and yet clearly people aren’t using those tutorials if they are losing to early aggression because they don’t scout.
yes but again - you’re whole point was you don’t like games ending early - yet you’re actively contributing to it, instead of trying to take away from games ending early.
Well yeah I am not able to get everyone to stay interested in the game, not everyone has the patience to sit for hours and hours to practice things, but that’s something for me to improve on 
hot news tip for you - if this is the case then aoe2 wasn’t the game for them to begin with. aoe2 is not a game you just “get good at” right away. it requires a huge time investment.
The problem is that very few people have the patience for this, really the direction we want to head into?
again - RTS has always been a game about time investment and getting better over time. you think the pros got there by playing for a few hourse and poof, viper 2400?
Indeed. But this is made worse than it needs to be by one map already being so over represented. It’s very daunting for a beginner to even read the list of things they need to spend practicing hours and hours on each, just to play the most basic looking map.
I’m not expecting newcomers to become the next viper, but the initial daunting feeling this game currently gives to players is real.
skills for one map largely transition over to anothe rmap - but it doesn’t matter - show me a single RTS where they don’t have one style of map that isn’t prefered over others.
that is true, but that is true of RTS genre in general. this isn’t just something exclusive to aoe2.
RTS has always had a steep learning curve man. there isn’t much that can be done about it - aoe2 is actually pretty tame on that front compared to other games at how easy it is at entry level.
everything you are trying to lay at the feet of aoe2 is actually something that is something you should be laying at the feet of RTS - it is a niche genre for a reason.
For sure, RTS by default need to have depth and big learning curve. But this would less of a problem if the meta was less stale and established. If more maps were in play, there would less of getting stomped by a build order from a guy who otherwise knows nothing about the game.
nah - you’d just have more metas you’d have to worry about learning, which would make matters worse.
at least with arabia be the standard you can start there and then once you have the fundamentals of arabia down you can use those to translate to other maps and adjust for that other map.
Yes, but you’d actually have to have much better game knowledge to achieve this and an 1500 elo would represent 1500 elo, not 1500 elo on Arabia and 900 everywhere else
you think someone who has a 1500 elo on arabia wouldn’t be able to translate well elsewhere? pretty much every map you wall on.
furthermore you literally just contradicted yourself. earlier you said that the learning curve was an issue.
now you’re saying that entry level people should have to learn even more? wow. just wow.
thats certainly going to help lower that learning curve isn’t it? oh wait. no its going to make them have to learn even more. oh instead of just learning the fundamentals on arabia and go from there now i have to learn arabia. but at the same time i also have to learn a fast castle on arena. at the same time i have to learn how to do a hybrid map opener.
yeah - thats going EXASPERATE the issue.
furthermore - if you think someone is going to drop 600 elo from arabia to another map…let me put it this way - when the pros who largely play on arabia go play in the clown cup against people who literally specialize on arena? they win it.
I have seen that in action, yes, it doesn’t. And obviously 900 was an exaggeration, but there are stark differences in output yes.
Pros are not comparable to your average players. Obviously a pro is a pro for a reason, put them in any map/situation, and they’ll do well. It doesn’t really make sense to add them into this comparison.
You have to look at it from the point of view of a completely new player. When you open up the game, and look at Arabia, it looks like the most basic map with not much on it. When you find out how much you have to learn just to play that one map, you’re gonna be put off by it. New players on low elos are unlikely to memorize build orders for every map, so yes, on low levels this would even things out a lot. As you go higher, you’ll have to learn more and more gradually, but without the current awkward period of getting curbstomped by players who know how to execute a set of actions written by others, but otherwise suck at the game.
were they playing against someone who specializes in that type of map? because if you take someone who plays blackforest every day and throw them against someone who doesn’t what do you expect to happen?
arabia is actually a great map for learning because it is open. it teaches you the importance of scouting and reacting. it teaches you how to handle early aggression. it teaches you how to boom while building military.
you can then adjust from there for say arena - okay i need to do a fast castle and then contest relics.
now take someone who specializes in arena - now they have to learn how to handle early aggression and laming. they got to learn how to handle not being able to just safely boom. etc.
yes but if the pros who specialize on open maps are beating the pros who specialize on arena at there own game, what’s that tell you?
and if you take someone who learned how to play on black forest - how well do you think they are going to do when you throw them on arabia? my guess? not very well. you want the evidence to back that up? in team games the low elo players play black forest more and arabia less. why? black forest is safer and easier, but doesn’t really help you learn skills for other maps.
and yet if you throw every map at them they have just that much more to learn - arabia teaches you the basics that allows you to go from there and learn other maps with minimal issues.
if you learn on arena or black forest - you largely aren’t going to know how to deal with earlier aggression.
but clearly that isn’t working all that well - and guess what? everyone starts at around 1k elo. people at 1k elo aren’t going to know how to execute a build order that curb stomps.
