Why is AoE2 player base so low?

[MAE_ME]

I totally agree that the major problem in the community now is actually the team games queue system.

IMO the best thing is making the team games be able to choose any map they want to queue with and give unlimited bans so you can queue with one map only.

The other big problem in team games is the civ picking. Mostly all what you see Franks, Britons, Ethiopians, Huns, Lithuanians, Gurjs, Hindus..etc. they should make the random player force all the players to go random not pick at all or make a separated queue for random.

 

[otw_Da]

I totally agree that the major problem in the community now is actually the team games queue system.

IMO the best thing is making the team games be able to choose any map they want to queue with and give unlimited bans so you can queue with one map only.

The other big problem in team games is the civ picking. Mostly all what you see Franks, Britons, Ethiopians, Huns, Lithuanians, Gurjs, Hindus..etc. they should make the random player force all the players to go random not pick at all or make a separated queue for random.

but only in the queue system this is labeld as problem. because in the lobby system you could go for "random civ" or "pick civ" and everyone was happy. if the civ picker want to be a civ picker, we should let him. if the arabia picker wants arabia, then we should get him the chance to do so. same goes for every map and mode in aoe.
The mainpart of the AoE community is put together of this small bubbles were people highlight their favorite map. Without small communities like Deathmatch, Nomad or Blackforest fans AoE would be dead.

 

[Giuseppe551]

I love how people keep saying "the majority want to play Arabia" and yet the first time they integrate map voting into the game, the democratic majority chooses mostly non-Arabia style maps.

64% of 1v1 ranked games are played on Arabia according to a recent SOTL video. So yes the majority want to play Arabia. It would probably be higher if people had completely free pick of maps.

 

[Bandana]

The game is fiiiiiine and is better than it has ever been

 

[HongeyKong]

64% of 1v1 ranked games are played on Arabia according to a recent SOTL video. So yes the majority want to play Arabia. It would probably be higher if people had completely free pick of maps.

Its definitely still the most liked map, but the 64% is more like "most unhated" / "most unbanned".

Ill give you an example here, lets say theres only 3 maps in the map pool, player can ban one and fav one.

40%: fav A, ban B
10%: fav A, ban C
30%: fav B, ban C
20%: fav C, ban B

Turns out, while only 50% of the players favourite A, 76% will be played on A, 12% will be played on B, 12% will be played on C.

 

[SouFire]

According to the dashboard data this is the players preference, for tg arabia is still the king at 29%, even arena the second most played map is barely close to 10% so the experiment of the map diversity was a total failure, players have a solid tendency.

 

[Darknoob]

64% of 1v1 ranked games are played on Arabia according to a recent SOTL video. So yes the majority want to play Arabia. It would probably be higher if people had completely free pick of maps.

I hate arabia yet 30/40% of my games is arabia, and "just 30/40%" cause i regularly ban it. How do you explain that?

 

[Memeluke]

the guys I play 4v4 with on discord started permabanning arabia in favour of arena and black forest or even hideout and oasis a long time ago, they just couldn't be bothered playing against an even faster ******ed brand new no mill no lumbercamp no tc archer build every week. The map is too open for team games, in 1v1 it's fine because there's not as much units around and you can defend with skirms or pikes or monks or mangonels or scorpions or tc etc but in tg the balance is too skewed in the direction of just having more army and faster than the other team, going for more economy is usually not worth it. Wish there was a green arabia-ish map in the pool.

 

[teutonic_tanks]

the guys I play 4v4 with on discord started permabanning arabia in favour of arena and black forest or even hideout and oasis a long time ago, they just couldn't be bothered playing against an even faster ******ed brand new no mill no lumbercamp no tc archer build every week. The map is too open for team games, in 1v1 it's fine because there's not as much units around and you can defend with skirms or pikes or monks or mangonels or scorpions or tc etc but in tg the balance is too skewed in the direction of just having more army and faster than the other team, going for more economy is usually not worth it. Wish there was a green arabia-ish map in the pool.

