We want your feedback!

[lordraphael]

ye people vastly overrate the "jp community". Its basically non existent anymore and anyone is free to join the tourney (except for diarouga :( ). I think they dont join for other reasons:
- difficult scheduling
- inactive, rusty
-know they have almost no chance of winning
- Not RE patch

Basically what i want to say is that while it might be true they are having issues with ESOC itself, there are plenty of other reasons why they dont join any tourneys.

Afaik Musket just doesnt want to play in tourneys ( hasnt been playing aoe in years i might even add), even back in nilla where there was no ESOC I cant recall him participating in any tourney.

On Organisation:
1 day tourneys would be nice i think.
Water maps are underrepresented but honestly as long as water isnt fixed, I dont really see the point in having loads of water maps. Even in aoc where water provides much less of an issue balance wise water maps are a niche

EDIT : always have a fourth place prize. Its seems shitty to not have it, youve gotten that far and then you get nothing that sounds bad. Its also not like it would have been a problem this tourney. Could have just taken 100 or 200 dollars from first place price pool and create a more fair prize pool distribution.

[WickedCossack]

1 day automated tournies.

[Dolan]

1) What would it take to get you excited to play in the next event?

I don't think I'll play AOE3 online again, unless Microsoft rewrites the game and makes it playable on servers like LoL, to eliminate lag for players who don't lag. Then I might reconsider.

What would it take to get you excited to watch it?

Good games and good graphic quality of streaming. I don't need verbal casting or entertainment, as long as the caster can move the camera on the most relevant scenes, I'm fine with silent casting too.
Also the games must not lag, otherwise gameplay quality would suck and we'd watch players struggling to cope with the lag.

To sum it up: good gameplay, good video quality and no lag. The rest is not so important.

2) What do you think works best about our events currently? What doesn't work?

Well, the fact that there have been new maps/content is cool, but it seems to me the new maps are even worse than Garja's maps. So, I appreciate the work behind the maps, I know how hard it is to make a good map, but maybe the map pool should be a mix of new maps and older, decent standard maps. Pushing novelty just for the sake of novelty doesn't necessarily lead to good gameplay.

What I would appreciate is that, despite the pool of good players shrinking, events still manage to get a few great series every now and then. The EP has split the community, though, so now we basically have no participation from the Japanese community anymore.

What doesn't work? Many high level players have been antagonised (goongoon, diarouga, Japanese players), one way or another, so now these events have less competition than we had during previous events. Which may make these events boring eventually, if the same players compete every time.
There still are players who don't have the maps before they start playing their series, which makes casters waste time solving technical issues instead of focusing on their stuff.
Some casters are annoying or have badly set up mics, but that's no problem because I often silence them.

What about a one-civ tourney? Maybe we could get Piroshiki to participate.

[Kynesie]

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn.

1. I totally agree with Boneng... I don t know half on map when i play on ep... I don t understant why we don t play on good RE maps + some ESOC maps.NE,siberia,patagonia,painted,yukatan,himalaya , even deccan...

2.It should have ( number of maps in mapp pool -1) water map. 4 whales maps are just not viables except more or less with ports...

3.For some civs EP change too much from RE

4.I have to change home in some months, It could be that I have a better connection.

[WickedCossack]

Conceptually a lot of the RE maps are very cool but they would ALL need to be seriously touched up to spawn a balanced map.

Anyways you can always just play the EP maps if you don't know them, both on RE and EP.

Also no water play this tournament was a shame, I think there was two games that involved a fishing boat iirc?

[_H2O]

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn.

1. I totally agree with Boneng... I don t know half on map when i play on ep... I don t understant why we don t play on good RE maps + some ESOC maps.NE,siberia,patagonia,painted,yukatan,himalaya , even deccan...

2.It should have ( number of maps in mapp pool -1) water map. 4 whales maps are just not viables except more or less with ports...

3.For some civs EP change too much from RE

4.I have to change home in some months, It could be that I have a better connection.

"Good RE maps" are just the best of the worst. We still have to respawn Siberia over 5 times to get a good spawn and it's often called the most balanced map.

Water maps we tried that one event. You played in it actually! I personally though Indonesia had some good games on it. The players however, seem largely against so we decided not to pick that battle.

Point 4 is great. Please sign up if you get this fixed. We can keep in touch and make sure you stay in the event and get to play.

