The latest patch of December 2020 has created map generation that is horrible. EVERY map has all the gold forward and the trees are 20-30 tiles away from you town center. So all you have to do is pick a horse civ and rush rush rush. It is impossible to get into any late game cause all the maps are like Arabia. So now all you do is wall wall wall, then the horses rush the wall and you spend you whole game quick walling you lumber jacks while horse zig and zag all over your eco. No strategy no finesse. In addition to this BORING game play of no matter the map the style is ALWAYS horses horses horses and walls walls walls, they took Nomad off the team list and the single list. Why do they care what maps we choose to play? So if you ignore all the boring changes that have been made and queue up for a team game, you don’t get to choose if you are playing against guy that have known each other for a while and developed a strategy. The game starts up and you have no option to exit once it is found another team. so you get stuck with people who don’t play the game with any teamwork while you face guys that are on discord. So if all of that is not bad enough, you cant even pick a counter civ if a team picks certain civs, you should be given the change to counter those choices, not be stuck with Mayan while they picked goth and Persian. It is ruined and the worst p[art is, these alterations have no real necessity. The system of finding a RANKED match where you can know who and what you are fighting on a map that doesn’t require 20 minutes of walling was fine. Now no games go late they all end in castle or feudal because getting rushed by a team sucks. so why bother?
Don’t play standard games. Make your own maps/mods. Play a map like 4v4 black forest fortress or michi even. Ranked gameplay is always about rushing, no chill.
Age of Empires 2 2013 is much better for non standard gameplay than the Definitive Edition.
Many players were complaining the maps were too closed with tight, narrow spaces. They want to be free and open, so you can end the game early in feudal age with a scout rush. They don’t want epic big battles, only small skirmishes.
I find ranked boring for that very reason.
Nice rant, but it doesnt really seems to be true.
Walling is already the meta for months. If you want late game fights, you always need to wall. No matter what map gen. Also rushing is part of the meta for years and years. So not really sure why you think that is an issue at all. Even with rushes games can last pretty much to the late game. I have fought many games on maps like Arabia that goes to late game. My latest game was a long game (>1h) on Arabia.
Seems like you are more a boomer and you much more like closed maps. That is totally fine for me, but i dont think ranked is really the place for such games. Most competative players are more about rushing then just booming. You preferences seems to not match with most others in ranked. You might have more pleasure with playing in the lobby. You can pick the maps which you like. For example Black forest. Easy wall off and almost surely late game battles, if that is what you like more.
Not sure what this rant has to do with the latest patch, since it didnt change much at the map gen. So this must be already an issue for you for months.
Yeah. I personally dislike open maps. But I won’t hold it against other players for liking them. Since I know they more competitive for good players and rush lovers.
These rushes make u a better player, for example i am not a very good player, an enemy has a 50 or more chance to beat me in super late game but my strongest point is that i can rush while also booming behind, so i kill vills putting my enemy behind while i am way ahead of him, this is how i win at least. for example a few days ago i played as turks vs bulgarians and went into my enemys eco making a lot of idle time for him, even deneing a castle and when he finnaly killed my unitts i had 90 vills where he had like 40 so i got a faster imp and this way won so i like open maps more for these reasons
In the end they just made the arabia map close to old arabia. original AOK/AOC arabia map was even more open than current patch, and that was the map that was played by the vast majority of the playerbase as the most all around map. There have been a lot complaints about walling and closedness of the DE version of Arabia since launch.
Open maps is one thing, resource generation assigning your wood at more distance than your enemies and sometimes all the golds or stones in the front is not competitive, that was the disgrace of AoC, there were tournaments that the map was defining the winner.
There should be a balance, wood should always spawn a forest at the same distance for all players, you guys lack of the level to understand how big is the impact of walking more to the woodlines, it is not about walling, far wood means slow wood production which affects farming and even normal buildings, while your enemy can have 3 woodlines right next to him, that rng is unfair, not funny and not even competitive.
That has always been a thing except for when there was the bug that in DE that made all the res spawn in the exact same cross shape and distance from your town every game. Playing with better/worse maps is a huge part of competetive AOE 2 and always will be. Unless there is a consistent drastic difference in woodlines from TCs which there shouldn’t be, in that case just reduce the variability a bit, but relatively distant woodlines is an Arabia standard.
They do not make you a better player. they make a fast game and a weaker player. How many times have I stopped the rush only to see my opponent not know what to do next. Good player can play the game in the late stages when the units are strong and walls cannot stop them. Feudal rush are for player who go up fast. However then you dont get even half the game. Not a single university upgrade…it is no better then farmville
But the whole game becomes about walls and scouts. May as well play that wall builder mod. half the screen is walls. They don’t let you play Nomad or BF or any map that might be different when you play 1v1. What is that all about. Skirms scouts and spears is not what i payed for.
