HC4: The ultimate guessing guide.

[haxo]

it is stupid to make hc5 if viewers know all the players :D

 

[Lightysword]

it is stupid to make hc5 if viewers know all the players :D

105 from 60k is not too many.

 

[DaisyChain]

I reacted in the heat of the moment yesterday with short posts, but I knew I wanted to do a closure post deserving of these last days.

To me, the hidden aspect of the Hidden Cup has also often been discouraging. In Hidden Cup 2, I actually waited for the event to be over to have the names, and watched the VODs. In Hidden Cup 3, I tried playing the guessing game and actually had 12 correct, but I sometimes felt frustrated because too many of my guesses were random throwaway names. I knew I wanted to do things more seriously this time and I also knew I'd have a lot of free time this entire week, so everything was well and I was ready to do detective work.

I knew this was probably the best place to gather insights from the players and the very dedicated members of the community who probably had the most knowledge on players. To be fair, I expected a bit more help at the start of the thread, and I ended up doing 16 profiles mostly alone. But once the event started, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people showing up and the quality of the discussions.

This became a place to live react on certain things, and a perfect hub to share guesses. Some things were just intuition for me like ACCM being Warwolf (just a feeling I had during his Arabia and Cross game based on his unit control) and the fact everyone seemed to agree gave me certainty and helped me a lot. Some things were a mystery for me (like Villese being Pope) although I think I would have ended up deducing it based on draft after the first 8 sets, but the certainty of someone like @Jeowaypoint definitely carried me there (although not thank you, because I spent 2 extra hours confirming that Admiral is Jordan simply because you were absolutely certain he wasn't, even if I knew it from that Cross game against ACCM ).

I ended up investing an absurd amount of time in that guessing competition, but this was honestly time well-spent. My 14/16 is barely better than last year's 12/16, but it felt a lot more informed. As I said, I had at least 10 with relative certainty purely from their first draft and first Arabia game, while a lot of my guesses of last year were by default. In the end, I should have listened to people like @diguoshidai who had the perfect explanations on why dogao was Bela. The fact T90 barely showed Nicov's Dark Age in the qualifiers and that the few times he did it did not match Little John's costed me the 16/16: I should have trusted the many people who told me it was his exact Dark Age on ladder.

Regarding aoezone, I share the feeling of many people here, including the big names of the community who showed up at some point. This is a shame that this place is often the hub of the dramaqueens and the whiners of Age of Empires. The community on average is more mature and more helpful than most videogames, but for some reason this central place of the community seems to be the gatherpoint of everyone who does not match this description. A few people came here on the thread in a pretty disrespectful tone, but I really enjoyed the general tone of the discussions. And if I myself was a bit rude with someone who had a guess I felt did not make sense, I'm very sorry. I was usually tired and also doing multiple things at once. I usually tried writing "I think this cannot be X because Y" but I might have thrown a few "this is nonsensical" over these last 50 pages. Overall, I say it once again: this was overwhelmingly positive and enjoyable. This is proof that we create the community we want and we just have to be positive on aoezone to bring more positive people in. This place deserves to be much better than it often is.

I would have also preferred that the people who download recs, search tournament accounts on aoe2.net or try to track who is in Twitch chat used another platform, because I stated multiple times I did not want to deviate from the viewer's experience and I'd only use T90's stream/vods/videos. Notably during the finals, some people were very definitive in their wrong assumption that Admiral was Viper based on the fact he wasn't watching the stream while Jordan was (as if Viper isn't exactly the kind of guy who logs out of his account during Hidden Cup anyway). I'm especially glad you were all wrong.

The fact a few pro players including the Hidden Cup winner showed up warmed my heart. It's awesome to know the many people who enjoyed the thread included some big names. And obviously a special thanks to @T90Official for Hidden Cup, but also for showing up here with his kind words.

Cheers to all <3​

 

[Tarsiz]

@DaisyChain thanks for all your work, I really enjoyed reading through the first 16 players profiles you wrote at the beginning of the thread and participating in the discussions here as well, so thank you for animating this thread. It was quite fun following along as the games were going on too.

It was really a welcome breath of fresh air in the toxic environment AoEZone has become over the past few months so thank you for that!

 

[haxo]

105 from 60k is not too many.

agreee, but it is not all about all players,if you know lets say 12-13 players its enough. and even more if they are in semis or top8

 

[lecracheursagacite]

This is a shame that this place is often the hub of the dramaqueens and the whiners of Age of Empires. The community on average is more mature and more helpful than most videogames, but for some reason this central place of the community seems to be the gatherpoint of everyone who does not match this description.