[lordraphael]

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn.

1. I totally agree with Boneng... I don t know half on map when i play on ep... I don t understant why we don t play on good RE maps + some ESOC maps.NE,siberia,patagonia,painted,yukatan,himalaya , even deccan...

2.It should have ( number of maps in mapp pool -1) water map. 4 whales maps are just not viables except more or less with ports...

3.For some civs EP change too much from RE

4.I have to change home in some months, It could be that I have a better connection.

patagonia painted and himalaya are shitty maps. Yukatan isnt great either not a big fan of sib aswell tbh.

[Hazza54321]

re maps are just better designed but just spawn so inconsistently(I like the re maps + esoc maps idea), would just like a remake of those, also less frequent tourneys is a good idea, makes each tourney one exciting.
More team tournaments is also a good idea as a large portion of players now play mostly team and theres hardly any active 1v1 players anymore.
Also agree with the 4 player prize pool.

[spadel]

Would like to see less 1v1 tournaments with a bigger pricepool. That last pkclan tournament would have been epic if Chicks didn't fuck it up towards the end. It was awesome to see players like NP returning and it was amazing how many people prepared for that tournament. I don't think the game has ever been as competitive as it was during that time!

Also I really dislike how it's basically impossible to seriously compete in any upcoming tournaments when you haven't been active since the EP has launched. I know barely 30% of the current tournament's maps although i have been more or less active during the early stages of EP. Also some civs have changed massively within the last year (Sioux, Ports, Dutch).. it's no motivation for me to competitively participate in any future tournament when I have to learn like 15 maps and basically dozens of new matchups.

I would consider fixing the RE maps instead of continuously designing new maps. That would at least solve one of the problems I see.

[benj89]

isn't there a balance between indonesia which was full water and the current maps? I totally understand why players wouldn't like full water maps like hisp/indonesia, but there should be maps where water is actually viable (only 4 whales seems to be the issue). According to water play in this tourn, it seems like there isn't any
Kynesie lagging in a 11 years old game is completely absurd though, I'm pretty sure even in most the remote part of France you can have a very good connection.

[_H2O]

First of all let me say that I am very pleased with the current state of ESOC. The fact that such a small comunity is able to fund such a tournament and that a group of unpaid people is able to organize an event with players around the globe amazes me. Also 2nd Chance Tourney is great for players of my skill level, please keep that.

In terms of room for improvement i will have to echo a lot of previous posts:
1. more water maps (maybe remove map veto again)
2. allow casts during the week (I really do not get the reasoning behind not doing that)
3. maybe cut down the finals to BO7 (BO9 seems excessive to me)
4. most importantly more small inivtational events (1v1, 2v2, something gimmicky like Starvation)
4.1 A set of continentel cups where the Top 8 of the last main tournament is banned. Scheduling should be much easier here and the winner harder to predict. (You could do N-America, S-America, Asia/Oceania, Western Europe, Eastern Europe (maybe put Germany here if there are not enough players), I don't know if we have enough African players so you might wanna add them to one of the European ones. And as Umeu suggested have the winners earn top 16 seeds with that.)

Nice feedback. Seems to build on the same themes.

Love 4.1. Nations type tournaments interest many people. The challenge is pulling them off well. We are looking to build a list of creative event ideas that we can run with. The events are slightly smaller and slightly more themed. These type of ideas can make that list.

[bwinner]

Just wanted to comment on the Japanese community. I got their feedback on the first iteration of the EP and they liked it a lot. I also got feedback from them to have more diversity in the maps which I agreed with.

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn. In the end, we had to choose between doing new things and keeping two players from Japanese community who were not compromising and weren't ever going to make it to the finals. Those two are also just inactive today, it's not like they are in QS waiting to play, and if only the ESOC staff would talk to them. They are just being rolled in to make a list of 3 people seem bigger. Boneng also told me that there was not much out reach we could do as the Japanese community was on a continual decline. I'm guessing he also just moved on.

Diarouga - would be nice to have back.
Kynesie - lag to RO4, always welcome to play if he decides to fix his internet. Every game he's in and freezing up the game is completely unfair to his opponent.
Goongoon - Would be nice to have back. Been friends with him for a long time. Just talked to him on skype. He doesn't play because it is hard to find games during EU mornings. He says the game is objectively empty and also is not sure he wants to put the time in to practice for tournaments. He is not boycotting ESOC events.
Musketjr - would be nice to have back. is he around? I haven't seen him. Last I remember was from the winter tournament.

