My take on how to improve ranked queue regarding map pool.

First, a little bit of background, I'm a long time DotA and DOTA 2 player. For those who are unfamiliar, in DOTA there is only one map, but there are over a hundred of heroes, there are different game modes regarding how you pick your heroes, but the most popular, or should I say default mode is all pick, that means you can pick any hero you want, and you can choose to play just one single hero every single game and improve that hero until you're ready to move on. So most people start out play one one map, one default game mode that is allpick, and they can choose to stick with familiar heroes until they're comfortable to learn more.

Now let's get back to AOE 2 DE, there are different civs (heroes) and then there are different maps in the map pool that are forced upon the players whether they like it or not. You can see how that can quickly complicate things and put off new and learning players who just want to focus on improving on specific civs or maps before moving on, which in my opinion is the best way to learn or improve at a video game.

The way to fix it for AOE 2 DE is to have one default map that people can't remove from their map pools, I don't see any reason that Arabia can't be that map. It has been the standard for many years and it is a good map to learn the game. Having one default map that people can't removed from their map pools means that their will be no "splitting the player base" problem. This is why it's better than having more bans or debating whether this map or that map should be in the map pool.

Next we can have an extended map pools that people can choose from to add to their queuing map pool. There can be default extended maps as well as rotating extended maps to keep it fresh and encourage people to discover new maps.

This is just an initial idea but I hope that the devs seriously reconsider the way how map pool currently is because it sucks.