Fixed and mirrored maps

[gibson]

I dont necessarily disagree with you kaiser but you can't say "age 1 is only boring if you don't understand it". That's just an objectively false statement. While there can be correlation between understanding and enjoyment, it is just as often positive as negative. There are plenty of noobs that enjoy the game the same if not more than higher ranked players due to their lack of understanding.

[Kaiserklein]

If Jerom said "imo age 1 is boring", I'd actually respect that opinion. Thing is instead, he just arbitrarily decided that age 1 is not interesting (which in my book is a bit different from "boring", though I'm not a native speaker). And I wouldn't expect someone who understands age 1 mechanics to say that.
Anyway, I totally agree about enjoyment being unrelated to understanding. I probably had more fun playing the game when I tower rushed on nilla than I do now.

[Jaeger]

If Jerom said "imo age 1 is boring", I'd actually respect that opinion. Thing is instead, he just arbitrarily decided that age 1 is not interesting (which in my book is a bit different from "boring", though I'm not a native speaker). And I wouldn't expect someone who understands age 1 mechanics to say that.
Anyway, I totally agree about enjoyment being unrelated to understanding. I probably had more fun playing the game when I tower rushed on nilla than I do now.

Well I'm not sure what you think interesting means because you use it in a weird way lol, when you cast you say "this treasure is not so interesting", when perhaps you mean that it's not "appealing".

[pecelot]

also full random maps in AoE2 provide some unexpected settings, like starting with a barracks, having another military unit other than scout at the beginning or starting with 2 TCs or more

[momuuu]

If Jerom said "imo age 1 is boring", I'd actually respect that opinion. Thing is instead, he just arbitrarily decided that age 1 is not interesting (which in my book is a bit different from "boring", though I'm not a native speaker). And I wouldn't expect someone who understands age 1 mechanics to say that.
Anyway, I totally agree about enjoyment being unrelated to understanding. I probably had more fun playing the game when I tower rushed on nilla than I do now.

if you look real closely at what I wrote, you'd discover this snippet of text:

Age 1 gameplay is unintersting to people who dislike that sort of gameplay

Even still, age 1 gameplay is a very simplistic thing. It is gameplay and there is skill/strategy to it, but as I said there's skill to almost everything you do in life. We spend our time on aoe3 rather than random activities that require skill because aoe3's gameplay for the most part is inherently interesting. Most games that are popular actually feature a large amount of complexity to figure out, unlike age 1 gameplay which has very few factors to play around with. I think it's objectively bad game design to make every single game include 5 minutes of something that the game wasn't designed around. Similairly, before you play a match in a shooter you aren't forced to spend 5 minutes playing some minigame. No, you get to the real content right away, the content that has specifically designed to be fun. In aoe3 doing the same start over and over again while you're playing the explorer minigame is dilluting the good content. If you really like the minigame you might be fine with it, but that still wouldn't make this good game design.

[momuuu]

Nice to see your reading skills aren't up to the task of understanding a post of someone. Also nice to see that you deal with that by insulting someone and then ranting about something unrelated. I dont get how you can produce such a pile of crap. Just a little hint: I never said anything about skill, I just called it boring. Theres skill in trying to throw rocks at specific spots yet I dont find myself sitting outside mindlessly throwing rocks around because thatd be fucking boring. Just like age 1 in aoe3 is boring to me. Age 1 in aoe3 is like a very dumbed down moba minigame, I dont see why Id want to play that.

Please quote where I insulted you... Meanwhile, you're saying I'm too retarded to read, and you call what I type "bullshit" or a "pile of crap". As usual, you're just aggressive because someone disagrees with you.
You decided that "age 1 is uninteresting", which is pretty different from saying "imo age 1 is boring". So maybe you should phrase yourself properly next time, if you want a proper answer. Cause in my opinion, age 1 is interesting since it displays skill from the players and setups the game (I have builds that rely on age 1 to work, for example).

