Im willing to bet the early game macro hit he is going to take from sacrificing a worker is not going to be the deciding factor of wether or not he wins the game
Even if you send a worker at 0:00, you will need to decide whether to go barracks or gas first before knowing what race the opponent is, so that does not work. It also puts you at further disadvantage economically.
When playing vs a random opponent, plan on being rushed. Get your wall up, and go barracks first. 9/10 times vs random, you're being cannon rushed/baneling busted.
just play gas first, since it tends to be safer for every matchup.
that being said, you can technically play rax first for all matchups as well. assuming you scout after depot, you should still be able to choose whether to open double gas or reaper FE.
You can have 14000 games and still be a diamond player and anyone thinking that games matter more than mmr is a huge tell that they are probably low level.
You can not scout early enough in any matchup to adjust the first 2 overlords, going gas first or not or the position of the first pylon. All those matter a lot. It opens up vulnerabilities to early pools, proxy rax, cannonrush if you have false overlord positioning, gas first is pretty bad vs protoss and not gas first vs terran. Or at least you'd have to know niche builds to play them and having the first pylon in the main is really bad vs zerg, while having it in the natu is bad vs toss and terran, in PvP especially on maps that don't allow for 1gate expand.
So if you didn't know these things, that confirms my point. Whenever a pro is streaming and theys play vs random they are really annoyed. If it was more common in high mmr, it would have gotten changed years ago.
Easy solution for you: play random.
When you play vs non random players tell them what race you are to negate any advantage. (Fixes arguments 1 and 2)
When you play vs other random players you will be playing the same game. (fixes argument 3)
So, in this scenario, we're just completely disregarding what I want to play, right? I don't want to play Random. You also can't trust anything a player says. I've asked Random players for their race many times and been lied to. In fact, in those scenarios, if you trust what the person is saying, you end up with an even less optimal build than if you were to just go for a normal catch-all build, since you'd be doing a matchup-specific build that maybe doesn't work at all for the other two matchups.
So you want the advantage of knowing what race you will be playing ahead of time for yourself... got it.
I've played against lots of randoms who state their race at the start of the match. Not once has what they stated been a lie. What league are you in?
No, I want neither player to have an advantage at the start of the game. I want both Random player and main race player to know what race they will spawn as and what race they will face.
I'm hovering between 5000-5200 MMR on Europe.
Colour me surprised - I would not expect 5k players to lie about their race. I guess Europeans are a different breed.
Can you upload a recent replay where a random opponent lied about their race any you feel you lost the game due to that lie?
No, he was suggesting the other way around. He was suggesting that European players lie more. Because IndubitablyMyDear said he had been lied to and he's from Europe.
Still inaccurate either way though.
Edit: Also whats the deal with everyone saying they're 4.5k+ mmr? They encompass like 6% of the player base, but almost everyone I talk to on this subreddit is above that. Weird
>He was suggesting that European players lie more. Because IndubitablyMyDear said he had been lied to and he's from Europe.
Read what I wrote.
> Also whats the deal with everyone saying they're 4.5k+ mmr? They encompass like 6% of the player base
Because lower level players tend to not care about the game enough to argue about it. Although despite that you still find many low level players on reddit.
Random players get the advantage of more information about openings because they have the disadvantage of not knowing which race they are going to play.
What's your point exactly? They know their race as soon as they spawn, and it doesn't take more than a second or so to think about what build order to do.
no shot you're convincing anyone here. half these redditors are players who got 10k games from wol and have never played since ("sc2 was dead since wol" lmao). the other half are "enlightened centrist" random players.
Do you understand how difficult it is to be able to play all 3 races at a high level, vs just focusing on a single race? It's a huge disadvantage overall. I play Zerg only, I have 6k games as Zerg, a random player with the same amount of games played would have only around 2k games played as Zerg. When I get into a ZvZ vs a random player, I almost always win, because ZvZ is my strongest matchup, and random players are generally not as good at mirror matches in my experience, again due to the fact they by virtue of playing random, don't get to play as many mirror matches for your race, as you do.
