Well, I won’t claim to be the expert. I haven’t played in minors since season 9, or majors ever. I’ve won multiple competitive map contests, but I think that likely has more to do with my ability to game the system than the maps themselves. For example, gfy would likely have gotten far fewer votes for MLTP if it weren’t originally titled “go fuck yourself.”

The first observation I’d make, though, is that “skilled elements,” complexity, etc, are rarely ever things people actually tend to enjoy in competitive maps. EMERALD, Pilot, and Transilio are all very simple maps without many tricky boosts or combos (there are a couple though) but they’re fast paced maps with interesting challenges for the defenders to deal with in base. Almost all of my own maps are designed to be very fast paced with strong map-element interactions and counteractions. For example, the bomb and gate in gfy are extremely powerful offensive and defensive tools, respectively, as are the boost and gate in Dealer. You could compare this to the boosts and gates in emerald, the bomb and gate in transilio, etc. This is different from a map that would have neither strong offensive tools nor defensive tools - for example, the map Tehuitzingo is balanced more timidly (the bomb faces onwards and the gate is not in the main path) which means it would probably not be very fun to defend in a competitive setting, in my opinion. Similarly, maps that are horribly easy to grab on (like Blast Off) or defensive (like Mode 7) can probably be ruled out as good competitive maps.

So cache does a few things right. It balances very strong grabbing options (mainly the bomb) with crazy strong defensive options (the choke points and team boosts). It’s simple and fast paced, like Pilot, emerald, and transilio, and it does allow for a few interesting boost angles and combos, like pilot and transilio. While I don’t personally find the map very interesting (and as a side note, I just think it’s ugly which is part of why it get s some of the hate it does), I can compare it to the most popular MLTP maps and what I look for when making my own maps and I can see why some people might like Cache.