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictio ... ish/boring

Maybe the tone was a bit aggressive, however it's extremely frustrating to be spoken to condescendingly by someone who in reality failed to actually understand what you wrote.

First of all, I never tried to turn aoe into sc2, dont misrepresent what Im saying. Also, this entire argument you are presenting is absolutely ridiculous. Aoe3 is designed in some way. That doesnt mean that the way its designed is perfect. It also doesnt mean that criticizing aoe3 for some things means you're completely disliking the mentality and that you should play sc2 instead. Anyone with a functioning brain would see that reducing/removing randomness doesnt turn aoe3 into sc2 or anything even close to sc2.

Dude, you're constantly criticizing everything related to aoe3. I swear I can't remember you actually posting something positive on these forums, when it comes to aoe3 related stuff (besides when they made banks cost 300w I guess?). You're the stereotype of the dude who doesn't play the game, doesn't contribute in any way to anything (at least not since years), but for some reason keeps tearing everyone's nuts by constantly bashing the game and its community (casters are bad, maps are bad, age 1 is bad, patch is bad, esoc policy towards glitches is bad, basement is bad and meanies, and so on).
About the sc2 thing, I was exaggerating to make my point. But essentially, having the whole map revealed at start is totally not aoe-like (it even means we'd basically have to remove treasures), just like fixed resources. That is sc2-like. And aoe is far from being a perfect game, so what? We're not trying to make a new game here.

It's just a forum discussion anyways? Aoe3 is not a perfect game and I represented my opinion on something that would ultimately make the game better. I don't understand why that deserves this aggressive response.

You should also get off your high horse. You cant attack people for having criticism on some aspects of a game, especially when those people actually provide arguments for their criticism rather than provide ad hominem arguments.

This is the biggest joke. You're acting again as a victim here, claiming that I "attacked" you, while you actually started being aggressive. Probably just cause I said that you don't understand age 1, which is not even a flame, but a fact, because only someone who didn't understand how age 1 mechanics work would call it "uninteresting". But of course your ego got hurt badly so you had to flame me.
And if anything, I'm providing arguments of why I think age 1 is interesting, while you're just saying it's shit without any explanation. Maybe the way I expressed myself sounded condescending, and I can understand if that's annoying. But honestly you're just worse, and what sucks is you don't have anything to justify your arrogance because you don't play the game and you don't know jack about it.

I'm probably just gonna stop answering you now cause I don't wanna get into one of these ridiculous arguments like you have with Garja.

"I'm better than you so you are wrong". Nice one. What are the real arguments? You only said it required skill and thus is interesting, which doesn't seem to make any sense to me. There are many things that require skill to do well but aren't interesting. For example, doing the dishes fast and efficiently requires skill. I'd assume you don't actively seek out to do other people's dishes because of the joy you get from it?

[91]

This is interesting

[deleted_user0]

It's fucking boring. Should play risk. But not with goodspeed! He makes any game boring

[momuuu]

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

[gh0st]

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

Well, you have been ranting a lot lately, being negative and aggressive most of the time. Whatever, hope you find peace.

[Gendarme]

Piss on you too, you son of a beach! I'm going back to Italia!

[momuuu]

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

Well, you have been ranting a lot lately, being negative and aggressive most of the time. Whatever, hope you find peace.

Why can't a man just post opinions on a forum? Who cares if the opinions are negative? It's not as if aoe3 is objectively a great game or that the state of the community is great. I'd despise myself if I would sugarcoat reality just so random people on a forum like me.

[deleted_user0]

Jeruma's no longer a top quality poster :(

[Gendarme]

Show hidden quotes

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

Well, you have been ranting a lot lately, being negative and aggressive most of the time. Whatever, hope you find peace.

Why can't a man just post opinions on a forum? Who cares if the opinions are negative? It's not as if aoe3 is objectively a great game or that the state of the community is great. I'd despise myself if I would sugarcoat reality just so random people on a forum like me.