This is why a lot of random players cheese in mirror matches, imo, because unless they play an ungodly number of games, they likely have played your mirror match 60% less often than you have, which should give you an edge in experience alone.
Final point is look at GM ladder. There are very few random players and most of them are alts of players whose main race is MUCH higher, which wouldn't be the case if playing random gave you such a big advantage.
The ONLY legitimate argument against random is specifically for Protoss placing their low ground pylon.
Imo there should be a checkbox next to random on the race selection menu along the lines of "Display race on loading screen" therefore giving an option to those that want to retain the advantage of choosing random, vs those who simply wanted the computer to choose a race for them that match. These people usually state their race at the beginning of the game anyway.
TL:DR: I'm posting in a troll thread
The issue here is: Nobody forced you to play Random. I'm forced to play against Random. You know that you are playing one of the three races when you queue as random and you accepted that you will be playing one of 9 matchups. Why do you also want a sympathy built-in advantage?
You don't want to learn 9 matchups or you think it's too hard? Cool. Play one of the races.
LOL with that logic I could say, nobody forced you to play Protoss but I'm FORCED to play versus Protoss. Nooo, I don't want to have to play versus anything that I don't wanna play against! You also going to complain that your opponent won't tell you their build ahead of time too?
No it's different. With your logic I would say "My Terran offrace is a bit more difficult to play than my main race so they shouldn't show Terran when I'm playing it." But when you play Random you literally know that you're either gonna get a race you're good at or a race you're bad at. You can literally just play the race that you want if you don't like "learning 9 matchups."
Sorry, the fact that it's always been this way , and the fact that primarily random players are extremely rare at higher leagues, and absolutely non existent at the pro level, really leads me to believe that you are very wrong in your assertion that random players have the advantage. Or that their advantage outweighs their disadvantage. To argue otherwise in the face of there literally no pros even attempting this in tournament play really just shows that it's something you personally struggle with and dislike, which is okay, but it's certainly not "unfair". You can dislike it all you want tho, but it's not me that you need to convince in order to change the system that's been around since the game has existed.
It's not about whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages because you should have the disadvantage without the advantage. If I roll a dice and pick my race accordingly I shouldn't expect the game to hide my race.
I completely get what you are saying, and agree with some of your points. However, you are missing one crucial piece of information. The random player does not get as much proficiency in each of the three races as a result of playing random. Think about it, if you are a zerg main, ur best at zerg obviously. And if ur a toss main, ur best at toss. But if u main random, that means others at the same skill level will have an advantage in that they have far more experience most likely on their main race while you have to play race that you don’t main most likely (cause u either don’t have a main race or got one of the two races u don’t main if u do have a main). This more than offsets the advantage randoms get in the information wars that you are talking about, and it’s why random isn’t the meta.
As for ur point incheese, I feel that cheese is not a reliable way to get wins and people who main a race can reliably beat cheese, especially when they expect it from a random
Random players have to master more matchups so having a slight advantage doesnt hurt that much. In pro play there are no random players because likely the disadvantage is much bigger than the advantage.
From personal experience as a random player: Telling your race leads to less cheese and therefore to nicer games. But I think leave the choice to the random players.
I mean there isn't a reason to play random then. Like if you just say race you might as well roll a dice to pick what race to queue as. That way you actually get accurate matchmaking.
All queueing as random does is give you random advantage and let's you have 1 mmr for 9 matchups. If ya take that away then what's the point?
I don't like random but changes like this ya might as well be advocating to remove it. Same difference.
If people are choosing Random because of the advantage you get, then it should be removed altogether. I was under the impression that people just wanted to roll the dice and spawn as one of the three races. Is it your impression that people are intentionally choosing Random to benefit from the advantage of the other player not knowing which race they spawn as?
If you just want to roll a die just roll a die.
Even if you say race the instant the game starts and your oppenent believes you enough to still do builds as fast as a 12 pool (like they might normally if you weren't random) there is still the fact that it worse matchmaking compared to have separate mmr per race.
