This thread was started in response to a comment by frs in the Seams and Bolts thread.

Well wviperw's competitive level design guide seems to have disappeared off the face of the internet, and has been gone for a while now. It mainly covered duel, since he mentioned to not put power-ups in duel maps, etc. which ofc is easy to do. But once on my Dynasty map, someone referenced wviperw's LD guide and suggested I remove the fog of death in my map because it would destroy it for competitive play. This confused me because the guide was made for duel, while my map was mainly TDM-focused. There's also plenty of good maps that have fog of death - take Grim Dungeons or Purgatory for example.

I've also been told in a TDM map, you need a lot of movement room / running space around a power-up so people can fight over it properly. Yet, I see that Grim Dungeons, played in tournaments, has a BS sitting on a tiny platform.

I'd like to gather opinions on what you think makes a good map overall. Right now I think:

- Vertical Element (but not too much)
- Good connectivity, so a room / battle can be approached in many different ways
- Powerful items separated from each other
- Not too many annoying obstacles

And can you save a map without ruining the purpose of it, such as a map that's supposed to be very open like Black Cathedral or a map that's supposed to be tight with 90-degree angles like Concrete Palace? Or do you think they have to be modified to such an extent that they're barely recognizable? For example, I've seen people suggesting to remove the BS on Reflux. C'mon... that's what the map revolves around! Basically put: Any layout or idea can work, you just gotta give it tweaks, right? And the last update made it so the Battle Suit isn't so powerful in CTF, so they did try to do something about it. I don't really think you should have to remove or add entire rooms / change several hallways to make a map good either, that makes it an entirely different map altogether.

So what do you think?