i only host arabia voobly but arabia is a map i strongly dislike because it is played too often. i play it to get games.
they can improve some things such as having a map pool that changes every so often or has new maps added (including maps that aren’t initially part of the game but are common in tournaments) but this was a awesome change. also, the civs are more balanced in a view of more maps rather than just 2-3. and i think if they allowed people to host games with only one map, you’d get a certain population only doing that and another population hoping for a different map and it will take longer to get games. then people will complain how long it takes to get games, or that the elo difference in the game was too big. so overall, people just like to complain and don’t see why the old way was realllllyyyy bad.
Also, the majority of tournaments (not all) utilize a variety of maps. So a ranking system that allows you to go up it only playing one map is faulty. for example, on voobly players have a black forest or arena ranking, but then when they want to enter a voobly tournament that is based on elo, their ranking is higher than it should be. you get players entering an arabia tournament that shouldn’t be in the tournament and you have lower level tournaments where players say their elo should be 100-200 points lower than it is due to the fact that they only play BF. how are you supposed to make tournaments like that?
i once thought they should have separate elos for each different type of map, like one elo for closed maps, one for open, one for water, one for land/water, one for nomad. but that is probably difficult and faulty in many ways as well.
I’m not sure I agree that those numbers were that way because that’s what you had to do to get a game. At least, I see no reason why if a significant number of people were dissatisfied with the norm, other games wouldn’t popped up. I don’t doubt you felt that way, but I think if that was all that common (ie more than the 11% ZeroEmpires talked about) that would have been visible in the numbers.
It is %95 Arena for some players, for some it is %80 Arabia %20 Nomad… People have different preferences and not necessarily happy to play all those 5 maps. I hate playing Arena(although watching is fun) and some people hate Nomad, you can’t force everyone into a common pool.
Is that so bad to play unranked? you only like one map, no problem! you can play it as many times you want, host a lobby and it will be filled with 8 players in less than a minute. They need (this will probably come very soon) to show elo in the unranked lobbys. I think the current ladder is a healthy approach to what we need to keep the game alive for another 20 years.
Typical super casual aoe gamer answer (Not that theres anything wrong with that, you just dont understand what you’re talking about here). The aoe competitive scene has been healthy for 20 years with how things has been. Why people don’t want some of these random maps is simply cause they are terrible for competitive play.
You and others in this thread obviously don’t know what kept the game alive for 20 years. Being able to play certain maps is very much a part of the game and community. Since lobbys are not ranked in this game, are the people who want to play ranked just going to go there. They dont want to play in a unranked lobby, but you feel there is no difference, so why would the ranked ladder even concern you? If it’s not changed from this alot of people will just go back to voobly and hd. And it’s so unnessecary since it’s only people that dont even care about ranked or competitive games that wants this to be unchanged. It should be catered to people that do this, not to people who don’t.
I quote what one guy said above: “Match making should reflect the competitive scene. If it fails to do that it’s worse than nothing.”
Most of the tournaments I watched have multiple maps, I don’t know why you have the idea that Arabia (or Black Forest or Nomad for that matter) is the only map for “competitive scene”?
I watched a lot of top players streaming DE and I haven’t seen anyone complained about the map pool, so again the “competitive” argument is weak. Most of them actually like the new match making.
I do agree that they need to fix the lobby system so playing other maps is viable. Most important is the network bug that prevents all available lobbies to be shown (which I think they will fix soon). Then either showing ELO in the lobby/click-able profile with match history/separate “casual” ladder for lobby play… Those are separate problems (that need fix urgently) but do not ruin ranked match making for them.
Yes it is so bad. You can’t see other people’s elo, no one’s elo get updated so elo would be broken to know how good the players are.
Can you explain why forcing nomad/bf/arena/arabia players to play highland is a health approach? What is healthy about it? Or you just like the current setup and want everyone else to be forced to play as you like.
No one is forcing you… You can stay at voobly and play what you like. You have freedom to choose.
If the devs really hear the “majority” like you. Those QoL improvements will never happen. Because those changes are for the new players. The “majority” like you should stay at voobly. That is what you should play…
And the truth is, the real majority are the people who only play single campaigns and even don’t know how to lure boars. None of players in this thread can represent the majority. I believe the devs will make the best choice.
If l were you, I would stop spammimg complains, just try to adapt the changes and enjoy the game. It’s your choice…
All they would have to do is implement the option to be able to choose a map. Then you can either go random map from teh pool or play your favourite one. This should please everyone. End.
