As someone who really only picked up competitive within the past two years, I was wondering how much the meta/game itself has changed over the past 10+ years of HL. I certainly believe maps couldn’t work in a time or place in people’s memories, but as someone who is new and doesn’t know exactly what fundamentally is different about HL now vs. then, I’m skeptical that every single map that was bad 5+ years ago is bad now.
If we have concerns about not having the manpower/interest for people to create new maps, why not resurrect something or bring in something otherwise pre-existing?
I’m doubtful something like Frontier, Mercenary Park, or whatever would work (especially without changes), but I think it’d be fun to try, and a whole lot more fun than having 0 idea how a map plays and just relying on someone else saying “TRUST ME IT SUCKS DON’T EVEN TRY IT”. Not faulting those people for trying to give their two cents and share their experience, it’s just that I tend to prefer to see hard evidence in front of me before dismissing something.
We should have pugscrims for testing maps, and while I appreciate Invite players testing out maps, I don’t think they should be the only ones testing maps and determining if they’re worthy. They should almost certainly have a heavier weighted opinion, but people in Main or whatever should at least have some input too. Everyone who isn’t RGL staff or high invite shouldn’t just sit around and wait for an excellent new map to be given to them to play.
edit: added another paragraph