Yes, some players do not have good macro and lose in the lategame. Just like some players have bad micro and lose in the earlygame. Both of these types of players are weak players. Not having a complete skillset in either direction isn’t a good thing if you want to climb the rankings.
Drush FC is still effective and it can buy you a lot of time for effective defense if that’s what you’re worried about.
You can still host random map games in the public lobbies with any setting you want.
Funnily enough I seem to have very similar reasons from you but still find myself on the other side of the debate. Let me compare and contrast:
You want to fully experience the game you’re playing. Great! So do I! But for me the most defining feature of playing AOE2 online is that it’s a multiplayer game. And a multiplayer game is not really multiplayer until you start interacting with the other player(s). So I want early aggression. Otherwise I might as well be playing SimCity. That is why I play ranked random map with Arena and Black Forest blocked.
Fortunately for me I really like feudal age fighting, working around the severe limitations of your units using the limited options you have. In fact, I wouldn’t mind if castle age was about twice as hard to reach. If however I strongly preferred imperial age play over that, I would probably be playing death match. If I really preferred lategame units but didn’t like the multiplayer aspect of online multiplayer too much I might play Black Forest, (or Arena, or Hideout, or Hill Fort,) or use treaty settings. And yes, at that point I would probably be a little bummed out that there is no easy quick play function for me. The new “unranked” ladder would have been a perfect opportunity for that, giving people who like slow games a quick play option. So yeah, I agree you have a right to be pissed.
However, I think you’re pissed at the wrong thing. As recent as a few years back even the pro’s said things like “walls walls no balls”. The elaborate superdefensive quickwalling style of play was never an intended part of the game, it only developed with faster connections, upping people’s reaction times. It’s fine that it developed to an extent, to balance out the development and spread of rush tactics. But it shouldn’t take over and just make everyone immune to scouts. Or, you know, man at arms, or militia, or archers, or… Scouts are fun to play and a good way to try and gain a small advantage or at least throw the opponent off their steadily balanced plan. I would probably agree with the people who thought that the last version of the game before the current patch made everything a tad too safe. Remember, Black Forest still exists, treaty options still exist. These are the open maps we’re talking about, this is the place where people go who like interacting with their opponent in the early ages. I don’t think it’s fair to take that from them because it doesn’t play enough like several other still available ways to play the game to your taste. I like the more open map generation just fine. I wouldn’t start complaining about resources being too far away unless they started moving the starting sheep back out of vision sometimes again.
So yeah, I respectfully disagree. There is a gamemode in AOE2 where people use Feudal Age units. It’s a very popular gamemode. We would like to keep playing it.
Who do you propose should get to be the last one to pick their civ, knowing their opponent’s choice?
If your only solution for horse rush is wall, that is your weakness. You can do your own horses, mix with pikeman, make drush, Trush…
Better than before when the whole game was about walls and archers imo. Gave walling an actual opportunity cost instead of arabia being hideout 2.0. of you want closed maps or longer games play arena/black forest/ hideout etc.
Arguably you could do a dota like approach and have each team pick a civ simultaneously in rounds. Idk if that’s the right direction for some but it’s an idea
Walling is still considered meta, but all players should be capable of defending with units or a few towers. Just remember that one game in KotD3, Vivi vs Kasva. Vivi had almost no wood, had to send vils almost to the edge of the map, never really walled. Guess who won…VIVI.
They totally ruined Arabia, they made it so open to a point where there is no room for strategy just mirroring your opponent aggressive moves in order to survive.
There is less room for vill-micro or quickwall action because of how big and hopeless vills are to scouts or ranged units.
Much less strategic options available for a player once he’s too occupied with survivability, I remember couple of months ago Viper and Hera used to do a lot of Master-piece strats, which were brilliant, a lot of UU, Castle Drops, Siege push, or even tower rush, there days it forces you to play solely meta.
i would say its literally the opposite… its harder to fully wall your base, thus you more often need to rely on quickwalling (remember this is quickly laying down walls directly next to/around your vils to protect them, lots of people dont realise this)
this is highly subjective… there might be less strategic but a ton more tactical… previously it was very very likely most players would just FC due to either walling themselves safely, or realising their opponent is fully walled… and thus practically invulnerable until castle age
You never play the classic arabia in voobly, when in some games you dont have any spot of wood and have to go trush