Ok time for me to rant.
I do believe that having something extra to help new players would be good but I think that this idea that has slowly been growing that 1v1's are heavily build order focused is completely wrong. The matchmaker team has already started making changes in the map pool which will allow more overlap between low / high rated players and some repeating classics to allow constant growth for newer players on these maps although it may take a bit of time for the effects to become obvious. Something that completely goes against this is the current idea that people should just watch a replay for 1 min and copy/paste the starting build order of some high rank player to somehow make the map playable. There should be more of a focus on players learning solid basics such as understanding general map layouts and how to craft simple build orders because this is what will allow players to be the most consistent is their gameplay and wins. When someone loses they should not just look at the mistakes on that map but what caused those mistakes. If you let units constantly leak through then it should not just be about what building is missing in your opening but what your plan was in general. Did you send all your units the other way? If so does losing stuff on the other side matter if you managed to do more damage on the other side? Or were you too zoomed in throughout the game to notice units slipping by? FAF is much more varied in map layouts compared to other games but that does not mean that you should be stuck playing the same maps over, in fact I believe players should be able to get a taste of varying maps as they improve which the map pool rating brackets currently do since there is so much to learn that 3 or so maps cannot teach you.
Currently, you could look at some random 1v1 replays of even 1800 players and see them stall instantly at the start of the game because they didn't have time to watch a build order for the 20 new maps or they just forgot their build order after playing a map again after 3-4 months because of how the map pool rotates. This problem mainly comes from the old map pool which is currently undergoing a change and the mindset that you can just watch a build order once for the rest of the pool and never actually learn how to start on a map. I feel like the majority of this issue has come around from people thinking that their opponent has studied some build order because they got lucky and managed to get a good start even though they never actually followed a build order and then deciding they should do that too causing their opponent to think the same the next game since someone might tell them the other guy had a build order. The reason I say this is because I myself have very rarely made or used build orders outside of tourneys since I know the basic foundations for how to craft a good opening and it is what allows me to be better than most on mapgen even and have an advantage at the start even though mapgen is a 'no build order map'. Even when looking at replays of others which I have done a lot I can see that many people do not have build orders or at least mess them up very often and just relying on your own knowledge is much better and consistent in the long run. On the other hand, strategies or the most optimal play in a certain scenario can be quiet confusing and different players may have different opinions on what the best thing to do is so it is important for players to be able to have access to the reasoning behind players actions and replays to see how players act depending on the opening / midgame.
Players who do make build orders will naturally increase in rating and reach some sort of their own wall. And I believe this will only hinder their future growth as they now have a great start (not their own skill) and then manage to lose it all out over the rest of the game. This type of growth can just lead to more frustration and inability to find what you actually did wrong since you don't know what the build order actually sets up for. I think this a very big reason that returning players like Deribus find it hard since you just match into some guy who is nothing like the same rating 7 months ago and maybe he does have some build order but because Deribus has not played for a long time he may be playing like a 1100 against a 1400 who also has a better opening and he gets rolled.
Anyway, enough yapping. As I said at the start of this rant I believe new players or in this case especially, returning players(I believe there is a decent amount of players who would play ladder if they had a newer"ish" experience) should both have some change, maybe similar to in nature to what Deribus has put or maybe something completely different to allow players to get a better feeling for the game but for different reasons. I believe a good start would be to follow along with what the matchmaker team has done and put a focus on consistent growth over just blindly following those of higher rating and show / teach new players how to create openings themselves. I remember making a "Build Order list" with Harzer long ago that not only gave players an opening but explained the map in some detail and what strategies players could do on it which I think would be useful if expanded on in new guides that could take any ladder map as an example and give a good players insights of what the map is about and what key features they are looking at when experimenting themselves. Something similar to this could be what Skrat has put forward with players reviewing maps on a map pools release which could be some collaboration between trainer and matchmaker team.
I would not mind talking about these ideas in more detail on discord if anyone is interested since I believe it would be a good start to some change.
