ESOCommunity

At this point the jp elo is not functional anymore. We've reached the point where top elo dudes are just the ones that were sitting on their higher elo and play 1 game to regain that elo. Maybe for the ESOC ladder we should combine EP and RE games in calculations, and then have an EP only ladder or something. This ladder we have is a great, highly functional piece of code that we should be using over the current trash ladder.

Ye we should use that. Seedings and other stuff should be based on that.
Of course it needs a fresh clear up the moment we sart emplying it.
Main problem I see tho is that it would work better with qs games only and we need to fix couple things before qs can be considered competitive.

EP qs hype ?

Garja wrote:Ye we should use that. Seedings and other stuff should be based on that.
Of course it needs a fresh clear up the moment we sart emplying it.
Main problem I see tho is that it would work better with qs games only and we need to fix couple things before qs can be considered competitive.

You jump to conclusions here. While I could see qs only being a good thing, I also think the practical implementation of your suggestion makes your suggestion actually a terrible suggestion.

Qs is needed to avoid players from cherry picking their games.
Also, once it is decided that tourney seeds etc. will be based on ESOC ladder, that will be an incentive to populate qs.

The practical problem is that people just don't like to qs in this dead community. It's a nice incentive in theory, but in practise I'd expect it just means people accept their random seeds. The community is just way too small to practically force qs only for ranked.

Anyways, its pretty off topic and you're just going to discuss this into eternity with garjuments so I'm just calling that I'm out.

It's quite similar to aoeo ranked ladder that just restarted, in concept. It's hard to get competitive games but maybe not as hard as aoe3 re/ep. Only difference is that the ladder appears in game on aoeo.

Give it a year and players will use EP qs just like they use EP maps now.

EP maps are good, can you make more maps garja pls ?

Garja wrote:Give it a year and players will use EP qs just like they use EP maps now.

EP exists for 2.5 years already and it was and will be used by few people.

yurashic wrote:

Garja wrote:Give it a year and players will use EP qs just like they use EP maps now.

EP exists for 2.5 years already and it was and will be used by few people.

d a m n w e l l s a i d

EP is the platform that runs 90% of the relevant content of AOE3. Strategies, twith streams, youtube videos, etc. are all related to EP at the moment. Like it or not the EP has de facto become the main platform of this game.
Still, one of the main problems of EP is exactly that QS is not a thing. QS is key to spread the game further among those who can't follow the game daily. Low level players are big part of that player base. They have hard time finding opponents on the EP and this can be solved through QS. On its turn QS needs to be triggered by tourney and other events just like the EP was.

Making games, where a specific map was selected from the onset, not count might help. Although I've no idea whether it's possible to only register certain map sets for the purposes of the ladder.

Garja wrote:EP is the platform that runs 90% of the relevant content of AOE3. Strategies, twith streams, youtube videos, etc. are all related to EP at the moment. Like it or not the EP has de facto become the main platform of this game.
Still, one of the main problems of EP is exactly that QS is not a thing. QS is key to spread the game further among those who can't follow the game daily. Low level players are big part of that player base. They have hard time finding opponents on the EP and this can be solved through QS. On its turn QS needs to be triggered by tourney and other events just like the EP was.

Well, let's compare EP to the punk movement. Shows, clubs, certain places, fanzines run 90% of the punk ideas of anarchism and freedom. But guess what, there are lots of other people who do not know/do not like/do not care. Running 90% of the content of a certain idea does not mean that 90% people accept it.

EP makes the balance of the game different. It favoures styles and civs that some people like and some don't. This is why Japanese and Chinese players (frequent QS users), who mostly favour low-eco play and abusing broken stuff, do not accept EP.

I don't think the comparison stands.
AOE3 is basically run by ESOC. Without ESOC aoe3 would be dead. It was dead before ESOC and it will be even more now 2018 if ESOC were to disband. JP community is long time gone (check last post on JP site) and Chinese community, even if active, seems to be an underground movement compared to ESOC.

Garja wrote:Give it a year and players will use EP qs just like they use EP maps now.

Pretty optimistic. Unless EP balance stabilises, I doubt they will.

Balance is not a problem. Worst EP patch iteration (the current one?) is still better than the RE patch in terms of balance.
It is only a matter of other incentives.

I don't mean that is imbalanced. It is changing every semester

Well I'm not a fan of contstant changing but I don't think that's necessarily a problem. Ideally the official patch should also be changed periodically to fix imbalances and such.

I think you both make good points, and I think that's what Goodspeed is planning on. As a guess, I don't consider it unlikely for balance to – relatively speaking – stabilize within a year from now.

