OpenRA

last 1 vs 1 I insta won because I got an artillery like 30 seconds into the game... I think crates bring too much randomness to the game.

Crates have always been on by default in every Command and Conquer game, as far as I know..

Why not just manually disable 'em?

Yes crates should be turned off by default at least in multiplayer game. This is also in accordance with tournament rules.

Here's the relevant issue: https://github.com/OpenRA/OpenRA/issues/4933

[EDIT] Ninja'd! Haha. Well there we go.

I understand that crates were traditionally on by default, that's a reason to leave them as-is, they are kinda neat after all. But if you're trying to play a serious match, as G. Frost pointed out they are both very random and very influential to how a game plays out.
So I guess the argument swings both ways. But looking at the Big Team Tournament, they specified "All defaults, except turn crates off". It seems to me like that would be the default stance for competitive play, which I would take as a fairly good reason why crates should be off by default. I think this comes under one of the changes OpenRA could make to the originals to improve things. What do you think?

The problem is on the public servers, the hosts normally just use the default settings, so in most public games crates are ON. that's why I would prefer the default to be OFF.

Eh, any tournament server host would check over the options before starting the game anyway. Leave them on by default, there's nothing wrong with them for public games. Get an artillery after 30 seconds? Lucky you. Mop up and offer a rematch, it's only a bit of fun.