I have to disagree with this. There are people with 10,000 games who are still at 900. They enjoy playing at that elo, but I don’t think you can say that they don’t have experience.
Yep. I like calling these people Arabia Snobs. They only care about their play style. Even if changes don’t hurt their play style, but benefit others, they throw a hissy fit.
Arabia 1v1 is at 50%. If there were 100 maps, and you said the most popular map far is say, “A”, it doesn’t mean anything if A is played at 3% while others are at 1%. 2 in 1 games are on arabia, but that also doesn’t mean 1 out of 2 players play arabia.
Viper recently said that he just wants to see more maps. He wants to play other maps, but there the maps in the pool aren’t good.
Also, nice pivot. While a lot of tournamnets are around 1v1, most of them have arabia as 1 map amoung like 20. Also, Nation’s Cup and Delicious Whirled Cup were super popular recently. As much as any 1v1 cup. And there are team game.
If you want to play arabia 1v1, fine. But stop ####### it so much. It’s just one map, and you are actually limiting the potential of AoE2 by focusing just on that one map. There are a lot of people, maybe up to 50% of the player base who likes playing other maps.
There’s nothing insane about that assumption. Majority of open map team game is flanks archers, pockets cavalry composition. Of course you might play differently than most others but you also don’t make insane balance change suggestions after you suddenly lose to some unique build when you’ve yourself been playing with the exact same civ over and over again. This thread is particularly against such players.
That’s good for you. If you’re able to do that, it means you’ve been playing all the civs and using different strategies in each age every game. A lot of tg players might not because they keep picking the same civs over and over and over again. The stats are there. 1v1 Arabia the most picked civ accounts for 10% of the games. TG Arabia the most picked civ Franks accounts for 65% of the games. When there’s some civ or unit that counters Franks, several people are on the forums calling for its nerf. And it won’t even be something like “Hey I’m so and so map player, I pick Franks and go for their cavalry but recently I’ve been facing this unique unit or civ and struggling hard against that. Is there a counter pick to it?”, it’ll rather be along the lines of “This civ is ridiculously OP. OMG Nerf it OMG. Look Viper said it in this min in his rage forest game (without understanding context), look T90 said it during his FFA game (which is a casual setting)”
You could always add a couple of spears in feudal but pikes or elite skirm upgrade is a gross waste of resources in castle age in TG. And this is not at high level, at any 1500+ tg it would be a waste of resources to go for trash units in castle age. Players usually attack together, so the pikes won’t do much. You could do monks but definitely not pikes.
50% is not 3%, that point makes no sense. Arabia is at 52%, then the 2nd most played map is Arena at 16%. The remaining 31% or so is split between all the other maps with a few % each. If a political party won 50% of the vote and the 2nd place party only got 16% that would be a landslide victory.
I do agree we need more maps and if you check my posts I’ve been advocating for 20+ maps on the ranked ladder for a while now. And I know you think I’m an Arabiaphile but I’m actually favouriting Megarandom at the moment.
This is the crux of the whole argument. Arabia is not just a map, it’s a map type and you can apply Arabia strategies on all open maps. I can’t understand why people think it’s a one-dimensional map. It’s probably the most diverse map when it comes to strategy.
This game extends beyond mere 1v1 Arabia matches. Game balance cannot rely solely on the outcomes of 1v1 Arabia encounters. Diverse scenarios like 1v1 Arabia and 4v4 Black Forest demand distinct strategies. What’s effective in one may not apply to the other, necessitating comprehensive civ balancing across these situations.
It’s not the absence of 1v1 Arabia experience that leads to flawed balance proposals. It’s a lack of profound comprehension regarding civ strengths and weaknesses. Inadequate game understanding underlies impractical suggestions, not just limited exposure to team games. While the two might be related, weak proposals stem from deficient game knowledge rather than exclusive team game engagement.
If this thread was exclusively against such players, I would be fine with that. But that is not the impression I am getting from the original post, and lots of comments here.
You are correct, but you also need to consider that there are only 2 civs in 1v1, but 4-8 on team games. Also, 50% of 1v1s are on arabia, but only 16% of team games are.
So, if you take all civs played by frequency, you’ll find that franks are actually not that high.
In fact, you look here and see that the actual play rate of franks is just 7%, less than the rate for 1v1s.
You can see here: Insights - Team Random Map | ALL - aoestats
Look, I agree with everything that you are saying. But I don’t think that’s what OP is saying.
Agreed. That is the one of the main differences between TGs and 1v1s imo. There are a few exceptions though. Pikes+mangonels+monks are still viable in certain situations.
Daut made pikes+skirms work in team games on DWC. But yes, generally, it’s a bad idea.
Except you ignored team games. For every 5 games played, 3 are 1v1, and 2 are team games. On team games, arabia is like 15%.
Also, stop conflating the number of games with the number of players. Say you have 10 players and 8 don’t play arabia at all, but play only 2 games a day. The 2 arabia player plays 16 games a day, and they are all arabia games. Now the ratio is 50%-50%. Reality is not that extreme, but the principle is still true. The number of players is far less than the number of games.