This is because (as @doacid has pointed out several times) AoEZone is the only place where conversations that lead to "drama" don't tend to result in one side getting quickly silenced by the moderators of the forum. That is not preferable: such moderation is heavy-handed and often very unfair because it is influenced by the personal biases of the moderators themselves. It is the central point of the community and the only place where the community can be itself so it is natural there will be drama because drama is inevitable in a community as long-lived as this one. Not constructively resolving drama when it pops up, along the lines of what @Pc23 said, is the real problem. It does no one any good to act like AoEZone is somehow at fault for these imperfections.

 

[XDestroyer69]

I would have also preferred that the people who download recs, search tournament accounts on aoe2.net or try to track who is in Twitch chat used another platform, because I stated multiple times I did not want to deviate from the viewer's experience and I'd only use T90's stream/vods/videos. Notably during the finals, some people were very definitive in their wrong assumption that Admiral was Viper based on the fact he wasn't watching the stream while Jordan was (as if Viper isn't exactly the kind of guy who logs out of his account during Hidden Cup anyway). I'm especially glad you were all wrong.

​

Well, if you want to play the guessing game, it's not wrong to use all the informations you can get. why the hate ? Even if your assumptions can be wrong or not. But anyway like you nicely stated the best informations you could have is to know the players style and draft.

 

[MaSmOrRa]

I reacted in the heat of the moment yesterday with short posts, but I knew I wanted to do a closure post deserving of these last days.

To me, the hidden aspect of the Hidden Cup has also often been discouraging. In Hidden Cup 2, I actually waited for the event to be over to have the names, and watched the VODs. In Hidden Cup 3, I tried playing the guessing game and actually had 12 correct, but I sometimes felt frustrated because too many of my guesses were random throwaway names. I knew I wanted to do thing more seriously this time and I also knew I'd have a lot of free time this entire week, so everything was well and I was ready to do detective work.

I knew this was probably the best place to gather insights from the players and the very dedicated members of the community who probably had the most knowledge on players. To be fair, I expected a bit more help at the start of the thread, and I ended up doing 16 profiles mostly alone. But once the event started, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people showing up and the quality of the discussions.

This became a place to live react on certain things, and a perfect hub to share guesses. Some things were just intuition for me like ACCM being Warwolf (just a feeling I had during his Arabia and Cross game based on his unit control) and the fact everyone seemed to agree gave me certainty and helped me a lot. Some things were a mystery for me (like Villese being Pope) although I think I would have ended up deducing it based on draft after the first 8 sets, but the certainty of someone like @Jeowaypoint definitely carried me there (although not thank you, because I spent 2 extra hours confirming that Admiral is Jordan simply because you were absolutely certain he wasn't, even if I knew it from that Cross game against ACCM ).

I ended up investing an absurd amount of time in that guessing competition, but this was honestly time well-spent. My 14/16 is barely better than last year's 12/16, but it felt a lot more informed. As I said, I had at least 10 with relative certainty purely from their first draft and first Arabia game, while a lot of my guesses of last year were by default. In the end, I should have listened to people like @diguoshidai who had the perfect explanations on why dogao was Bela. The fact T90 barely showed Nicov's Dark Age in the qualifiers and that the few times he did it did not match Little John's costed me the 16/16: I should have trusted the many people who told me it was his exact Dark Age on ladder.

Regarding aoezone, I share the feeling of many people here, including the big names of the community who showed up at some point. This is a shame that this place is often the hub of the dramaqueens and the whiners of Age of Empires. The community on average is more mature and more helpful than most videogames, but for some reason this central place of the community seems to be the gatherpoint of everyone who does not match this description. A few people came here on the thread in a pretty disrespectful tone, but I really enjoyed the general tone of the discussions. And if I myself was a bit rude with someone who had a guess I felt did not make sense, I'm very sorry. I was usually tired and also doing multiple things at once. I usually tried writing "I think this cannot be X because Y" but I might have thrown a few "this is nonsensical" over these last 50 pages. Overall, I say it once again: this was overwhelmingly positive and enjoyable. This is proof that we create the community we want and we just have to be positive on aoezone to bring more positive people in. This place deserves to be much better than it often is.

I would have also preferred that the people who download recs, search tournament accounts on aoe2.net or try to track who is in Twitch chat used another platform, because I stated multiple times I did not want to deviate from the viewer's experience and I'd only use T90's stream/vods/videos. Notably during the finals, some people were very definitive in their wrong assumption that Admiral was Viper based on the fact he wasn't watching the stream while Jordan was (as if Viper isn't exactly the kind of guy who logs out of his account during Hidden Cup anyway). I'm especially glad you were all wrong.