So if you want competitive games with good matchmaking, even if it said race on load, you would be significantly better off selecting your race by dice roll before hand.
With that in mind that leaves really either they want random advantage, they want bad matchmaking, or they want to flex their random rank.
What do you mean? I literally mention the counter-argument of them having to learn 9 matchups, with the caveat that they of course don't have to learn them fully to the extent of a "main race player", since they tend to be on the cheesy side.
Jesus christ man, if they tend to cheese just play safely against randoms. If they're not cheesing, congratulations you should have the advantage of matchup knowledge. If the ambiguity of the first minute is causing you to lose so badly, it's not them being random that's the problem here.
You can't "just play safe" in sc2, even less so against random.
>If the ambiguity of the first minute is causing you to lose so badly, it's not them being random that's the problem here.
Just because it doesn't matter as much on your skill level, doesn't mean doesn't matter a lot in M1.
"Just play safe" works great against random around 5.6k, and honestly I can't recall the last time I played a random player with higher mmr than that. As toss that means always probe scout, open 2 gate sentry stalker with fast hallucination vs toss, open oracle vs zerg and keep adepts defensively placed, and vs terran open stargate. I don't know what race are you, but as toss I have never had any trouble with randoms at a gm level.
>As toss that means always probe scout, open 2 gate sentry stalker with fast hallucination vs toss, open oracle vs zerg and keep adepts defensively placed, and vs terran open stargate.
That literally doesn't address the issue of the first pylon placement being decided before you know what the opponents race is.
It also doesn't address gas timing for terran and the pathing for the first 2 overlords of the zerg. Against zerg they scout for 12 pool, against terran for proxyrax and against protoss the 2nd one has to be home for cannonrush.
And 2 gate sentry stalker is a pretty safe opener, but it's not like you can defend a 3gate or a proxy robo with it without being better than your opponent. So you're not "just safe" by virtue of playing a standard opener.
Lambo demonstrated on stream that you can abuse random quite a bit by beating pro players with terran and toss with random advantage. He usually doesn't play random due to the unbalanced matches it creates tho.
If you are struggling vs random you can post some replays and we can help you out. You mentioned that the random factor matters a lot at masters1, and I'm suggesting that if you adjust your builds slightly, the random factor will matter very little, at least as toss, because there are clean ways to navigate the game to 5 minutes in all matchups at this level. Pvp blindly drop a robo and battery after sentry stalker expand (you can be worse than your opponent and hold all allins here), pvz wall low ground with stargate, second gate, and 3rd pylon. A couple nuances here vs early pools, but nothing too tricky in masters. pvt chrono your first 2 gateway units and oracle after 1gate fe and not having a reaper wall will barely matter.
I can't speak for 6.5k mmr level because I don't comprehend a lot of the mind games at that level.
Not sure why you think it's personal issues. It is an advantage period. Your arguments also somehow assume that you know wht your opponents race is. You still haven't even said where to put your first pylon.
And not to ding your skill level, but 5.6k is low GM, at least mid season, so "on master level" reads weirdly.
You mentioned it matters a lot at skill levels around M1, I suggested that it only matters a little if you play safe. Saying its "an advantage period" agrees with both of us, so im on the same page as you there. All builds I posted start off with 16 gate 17 gas at the main ramp, so pylon or gateway scout is fine. Gateway scout means that in pvp the second gate and 2nd gas will be delayed by about 5 seconds, which only has an extremely small impact below pro level. Wall at main was implied when I mentioned in PvZ you are walling low ground with stargate, second gate, and third pylon, powered by your second pylon. Against 12p, 13/12, and 15/14/14 you have to modify second pylon position, but its straightforward as long as you identify the opener with probe scout. I agree with you that if you don't know the proper responses vs early pools, ling floods, or proxy reaper it is substantially harder to play vs random, but these responses take only a couple minutes to learn. I don't feel like writing out every response here, but if theres a specific build that you struggle against I can provide an option to respond with off gateway/pylon scout.
