Stale Game - Random Maps and Random Civilization hardly played in favor of picking

Age of Empires II: DE II - Discussion
#1

I would like to get this discussion going. For me the standard both on zone days and on voobly was playing TG FR (Full Random map) or Arabia, and before userpatch everyone would go Random, after userpatch everyone would go Mirror.
In DE we don’t have the option of playing Full Random anymore on ranked, only on lobby games. I know we do have Megarandom, but many people don’t enjoy it.
But besides that, I feel the civilizations situation particularly is making the game very stale, all ranked games after a certain level the players in the other team will have picked civ, and it’s the same small set of civs… It’s made worse by the fact that everyone also picks position as well. So in arabia for example, all games you are against a Viking, Briton or Ethiopian flank, and a pocket Franks, Indians, Teutons or Lithuanians. Every game it’s the exact same strategy, with very few people doing other things.
The “Prefer Random” feature was added in the last patch, but I argue it’s broken by design, because you just need one guy to not want to play random to force everyone else to play the stale pick civ situation. What do you guys think?

Proposed solution: “Prefer Random” wins if at least half the players prefer random.

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#2

here is the thing. voobly wasn’t something your casual aoe2 player knew about.
everyone there was a hardcore player of the game.
thus all those things you would expect from them, random, glhf, gg, etc; you still see. but you don’t see it from the casuals.

far better then the game was before, before HD you saw about 4 civs with any sort of normalcy (vikings on water, Huns, Aztecs, Mongols, and Mayans). nowadays i see a wide variety of civs, with about 12-15 civs i’d say are staples.

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#3

For teamgames, a system where some of the players in each team can get a random civ should work, if that would be good enough for players like you (eg if in a 3v3 2 players of one team and 1 player of the other team take the option, 1 player of each team gets a random civ).

For 1v1s I’d like to see a map in the pool with “force random civ choice” associated with the map. People who don’t want to play with random civ can ban the map.

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Why do I have to play rdm civ?
Random queue
#4

Those are valid points, it’s true that the players I was playing with on Zone and Voobly would not be the (majority) of casual players, and indeed we have more viable civs now than in aoc 1.0c. Still, I think we can wish for things to be better, particularly while we are still getting updates, which from our experiences with the original game, aom and aoe3 I would say we won’t be getting anymore in 1 or 2 years.

#5

I like both of your ideas, they would be positive changes to increase variability in the matches.

#6

Instead of your “random civ” vote option (which will be a disaster, the picking players will never go random because you choose so, they will just alt-F4), why not simply just ask for a new ranked mode “random civ” ? It would make much more sense to split both types of players, and is certainly not hard to implement.

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#7

That would definitely solve the problem

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#8

I think the reason for this is a lot of people ban water maps because they aren’t expert at water build orders, so they don’t want to play MegaRandom because of the risk it will be a water map. If they made a Land MegaRandom, it might see more use.

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#9

Land MegaRandom, Hybrid MegaRandom(Coastal, Scandanavia, OG Nomad, City of Lakes, Continental, Baltic etc) and Water MegaRandom, three varieties of MR are sorely needed.

1 Like
#10

I really miss the Full Random map in the old version. It was supposed to be the only standard for the formal competitive multiplay, much like the “Standard maps” in AoE3. You can get various but all regular maps in this map set, without getting those weird walled maps, 0 TC or 2 TCs maps, MR and BF, which are considered less competitive by the former ES devs.

Now the ranked game is occupied by the Arabia+Arena, and some irregular maps. The Full Random map can only be played in the lobby, and is called “Custom map pool” and mixed with other casual rooms now. The poeple like me are actually getting worse online experience in the DE.

It is ironic that when the current devs kill Full Random map, Deathmatch is still preserved despite few people playing it.

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#11

AoE1DE got a hudge update this year so if this game still receives such attention I’m pretty optimistic
for AoE2.

If the map is unpopular, people who want to play random will complain they have to always use one map they hate. If it’s Arabia, people who want to pick civ will cry how they can’t play Arabia anymore.

Well whenever I get a water map I tell myself the opponent props isn’t a water map expert either and that’s going to be balanced lol.

??? Aren’t the rules for DM matchmaking the same for RM?

Anyway as a solution, I would propose balancing ELO gain to incentivize tryhards who only care about ladder climbing to pick random, by decreasing gains from winning with a pick civ for instance. Now there is the problem of people who want to try and win with less popular civ. I don’t know if using statistics to decide which civs should give you less ELO would be OK.

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#12

Just cycle the map every 2 weeks. If someone can’t play Arabia for 2 weeks without going random civ, they’ll survive. If someone has to pick MR for two weeks to get a random civ matchup, they’ll survive.
I think the people who love it will outnumbered the people who hates it.

Please no, I’d like to keep my 50% win rate thank you very much.

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#13

I suppose you mean that system would make better player remain at lower ELO for more times. Well, I kind of didn’t look about this, ooopsie

#14

How are people so oblivious to consequences…?

The issue rolls over to TGs as well though. But i still reckon this could potentially increase queue times too much…

As there seems to be large numbers of players wanting to play arabia competitively (ie using a picked race instead of randomly getting some joke like italy or turks vs an s tier)

Vs a large number of players that irrationally think random civ gives a more competitive game…

1 Like
#15

How would it increase queue times?
It would fit into the ranked map pool. (You might then want to expand the number of maps to 9, with 4 bans available per player, to allow enough choice for people who want to pick their civ, but it’s still just a ladder which matches people and then picks the map afterwards).

#16

Im competitive i make sure i ban this forced random map and “prefer” arabia (basically what over half the players do now anyway judging by playrate)

Person B specifically wants to play the forced random civs and bans arabia (increases odds of getting preferred map) and “prefer” forced random.

Essentially creates two queues…

#17

I agree but I also think that the game needs to be fixed. Walls are way too strong for early play and the Age of xbows is ridiculous

#18

Xbows are getting weaker as melee pathing improves

#19

Deathmatch has a ranked queue and its map pool is decent. But if people want to play classic Full Random maps they can only go to the lobby.

#20

ofc aoe2 white knight had to chime into it

i personally like the random option and would prefer it over a pick despite people picking tier 1 civs