Interesting thoughts. I kinda must agree. What do you think?

'Perfect' I think is actually a fair standard, depending on your interpretation of 'perfect'. Dust2 is not the best-looking map, and it doesn't have any gimmicks really to speak of, except picking from T spawn to mid doors. IIRC from DaveJ's blog, the main novelty of the map is the platform/ledge/ramp set up at A site (ramp) and T spawn on the B side.

But, its number of routes is perfect, timing is good everywhere, all the ways Ts can go have a number and arrangement of spots to check that's within the range of balanced.

Season (original, by cashed) is the perfect example of how it is possible to get playtime against Dust2. By the time shortly before CSGO started, a lot of players on pubs did not know that Season was a custom map. Think about that: a custom map, released well after the peak of custom mapping for CSS, got so much penetration into public servers that some people thought it came with the game.

Season: not the best-looking* map, not much in the way of novelties or gimmicks (vent), perfect number of routes, good timing, good balance at the choke points and entrances.

What does a map need to be 'perfect': not too many routes, perfect number of choke points, good timing, balanced cover, modest texturing/lighting done competently.

Before CSGO, it was very easy for new (non-VALVe) competitive maps to get playtime: leagues pushed these maps out to players, and they would trickle down to pubs (some maps more than others), and pubs would also use whatever custom maps they wanted (hostage maps, defuse maps that were not used by leagues for whatever reason, assassination maps). The main impediment now to custom maps is the official matchmaking system: a large fraction of competitive play is locked in to VALVe-selected maps, and 'community servers' are heavily disadvantaged compared to official servers.

*Neither Dust2 nor Season is bad-looking, but when compared to maps like Nightfever (d00ds) or Museum (Theropod-X), they are definitely not at the top end of the spectrum.

/r/csmapmakers Thread Link - streamerzarmy.com