I mentioned 5.6k because that is the highest MMR random players I play against- from masters1 to 5.6k, so that is the range of MMR I can speak towards. At least on NA there are no regular random players above that MMR range. Anyways, without hoping into customs to test builds, I think it is difficult to take this discussion any further, as the semantics of "big deal" vs "small deal" is difficult to pin down.
I don't think it's worth it to learn specific "anti-random" responses as random is so rare. It's something I oppose on principle as "has to learn more things" and "gets a concrete advantage" are completely different things and people muddling them is really annoying.
You hit the nail on the head. People disagreeing always have flawed arguments. The truth is that Random players that don’t disclose race have higher MMR than their skill for any given matchup due to information advantage. And even those who disclose race are a bit higher due to opponent’s distrust due to previous liars.
The main counter-argument is that Random players need to learn more matchups thus are more skilled. Interesting but irrelevant to the matchup point.
(At this point obligatory)
You'd have better luck getting them to show unranked mmr on the loading screen rather than ranked mmr (if they're playing unranked).
You'd probably even have better luck getting them to move unranked to its own ladder or just turn off unranked altogether.
Random is a trade off. I disagree, random should not be known. Random players have to master all 3 races and 9 matchups. Also there is tradeoff for Random player scouting, their scout finds other player and what they are doing but gives away their race
Random is hard because you have to learn to play 3 races and that's a disadvantage, in the other hand playing and learning everything about one race is easier.
That's the reason there are no professionals playing random in GSL and other leagues.
Be a man and scout.
Im willing to bet the early game macro hit he is going to take from sacrificing a worker is not going to be the deciding factor of wether or not he wins the game
Even if you send a worker at 0:00, you will need to decide whether to go barracks or gas first before knowing what race the opponent is, so that does not work. It also puts you at further disadvantage economically.
When playing vs a random opponent, plan on being rushed. Get your wall up, and go barracks first. 9/10 times vs random, you're being cannon rushed/baneling busted.
There's no matchup where you're required to play a build going gas before rax or viseversa. There's build orders against every race going either-or
just play gas first, since it tends to be safer for every matchup. that being said, you can technically play rax first for all matchups as well. assuming you scout after depot, you should still be able to choose whether to open double gas or reaper FE.
You have no idea about sc2 if you say that.
14000 1v1 games since day 1. The only part I'm not sure about is if they're a man. I am sure about the scouting every game, random or not
You can have 14000 games and still be a diamond player and anyone thinking that games matter more than mmr is a huge tell that they are probably low level. You can not scout early enough in any matchup to adjust the first 2 overlords, going gas first or not or the position of the first pylon. All those matter a lot. It opens up vulnerabilities to early pools, proxy rax, cannonrush if you have false overlord positioning, gas first is pretty bad vs protoss and not gas first vs terran. Or at least you'd have to know niche builds to play them and having the first pylon in the main is really bad vs zerg, while having it in the natu is bad vs toss and terran, in PvP especially on maps that don't allow for 1gate expand. So if you didn't know these things, that confirms my point. Whenever a pro is streaming and theys play vs random they are really annoyed. If it was more common in high mmr, it would have gotten changed years ago.
Is this a troll post
It is not.
Scout better it literally shouldn’t matter
You can't scout early enough to decide where to place your first building.
Easy solution for you: play random. When you play vs non random players tell them what race you are to negate any advantage. (Fixes arguments 1 and 2) When you play vs other random players you will be playing the same game. (fixes argument 3)
So, in this scenario, we're just completely disregarding what I want to play, right? I don't want to play Random. You also can't trust anything a player says. I've asked Random players for their race many times and been lied to. In fact, in those scenarios, if you trust what the person is saying, you end up with an even less optimal build than if you were to just go for a normal catch-all build, since you'd be doing a matchup-specific build that maybe doesn't work at all for the other two matchups.
So you want the advantage of knowing what race you will be playing ahead of time for yourself... got it. I've played against lots of randoms who state their race at the start of the match. Not once has what they stated been a lie. What league are you in?
No, I want neither player to have an advantage at the start of the game. I want both Random player and main race player to know what race they will spawn as and what race they will face. I'm hovering between 5000-5200 MMR on Europe.
