Nobody will ever agree on new maps. Nobody agreed on gunboats when it was added. Consensus is unreacheable. My answer to this yearly argument is to simply add more maps.
Besides, etf2l map pool + pick and ban is ridiculous. How many viaduct games did we see on stream at cph?
With that said, new maps are always welcome because they add variety, and are a way to balance the game. For example, scout is currently very strong, so maps good for soldier with flat grounds could be a way to counter scout's strengh. It's the way maps are used in Starcraft series.
I wish we had a smarter system than the currently 7-map pool used in europe. For LAN, we could have 10 or 12 maps or whatever and use them with the current pick and ban system.
For regular seasons, I see two solutions :
- Given there are 3 seasons a year, we could have different map pools used, with for example 4 core maps staying in, and 2 or 3 non-core maps being swapped each season; Playoffs would be done with pick/ban with the full map pool
- Run the season with a full map pool with each team picking their map but enforce teams to choose the same map at most two times. Discuss further to figure out if having the two halves of the given fixture be played on the same map when both teams pick it is a problem or not. I like this way the most because anyone can pick the map they want to play, but it has the huge drawback that it requires additional coding on the website.
Edit : pick/ban for cups and tiebreakers only requires the map pool to be an odd number, and it's possible to replace Case1.6 and 7 by 'Team x bans <whatever number once multiplied by 2 leaves one map in the pool>