End of Master League Patreon system/ major tourney series.

@everyone Sad news today that the ML funding system and official series of events is coming to an end.

This does not include the Master League system itself (performance and live tourney records) which I will maintain.

We have accomplished so much with this 14 month run of 5 major tournies, 4 affiliate events, and 5 minor events, and ML5: THE FINALS will now serve as our swan song.

Reasons for ending:

1) ML is at its peak let's quit whilst we're ahead! It's been a blast but let's go out on a high, and not risk over doing it, and going past our peak.

2) Personally I can no longer put in the time in to maintain the financial side of the league, and run huge events myself. I want to concentrate on casting other people's events and doing for-fun streams. I am sorry but a handover of funding system to someone else would be messy and of the people I know I wouldn't want to burden any of them with it!

3) Uneven dev support. With obs mode being down for the last six months, little promotional help, and communication issues. It's not an ideal climate to promote this game with events. Covid, AoE4 development, and 64 bit issues are likely causes.

4) Uneven player skill distribution at present. Isildur is like Luvnest, DevM, Jesulin, Talisman, Jove, at their peak, and that peak is proving very consistent. Basically Isildur won our tourney series as a whole, a huge congrats to him!!! I mean that genuinely.

5) ML4 finalist player caught cheating and fiasco. It just sucks having to put so much effort into protecting the prizepool tbh, and the refs are burnt out themselves. So it's just a bit risky.

HUGE THANKS

Thank you to everyone that financially supported ML you are all legends and I love every single one of you in more ways than one.

The financial support, refereeing, asset creation, casting, playing, training, writing, and engagement has been phenonmenal.

We're a fantastic community when we put our minds to it!

The residual 1.6k of funds will be used on small for-fun compeittive events in the coming months. Every last penny will go into prizepools. We will see a mid rank mini tourney this Saturday on my stream to start us off

It was a good run.

Very sorry to hear that, although understandable.

Thanks for all the effort and the amazing content over the past year!

Amazing 14 month run and the reasons you are giving are perfectly understandable. Thx for the hard work for our entertainment.


I don't take this post as a goodbye but rather a see you soon. Maybe not in the same format but i don't see this been the last major tournament you are gonna organize. Hope things get better globally and finally get major fixes for the game been done.

It was a lot of hours of entertainment provided, it'll be missed.

tough news and sad to hear ML is coming to a close! for me this was probably the best and most entertaining series since SNF, but i guess everything good has to end some day. big thanks and kudos to A_E and everyone else involved for making these awesome tourneys happen!

hope gcs3 is still on the horizon, though?

It was a lot of hours of entertainment provided, it'll be missed.

yeah...

Amazing 14 month run and the reasons you are giving are perfectly understandable. Thx for the hard work for our entertainment.


I don't take this post as a goodbye but rather a see you soon. Maybe not in the same format but i don't see this been the last major tournament you are gonna organize. Hope things get better globally and finally get major fixes for the game been done.

yeah, 100% agree.

Thank you very much for your work and amazing content!

Thank you a lot for all those tourneys. You set the bar pretty high for everyone to follow.

Thanks for your work.

well done

A_E you have been a beacon of progress for the competitive scene. Thanks for all the effort

Hard to imagine someone even coming close to filling AE's role over the last 5 years.

With regards to players not living up to the challenge I honestly think the main problem is the lack of a competitive automatch. Automatch is this weird mixture of 80% stomps and 20% challenging matches. This mixture doesn't lend itself well to improving systematically. Scrimming is the obvious alternative but for broad improvement among the competitive playerbase a more populated matchmaking would be neded imho. Scrims are too selective and there's too little incentive to really go 100% try hard in them.

There's also too many people who are hardstuck in a "semi try hard" mindset where they take the game somewhat seriously but not seriously enough to actually make progress. They've gotten used to stomping noobs in automatch giving them the short term pleasure of feeling like a pro but in reality they undergo zero actual improvement while doing so. In these cases automatch is a kind of short term pleasure trap in terms of skill development.

3) Uneven dev support. With obs mode being down for the last six months, little promotional help, and communication issues. It's not an ideal climate to promote this game with events. Covid, AoE4 development, and 64 bit issues are likely causes.

This is why I was trying to raise a fuss with Relic in the shout box. Trying to let them know they are killing all of the hype for their own product. It does not make any sense why they are doing patchs when the game is completely broken for automatch and tournaments? Relic please call me. I will advise you if necessary. Who is even running this company?

AE
Thank you sir! You did plenty for the community and also pushed some new map action out. Very cool!

Thank you so much for your work AE it was a blast, and the transparency you have given.

Sad that relic simply don't want to fix their product in a timely manner while tournaments were going on. (And still haven't manage to do so)

thanks AE. it is not easy organising things across the internet.

what is obs mode? what is the issue?
i still can spectate games in live now.

It was a great run and you've all more than earned your rest. As others have already said, till the next time hopefully

what is obs mode? what is the issue?
i still can spectate games in live now.

You cannot observe custom games anymore since almost 5 months

You cannot observe custom games anymore since almost 5 months

Or games from friends!

only automatch live games in 1vs1-4vs4 is possible.