Where Cauldron feels like a good idea (circular map with easy rotation, horizontal symmetry and interesting lines of sight) executed poorly, Pantheon feels like a bad idea from the get-go.

A lot of this is because of the spawn areas. Based on the heatmaps Bungie provided, the two self-contained spawn areas make up 70% of the map. That's enormous! Literally 70% of the map is partitioned off from the main play space for respawns. And because they're so huge, it's very difficult to flip the spawns.

Now you might think "Well at least it's a symmetrical map, so you don't need to flip spawns often". Most of the time, yes, you intentionally flip the spawns for a strategic advantage. But the real purpose of spawn flipping is to prevent spawn camping. It prevents an enemy team from sitting outside your spawn and picking you off as you spawn in. It doesn't always work perfectly, especially in 12-man games where things can get a little hectic, but for the most part if the enemy rushes your spawn, you spawn somewhere else, hopefully out of harm's way.

Compare that to Pantheon, where the spawn areas are large enough that you can have people literally capturing your home Control Point and still spawn there. In some cases that can be quite convenient, but not when they're also packing an LMG, or when there's more than one of them.

What's worse, the spawn areas are partitioned, with only 3 ways out into the main play space. even worse still, all three routes are fantastic sniper lanes and grenade chokepoints, and two of them require you to come around a blind corner. What this means is that almost every single game of Clash or Control on Pantheon turns into a game of "Trap them in their spawn and pick them off as they try to leave".

And after all that, my personal favourite - the 15 second walk of shame. After every death you respawn at the back of your enormous spawn area, and have to sprint for 15 seconds before you can even make another attempt at breaking out. If you die just 10 times in a game on Pantheon, you've spent 2 and a half minutes walking out of your spawn. Incredibly frustrating in Clash (especially with Heavy Ammo inbound), but downright unbearable in Control where the enemy can easily neutralise and/or capture Point B in the time it takes to respawn and get back to the fight. Yuck.

Strangely, Pantheon is actually a pretty good map for 3v3, probably because it's much harder to lock down all three lanes with only 3 people and players tend to stick together more.

Tl;Dr - Pantheon's needlessly large spawns and poorly placed chokepoints encourage spawn camping, making it uniquely awful for 6v6.

People running into B like an assembly line of dying makes me sad

That's my major source of fun, tbh. I only stop doing that when the enemy has 2 capture points.

I am bothered by how many maps exist but I never play. Until the past week or so I had never played ONE game on TimeKeeper. The HoW maps in general are low-use for me as I usually get into Crucible for limited time events and they seem to avoid the new maps. I understand the point that not everyone has the new maps, but I do. In fact, I paid for them. it seems weird that it's so rare that I get to benefit from PVP paps until they become free for all.

First Light and the other big Vex-y one are hidden away where they never come up.

I think all of the maps can be great maps if you can adapt your play style for the map. I generally like sniping, taking people out from a distance, and I've been able to find useful ways to play this way on most maps, but I would say it's least helpful on Theive's Den, Firebase Delphi, and maybe Twilight Gap (totally possible on this map, but you might be more effective getting closer to the enemy).

I definitely prefer maps that are balanced, and symmetrical. I appreciate the triangle-based maps more than the lanes. Pantheon is great when you own B, and horrible when you don't. It's way too difficult to flank on Pantheon without getting your head blown off (and they could have made that outside rim a hair wider, who needs a stinking hole right next to heavy?).

That being said, the imbalanced maps are so much fun when you're winning and so frustrating when you're not. As much fun as it is to watch my K/D go sky high on maps like Shores of Time and Blind Watch, being on the other side of that situation makes me wish they could find a way to balance those maps.

I think some of my favorite maps are Anomaly and Burning Shrine. That being said, there are very few I hate. So far, I have not found a way to play Theive's Den that I like, and Sky Shock is equally a pain, but I never play combined arms. I wish First Light and Bastion were back in the Control rotation as I enjoyed those maps.