That puts the list at two people "boycotting" the events.

That also puts the list of people barred from events at one. Yes there is literally one person who is banned from entry. I have also talked to that one person many times to try and improve things. But when you have flamed half of the staff (of ~20 people) and won't stop, why would you expect to be playing in the event.

When you look at the message above the summary is this:
3 Players have stopped playing the game as much. Not because of ESOC. 1 Player lags too much to play in tournaments. 1 Player is banned (diarouga). 1 Player is boycotting (musketjr?).

Well, I am not sure about that. I am pretty sure boneng, kynesie and goongoon would have played if there wasn't all this problems with esoc.
I met goongoon in game during the tourney, then there was a game (maybe knuch vs save_ur_skill I am not sure) that begun to be streamed. So I asked him weather he would watch and he told me that he won't ever do anything that has to deal with ESOC... So I think you lie a bit when you say he just doesn't want to play because he can't find games. I think he still doesn't accept his ban from the 2v2 tourney (which I understand because it was a bit rude for him).
Same for the japan community, boneng was playing in January and I think that don't playing in tourney has encouraged him to stop. Also we don't see any other japan player, dyddy for example, so Idk. The reason of the boycott of japan community was a problem between garja and boneng initially. ESOC took position for garja, which I understand because he was the map creator and an important member of the community, but that created the tension with the japan community...

For kynesie, this is a bit more complicated, that's a lot of top player who don't want to see him because he lags and you don't like his style, but the community like him and want him back I think, so you should be more tolerant.

[_H2O]

Would like to see less 1v1 tournaments with a bigger pricepool. That last pkclan tournament would have been epic if Chicks didn't fuck it up towards the end. It was awesome to see players like NP returning and it was amazing how many people prepared for that tournament. I don't think the game has ever been as competitive as it was during that time!

Also I really dislike how it's basically impossible to seriously compete in any upcoming tournaments when you haven't been active since the EP has launched. I know barely 30% of the current tournament's maps although i have been more or less active during the early stages of EP. Also some civs have changed massively within the last year (Sioux, Ports, Dutch).. it's no motivation for me to competitively participate in any future tournament when I have to learn like 15 maps and basically dozens of new matchups.

I would consider fixing the RE maps instead of continuously designing new maps. That would at least solve one of the problems I see.

Yes that was a huge shame. That event also happened over 5 years ago though. I wish we could have gotten ESOC going sooner. I believe we could have raised far more money had we been around at that time.

Interesting. Our goal was to build a complete map pool of ESOC maps that we could draw on and keep things from getting boring. For sure something to keep in mind.

[stronk]

Bring back Diarouga

[deleted_user0]

re maps are just better designed but just spawn so inconsistently(I like the re maps + esoc maps idea), would just like a remake of those, also less frequent tourneys is a good idea, makes each tourney one exciting.
More team tournaments is also a good idea as a large portion of players now play mostly team and theres hardly any active 1v1 players anymore.
Also agree with the 4 player prize pool.

Agreed. Remake of Siberia or Great plains with fixed hunts would beat 100-0 these fking campaign mode maps or with broken cliffs

[deleted_user0]

Just wanted to comment on the Japanese community. I got their feedback on the first iteration of the EP and they liked it a lot. I also got feedback from them to have more diversity in the maps which I agreed with.

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn. In the end, we had to choose between doing new things and keeping two players from Japanese community who were not compromising and weren't ever going to make it to the finals. Those two are also just inactive today, it's not like they are in QS waiting to play, and if only the ESOC staff would talk to them. They are just being rolled in to make a list of 3 people seem bigger. Boneng also told me that there was not much out reach we could do as the Japanese community was on a continual decline. I'm guessing he also just moved on.

Diarouga - would be nice to have back.
Kynesie - lag to RO4, always welcome to play if he decides to fix his internet. Every game he's in and freezing up the game is completely unfair to his opponent.
Goongoon - Would be nice to have back. Been friends with him for a long time. Just talked to him on skype. He doesn't play because it is hard to find games during EU mornings. He says the game is objectively empty and also is not sure he wants to put the time in to practice for tournaments. He is not boycotting ESOC events.
Musketjr - would be nice to have back. is he around? I haven't seen him. Last I remember was from the winter tournament.

