Wtf is this map pool? (AGAIN)

[lIIllIIIIlllllIIIIIlllIIIIlll]

Devs can you stop greifing me with these maps? Mountain pass... Kilimanjaro... Mega random... Hill fort... Bog Islands... Literally WHO asked for these maps?

Garbage maps and there are too many maps overall. Map pool should consist of 3-5 maps imo. What about Arabia, Arena, Golden pit, Continental

[lIIllIIIIlllllIIIIIlllIIIIlll]

Thor II eredeti hozzászólása:

The fact is, someone who wants to play ranked, has to know how to adapt to any situation that comes up. This is a strategy game, not a Moba, not always a general can choose the battlefield on which he will fight, and the Map Pool reflects that.

Who wants to play the map on which he has more fun goes to Unraked. Aoe II is already too robotic (Build Orders if you want to have any chance for example), we will not encourage to make it even more robotic.

The only problem is that the maps do not have the same starting conditions for everyone. Or, not having a counterpart for those who have had bad start conditions, or else a player from each team starts in a bad position and one in a good position.

Gwotyng eredeti hozzászólása:

(So there will be 4 rank mode: Regular, Nomad, Empire Wars, and Deathmatch.)

Sounds like a great idea, it remains to be known if there are enough players for 4 different ranked modes. "Regular" looks much more concrete, more inclusive and better theorized than a "Ranked Arabia".

Adapting to your enemies strategy should be the focus in an RTS, rather than adapting to ta randomly generated map - which is often straight up unfair

[Thor II]

Again, you (and those who coordinate the Tournaments) are taking into consideration as if it were a Moba or one of these smaller RTS. This is Age of Empires, arguably the best RTS that has ever been created.

I've never played Starcraft, but in Warcraft (from Blizzard too, so I'm taking the liberty of assuming they're alike) they don't even have random maps, the maps are always exactly the same, with everything in the same place match after match. This for me already disqualifies them from being compared to AOE II.

If you always play on the same map, the trend is that the civilizations that do best on this map will almost always be used. When you will see, the strategy is over and you are always playing the same map, always using or facing always the same civilizations, which always use the same strategies. There will come a point where there is only one map, and 4 – 8 civilizations being used, where is the fun?

The AOE II Map Pool is an innovation, they are saying that adapting to the map is also part of the strategy and not only when to attack the enemy, where to attack the enemy or which units to use. They're making the game less robotic.

[lIIllIIIIlllllIIIIIlllIIIIlll]

Yes they are trying to gain viewers by adapting, AOE2 gets little to no viewers even with big tournaments. SC2 Still way more popular even to this day.

Why are you bringing up other games?

We already have strongest civs for each map so what would change? That is literally what we already have. The devs could tackle this with regular balance changes.

Yes fair point, and im not asking of them to remove this. Just to make it less extreme and a bit more consistent.

[Cacomistle]

Thor II eredeti hozzászólása:

Again, you (and those who coordinate the Tournaments) are taking into consideration as if it were a Moba or one of these smaller RTS. This is Age of Empires, arguably the best RTS that has ever been created.

I've never played Starcraft, but in Warcraft (from Blizzard too, so I'm taking the liberty of assuming they're alike) they don't even have random maps, the maps are always exactly the same, with everything in the same place match after match. This for me already disqualifies them from being compared to AOE II.

If you always play on the same map, the trend is that the civilizations that do best on this map will almost always be used. When you will see, the strategy is over and you are always playing the same map, always using or facing always the same civilizations, which always use the same strategies. There will come a point where there is only one map, and 4 – 8 civilizations being used, where is the fun?

The AOE II Map Pool is an innovation, they are saying that adapting to the map is also part of the strategy and not only when to attack the enemy, where to attack the enemy or which units to use. They're making the game less robotic.

There really are no other competitive rts with random maps.

I don't think that makes them uncomparable though. It doesn't matter if the map is random, the best civ on the map will still be used.

Like look at megarandom. Mongols every single time. Arabia has far more variation. Because if you don't pick mongols on megarandom, and there's a lot of hunt, you automatically lose to mongols. Random maps does not increase the variance, its the same thing.

The issue is that Arabia is the best balanced map. Its a map where you can pick a garbage civ and still win. Most of the other maps in the pool aren't like that. So what happens is you picked 8 inbalanced maps (like nomad where persians and malians are the only 2 good civs, or megarandom which is pure mongols), and there's only 10 viable across all those maps (only even that many because arena and golden pit each have like 4-5 good civs). Which isn't any more than arabia by itself.