Because in the spirit of introvertism, you are what you present yourself as online.

[edeholland]

I would love to see a smaller tournament on fixed maps. Not just because there are no more map-screws (and bad casters judgements), but because I feel like it would explore a new part of the game. Something that's currently important is scouting the map & adapting to how the map is generated.

"A mine in the front? Perhaps mine that one first. Some trees at the side of your base? Use that to wall off your base."

When the map is fixed from the start, these questions are answered even before the game starts. You can prepare for the map in greater detail.

"I have a mine in the front and trees to the side of my base, so I can perfectly fit my market in between. Then I use one villager to herd the hunt in the back of my base, and I can use that villager to build a stable once I reach age 2. When I get pressured early on I move my villagers to the mine above my base where I can scout incoming raids by putting a barracks to the side."

If you can train on the exact same map layout you can work out on how to fully utilize the map to your advantage. It's the same reason AoE3 has fixed decks and cards, unlike other games that involve cards (like Heartstone) that give you a semi-random set of cards where you have to adapt to whatever you have in your deck (in Heartstone it would also be pretty bad to have a set deck and order for your cards, you could basically let a computer calculate the optimal strategy beforehand).

If we really think randomizing stuff is fun, why don't we like blindly picking civs? If you have to pick you civ before you know what your opponents picks, you sometimes get a good matchup and sometimes you get a bad matchup. You will have to adapt to whatever matchup you get.

[BrookG]

I am not sure how much would general BOs would deviate given a completely fixed-map pool. In theory it would, but it also depends on the effort of the players to plot their strategies given the MU. A small tournament would work nicely as a pilot for answering questions like that

On the negativity part, there's nothing wrong with being realistic. Some people have a tendency to see the effects of negative aspects more than the positive, but not necessarily being pessimistic per se. A pragmatic point of view helps to grasp the situation and solve easier problems. It would be nice if we heard other people's voices without dismissing them

[Ashvin]

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

Well, you have been ranting a lot lately, being negative and aggressive most of the time. Whatever, hope you find peace.

"Lately"?

[edeholland]

I am not sure how much would general BOs would deviate given a completely fixed-map pool. In theory it would, but it also depends on the effort of the players to plot their strategies given the MU. A small tournament would work nicely as a pilot for answering questions like that

I don't think it would completely change BO's, but I definitely think that with time, players will take the map layout into account when preparing a matchup and their base layout. It might need more time than just a small tournament though.

Show hidden quotes

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

Well, you have been ranting a lot lately, being negative and aggressive most of the time. Whatever, hope you find peace.

"Lately"?

Picking on him isn't going to help at all though. Constructive criticism might.

[Kaiserklein]

We already had a fixed map pool last tourney, yet basically no one prepared anything special on these maps. We just saw a shit ton of india, quite a lot of dutch to "counterpick" india, and then various civs next to that. I personally don't think we witnessed any kind of super tailored strats.
In the same way, I doubt fixing maps is gonna bring anything strat wise. People don't try hard enough for that. Having your mine in front, or a specific line of trees, won't ever influence build orders in this community.

[momuuu]

I am not sure how much would general BOs would deviate given a completely fixed-map pool. In theory it would, but it also depends on the effort of the players to plot their strategies given the MU. A small tournament would work nicely as a pilot for answering questions like that

I'd maybe reverse this logic: instead of stating people don't play differently on fixed maps, you could also state that people don't play differently on random maps (these two statements are logicially equivalent).
I can see how people don't actually really play differently on a random map. The randomness doesn't actually lead to much more adaptation, because the specific map layout doesn't matter that much. Or equivalently, people don't really play differently on a fixed map.

But that actually translates into an argument in favor of fixed maps. If the differences in gameplay are minimal/non existant, then we should favor fixed maps because those are more fair! If the difference really is minimal, which I think it might be, then fixed maps are superior.