It was supposed to be so right when the ESOC Ladders were launched, but it wasn't taken too seriously due to the issue of them not being able to recognise whether the game was played on EP or not, as far as I know. I'm pretty sure it hasn't been fixed, unfortunately. Another problem was that there was no division of the player-base based on the Japanese Elo ranking — it caused lower-rated players who won occasionally to be on top, since they gained a lot of points by facing opponents of similar skill level. I, for instance, sitting on 2100+ Elo points on Jp, could only gather 1800 and 1650 for RE and EP, respectively, in the new system.

Nonetheless, it's high time we pushed the envelope, as the initiative is undoubtedly worthwhile.

It's a system that takes time to find some sort of point of decency, but right now making this the real ELO ladder might push people to play rated at all some more, as theres actually something to gain. Right now you will struggle so much contesting 2500-2600 ELO guys because thats mostly just inflated inactive people, so there's not much incentive to play lots and try to get that #1 spot on this site and the ladder. It just needs a reset, and we made that reset ourselfs.

Probably right now its better to mix EP and RE in the ELO calculation, and then have a seperate EP calculation for later future goals. It just makes playing at all more rewarding, which is something the community needs the most. I actually think it'd be more healthy for the community if some of the tournament money went to a monthly ladder reward or something, as people just playing games at all is the thing we're struggling with.

That also makes Garja's suggestions miss the point (shocker). Sure, it'd be nice if EP QS was the big thing, but as of now it's quite obvious people are just fine with not really playing rated games at all. If you're going to shove this EP ladder down their throat, then you're just replacing a poorly functional system with one that will be poorly functional for the same reasons. It's hopeful to think a new ladder will stimulate people to play ranked more to be honest, maybe even naive. It's just stupid to think we can make everyone switch to EP QS.

Really, the problem is that theres a small base for EP, and then in the end the 1st lts go to RE because thats where all the 1st lts are, the captains then tend to stay RE because you're only playing people higher than you otherwise and theres just much fewer competition, and then that just affects the entire community even at the higher levels. At really high levels there are not many players anyways, and getting quicksearch games can be pretty hard either way. The big basis of asian players and random quicksearch heroes increases the pool by so much that it's playable. If you make EP QS the only ladder then nobody will even bother switching to ESOC ladders and simply continue using ELO ladders. For there'd be little reason to refer to EP ELO as there are way too few games. But this is garja using his poor logic to derail a thread. The point is that I think jp ELO needs a reset in the form of our own ladder that works basically in the same way but without the inflated ELO.

Garja wrote:Give it a year and players will use EP qs just like they use EP maps now.

Give it a year and players will use AOE 4

Your logic is bad (surely mine is better) but I don't feel the urge to repeat it every post I make.

momuuu wrote:If you make EP QS the only ladder then nobody will even bother switching to ESOC ladders and simply continue using ELO ladders. For there'd be little reason to refer to EP ELO as there are way too few games. But this is garja using his poor logic to derail a thread. The point is that I think jp ELO needs a reset in the form of our own ladder that works basically in the same way but without the inflated ELO.

In case you didn't notice people are playing rated on the EP and the EP only ladder is working just fine. After some months it is actually producing a rather decent represantion of player's skill level, despite the fact that no real enforcing incentive has been put in place. Basically players are playing on the EP solely because they enjoy it more and because tourneys are held on that patch, so there they find the most useful practice games. And yet the next tourney could make use of the current ESOC ladder and give a rather trusty seed placement.
I've been asking for a larger employment of the ESOC ladder way before you and with more foresight than what you're doing right now.
At the moment, the main problem for a larger EP employment is coordination. Most of players just have a hard time finding opponents of the same level. Previously used mechanisms to bypass this issue were for example the EP user base thread or, more recently, the scheduling through the Discord channel. We need something more enforcing and automated to solve the coordination problem.
The next step is to make the EP ladder mandatory for ESOC related events. This way there is simply no choice between playing EP or playing RE. But in order to legitimate it statistically we need players to play on random conditions (quicksearch) and not biaised ones (hosted games).
Right now QS isn't ready to be competitive (we need civ fix first and then a proper map pool for qs).

princeofcarthage wrote:

Garja wrote:Give it a year and players will use EP qs just like they use EP maps now.

Give it a year and players will use AOE 4

That would be cool. Unfortunately they're still releasing AOE1:DE in 2018 so it's a long way to go for AOE4.

RE QS is almost dead, how could EP QS stay alive? Besides, i think that the new discord features are really nice for those who want to play on the EP.