If you really want variance, you don't just throw in whatever garbage tier maps you can think of and go "now its varied". You make good maps. Its way better playing 10 different civs on Arabia than playing mongols over and over and over and over and over again on megarandom.

Imagine if I suggested, "hey what about a map with no wood". Well, the best civ on that map would be saracens, because you'd have to sell gold for wood (plus Saracens and Khmer are the only 2 civs in the game that can afford to go to feudal and place a market without cutting any trees). Would you be happy with this?

Because it certainly adds variance, and it forces you to use a civ that's otherwise not good on any of the other maps. But I think its blatantly obvious that would be the dumbest piece of trash map ever.

And that's what your arguments are ignoring. You're just adding variety for the sake of variety, and that's not what games are about.

Plus when you look at the history of this game, there was a long period of huns arabia wars, and all the pro players I watch sound like they were happy with that period of time. And on voobly 80% of the maps played were arabia. Almost every pro I watch has explicitly said they want to play Arabia more. These "map pool sucks" things come up every patch. And you know what, I almost never heard that complaint in warcraft 3 or starcraft 2 (I didn't play brood war unfortunately but I doubt it was there either). These are more popular games that were receiving fewer complaints (not to mention all the years that aoe 2 was still considered a great game despite not having a map rotation).

Maybe, just maybe, its not the map pool that makes this game great.

Besides, if there were an Arabia only queue, you could still play other maps. its just the option to play Arabia. Maybe in the top 20 players you wouldn't be able to find a game (because they all like Arabia), but you're not in the top 20 players.

[petercordia]

I'm curious, are you guys who want to play only arabia the same people who want to keep playing with the 2019 dataset until it is 2030?
Could we create a 2019 arabia que for you, and then develop a megarandom/islands/arena/arabia que with autoque and Indian Battle Elephants for the rest of us?

I do understand why people (especially those that like Arabia) are annoyed with the current map pool. I think it's good to be pushed towards playing on diverse maps, but not to the extend we see now. When I want to practice a build order, I can't even guarantee getting a map where the build order will work. Ideally I think the map pool should allow you to limit yourself to Arabia-like maps and 1 other map-type. Eg with Arabia/ArabiaCloneB/ArabiaCloneC/Islands/WaterB/Megarandom/WackyB/Arena/ClosedMapB and 4 bans and 1 favoured map (I really like the suggestion of having a favoured map).
Though maybe I agree with you guys less than I think I do, because to me Kilimanjaro and Golden Pit seem pretty similar to Arabia.

Reasons why I think the map-pool shouldn't allow you to only play Arabia-like maps:
- to allow the ELO to be a universal ELO. For ELO's to be representative you have to have at least some overlap in the maps you play. And having the flexibility to deal with a variety of maps should be rewarded with a higher ELO.
- people often don't choose what's the most fun. I wouldn't have chosen to learn to play hillforts, but it wasn't a bad experience. 2 quotes from game developers[www.thegamer.com]: "given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,” and, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves."

PS: there are so many beautiful maps on https://aoe2map.net/, I don't understand why they chose the maps they did. I hope they let players vote for the maps in the next map pool

[Cacomistle]

petercordia eredeti hozzászólása:

- people often don't choose what's the most fun. I wouldn't have chosen to learn to play hillforts, but it wasn't a bad experience. 2 quotes from game developers[www.thegamer.com]: "given the opportunity, players will optimize the fun out of a game,” and, “one of the responsibilities of designers is to protect the player from themselves."

Honestly this quote exemplifies some of the problem with the map pool.

Like megarandom, its a mongols war every time. Because any map with hunt they're the optimal pick, so you have to pick them.

I think part of the fun of Arabia is it has the most viable civs and strategies, so its the hardest for players to optimize the fun out of. Whereas when you get a map like nomad in the pool, every player knows Persians are the best civ. So even though its technically a new experience, its optimized before people even play it.

[petercordia]

Interesting point. How would you feel about maps where the map-rule is you have to go random civ? Would that mitigate the problem?

[Kenvert]

memory lane eredeti hozzászólása:

Yes they are trying to gain viewers by adapting, AOE2 gets little to no viewers even with big tournaments. SC2 Still way more popular even to this day.

"Little to no viewers"?
Check the average number of viewer for both games:
https://sullygnome.com/game/age_of_Empires_II_Definitive_Edition/90/summary
https://sullygnome.com/game/StarCraft_II/90/summary

Yeah SC2 has more viewers but is not "way more popular". And the number os viewers has NOTHING to do with the quality of the game. SC2 is a good game but it's only more popular because it's from Blizzard imo...