"Oh, I feel like sniping like a douche." Check.

Hey! We aren't douches! You know the sight lines; it's your job to stay out of them. You can't blame a sniper for one of the most logical choices. Engage targets from distance with the added bonus that they explode with a headshot (I mostly use Praedyth's Revenge). Sounds awesome to me.

*For the record, I'm joking. If it's any caveat, blink shotgunners that never seem to take damage drive me bonkers.

I've only really played Control regularly, so I feel like it's just the same four maps over and over.

A voting system or at least equal weighing of maps would be highly appreciated.

I wish they would put all the maps in the Control playlist. I'd like to have more options without limiting myself to 2 or 3 big maps only.

I wish this too. There's a moon map that I used to play control on occasionally that I never see anymore, that has vehicles and wide open spaces. I really liked that one. (looked it up, first light)

There should be a RNG playlist that picks a random map, set of players, and set of rules. Maybe call it "the spice of life" or something.

Favorite map is probably pantheon. I like shores of time, twilight gap, rusted lands, widow's court, exodus blue, asylum, burning shrine, maybe others. I really dislike the anomaly and blind watch, and not in love with black shield. I used to really like firebase delphi until the meta changed to all shotguns all the time.

I agree that Asylum suffers from the very limited approach paths. You either run a gauntlet to get A and C, or you hold B and one other and have some major team advantages.

Bastian, Last Watch and Skyshock all are nice and wide open, so there tends to be less clumping and more moving in those maps, but it reveals Destiny's flaw in that there are few ways to hold an area. You are always drawn into the close range fire fight.

Comparing to other shooters, I think Destiny would benefit from some larger maps with more routes. Looking at the heat maps they posted the fights almost always concentrate in 2-3 small areas of the map. You can almost draw a line between spawns and see that those points match up to where the players would first see one another.

Well, let's just say there's a reason Bungie lowered the weighting of Blind Watch.

This is my idea for spawns/flags on Blind Watch. I think it would work better and B could be adjusted so that the time to get from C to B and A to B are the same. Now instead of being able to hold the doors with snipers and shotties to keep A out of B, B is on the outside under the overhang. So you could attack straight on, or get on the roof and drop down behind the team. And while snipers would still be deadly, it is much more of an open alley. Heavies could probably stay where they are at, but I hate the A heavy in that stupid merri-go-round. I always bork that jump and end up in the basement under it.

It's interesting to see how game-types can influence my perception of a map's quality. I actually liked Blind Watch quite a bit at first- the rotating windows on the windwheel thing, the verticality of it... And then Iron Banner rolled around, and it dropped to the bottom of my list. I've been trying to figure out a balanced place to put "B" flag, but there's just no suitable location in the middle of the map without major geometry changes (IMO).

I could go on, but I made this topic because I'm way more interested in what other people have to say. Which PvP maps to you love/hate, and why? What changes would you make to them?

I think my favorite map is Anomaly. I'm a hang back and pop shots kinda guy, so the catwalk across from B is my home. I really think that is the trick to the map, holding that area. If you control that, you can control B. A and C seem to be fairly equal. I also like that while it has moving Geometry, it doesn't get in the way. Burning Shrine on the other hand. I hate those rotating doors, especially in trials. Seems like just as I'm about to get that final shot, they get in my way and give my enemy time to recover. I'm also not a big fan of doors that open and close. 1. They give away your immediate location, 2. If you are a little laggy, you have to wait for them to open, 3. Don't know what three is, but it's there. :)

I also really like Shores of Time, but it too fails in flag placement. It is one of the few maps where you can almost cover two points from one position. Smart teams simply Cap B and C and just watch for the enemy approach. If they moved B just to the other side of the jump to the platform it's on and adjusted the spawns it would be better.

I wish they would put all the maps in the Control playlist. I'd like to have more options without limiting myself to 2 or 3 big maps only.