The map design was just screwed on almost all maps....
sorry for quoting just one paragraph^ but I read the whole post and didnt want to flood with quotes.
Ofcourse maps can be judged by taste, just like music or movies can. Maybe you simply did not have fun on BF2 maps, but to say that they were poorly designed is just... "wrong".
BF2 has among the absolute best level designs in any retail shooter to date, hands down.
By "best" we can argue for years ofcourse, but Im looking at it purely objective. bf1942 sure had fine maps, and in 2002 they were more original than what the BF2 maps might have been in 2005, but every single BF2 map is way better designed than every bf42 map, easily.
The fact that BF2 became such a favorite clan-match game is just one proof of this. Clans dont play on badly designed maps/games. It's all about balance, flow and stability in clan matches. BF2s maps also are all completely original, just study maps like Dragon Valley, FuShePass, Karkand, Kubra Dam, Gulf of Oman... these are giants within the "level design world", add to this also Cerbere Landings and Camp Gibraltar from 2142, and Operation Harvest from the boosterpacks.. this is leveldesigns to study and teach at schools.
The things you mention about how the maps "But the mapdesign never allowed for the common goal of winning a map." this is not a flaw in map design, it's the game mode that is fuzzy.
Conquest is actually a weird game mode, not many players understand what it's all about. On one hand you have a pool of points you need to drain to zero to win, but you can do this by holding X amount of flags (how many? no one knows. For how long? no one knows) but you can also do this by fragging.
On the other hand you have a bunch of flags you must take, but why? sure you get spawnpoints and vehicles there, but why do you really win by holding flags? and which flags? how many?
If you ask 10,000 BF2 players how fast the tickets go down and which flags they need to hold to make this happen on any map, less than 1% would give you a correct answer. And this is the core of the game mode!
This confuses players, and many just go for the kills, while others only go for flags, and some try to do everything. The actual "ticket bleed" never made sense to common players. What happens is that players in BF2 aren't actually
playing the game mode, they drive and run around doing whatever they feel like in the sandbox world - and it's awesome, fun and cool, so it works anyway.. But the game mode is just this
other thing that goes on on the side of the action.
In contrary to BC2 rush where the game mode is primary and on everyones focus.
If you ask 10,000 BC2 players how to win on a Rush map, 99% would tell you how to do that. And that is the core of that game mode
So if some rounds in BF2 (and FH2 as well ofcourse) feels weird or as if something just "happened" without no one really knowing what it was, it's not because of the map design. It's the game mode that isn't clearly enough communicating the "common goal" to the players.