No, they would barely hold majority. Also, what is your point here? f#@k the rest?
I am pretty much a teamgame only player but i dont think that my opinion on the balancing is that much different to a singleplayer.
But like others already mentioned teamgames just play out differently. You can’t say either which civ is strong/weak on teamgames if you only play single player and it’s not because people don’t know about trash units.
Chinese for example were pre nerf always considered to be absolute S Tier in sologames…they are not special in teamgames tho. Things like teambonus or the strength of 1 unit becomes much more interesting in these games.
So yes, the Tierlist of teamgames is probably much different to 1vs1 arabia but not because people “dont know” how to play it…it’s because these games play out way differently.
At the end there are more people playing teamgames than actually 1vs1 so balancing only around 1vs1 arabia isn’t smart either in my opionion. The hard part is to find a balancing for both type of games
If you never play sth else than arabia u won’t realise that some civs with some strats can be pretty strong on other maps. If you compare tierlists from pro players from arabia and tierlists from arena u will see that they look way differently…is it because they don’t know how to play them? i highly doubt that.
btw. i wouldn’t just assume that those are people never playing 1vs1. I mean it can be possible but it’s often from people just being in low elo and they just have a different view of the game. I also saw a lot of “balance suggestions” and i often disagree with them.
Yeah, I agree that many balance changes were very positive for the game, and that it is good that some “broken” went away.
And as developpers are to some extend listening to the community, it is good that the community gives its opinion. A lot of good changes were proposed by the community before being added to the game
But it feels that many people take the opportunity to ask for changes for their own benefit (their civ, their playstyle) only. And it sometimes sounds silly as they make it feel like their change is very urgent and necessary to put the game out of a disatrous state.
PS: Pathing is in a bad state and doesnt count as a civ balance.
That is probably what the devs tried to do with the handicap feature.
I don’t know for new players, but I wouldnt use it (with/against better players) because I want to lose the “feeling” of the eco and military. It is also why I was never interested in the “turbo” setting.
The imbalance you are talking about only works if you know the difference in skill between the players. And 2 “weak players” dont need any balancing to play with each other.
If I had to decide on some " balancing feature to compensate Elo difference" to put on “strong players”, I would rather take stuff like:
limit the maximum number of villagers
start the game later (ex. 2 minutes later) than the others.
Currently there seems to be two different threads: One about team games players only dont understand balance and one about 1v1 players dont understand balance. I’ll be posting this replay to both to show my vision on this debate. Personally i do believe both are wrong.
The main point: This game should be balanced towards both 1v1 and team games. To both open maps and closed maps. Having all civs at 50% win rate for every setting is an utopia. It will never achieved. It will even make the game feels blend. Civs dont have any identity. To me it will be fine if a civ have an edge for a specific niche, as long as it isnt game breaking for other settings.
Different settings (map type, 1v1 or team game) ask both for different things. A civ can be weak for 1v1, but strong for team games or visa versa. Both cases should be considered when doing balance changes. Limiting balance to just one setting (Looking at you 1v1 Arabia only or 4v4 black forest only people) is to narrow minded. When suggesting balance changes you have to consider all popular option.
In the end stupid balance changes aren’t made because people play only team games or only 1v1s. The real reason to me is people arre to narrow minded or just lack the insight/game knowledge. They just badly lost a game against a strategy and therefore want to nerf that strategy. They lack to aknowledge it was due to other reason they lost. Balance isnt always the reason why you lost. There are many others reasons.
You could have made bad mistakes. Your enemy could be playing better then normal. You could be matches wrongly against a better player that recently underperformed, so his rating dropped. Some players are much better on certain maps, so that is a reason why they play better or worse. And for teaam games also other factors play a role as well. Like premades vs solo or team play between a team as well. As result team games tend to be more unbalanced in general, since you can be carried by allies doing all the hard work for you. These are all factors in the outcome of games. But these are much harder to aknowledge for players. So they blame balance and made a thread.
On average higher rated players do have a better insight in this game and are better in deciding which balance changes make sense and which don’t make sense, but there are clearly some exceptions. Even pros can be wrong about the impact of balance changes, while a few lower rated players can be right. There is some correlation between Elo en you good your balance suggestions is, but it won’t be a 100% correlation.
That just means that average pick percentage should be closer to 8/43 instead of 2/43. Instead Franks is picked 28/43 3.5x times more than anything else.
Even if you include all team games and not just Arabia, Franks are the highest and significantly outnumber any other civ’s number of games.
OP is implying that majority of TG players have a bias based on their games which involves repeated usage of a certain few civs. In reality, if you switch civs the bias could go away. But many tg players who complain that a unit or a civ as OP keep picking their own favorite civ over and over again. As a consequence they end up being responsible for strong nerfs to situational units.
Sorry @NastyHigh, but @filtercoffee488 has nailed you and your response here confirms you don’t really know what you are talking about. You didn’t consider that many TG players prefer open maps and dislike arena and black forest, and so now you try to back-peddle to say you were only talking about closed maps. The fact you would confuse team games in general for only closed maps suggest you have both a bias and lack of experience.
