captain lust said:
In most games this would be considered kind of a joke, like a street fighter tourney that randomizes character selection so that players can't get "too good" with their mains.
The only other game I've played semi-competitively (although I was a hopeless failure) is Gears of War. That used random maps and it seemed sensible.
The example you've given of Street Fighter isn't really appropriate, since there are so many characters and most of the skill is dependent on a perfection of style, specific to a certain character or certain characters.
I've just spoken to a friend on steam, who knows a lot more about this than I do. He watches lans and plays games competitively (recently won the socom 4 beta tournament with 32 teams) and he's just told me that there's never map selection, for any major shooter. The maps are prepicked, although not randomised. Personally, I don't think it's necessary to prepick them, due to the nature of Warband's competitive play, randomising works fune but I think it's poor show that you've called not selecting maps a "joke" when clearly, that isn't the case
captain lust said:
It just adds slightly more depth to the metagame of something like this if you know that your opponent's shown a lot of strength with a certain faction on certain map in the past so you have to try and beat it, but maybe they'll pull something else out you had no idea they'd trained. Allowing each clan to be masters at something rather than forcing them to be decent with everything seems more interesting to me and inspires better competition.
Then we are of different opinions.