I know people randomly get angry when you bring up sc2, but I will do so anyways because it is a great example of why fixed maps aren't really a negative thing. People say fixed aoe3 maps would feel stale, that the games would feel repetitive, but I do not think this is true at all based on my experience with sc2 and aoe3. In the end, the specific layout of the map doesn't really matter as much. What matters is how safe your resources (or expansions in sc2) are. Whether they are to the top or bottom, left or ride, doesn't usually matter. It just matters that they are accesible to the player. And that's all there's to it in maps. You'll maybe slightly adapt building placement or something, but in general my strategies never deviate for either aoe3 or sc2. And in sc2 the game has never felt repetitive at all.

Rarely do we actually adapt our build order because of the hunt situation. As far as actual strategizing goes, we tend to push out when the hunts are depleted. It doesn't really feel like you're making a good strategic decision to push out later because you got more hunts, as much as that it feels like you just got lucky. For example, if you're playing Brits vs Russia that match up can be entirely decided by how many safe resources you end up getting. Once those are out, you have to push out. Whether you win or not when pushing out is mostly determined by how long you were allowed to stay in base. This doesn't feel strategic or fun, this feels like you just need to get some amount of luck.

[momuuu]

We already had a fixed map pool last tourney, yet basically no one prepared anything special on these maps. We just saw a shit ton of india, quite a lot of dutch to "counterpick" india, and then various civs next to that. I personally don't think we witnessed any kind of super tailored strats.
In the same way, I doubt fixing maps is gonna bring anything strat wise. People don't try hard enough for that. Having your mine in front, or a specific line of trees, won't ever influence build orders in this community.

I feel like when it comes to civ picks on maps, there isn't much room for tailoring specific strats. You just pick the civ that can do something that they're good at anyways without making concessions to the map. For example on a no TP map you don't actually tailor strats for the maps, you just pick a civ that doesn't get a TP anyways. On livestock maps you don't pick a civ to do some livestock pen build order, you just pick a civ that does their normal thing while benefitting from the livestock. On low resources maps you don't pick brits and perform a weaker version of what they normally are, you pick a civ that plays aggressively anyways and doesn't care about the low resource part, for example Russia/Aztec.

In the end I feel like aoe3 is not flexible enough for all civs to actually play around the maps (or the specific map layout). Instead, people will just pick the civs that aren't handicapped by the maps and will feel like they can't play some civs on that map. Instead of promoting diversity, I feel like many maps actually feel restrictive instead. Instead of being able to pick all civs and use all strats, you can now just use a limited selection of civs/strats competitively. I've never really felt like there was much other adaptation to the maps at all.

[Ashvin]

I am not sure how much would general BOs would deviate given a completely fixed-map pool. In theory it would, but it also depends on the effort of the players to plot their strategies given the MU. A small tournament would work nicely as a pilot for answering questions like that

I don't think it would completely change BO's, but I definitely think that with time, players will take the map layout into account when preparing a matchup and their base layout. It might need more time than just a small tournament though.

Show hidden quotes

Whats up with jerom these days? Not like i miss the old one, but still....

Nothing at all. What's up with you though? You used to be kind to me?

Well, you have been ranting a lot lately, being negative and aggressive most of the time. Whatever, hope you find peace.

"Lately"?

Picking on him isn't going to help at all though. Constructive criticism might.

I think you misunderstood me. I just asked what he meant by "lately".

[Gendarme]

That is basically what I said earlier:

Honestly, Age of Empires 3 is just a little shitty fucking piece-of-shit game.

[lemmings121]

We already had a fixed map pool last tourney

wait what?


on the last tourney I only remmember a game of you complaining about a bad spawn that made you lose the game. was it fixed?

[momuuu]

Kaiser means that apperantly the same maps were used for the first, second, third etc. map of the series. So game one was always on some map (tibet??) and then game two on another map (manchuria?) and then game 3 on some fixed map and so on.