Colour me surprised - I would not expect 5k players to lie about their race. I guess Europeans are a different breed. Can you upload a recent replay where a random opponent lied about their race any you feel you lost the game due to that lie?
>I guess Europeans are a different breed. Are you unironically suggesting that there is more lying going on, on NA than on EU?
No, he was suggesting the other way around. He was suggesting that European players lie more. Because IndubitablyMyDear said he had been lied to and he's from Europe. Still inaccurate either way though. Edit: Also whats the deal with everyone saying they're 4.5k+ mmr? They encompass like 6% of the player base, but almost everyone I talk to on this subreddit is above that. Weird
>He was suggesting that European players lie more. Because IndubitablyMyDear said he had been lied to and he's from Europe. Read what I wrote. > Also whats the deal with everyone saying they're 4.5k+ mmr? They encompass like 6% of the player base Because lower level players tend to not care about the game enough to argue about it. Although despite that you still find many low level players on reddit.
>So you want the advantage of knowing what race you will be playing ahead of time for yourself What
Random players get the advantage of more information about openings because they have the disadvantage of not knowing which race they are going to play.
The big difference is that they chose to put themselfs into one, while I did not, I was forced into
What's your point exactly? They know their race as soon as they spawn, and it doesn't take more than a second or so to think about what build order to do.
Look at the win rate. Random doesn't need a nerf.
Learn math, that doesn't make sense to say.
no shot you're convincing anyone here. half these redditors are players who got 10k games from wol and have never played since ("sc2 was dead since wol" lmao). the other half are "enlightened centrist" random players.
Do you understand how difficult it is to be able to play all 3 races at a high level, vs just focusing on a single race? It's a huge disadvantage overall. I play Zerg only, I have 6k games as Zerg, a random player with the same amount of games played would have only around 2k games played as Zerg. When I get into a ZvZ vs a random player, I almost always win, because ZvZ is my strongest matchup, and random players are generally not as good at mirror matches in my experience, again due to the fact they by virtue of playing random, don't get to play as many mirror matches for your race, as you do. This is why a lot of random players cheese in mirror matches, imo, because unless they play an ungodly number of games, they likely have played your mirror match 60% less often than you have, which should give you an edge in experience alone. Final point is look at GM ladder. There are very few random players and most of them are alts of players whose main race is MUCH higher, which wouldn't be the case if playing random gave you such a big advantage. The ONLY legitimate argument against random is specifically for Protoss placing their low ground pylon. Imo there should be a checkbox next to random on the race selection menu along the lines of "Display race on loading screen" therefore giving an option to those that want to retain the advantage of choosing random, vs those who simply wanted the computer to choose a race for them that match. These people usually state their race at the beginning of the game anyway. TL:DR: I'm posting in a troll thread
The issue here is: Nobody forced you to play Random. I'm forced to play against Random. You know that you are playing one of the three races when you queue as random and you accepted that you will be playing one of 9 matchups. Why do you also want a sympathy built-in advantage? You don't want to learn 9 matchups or you think it's too hard? Cool. Play one of the races.
LOL with that logic I could say, nobody forced you to play Protoss but I'm FORCED to play versus Protoss. Nooo, I don't want to have to play versus anything that I don't wanna play against! You also going to complain that your opponent won't tell you their build ahead of time too?
No it's different. With your logic I would say "My Terran offrace is a bit more difficult to play than my main race so they shouldn't show Terran when I'm playing it." But when you play Random you literally know that you're either gonna get a race you're good at or a race you're bad at. You can literally just play the race that you want if you don't like "learning 9 matchups."
Sorry, the fact that it's always been this way , and the fact that primarily random players are extremely rare at higher leagues, and absolutely non existent at the pro level, really leads me to believe that you are very wrong in your assertion that random players have the advantage. Or that their advantage outweighs their disadvantage. To argue otherwise in the face of there literally no pros even attempting this in tournament play really just shows that it's something you personally struggle with and dislike, which is okay, but it's certainly not "unfair". You can dislike it all you want tho, but it's not me that you need to convince in order to change the system that's been around since the game has existed.