That puts the list at two people "boycotting" the events.

That also puts the list of people barred from events at one. Yes there is literally one person who is banned from entry. I have also talked to that one person many times to try and improve things. But when you have flamed half of the staff (of ~20 people) and won't stop, why would you expect to be playing in the event.

When you look at the message above the summary is this:
3 Players have stopped playing the game as much. Not because of ESOC. 1 Player lags too much to play in tournaments. 1 Player is banned (diarouga). 1 Player is boycotting (musketjr?).

Well, I am not sure about that. I am pretty sure boneng, kynesie and goongoon would have played if there wasn't all this problems with esoc.
I met goongoon in game during the tourney, then there was a game (maybe knuch vs save_ur_skill I am not sure) that begun to be streamed. So I asked him weather he would watch and he told me that he won't ever do anything that has to deal with ESOC... So I think you lie a bit when you say he just doesn't want to play because he can't find games. I think he still doesn't accept his ban from the 2v2 tourney (which I understand because it was a bit rude for him).
Same for the japan community, boneng was playing in January and I think that don't playing in tourney has encouraged him to stop. Also we don't see any other japan player, dyddy for example, so Idk. The reason of the boycott of japan community was a problem between garja and boneng initially. ESOC took position for garja, which I understand because he was the map creator and an important member of the community, but that created the tension with the japan community...

For kynesie, this is a bit more complicated, that's a lot of top player who don't want to see him because he lags and you don't like his style, but the community like him and want him back I think, so you should be more tolerant.

lol nah, he should just fix his fucking shit and stop ruining the game for everyone he plays against... same with titties

[WickedCossack]

Less frequent tournaments ?!?

It was 6 months since the last one before this one and lots of people got bored and stopped playing. You won't get more good players with less frequent tournaments imo, you'll get less because there's nothing happening and nothing to play for. If anything it's the long duration between the 1v1 events that is hurting the number of top players in each one.

[pecelot]

I met goongoon in game during the tourney, then there was a game (maybe knuch vs save_ur_skill I am not sure) that begun to be streamed. So I asked him weather he would watch and he told me that he won't ever do anything that has to deal with ESOC... So I think you lie a bit when you say he just doesn't want to play because he can't find games. I think he still doesn't accept his ban from the 2v2 tourney (which I understand because it was a bit rude for him).

Well, him being angry at ESOC doesn't necessarily have to mean ESOC is responsible for this. I don't want to judge the case, just throw it in. Moreover, I think Ryan meant that he was always a pain in the neck to schedule tournament games. I'm pretty sure we remember ASC Summer that ended in September...

[momuuu]

I really liked the organization of the few last tournament. I think this site is build very well, it's ez to shedul, bet event is a lot of fun too... A big thank you to the people who make it possible : developpement team, media team, @Goodspeed, donator etc

There is still 3 points I think about that could improve my feeling :

1-The lack of water map as people said. Tbh I dislike the idea of map veto, because itbresult with only standard maps.

2-(Not very important) I don't know the statistic and you have probably more information than me about this, but the check in 2 weeks before tourney seems irrelevant to me. It wasn't a bad idea, but it failed Imo, because the amount of game played remind unchanged.

3-The most important point in my opinion :
The is much too much top players that don't play because of problems with the staff :
Diarouga, goongoon, japancommunity (think boneng, nagayumi...), kynesie, musketJr...
That's huge for the viewer. And that's not new, because we missed bsop and snowww until this tourney. I think you should try to bring back as many of them as you can for the next tourney because the hype would be huge !

agree with point 3 especially. Probably leave the personal problems out and try to convince them to join,.. Will give the tournament more depth. Ofc I cant be ending in insultings during the tournament.

Except that the problems aren't personal problems but problems on those guys' end.

[Rikikipu]

I would like to recall that the ESOC maps subforum got zero topics during 2 years about what people would like to see fix or revamped. You are really welcome to post there and to discuss with us. Imo it would be more constructive to make topics there instead of randomly flaming the maps and the mapmakers.

@spadel kinda agree with you on the point that we released maps a bit too much recently. We are aware of this issue and we are going to slow down this process. Having new maps though is still something that keep the game fresh especially with fan players who are not necesarily top players, but still great contributors to the community.