The fact a few pro players including the Hidden Cup winner showed up warmed my heart. It's awesome to know the many people who enjoyed the thread included some big names. And obviously a special thanks to @T90Official for Hidden Cup, but also for showing up here with his kind words.

Cheers to all <3​

Thank you so much for starting the fire!

This thread has increased my enjoyment of the tournament tenfold and indeed was one of the most enjoyable threads to read in a long time.

However, I vehemently disagree with your assessment of AoEZone as a "toxic" place or drama prone place.
I know this is a popular notion with a lot of people, but I think this is the result of folks getting used to their safe spaces (their favorite streamer`s chat; discord; social media bubbles; etc.) and a general unwillingness to have their positions challenged.

I`m absolutely certain this place is not more toxic than Reddit or any other public forum, it`s just that in this forum unpopular opinions get as much exposure as popular ones. And that`s a good thing in my opinion.

During Trump`s presidency, I made it a habit of reading Breitbart news everyday.
And guess what, if you read past the aggressive tone of some posts and go direct to the substance, you will sometimes find some very well-argued positions and some very well taken points.
At the end of the day, I still disagreed with 99% of what was written there, but it made me think harder about my positions and why I defend them.

The same thing can be true for people who disagree with you on AoEZone and sometimes use a harsher tone.

It all comes down to how open are you to having your positions challenged and how open are you to the fact that you might not be right about everything.

 

[BlotchedyDooDah]

Thank you so much for starting the fire!

This thread has increased my enjoyment of the tournament tenfold and indeed was one of the most enjoyable threads to read in a long time.

However, I vehemently disagree with your assessment of AoEZone as a "toxic" place or drama prone place.
I know this is a popular notion with a lot of people, but I think this is the result of folks getting used to their safe spaces (their favorite streamer`s chat; discord; social media bubbles; etc.) and a general unwillingness to have their positions challenged.

I`m absolutely certain this place is not more toxic than Reddit or any other public forum, it`s just that in this forum unpopular opinions get as much exposure as popular ones. And that`s a good thing in my opinion.

During Trump`s presidency, I made it a habit of reading Breitbart news everyday.
And guess what, if you read past the aggressive tone of some posts and go direct to the substance, you will often find some very well-argued positions and some very well taken points.
At the end of the day, I still disagreed with 99% of what was written there, but it made me think harder about my positions and why I defend them.

The same thing can be true for people who disagree with you on AoEZone and sometimes use a harsher tone.

It all comes down to how open are you to have your positions challenged and how open are you to the fact that you might not be right about everything.

First time I've heard the Breitbart-AoEZone comparison

 

[AtTheGates_]

Also did the dreaded 14/16, switching up Dogao and Nicov.

Feelsbadman.

 

[AtTheGates_]

I reacted in the heat of the moment yesterday with short posts, but I knew I wanted to do a closure post deserving of these last days.

To me, the hidden aspect of the Hidden Cup has also often been discouraging. In Hidden Cup 2, I actually waited for the event to be over to have the names, and watched the VODs. In Hidden Cup 3, I tried playing the guessing game and actually had 12 correct, but I sometimes felt frustrated because too many of my guesses were random throwaway names. I knew I wanted to do thing more seriously this time and I also knew I'd have a lot of free time this entire week, so everything was well and I was ready to do detective work.

I knew this was probably the best place to gather insights from the players and the very dedicated members of the community who probably had the most knowledge on players. To be fair, I expected a bit more help at the start of the thread, and I ended up doing 16 profiles mostly alone. But once the event started, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people showing up and the quality of the discussions.

This became a place to live react on certain things, and a perfect hub to share guesses. Some things were just intuition for me like ACCM being Warwolf (just a feeling I had during his Arabia and Cross game based on his unit control) and the fact everyone seemed to agree gave me certainty and helped me a lot. Some things were a mystery for me (like Villese being Pope) although I think I would have ended up deducing it based on draft after the first 8 sets, but the certainty of someone like @Jeowaypoint definitely carried me there (although not thank you, because I spent 2 extra hours confirming that Admiral is Jordan simply because you were absolutely certain he wasn't, even if I knew it from that Cross game against ACCM ).

I ended up investing an absurd amount of time in that guessing competition, but this was honestly time well-spent. My 14/16 is barely better than last year's 12/16, but it felt a lot more informed. As I said, I had at least 10 with relative certainty purely from their first draft and first Arabia game, while a lot of my guesses of last year were by default. In the end, I should have listened to people like @diguoshidai who had the perfect explanations on why dogao was Bela. The fact T90 barely showed Nicov's Dark Age in the qualifiers and that the few times he did it did not match Little John's costed me the 16/16: I should have trusted the many people who told me it was his exact Dark Age on ladder.