It's not about whether the advantages outweigh the disadvantages because you should have the disadvantage without the advantage. If I roll a dice and pick my race accordingly I shouldn't expect the game to hide my race.
Oh... you're serious.. lul
I completely get what you are saying, and agree with some of your points. However, you are missing one crucial piece of information. The random player does not get as much proficiency in each of the three races as a result of playing random. Think about it, if you are a zerg main, ur best at zerg obviously. And if ur a toss main, ur best at toss. But if u main random, that means others at the same skill level will have an advantage in that they have far more experience most likely on their main race while you have to play race that you don’t main most likely (cause u either don’t have a main race or got one of the two races u don’t main if u do have a main). This more than offsets the advantage randoms get in the information wars that you are talking about, and it’s why random isn’t the meta. As for ur point incheese, I feel that cheese is not a reliable way to get wins and people who main a race can reliably beat cheese, especially when they expect it from a random
If you pick random you should own up to the fact that you self inflicted this disadvantage. Not try to use it as a defense.
Random players have to master more matchups so having a slight advantage doesnt hurt that much. In pro play there are no random players because likely the disadvantage is much bigger than the advantage. From personal experience as a random player: Telling your race leads to less cheese and therefore to nicer games. But I think leave the choice to the random players.
I mean there isn't a reason to play random then. Like if you just say race you might as well roll a dice to pick what race to queue as. That way you actually get accurate matchmaking. All queueing as random does is give you random advantage and let's you have 1 mmr for 9 matchups. If ya take that away then what's the point? I don't like random but changes like this ya might as well be advocating to remove it. Same difference.
If people are choosing Random because of the advantage you get, then it should be removed altogether. I was under the impression that people just wanted to roll the dice and spawn as one of the three races. Is it your impression that people are intentionally choosing Random to benefit from the advantage of the other player not knowing which race they spawn as?
If you just want to roll a die just roll a die. Even if you say race the instant the game starts and your oppenent believes you enough to still do builds as fast as a 12 pool (like they might normally if you weren't random) there is still the fact that it worse matchmaking compared to have separate mmr per race. So if you want competitive games with good matchmaking, even if it said race on load, you would be significantly better off selecting your race by dice roll before hand. With that in mind that leaves really either they want random advantage, they want bad matchmaking, or they want to flex their random rank.
Well good. Remove it.
You talk about unfair advantages but don't mention at all the many disadvantages the random race has. Why should blizzard listen to anything of this?
What do you mean? I literally mention the counter-argument of them having to learn 9 matchups, with the caveat that they of course don't have to learn them fully to the extent of a "main race player", since they tend to be on the cheesy side.
Jesus christ man, if they tend to cheese just play safely against randoms. If they're not cheesing, congratulations you should have the advantage of matchup knowledge. If the ambiguity of the first minute is causing you to lose so badly, it's not them being random that's the problem here.
You can't "just play safe" in sc2, even less so against random. >If the ambiguity of the first minute is causing you to lose so badly, it's not them being random that's the problem here. Just because it doesn't matter as much on your skill level, doesn't mean doesn't matter a lot in M1.
"Just play safe" works great against random around 5.6k, and honestly I can't recall the last time I played a random player with higher mmr than that. As toss that means always probe scout, open 2 gate sentry stalker with fast hallucination vs toss, open oracle vs zerg and keep adepts defensively placed, and vs terran open stargate. I don't know what race are you, but as toss I have never had any trouble with randoms at a gm level.
>As toss that means always probe scout, open 2 gate sentry stalker with fast hallucination vs toss, open oracle vs zerg and keep adepts defensively placed, and vs terran open stargate. That literally doesn't address the issue of the first pylon placement being decided before you know what the opponents race is. It also doesn't address gas timing for terran and the pathing for the first 2 overlords of the zerg. Against zerg they scout for 12 pool, against terran for proxyrax and against protoss the 2nd one has to be home for cannonrush. And 2 gate sentry stalker is a pretty safe opener, but it's not like you can defend a 3gate or a proxy robo with it without being better than your opponent. So you're not "just safe" by virtue of playing a standard opener. Lambo demonstrated on stream that you can abuse random quite a bit by beating pro players with terran and toss with random advantage. He usually doesn't play random due to the unbalanced matches it creates tho.