As someone who prefers team games, I’ve played enough to know that many different dynamics and situations can happen (FC on Socotra? Nope.). You think it’s always one way because you probably don’t play enough team games.
I get it, you wanted to basically claim that team game players are less skilled, and that 1v1 Arabia is “real” Age of Empires. And that’s why it should be the standard for balance. You missed the obvious fact that all you’re saying is “I want my preferred game settings to be given more consideration by the devs than others,” which is what everybody says.
Sorry to come late to the discussion, but I had to comment on what a bad take this post is and I’m glad other TG players have corrected you here.
That is not true. I literally linked you a link. Show me your source.
Again, source. Also for 1v1s, for a proper comparison.
Which is also true for 1v1s. You have not demonstrated otherwise.
What do you mean “situational”? “situational” in 1v1s? If they are broken in team games, but “situational” in 1v1s, they should absolutely be nerfed. Rather, they should be tuned to accommodate both game mods.
I didn’t back-pedal* and nor did I confuse the two. My argument still applies to Team Arabia, just less so than on Arena. As in, relics are still way less important and you still never see trash units on team Arabia because of trade. If you never have to make trash and gold is infinite, there’s way less to worry about. The thought process is much easier, because there is way less time pressure to go for an aggressive push early or secure the relics before the gold runs out if you’re behind economically. And you don’t need what would be considered a well balanced army 1v1, because your team mate’s army can cover your weaknesses. In some cases, you don’t even need particularly good economy management on team games if the strongest strategy based on the situation is for a team mate to sling you. The main thing which is more complex in team games is the larger scale battles with a lot more units involved and lots of unique units, but this is negated by the fact that you can build an ultra late game deathball army composition with all upgrades which is siege heavy and counters everything, essentially without needing to scout what the opponent has.
Are you disagreeing with the point that team game players go for simpler single gold unit + siege army compositions? Or the point that there’s no need to transition into trash units? Or the point that infantry is a losing play / extremely rarely seen? Or that team Arabia games are fairly predictable based on the civs and their flank / pocket positions on the map? I have enough team game experience to know these things are almost always true.
Clearly I have a bias towards 1v1, I’ve never tried to hide that fact. But your bias for team games is no different, so you are in no position to be sanctimonious about it.
Source is aoestats, team games ladder, 1200+ elo civs tab. 16k games where Franks were picked out of 25k games played on Arabia. Deviation from the expected 2/43 is much lower for 1v1
The first win rate vs play rate graph chart in the link you showed - what’s at the right most? how many civs are beyond the average vertical line, especially at 1200+?
Based on your own explanation the play percentage of each civ should in theory be greater in team games compared to 1v1 but since majority of TG players keep picking the same 5-6 civs, the bias towards these civs is huge.
Naturally when there’s some civ that does well against these specific subset of civs, its considered broken or OP by TG players and they want that civ to get nerfed to the ground. That’s what the post is saying.
You’re highlighting an important perspective about game balance and the value of 1v1 experiences in understanding it fully. Playing 1v1 matches provides a more intimate understanding of unit strengths, weaknesses, and overall game balance. While team games can lead to different dynamics due to cooperation and diverse strategies, 1v1 encounters often reveal the core of balance issues.
Your message emphasizes that a balanced army composition isn’t always obvious when relying on team strategies or niche situations. To truly comprehend the impact of unit strength, it’s crucial to engage in 1v1 matches on standard maps. Recognizing that adjustments for team games could inadvertently affect 1v1 balance is a key insight.
Ultimately, your TED talk encourages players to consider their experiences and limitations before making judgments about game balance. Engaging in 1v1 matches on common maps provides a well-rounded understanding that can lead to more informed discussions about unit balance and fairness.
The distributions and dropoffs are pretty even across 1v1s and team games.
Forget the rest of the argument, all that hinges on this one point. I don’t think your point holds up at all.
Also, if you look at the broader picture, 1v1 civ picking is at least as bad as team game civ picking. If anything, you’ll find more diversity in team games. Unfortunately, I can’t get exact details by patch in aoestats, and aoepulse doesn’t include team game data. This makes exact comparisons pretty difficult.
Core of balance issues if you only play 1v1s. It reveals nothing about team game specific issues, let us be clear. Same with team games. It doesn’t reveal anything about 1v1 specific issues.
It’s lazy to just say “we can’t balance this in 4v4 blackforest because it’s currently balanced in 1v1 arabia” and think that that ends the argument. There might be ways to balance thing that you haven’t thought about, and it’s extremely hard to be sure that there aren’t. How can you be sure you’ve thought of all the possibilities?
That said, I get the impression that it is 4v4 blackforest fans who are the main opponents of proposals to properly balance 4v4 blackforest. So I can’t really bring myself to care.
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2 pop heavy siege (SO, BBC, Trebs) and multi-pop elephants would do wonders to balance that game mode, but the people who play it don’t want it.