@Kynesie I would like to talk a bit to you about water maps in pm, skype, discord or whatever.

[deleted_user0]

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn.

1. I totally agree with Boneng... I don t know half on map when i play on ep... I don t understant why we don t play on good RE maps + some ESOC maps.NE,siberia,patagonia,painted,yukatan,himalaya , even deccan...

2.It should have ( number of maps in mapp pool -1) water map. 4 whales maps are just not viables except more or less with ports...

3.For some civs EP change too much from RE

4.I have to change home in some months, It could be that I have a better connection.

patagonia painted and himalaya are shitty maps. Yukatan isnt great either not a big fan of sib aswell tbh.

ur right about the first 2, but i disagree about yucatan, it's an interesting map design with the 2 sides water, and it's almost never mapscrewed. there's plenty of resources as well on land to not have to go water to defeat water play, yet at the same time the water is good enough to be defended without having to rely on much more than the shorelines. Still monitors can rek your side if you lose it, but if you relocate to the middle of the map, monitors can't reach it. its one of my favorite re maps tbh. tp line on it is also better than average.

[deleted_user0]

Then next tournament boneng didn't like that there were too many new maps to learn.

1. I totally agree with Boneng... I don t know half on map when i play on ep... I don t understant why we don t play on good RE maps + some ESOC maps.NE,siberia,patagonia,painted,yukatan,himalaya , even deccan...

2.It should have ( number of maps in mapp pool -1) water map. 4 whales maps are just not viables except more or less with ports...

3.For some civs EP change too much from RE

4.I have to change home in some months, It could be that I have a better connection.

"Good RE maps" are just the best of the worst. We still have to respawn Siberia over 5 times to get a good spawn and it's often called the most balanced map.

Water maps we tried that one event. You played in it actually! I personally though Indonesia had some good games on it. The players however, seem largely against so we decided not to pick that battle.

Point 4 is great. Please sign up if you get this fixed. We can keep in touch and make sure you stay in the event and get to play.

indonesia is a good map, i like it, though i like the old version more than the new one, the new one is too far from the shore with your first tc

[_RDX_]

I loved all of the tourneys that ESOC conducted so far. I would like to congratulate all of the people who made the tourneys go successful, especially the ESOC Team. Well it sucks that Aizamk isn't any part of the Team, He should have been in the Maps Team, or at least the Dev Team. He contributed a lot. I would also like to see Treaty tourneys and Team Supremacy tourneys just like the Insight Studios Invitational 2V2. And ESOC needs a forum to write up its history, like how it was formed and stuff like that and the credits section along with that. Because a lot of people have contributed for the development of the community. Their names shall not be forgotten forever. Thank you for your generosity to such wonderful things and asking for people's opinions as a feedback. Thank you! ESOC Team overall.

[Aizamk]

Just to elaborate on the situation with Japanese players, from my interactions with them.

1) Certainly jpcommunity has been pretty quiet in general, with most good ones inactive due to jobs/life making it difficult to commit to a tournament/practicing for one/waking up at odd times just to be able to play a non-japanese opponent. Hence why they often only hold the one-day tournament things.

2) The game is far off from its peak popularity in Japan, and you really do need involvement from people like matsujun (godly caster) to make a collaboration successful; and he only shows up once in a while. Sentiment is definitely (as h2o mentioned in a previous post) that jpcommunity is in decline, though. Only about 2-3 active PR ~35 players that I know of.

3) It also seems that there is a bit of apprehension for non-jp hosted tournaments. Having to learn new maps is one thing, but the main problems are scheduling+communication. +Not really a positive feeling when you want to play a tournament for fun and your opponent tells you you're laggy.

However, imo all you really have to do is include a prize for best Japanese player (as before), consequently get some Japanese sponsorship to chip in and help fund that prize, and at least some of them would be motivated to put the effort in. TBH, though, no reason to limit this to Japan. Awards for best player by nationality/region (for the nationalities/region with above a certain number of entries of a certain level) could be really interesting.

I'd really love to co-cast a game in Japanese at some point, but while my written communication for Japanese is fairly ok, from my skype calls with some of them I can tell that my spoken communication is far far below what it would need to be. Getting there, though. Hopefully by next year!

[_RDX_]

wow, aiz is gonna cast, OP!!