The state of ranked Nomad games in 2021

In the time before DE, besides obviously Arabia, 3 Maps were most commonly played by the community on voobly and the HD edition of the game:
Arena, Black Forest and Nomad.
Of those 3 only Nomad did not make it into permanent ranked map selection. The reasoning back then was that Nomad does not have a regular start and many random elements that do not belong into a fair ranked game.

Since then the map creation of Nomad was changed several times. Now the distribution of resources is spread out very evenly and the shape of the main land is very consistent. It also does no longer connect to the edge of the map.

Now Nomad is slowly starting to reappear in ranked que more often. The map does get voted in pretty much whenever possible and is being played on by many. If you put Nomad as your preferred map you usually get Nomad or the other player alt-F4ing.
It seems most people have a strong opinion on this map.

I think the current state of this map does not make any sense.

Either the map is to random for ranked → then do not make it an option for it to be voted in!
Or it is a suitable map for ranked → then make it permanent as there are actually more people who want to play Nomad then Black Forest (which is permanent in the ranked teamgame Mappool).

What do you think?
Should Nomad be permanent or omitted from the ranked mappool?

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You mean black forest, right?

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Yes, I always mix it up because it is translated dark forest in the German version of the game…

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They probs think it can’t be too random to be voted for, else why would they propose MegaRandom too?

The version of Megarandom that is used in the ranked mappool right now is extremely streamlined from what it was once. I think they should rename it to “Slightlyrandom”…

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eh what?

how do you come to this conclusion?

also what kind of logic is " it either must be permanent or never come up"

wtf man, im assuming you are hard biased and just want to have more nomad… if it was so popular it would get voted more, and then you can play it more

i dont mind nomad, but atm we have african whatsitsface which is as good as nomad, probably just more balanced

it might be better than it used to be, but it can still suck

there is still water… lots of people hate water…

imo they should just give more map options with unlimited bans, and temp banning for map dodging

yes if you want a niche map you will queue for longer, but if we dont do this then you’ll never get the map you want or someone will always cry that they never get their map…

more like “RandomMapsSelection”. I have played it many times on DE and the only “crazy” things i ever saw were the starting buildings, that you sometimes start with 2 TCs, and sometimes with weird buildings like bombard towers.
Other than that its just a random selection of a few very standard and balanced maps.

Must be really rough for nomad players, their map isn’t always in the pool and they have no chance to queue specifically for it.

I think they should increase the map pool. 10 maps in 1 vs 1. 4 always - Arabia, Arena, Nomad, Megarandom. 3 develop picks. 3 elected by community.

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Btw what is the popularity of Fortress nowadays. I used to play AoK, back when Arena wasn’t there. So I loved Fortress.

I also liked that it had possibilities of overchop and that Goth (now Cumans also) could have problems. It was Arabia with slight variations and walling.

Wait, the German version does not call Black Forest Schwarzwald?

Does the Arabian translation also call Arabia “Hot Desert”?

In the Spanish version it is like the black jungle

Well, there was a video by Zeroempires in which he looked at the selected maps from over 1 Million voobly matches ( https://youtu.be/dtqCJVNAS04 ).

Selection rates:
Arabia → 52%
Black Forest → 13.3%
Nomad → 11.7%
Green Arabia → 7.8%
Arena → 3.5%
All other maps had less then 1% playrate.

When the ranked system in DE was changed to how it is now (with permanent as well as rotating maps) the Devs choose the traditionally most played maps to be the permanent ones.
=> Except for Nomad
back then the argumentation was that Nomad had to many random elements for ranked play.
Nomad was actually missing from ranked matchmaking for month…

Nomad isn’t my favourite map but I enjoy a match on it from time to time.
But if you look at how many Nomad games are played in lobbies and unranked games it does not really make sense to treat Nomad the same way as those other maps that don’t have such a big playerbase…

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It gets voted into the Mappool sometimes, but not often.
However, back on voobly and in Pro games it was usually played in the regicide game mode. This is not the case in ranked now. This is a little weird though as they changed the map settings for some other maps. For example Black Forest is played on the “map explored” setting because it was usually played like that before DE…

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Yup, Regicide Fortress used to be my favourite. I like how they enhanced the regular Fortress.

Yeah i would love to see more love for Nomad. Most communities benefit from DE, but Nomad community kind of got killed by DE devs. But i am not sure if having Nomad as fixed map is THE solution. But i also dont really know another solution.

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This is probably based on 1v1 only? Havent watched the vid.

It wasn’t stated but I think it is 1v1 as well as teamgames.
1v1s usually favour Arabia more and teamgames tend to have more map diversity.

Last time i looked at the Voobly data, i think we had higher BF rate, because of all BF TGs. Maybe i remember this wrong.

Arabia, Arena, Black Forest and Nomad should be permament, but the devs just have zero idea how to developer their game.

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