100% agree with you, 18 pop archer from flank is extremly hard to stop and the low/exposed economy one has makes games very snowbally and easily decided at min 13. That's a problem on any open landmap right now. Instead of advancing through the ages you end up with an eco-age where you play down the always same buildorder followed by an archer age, which from time to time even makes it to the xbow age. By then most of the time someone is dead already.

 

[KolyaKrasotkin]

100% agree with you, 18 pop archer from flank is extremly hard to stop and the low/exposed economy one has makes games very snowbally and easily decided at min 13. That's a problem on any open landmap right now. Instead of advancing through the ages you end up with an eco-age where you play down the always same buildorder followed by an archer age, which from time to time even makes it to the xbow age. By then most of the time someone is dead already.

I think, that is a symptom of the bigger problem, that picking civs and position became standard.

Ranked team games play out like tournament games, as if anything were at stake, and people sacrifice the fun of team games for the illusion of getting better at playing the game by optimizing some ridiculous, aggressive build order.

 

[teutonic_tanks]

I think, that is a symptom of the bigger problem, that picking civs and position became standard.

Ranked team games play out like tournament games, as if anything were at stake, and people sacrifice the fun of team games for the illusion of getting better at playing the game by optimizing some ridiculous, aggressive build order.

no that has nothing to do with civ picking. You will play the same 18/19 pop archer strat with whatever civ you have. If you didnt pick a top archer civs, you just extra disadvantage, but the game will stay as snowbally as without. Picking a civ doesn't spawn more trees around your base 11

 

[T-West]

Picking a civ doesn't spawn more trees around your base

Next DLC civ bonus: spawn an extra patch of trees near your TC.

 

[teutonic_tanks]

Next DLC civ bonus: spawn an extra patch of trees near your TC.

Even better idea: next DLC civs can plant trees for 1 wood per tree

 

[Giuseppe551]

I hate arabia yet 30/40% of my games is arabia, and "just 30/40%" cause i regularly ban it. How do you explain that?

That just proves the point. Even though you don't have Arabia favorited so many other people do that 30-40% of your games end up there.

Not sure why people are jumping through hoops lately to make it seem like Arabia isn't the standard map in aoe2.

 

[Potkeny]

Not sure why people are jumping through hoops lately to make it seem like Arabia isn't the standard map in aoe2.

I think people are trying to explain that arabia players can already play almost exclusively arabia with the current system, regardless of map pool variance, so any kind of complaining from them feels funny compared to those who want to play nomad/arena/megarandom/etc.

 

[Kamigawa]

Even better idea: next DLC civs can plant trees for 1 wood per tree

Strongest wall in the game

 

[Lokalo]

I think people are trying to explain that arabia players can already play almost exclusively arabia with the current system, regardless of map pool variance, so any kind of complaining from them feels funny compared to those who want to play nomad/arena/megarandom/etc.

Well as always, there are 2 sides. I can understand this side, that in a sense is worse for people who want more variety, especially clowns as many people have arena banned.

However other side is, if there are tons of arabia players, why the heck I gotta play non arabia IF I WANT ARABIA. And worst part is, in many cases if arabia player is matched with clown, they both play in some trash map like bog islands which often both players don't really want to play. I mean current system often works in a way, that BOTH players have to play a map that they don't want, so both players are in a losing situation. So instead of a clown waiting longer and getting arena, I get non arabia and we both play trash map. Or as many do, just dodge. Keep dodging, if needed relog on other account. Works perfectly 11

 

[Potkeny]

I mean current system often works in a way, that BOTH players have to play a map that they don't want, so both players are in a losing situation. So instead of a clown waiting longer and getting arena, I get non arabia and we both play trash map.

Yep, but sadly then we are either back to splitting Qs or removing bans and making an arabia-arena matchup 50% coinflip, and I'm not sure either of those would actually result in less complaints.

 

[Memeluke]

Strongest wall in the game

what if they were all straggler trees... sounds like exactly something they would do tbh

 

[eC_Gurke]

Played a good amount of ranked TGs (as single queue) lately and barely any of those were on arabia and most even had random civs.

Was way more fun than anticipated, even stopped playing 1v1s for that.

So what are we all complaining about?

 

[ZaKkI]

So what are we all complaining about?