Regarding aoezone, I share the feeling of many people here, including the big names of the community who showed up at some point. This is a shame that this place is often the hub of the dramaqueens and the whiners of Age of Empires. The community on average is more mature and more helpful than most videogames, but for some reason this central place of the community seems to be the gatherpoint of everyone who does not match this description. A few people came here on the thread in a pretty disrespectful tone, but I really enjoyed the general tone of the discussions. And if I myself was a bit rude with someone who had a guess I felt did not make sense, I'm very sorry. I was usually tired and also doing multiple things at once. I usually tried writing "I think this cannot be X because Y" but I might have thrown a few "this is nonsensical" over these last 50 pages. Overall, I say it once again: this was overwhelmingly positive and enjoyable. This is proof that we create the community we want and we just have to be positive on aoezone to bring more positive people in. This place deserves to be much better than it often is.

I would have also preferred that the people who download recs, search tournament accounts on aoe2.net or try to track who is in Twitch chat used another platform, because I stated multiple times I did not want to deviate from the viewer's experience and I'd only use T90's stream/vods/videos. Notably during the finals, some people were very definitive in their wrong assumption that Admiral was Viper based on the fact he wasn't watching the stream while Jordan was (as if Viper isn't exactly the kind of guy who logs out of his account during Hidden Cup anyway). I'm especially glad you were all wrong.

The fact a few pro players including the Hidden Cup winner showed up warmed my heart. It's awesome to know the many people who enjoyed the thread included some big names. And obviously a special thanks to @T90Official for Hidden Cup, but also for showing up here with his kind words.

Cheers to all <3​

This thread was amazing. Although I only participated myself during the last day I did read it all. Thank you for your work!

 

[nimanoe]

@LidaKor I think we need a new category for the Age Community Awards: Best AoEZone thread (and this one will win no doubt)

Thanks for starting it all @DaisyChain and thanks for all the people participating here. Loved the discussion about the players and their playstyles and it really enhanced HC4!
It's also nice to talk to your friends who don't know about this thread and pretending you found out all of this info by yourself 11

 

[green eggs]

I reacted in the heat of the moment yesterday with short posts, but I knew I wanted to do a closure post deserving of these last days.

To me, the hidden aspect of the Hidden Cup has also often been discouraging. In Hidden Cup 2, I actually waited for the event to be over to have the names, and watched the VODs. In Hidden Cup 3, I tried playing the guessing game and actually had 12 correct, but I sometimes felt frustrated because too many of my guesses were random throwaway names. I knew I wanted to do thing more seriously this time and I also knew I'd have a lot of free time this entire week, so everything was well and I was ready to do detective work.

I knew this was probably the best place to gather insights from the players and the very dedicated members of the community who probably had the most knowledge on players. To be fair, I expected a bit more help at the start of the thread, and I ended up doing 16 profiles mostly alone. But once the event started, I was overwhelmed by the amount of people showing up and the quality of the discussions.

This became a place to live react on certain things, and a perfect hub to share guesses. Some things were just intuition for me like ACCM being Warwolf (just a feeling I had during his Arabia and Cross game based on his unit control) and the fact everyone seemed to agree gave me certainty and helped me a lot. Some things were a mystery for me (like Villese being Pope) although I think I would have ended up deducing it based on draft after the first 8 sets, but the certainty of someone like @Jeowaypoint definitely carried me there (although not thank you, because I spent 2 extra hours confirming that Admiral is Jordan simply because you were absolutely certain he wasn't, even if I knew it from that Cross game against ACCM ).

I ended up investing an absurd amount of time in that guessing competition, but this was honestly time well-spent. My 14/16 is barely better than last year's 12/16, but it felt a lot more informed. As I said, I had at least 10 with relative certainty purely from their first draft and first Arabia game, while a lot of my guesses of last year were by default. In the end, I should have listened to people like @diguoshidai who had the perfect explanations on why dogao was Bela. The fact T90 barely showed Nicov's Dark Age in the qualifiers and that the few times he did it did not match Little John's costed me the 16/16: I should have trusted the many people who told me it was his exact Dark Age on ladder.

