I started following this game with ECL, whose tournament website described Arabia simply as "the bread and butter of competitive Age of Empires". There was a stretch where G1 Arabia was the standard for all major tournaments, or if not, you could usually expect it to be played at least once per set anyway.
Well, look how far we've come. In the playoff brackets of the last 6 S-Tier mixed map tournaments, Arabia was played 6% of the time (I counted). The community's favorite and most played by far map (by a comical amount), arguably the most balanced map, is essentially dead at the competitive level. Irrelevant. And now in GL's recent podcast both Viper and Masmorra are saying that Warlords is a more interesting event than KOTD. Here's Viper talking specifically about civ selection:
"There's the RNG of when you choose certain civs, right? And you get an unfortunate matchup, right? While for these mixed maps, Warlords, NAC now as well, you can prepare kind of 2-3 civs on a map and it's not going to be like "oh, randomly I ran into this civ instead of that" because you always can predict and plan out how the map will likely play out, so there's a lot less RNG in some ways in civ picks and preparation while KOTD is also, besides being the same map over and again, it's also the civ RNG can be a bit frustrating for players...the enjoyment from a strategic and entertainment aspect is way larger with mixed maps compared with single maps. Maybe KOTD has lived out it's purpose."
Maybe I am incredibly out of touch with the rest of the scene, but this is exactly what I hate about mixed map tournaments. Seeing the same few OP civs on certain maps is not civ variety. Seeing the same strats with these same civs on these maps is not strategic variety. Civ variety to me is the semi-randomness of KOTD (or any single map tournament), where you know you're going to be playing a very high level civ, and playing against one, but you need to *gasp* adapt on the spot to your opponent's civ and gameplan from there. That's beautiful Age of Empires to me and I hope it is not dead.
Well, look how far we've come. In the playoff brackets of the last 6 S-Tier mixed map tournaments, Arabia was played 6% of the time (I counted). The community's favorite and most played by far map (by a comical amount), arguably the most balanced map, is essentially dead at the competitive level. Irrelevant. And now in GL's recent podcast both Viper and Masmorra are saying that Warlords is a more interesting event than KOTD. Here's Viper talking specifically about civ selection:
"There's the RNG of when you choose certain civs, right? And you get an unfortunate matchup, right? While for these mixed maps, Warlords, NAC now as well, you can prepare kind of 2-3 civs on a map and it's not going to be like "oh, randomly I ran into this civ instead of that" because you always can predict and plan out how the map will likely play out, so there's a lot less RNG in some ways in civ picks and preparation while KOTD is also, besides being the same map over and again, it's also the civ RNG can be a bit frustrating for players...the enjoyment from a strategic and entertainment aspect is way larger with mixed maps compared with single maps. Maybe KOTD has lived out it's purpose."
Maybe I am incredibly out of touch with the rest of the scene, but this is exactly what I hate about mixed map tournaments. Seeing the same few OP civs on certain maps is not civ variety. Seeing the same strats with these same civs on these maps is not strategic variety. Civ variety to me is the semi-randomness of KOTD (or any single map tournament), where you know you're going to be playing a very high level civ, and playing against one, but you need to *gasp* adapt on the spot to your opponent's civ and gameplan from there. That's beautiful Age of Empires to me and I hope it is not dead.