Just thought if I was myself. Currently, we have tournaments very often, and we see many many mirror ara matches occasionally broken by mirror nomad or BF or mirror GA DMs. We are going the Starcraft route where we give competitive play highest priority and we as a community value competence online as a virtue higher than most others. We try to draw in new players with these tournaments, which will only be watched by similarly competitive oriented people. So do you think that's where we should be headed? Do you think we should put all emphasis on making our game an e-sport and treating like one. To me, Starcraft is an e-sport with many players; and the community isn't much better off without all them other than to watch and sponsor those tournaments. Which is fine because that's what it was kinda made for.
But when I think of our game as an RTS, I see it as an old master of a game that emphasizes diversity in the number of civilizations and tactics one can play, and one which isn't very suited for ultra-competitive scene. But we generally never see the celebration of diversity these days in tournaments or in everyday games. We see a few people picking something in opposition to the meta and we call him/her a noob for it and forget them. In general, it seems we have a hatred for anyone who plays this for anything other than the competitive aspect of the game. There may be people who didn't play MP back in 1999 and still enjoyed the game and came back and found the thing that made AoE2 different than the $$$$$ that was and still is Starcraft (nothing wrong with that, TBH) has gone; and it begs the question, shouldn't we try to emphasize our game's own strengths rather than trying to become another game altogether?
We still see loads of folks hating on a game that was different because it wouldn't be possible ''in the meta''. Should that really happen? Should our game forget its uniqueness and just bend over and copy what its rival and exact opposite game is doing? We have countless online tournament with big $$$ but we don't have a single thread even; to appreciate how poignant the message or story of a mod or a scenario is. We have nothing to recognize the intelligent use of gameplay mechanics in a particular mod or even an in-game campaign. I'm just asking; is that how you'd like this game to go on?
But when I think of our game as an RTS, I see it as an old master of a game that emphasizes diversity in the number of civilizations and tactics one can play, and one which isn't very suited for ultra-competitive scene. But we generally never see the celebration of diversity these days in tournaments or in everyday games. We see a few people picking something in opposition to the meta and we call him/her a noob for it and forget them. In general, it seems we have a hatred for anyone who plays this for anything other than the competitive aspect of the game. There may be people who didn't play MP back in 1999 and still enjoyed the game and came back and found the thing that made AoE2 different than the $$$$$ that was and still is Starcraft (nothing wrong with that, TBH) has gone; and it begs the question, shouldn't we try to emphasize our game's own strengths rather than trying to become another game altogether?
We still see loads of folks hating on a game that was different because it wouldn't be possible ''in the meta''. Should that really happen? Should our game forget its uniqueness and just bend over and copy what its rival and exact opposite game is doing? We have countless online tournament with big $$$ but we don't have a single thread even; to appreciate how poignant the message or story of a mod or a scenario is. We have nothing to recognize the intelligent use of gameplay mechanics in a particular mod or even an in-game campaign. I'm just asking; is that how you'd like this game to go on?