Anyway, regarding the topic, they should just choose better maps to the pool. "Arabia only" idea would be terrible.

[Cacomistle]

petercordia eredeti hozzászólása:

Interesting point. How would you feel about maps where the map-rule is you have to go random civ? Would that mitigate the problem?

No. Arabia is the only map that would work for.

Because if you get islands, and you're like franks vs italians, you auto lose. Unless your opponent is just way worse than you, the matchup is pretty much unwinnable.

If you play megarandom, and there's 40 deer on the map, if your opponent gets mongols and you don't you lose. That's why everyone picks mongols on that map, because otherwise they can just straight up lose purely from the civilization matchup.

I don't think flipping a coin is preferable to mirror matchups. They just need to add maps to the pool that aren't garbage, or give us some system where people can at least prefer arabia. Megarandom just shouldn't be part of the map pool.

[lIIllIIIIlllllIIIIIlllIIIIlll]

Sc2 roughly double the average viewers, and many times the viewers when its a big tournament. (Big Youtube stream + twitch)

And the reason why AOE2 is somewhat growing in viewer numbers is because they are adapting to SC2 competetive style

[?????]

I don't think anyone just wants to play on Arabia, It's just that ranked isn't a place for meme maps. I can see all those people saying "oh damn I wish I was home right now playing ranked Mega Random XDXDXDXD"

[Kenvert]

memory lane eredeti hozzászólása:

Sc2 roughly double the average viewers, and many times the viewers when its a big tournament. (Big Youtube stream + twitch)

And the reason why AOE2 is somewhat growing in viewer numbers is because they are adapting to SC2 competetive style

AoE2 top viewers during the HC3 tournment was 54k... that is "roughly double" the SC2 top viewers (that of course was during a tournment too). I put the link but you refused to see it.

"Adapting to SC2"? Age of Empires 2 was a competitive game back in 2000ish already. And with people from multiple nations competing... not a KoreanFest like Starcraft.

And as I said, SC2 is more popular because of Blizzard. The same reason Heartstone is a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ card game compared to MTG but is way more popular.

[Cacomistle]

Roninsan eredeti hozzászólása:

memory lane eredeti hozzászólása:

Sc2 roughly double the average viewers, and many times the viewers when its a big tournament. (Big Youtube stream + twitch)

And the reason why AOE2 is somewhat growing in viewer numbers is because they are adapting to SC2 competetive style

AoE2 top viewers during the HC3 tournment was 54k... that is "roughly double" the SC2 top viewers (that of course was during a tournment too). I put the link but you refused to see it.

Part of this is because starcraft 2 was popular back when twitch was still justintv. People just didn't watch streams as much back then.

Starcraft 2 had more sales, and I think if it released at the same time as DE it would have had more viewers.

Its definitely not correct to say that aoe 2 adapated to starcraft 2's competitive style though. The tournaments for age of empires function pretty distinct from how they function in almost every other game. I've never seen a caster organize a 50k prize pool tournament for starcraft, nor have I seen them host tournaments from their apartment or with all the player names hidden (have seen red bull sponsorship in sc2 though but aoe 2 was already getting tons of viewers before that happened).

[Sheng Long]

I didn't want to enter fight of aoe vs SC2 the game as different approach and even if SC2 is well more optimized aoe has is card to played.
But i agree i want to play equilibrate match most of the times , and sometimes weirds maps are fun. But they're just too many i can't ban them all , i can't go to the map pool and be sure i have an equilibrate map .You know aoe is a rigid game and something like hole in the woodlines are really annoying most of the times .

(PS : stop fighting about the competitive aoe scne ; they're no PRO scene in aoe ; i doesn't say they're bad played or they not right too chalenges themselves (and it's great they're still really high level player on Aoe ) but i don't called PRO someone who earn 4000 dollars in a whole year but it's better than nothing for sure )

[Novi]

Roninsan eredeti hozzászólása:

1) Remove MegaRandom from the pool... It's too RNG based.
2) Make the pool 8 maps per season instead of 9.
3) Give people 1 more map ban choice (for both 1v1 and Team games).

This change alone would help a lot!

Removing a map would also REMOVE 1 ban. They added 9th so they could give people an extra ban. 2 players with 4 bans = 8 possible map bans total, leaving 1 map playable. Add any more and you cannot matchmake.