If we're providing anecdotal evidence, here is mine. I only want to play BF and I get one ban, maybe two if I want to do 2v2. For at least the last year I only get to play BF on average once every 8 games. THAT SUCKS.

The alternative is go to lobby where there is no lobby elo, no way to balance teams with more than 50% of players having no visible ranked elo, and hosts having to use some arbitrary criteria like "semi ++++++++" that all still results in a lopsided crap game. The alternative sucks too.

Playing BF on Voobly was better in every way and even finding a balanced BF game on HD was easier and faster than DE. That is what I'm complaining about.

 

[HongeyKong]

Playing BF on Voobly was better in every way and even finding a balanced BF game on HD was easier and faster than DE. That is what I'm complaining about.

Because there were only 3k-ish active TG players in Voobly MS, with maybe 1k solely playing arabia, and 1k solely playing BF. With ratings also taken into consideration, most of the time you only face couple hundred players.

On DE there are 60k+ active ranked TG players (and 100k+ unranked) with more diverse map preference. If players still (get forced to) switch between maps every now and then like they do with the current map pool system, then games might still be balanced; but if they switch to their worst map after lets say 10 wins on their best map, games might be unbalanced. And If you only play with players you recognize / approve, you can play it unranked anyway.


EDIT: And pls dont say "It also worked in the Zone days!!!", (1) Back then most of the games were unrated (2) People were so bad that they didnt know what a balanced game is.

 

[ZaKkI]

Because there were only 3k-ish active TG players in Voobly MS, with maybe 1k solely playing arabia, and 1k solely playing BF. With ratings also taken into consideration, most of the time you only face couple hundred players.

On DE there are 60k+ active ranked TG players (and 100k+ unranked) with more diverse map preference. If players still (get forced to) switch between maps every now and then like they do with the current map pool system, then games might still be balanced; but if they switch to their worst map after lets say 10 wins on their best map, games might be unbalanced. And If you only play with players you recognize / approve, you can play it unranked anyway.


EDIT: And pls dont say "It also worked in the Zone days!!!", (1) Back then most of the games were unrated (2) People were so bad that they didnt know what a balanced game is.

Your comment makes no sense at all.

My comment was that as a BF only player it is harder and takes longer for me to get balanced games on the map I want to play in DE than it did in Voobly or HD. And your argument is that there's MORE people on DE so it should be harder and take longer????

Adding ranked lobbies (can be its own ladder) or letting me pick my map in matchmaking (and waiting as long as I have to) would make my experience infinitely better and at least on par with HD and would take nothing away from any one else.

 

[The Bloodless]

Because there were only 3k-ish active TG players in Voobly MS, with maybe 1k solely playing arabia, and 1k solely playing BF. With ratings also taken into consideration, most of the time you only face couple hundred players.

On DE there are 60k+ active ranked TG players (and 100k+ unranked) with more diverse map preference. If players still (get forced to) switch between maps every now and then like they do with the current map pool system, then games might still be balanced; but if they switch to their worst map after lets say 10 wins on their best map, games might be unbalanced. And If you only play with players you recognize / approve, you can play it unranked anyway.


EDIT: And pls dont say "It also worked in the Zone days!!!", (1) Back then most of the games were unrated (2) People were so bad that they didnt know what a balanced game is.

Is 100k confirmed? I'm blown away if so. Last I checked it was ~40k players on de... though, granted, that may have been only the "serious" 1v1ers.

 

[LockeAoC]

If we're providing anecdotal evidence, here is mine. I only want to play BF and I get one ban, maybe two if I want to do 2v2. For at least the last year I only get to play BF on average once every 8 games. THAT SUCKS.

The alternative is go to lobby where there is no lobby elo, no way to balance teams with more than 50% of players having no visible ranked elo, and hosts having to use some arbitrary criteria like "semi ++++++++" that all still results in a lopsided crap game. The alternative sucks too.

Playing BF on Voobly was better in every way and even finding a balanced BF game on HD was easier and faster than DE. That is what I'm complaining about.

You need to join the Rage Forest discord. You’ll get all the BF games you want there.