I may be in the minority here but I actually like the map pool. It forces you to practice a variety of different strats and makes each game different instead of just every game being Arabia 1v1 with like one of 3-4 strats and whoever’s fastest wins.
Viper and DauT have both seemed to like the pool in general. Both see the need and desire to continue development of the current system. Viper wants the map pool to change weekly and the ability for each player to checkmark 1-2 maps they don’t want to play while DauT also thought the map pool should change every few months. I more or less agree with them but that isn’t the developers number one priority at this point. It is helping to smooth out the other wrinkles. Then they can focus on for example the map pool and vetoing maps so that players can veto Highland or Continental and others can veto Arabia or whatever. And hopefully maps like Arena, Nomad starts, and tournament favorites like Cross and Bedouins make it into the pool. I think if they add a map or so each week and take one out, and have a mini screen shot of what it could look like as you are going into the game, players will learn and develop and the community and competitive scene will be healthier than ever.
Also, I think the ranking system kind of has to be built around the pros and their preferences and what is necessary at that level. If Viper and DauT and other pros decide to stay with DE (DauT said yesterday on his stream he doesn’t see a need to ever go back to Voobly) then that is a win for the developers. Both have had negative responses to taking away the map pool. Again, no map pool means the ranking system becomes flawed and slanted towards individual maps and the intention is to get a ranking of a player’s skill across a variety of maps on a Random Map game. When you include elo for games matched via individual maps, it becomes biased as people can play certain map types like BF or Arena and reach higher elo levels than what is actual. So having the ability to play a specific map unranked and ranked games being a pool is in reality very wise of the developers.
Furthermore, picking maps will split the player base and create longer queue times making it more lobby simulator which was one of the most frustrating things about other game clients. If the game had millions of players you could have ranks for each map, one for Arabia, one for Continental and so on, but that is just not feasible in aoe2.
This looks like a great compromise, especially for a 1v1 ladder.
Having a rotating pool of 5 maps with each team getting to ban 1-2 maps will narrow the list down and a map can be chosen at random from the remaining candidates.
This method alongside a weekly or bi-weekly rotation would keep the game pretty fresh, in my opinion.
Queue times would be terrible if players can just choose a single map to queue for, not to mention queues would be almost entirely empty except for Arabia, BF, and Arena.
@Ulthos read @GeneralZumaI’s post a little up here, and elaborate on that so we can argue on meeting point. And by the way I already stated on my post that elo should be shown on unranked lobbies. I would not like anybody to be forced to play what doesnt want to.
Than we are on the same page. Keep the pool, add missing maps to it and allow people to modify their pool. You can select all the maps and play asap while we wait and play the map we want. This simple.
Best reponse
I would just add = map pool should include more water maps, because now all are mostly land based with little need of navy.
Map pool should change over time in regular basis, so more maps will be played.
You know, I’ve been thinking about why exactly people like to play maps like arabia, bf, arena and nomad more than any other maps. I thought to myself that it was maybe because they’re more basic and straight forward than most of the other maps, but then I watched some youtube vids of matches being playing on scandinavia and oasis, and I just thought to myself “why aren’t those maps played more often? they seem balanced enough for me”, but then one of those days I found out why in another topic from this forum.
This is the link of the topic if anyone feels like giving it a look, but the most important is here:
there’s a print of a map generation from scandinavia someone else posted, and if you pay attention one of the players is completely surrounded by trees, only having a single tile opening at the bottom, and this completely changed the balance of the match giving one of the players a huge advantage over the other, and as the other user said, the reason competitive players have stuck to those map is because their generation are much more likely to give fairer matches than others, so I feel like instead of complain about which maps should be choosen or not, they should instead work on the maps generation so that other maps are also viable for competitive play, making matches fair more often than not. If something like that was done then I wouldn’t mind at all having more maps at the pool.
In fact, I personally would like to see the ranked system being split into 3 elo categories if the maps get reworked for competitive play: land maps, hybrid maps and water maps. I think we can all agree that the way we play the game can change drastically depending on how important water is on the map, and some players just love/hate having to deal with ships, and not only that but even the civs’ strenght can change depending on it. (I for example like playing land maps more than anything, and I love playing cumans which are great for land maps, and altho I can still adapt a bit with them to play hybrid maps I would definitely not choose them to play a water map. I’d pick Koreans instead, their new bonus makes ships cheaper to produce and their towers would greatly help defend my docks from atks and my shore from transport ships. It’ll require from me a much different skill set to play on water than on land)