You’re really comparing people with like 10, 20 years of experience vs players who played for a few weeks? Pros tend to do a large amount of preparation for tournaments, and most of them will have played all kinds of maps many many times by now even if only due to the sheer amount of time spent on the game.
Or gets you to ragequit. Because if someone doesn’t show you how to lame, you might not figure it out anytime soon by yourself. Same with things like quickwalling.
hasn’t even been attempted…
Basically, try to look at the game from a point of view of a complete noob. Many things that you take for granted are pretty difficult to figure out on your own.
lol no. Arena pros have years of experience too.
first of all - new players shouldn’t be trying to quick wall. they should be walling in advance.
and frankly - laming isn’t something you should be learning as a new player - you should be learning how to scout, how to react to aggression, and how to keep moving forward.
yes it has - why do you think team games the low players black forest so much.
there is a reason Arabia has become the standard in the past 20+ years. its the most balanced map.
no its not - they literally have a tutorial that teaches them how to boom, unit counters, etc. art of war did not exist when i started this game - furthermore in the age of internet literally everywhere - any questions they have can be answered in a flash.
what they need is a map that puts it all together - and arabia does that.
you know what doesn’t do that? Forcing them to play 8 different maps. want to know why? because you’re literally forcing them to have to learn EVEN MORE all at once.
choose a map that can let them take all the basics and put it together in a neat package. Arena and Black Forest can’t do that. Water adds too much complexity.
the more maps you force them to have to learn at once, the harder it is to learn and put the fundamentals together.
you talk about wanting to make it easier on new players - but you’re ideas would literally force them to have to learn MORE at once.
imagine someone whose first map is arena - and they then go to an open map - they try to boom without walling or scouting. how is that going to go for them?
whereas if players learn on one map, they can then adjust that to other maps later on down the road once they have the fundamentals down.
So you simply mean closed maps? Trashbow itself only gets useful past a certain stage of the game and is pretty useless against a lot of unit compositions. I wouldn’t consider it a strat on its own but one of many tools Persians have to offer in late game. With halbs, hussars, siege ram, gunpowder and trashbow Persians have a decent tech tree for late game and also their eco is pretty well suited for booming, both of these are helpful for these maps.
Still, I’d say Persians are at best mid tier on closed maps (some people might probably rate them lower). On arena, for instance, early imp momentum is very important and Persians have no go-to unit for this, making them rather hard to play. So it’s even more important to react to what your opponent does compared to other civs. If you surivive early imp and are fortunate enough to not be up against a civ like teutons, ethopians or celts, the civ is decent and you can use trashbow as part of your army (accompanied by halbs/hussar and siege).
No it’s not, it heavily favours early aggression as you put it earlier.
Then you get back to the problem of getting slaughtered, because now you have naked villagers ripe for the picking. Quickwalling is completely essential on Arabia, not knowing how to do it just inherently puts you at a huge disadvantage. Most newcomers try to ring the townbell, and well, we all know that it’s a bad idea, but it checks out with noob logic.
Not knowing how to quickwall is not like not knowing how to Castle in chess.
On open maps like Arabia, it’s an essential skill, not knowing how to do it, and not knowing how to block an enemy scout from doing it puts you at an inherent disadvantage.
Because you take skills for granted. For a noob, the map teaches nothing without help from a more experienced player.
Again, to emphasize, a noob will have no idea that you should quickwall your woodline and miners when the scouts/maa approach, they ring the townbell, because with noob logic, that makes sense. To them, quickwalling seems like some next level big brain move, even though it’s completely standard.
A noob most likely won’t figure out that you can steal opponent boar/sheep to delay their first attack.
A noob most likely won’t figure out that spears in feudal by themselves are only moderately effective at countering scouts, because in order to actually try and trap the scouts, you need to start deploying the pallisade gates. Etc.
its the most balanced map for learning though - because you can learn fast castle builds. and you can learn early aggression builds.
you don’t learn how to deal with or how to deal early aggression on Black Forest or arena do you?
yes that’s why laming is frequently banned in tournaments - because laming is essential.
are they going to learn how to handle early aggression, scouting, etc on Black Forest or Arena? no.
quickwalling is NOT standard by any stretch of the imagination. maybe at 1600+ but thats the top 10%. a new player does not need to know how to quick wall.
again for like the 5th time: pro tournaments =/= casual play
I don’t know. I do it very frequently, because I’m not a huge fan of getting my vills sniped by a few feudal age units, each to their own I guess. And because I do quickwalling so frequently, I try my best to teach it to noobs because at least on my elo it’s absolutely needed skill.
and how often do you actually see laming in casual play? i don’t see it much at all.
that is why you wall in advance and don’t leave it up to quick walling.