Regarding aoezone, I share the feeling of many people here, including the big names of the community who showed up at some point. This is a shame that this place is often the hub of the dramaqueens and the whiners of Age of Empires. The community on average is more mature and more helpful than most videogames, but for some reason this central place of the community seems to be the gatherpoint of everyone who does not match this description. A few people came here on the thread in a pretty disrespectful tone, but I really enjoyed the general tone of the discussions. And if I myself was a bit rude with someone who had a guess I felt did not make sense, I'm very sorry. I was usually tired and also doing multiple things at once. I usually tried writing "I think this cannot be X because Y" but I might have thrown a few "this is nonsensical" over these last 50 pages. Overall, I say it once again: this was overwhelmingly positive and enjoyable. This is proof that we create the community we want and we just have to be positive on aoezone to bring more positive people in. This place deserves to be much better than it often is.

I would have also preferred that the people who download recs, search tournament accounts on aoe2.net or try to track who is in Twitch chat used another platform, because I stated multiple times I did not want to deviate from the viewer's experience and I'd only use T90's stream/vods/videos. Notably during the finals, some people were very definitive in their wrong assumption that Admiral was Viper based on the fact he wasn't watching the stream while Jordan was (as if Viper isn't exactly the kind of guy who logs out of his account during Hidden Cup anyway). I'm especially glad you were all wrong.

The fact a few pro players including the Hidden Cup winner showed up warmed my heart. It's awesome to know the many people who enjoyed the thread included some big names. And obviously a special thanks to @T90Official for Hidden Cup, but also for showing up here with his kind words.

Cheers to all <3​

Thank you @DaisyChain! The two of us got a bit short with each other at one point, but I'm glad we quickly moved past that. Sorry for calling you a **** lol. This was a fun thread!

 

[__skeje]

Well he was first to reach 2.6k on ladder and just clapped (presumably) Liereyy, so it seems to work out for him!

"He has the ability to make any game boring" used to be said about Mbl but is now accurate about Hera. Hopefully Viper wins tomorrow.

Really¿ 11

 

[welcometorapture]

It's also nice to talk to your friends who don't know about this thread and pretending you found out all of this info by yourself 11

This thread was great, especially for the reason Niman said: I got to pretend to my casual AoE friends I knew all of this stuff about the players so I could identify them at a glance .

 

[DaisyChain]

To be honest, this is all the recognition I could have dreamt off starting this thread.

 

[SmashFascists]

To be honest, this is all the recognition I could have dreamt off starting this thread.

Deserved.

 

[D_Cool]

Congratulations to T90 on running an amazing tournament! Lots to praise about the whole production. I remember a bit on your stream when you talked about trying to get sponsors and being told the HC3 viewer numbers were 'largely due to COVID'. It must feel so so sweet to come back a year later and get even bigger viewer numbers and prove what you already knew - that Age of Empires, and your content, is popular because it's a great game which is presented really well. Nice one.

Also congratulations to the players, especially the finalists. Amazing to see the winner come on here and make such a gracious post about criticism too. It would be so easy to basically think, 'I'm beating excellent players and I can keep doing what I'm doing.' After being right at the top since the last NAC, you deserve this one Hera.

Now just hoping to see another big 1v1 in the next couple of months to keep the hype going .

 

[DaisyChain]

I watched today's Jordan stream, and we will have an even more serious issue to differentiate him with Viper next Hidden Cup because I think he'll eliminate some of his small flaws. His APM is absolutely through the roof while casually interacting with chat and playing relaxed Nomad team games. I feel like it doubled since before Hidden Cup.

That tends to confirm the eapm study of Admiral Jeowaypoint made:

@MaSmOrRa There was less challenge come later stages, and I quickly realized that whatever the case, Jordan is playing good enough to fool me. The series vs Yo made me again rest merrily on my choice. Admiral even exhibited non-Jordan eapm graphs (aoe2insights) and peaks in several (almost all) games, exceeding TheViper(!)... like I did not expect Jordan to get 120-peaks and sustained 100 eapm I associate only with viper+tempos, when most recs it is almost Villese-like (slow but accurate and unaggressive army usage, little micro) 40-50 average and mere 60peaks.

 

[D_Cool]

I haven’t followed Jordan that much but am a bit of a Max fanboy.

I always get the impression there are 2 versions of Max: the incredible strategist and boomer who can compete with the best of them and doesn’t often lose to players outside the top 6, and a shadow of that who looks disappointing and seems to lack speed.

Thing is, when Max lost to Jordan in qualifiers, it looked like the good player version of Max. This felt weird to me as I didn’t think Jordan’s level was good enough to beat on-form Max.

I chalked it up to me overrating Max’s level at the time but on reflection maybe Max was playing at a really high level like I thought, and just met an opponent who was playing even better.