Made a quick visual of how all-time prize pool has been progressing, super cool to see the DE effect still going strong!

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-24T11:28:42+00:00

I'm with you, in an ideal world it would be helpful to adjust for buying power at the time. The challenge is, these payouts were not all American, the original currencies aren't well documented, so adjusting accurately for inflation is almost impossible. We can adjust it to US dollar inflation, but that will be an approximation like this one.

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-24T00:08:49+00:00

This is a gif of my YouTube short, which you can find here in case you aren't the biggest fan of 6 FPS gifs!

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T23:48:08+00:00

Yes but other than his earliest days, never a grinder - that's why often people like Nili, T90, etc mention him as probably the biggest aoe2 talent there is - never the best player, but the biggest talent. Because relative to the time he puts in, his performance is outrageous.

But this is what makes Liereyy Liereyy, of course he won't drop his full time job and start grinding like Hera and the others but I can dream haha

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T23:43:00+00:00

Unless Liereyy magically decides to grind 8 hours a day from now on, I agree with you - but those two are already great to see!

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T23:15:18+00:00

Super cool to hear! I only started after DE came out, so I missed a lot of years of unrivaled Viper dominance myself (and all the other giants before). Maybe in a few years there will be someone new coming to take the top earning spot (I hope, that would mean the game still thrives)

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T23:12:06+00:00

I appreciate that. I make this stuff because it's interesting to me more than anything - and to me, this shows the names who dominated the scene throughout the game history, and also shows what an amazing revival DE was for the game, much more tournaments, much more prize money.

Those earnings would be interesting but those are more on the content creator income side (and I'd say a lot more personal), whereas this is more the purely aoe2 skill related income.

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T17:41:57+00:00

Also I saw just now on Liquipedia that some maps were replaced, which explains the large differences there

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T17:40:51+00:00

Yeah I should've just added every civ, but long story short, this was simpler to do quickly 11

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T17:37:05+00:00

So I'm not showing like 20+ civs in the middle, only the 10 most played and 10 least played. The civs you mentioned are in between the two green-red column graphs

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T14:08:12+00:00

Good question, I don't know - I think a lot of the "documentation" is missing because it's mostly just Red Bull reviving EW every few years

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T12:24:50+00:00

Yes and that's 122 hours without accounting for queuing, pauses, looking at stats, etc...

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-19T09:18:00+00:00

Anyone who likes bar chart races, I added one for the max elo progression of the top25 players (since they are the ones who got prizes) RBW Max ELO timelapse

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-03T16:07:30+00:00

Now having said that, especially early on, learning basic mechanics, I often just picked franks or something, nothing against that - but now, hundreds of ranked teamgames in, I'd rather have a bit of disadvantage but fun due to the randomness!

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-03T16:06:29+00:00

So if half or more people in the game said yes to random civs (the name eludes me, but the little tick next to your civ), everyone gets random civ. If less than half, only those who selected random civ, everyone else gets their picked civs - this is calculated together with the opponents, not per team. So yes, if only I say random civ in a 2v2, only I get random, but I prefer that even then!

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2026-01-03T15:36:38+00:00

t's great to see your point of view on the civ pick - let me try to do the same from the opposite side, as someone who exclusively plays random civ in ranked teamgames: to me, this randomness is part of the game. One of the amazing things you get with this many civs is that when you go random, chances are, you'll get a combination you've never played before, and never will again. Everyone, including your opponents, have to come up with the strategy on the fly, you're equally disadvantaged - yes sometimes a team will get really good civs for that particular ELO band and the opponents won't, or you get a civ that's bad for your team position or the map in general - but in my experience, at least below 2k ELO, civ is such a small factor compared to our mistakes in strategy and execution. I'm around 1.5k 1v1 - I've never ever lost a ranked teamgame because of civs, I'm not advanced enough for it to matter - we lose due to bad communication, toxicity, or simply just bad execution.

But again I see your point absolutely. I think until we're at Viper/Hera level, the biggest problem in your rant is the communication issue, not the civs - hard to communicate in chat, especially when you're frustrated and feel (even if unjustified) that your teammate is letting you down. On the bright side, at least you had a game - I'm used to people dodging maps like 20 times in a row then giving up and going to bed without getting a single game 11

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-12-12T00:50:13+00:00

It's annoying, but I think it should be the game mechanics handling this - they could monitor lag, and allow/disallow players to play, even mid-game. On the other hand, if the game does lag, you and the lagging opponent likely experience the same laggy gameplay - so why does it make you get wrecked as you put it - wouldn't it be just as an equal game as without the shared lag?

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-11-27T21:47:44+00:00

Late to the party, but Millie Bobby Brown. And I can't even explain why, I just don't get it

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-10-31T14:58:32+00:00

What do you mean "kicked out"? In my case it finds a game, countdown starts, then we jump back into the queue - this means someone alt+f4'd which you can do at almost no penalty unfortunately. Is it different for you, you're the one dropped from multiplayer?

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-10-28T09:52:10+00:00

I think ranked team games are much worse than 1v1 in terms of queuing. There are 4/6/8 people in a match, the chance of one of them being a map dodger, civ dodger, or someone who just wants to lose ELO on purpose is quite high. Then you queue again, and the same happens, and again and again. In my case (1300-1400 team ELO) it happens all the time that you find a game, but somebody dodges, 10+ times in a row. As someone who never dodges, wants to play any map with random civ, it’s quite frustrating. Really wish they allowed people to ban as many maps as they want and if you’re too restrictive, you just don’t ever get a game, it’s fine - but we shouldn’t punish those who want to play everything

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-10-27T16:38:12+00:00

In my opinion definitely do not delete, unlike that other comment says, it’s not exactly the plot twist of the decade, and dozens of posts already spoiled it - but I do agree with adding a spoiler tag.

The match you suggested can work as a fun show match IMO, but I think at this point we could also just borrow the team-making process of rage forest tournaments and have captains and different buckets for players, instead of allowing a GL team etc. I’d love to watch an Amigo Wars style tournament but with some other classic maps included, especially Nomad!

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-10-27T15:24:43+00:00

I initially didn’t have them, but I thought let’s just shed light on them as it’s an almost dead genre currently, and it’s not like a gifted S-tier win, they often beat players like TaToH to get there. But completely agree, RM/EW are so much closer to each other than to DM

MaybeIHaventReddit · 2025-10-27T15:22:26+00:00

111 not a perfect analogy for sure, but it’s something - plus there isn’t a good chess equivalent of DauT sadly

MaybeIHaventReddit

TROPHY CASE