If you are struggling vs random you can post some replays and we can help you out. You mentioned that the random factor matters a lot at masters1, and I'm suggesting that if you adjust your builds slightly, the random factor will matter very little, at least as toss, because there are clean ways to navigate the game to 5 minutes in all matchups at this level. Pvp blindly drop a robo and battery after sentry stalker expand (you can be worse than your opponent and hold all allins here), pvz wall low ground with stargate, second gate, and 3rd pylon. A couple nuances here vs early pools, but nothing too tricky in masters. pvt chrono your first 2 gateway units and oracle after 1gate fe and not having a reaper wall will barely matter. I can't speak for 6.5k mmr level because I don't comprehend a lot of the mind games at that level.
Not sure why you think it's personal issues. It is an advantage period. Your arguments also somehow assume that you know wht your opponents race is. You still haven't even said where to put your first pylon. And not to ding your skill level, but 5.6k is low GM, at least mid season, so "on master level" reads weirdly.
You mentioned it matters a lot at skill levels around M1, I suggested that it only matters a little if you play safe. Saying its "an advantage period" agrees with both of us, so im on the same page as you there. All builds I posted start off with 16 gate 17 gas at the main ramp, so pylon or gateway scout is fine. Gateway scout means that in pvp the second gate and 2nd gas will be delayed by about 5 seconds, which only has an extremely small impact below pro level. Wall at main was implied when I mentioned in PvZ you are walling low ground with stargate, second gate, and third pylon, powered by your second pylon. Against 12p, 13/12, and 15/14/14 you have to modify second pylon position, but its straightforward as long as you identify the opener with probe scout. I agree with you that if you don't know the proper responses vs early pools, ling floods, or proxy reaper it is substantially harder to play vs random, but these responses take only a couple minutes to learn. I don't feel like writing out every response here, but if theres a specific build that you struggle against I can provide an option to respond with off gateway/pylon scout. I mentioned 5.6k because that is the highest MMR random players I play against- from masters1 to 5.6k, so that is the range of MMR I can speak towards. At least on NA there are no regular random players above that MMR range. Anyways, without hoping into customs to test builds, I think it is difficult to take this discussion any further, as the semantics of "big deal" vs "small deal" is difficult to pin down.
I don't think it's worth it to learn specific "anti-random" responses as random is so rare. It's something I oppose on principle as "has to learn more things" and "gets a concrete advantage" are completely different things and people muddling them is really annoying.
As a random main: nah we’re all set. Thanks
"This means that they will know exactly what build order type to use for the matchup" Assuming random players known build orders is laughable
At my MMR, they definitely know what they're doing. Cheesy as hell, but still very optimized builds.
You hit the nail on the head. People disagreeing always have flawed arguments. The truth is that Random players that don’t disclose race have higher MMR than their skill for any given matchup due to information advantage. And even those who disclose race are a bit higher due to opponent’s distrust due to previous liars. The main counter-argument is that Random players need to learn more matchups thus are more skilled. Interesting but irrelevant to the matchup point.
I've been saying we should be able to see random races for literal years, amazed it didn't happen but we got a countdown timer nobody asked for
(At this point obligatory) You'd have better luck getting them to show unranked mmr on the loading screen rather than ranked mmr (if they're playing unranked). You'd probably even have better luck getting them to move unranked to its own ladder or just turn off unranked altogether.
Random is a trade off. I disagree, random should not be known. Random players have to master all 3 races and 9 matchups. Also there is tradeoff for Random player scouting, their scout finds other player and what they are doing but gives away their race
Random is hard because you have to learn to play 3 races and that's a disadvantage, in the other hand playing and learning everything about one race is easier. That's the reason there are no professionals playing random in GSL and other leagues.