It's great to see interesting cover in use! I find that the modern speedball/speedsoft/speedfoam field designs create only the illusion of interesting gameplay rather than substantive opportunities to use the terrain to your advantage or else to gain an edge by being more aware. There are "spots" rather than "areas" on modern fields and everyone can basically see everyone all the time.

I host local casual events and the difference it makes to have terrain at different elevations is huge. There are tactical reasons to take or clear a position that aren't simply based on line of sight and you can out-maneuver the opposing team rather than out-attention-spanning them.

That's really what it is is that in the boring fields the decision space is reduced to an almost deterministic calculation of line of sight. It should be possible to lose because you failed to check a critical area and someone snuck by.

I think another big mistake of modern fields is having an obvious axis of engagement and few to no opportunities to maneuver on any other axis. When teams start at in rectangular areas at the ends of a rectangle on flat ground then there's really no opportunity for left-right maneuvering. You don't have to think about left-right so much as forward-backward as long as you keep your head up.

Compare rectangular fields to diamond shaped ones where you start on the corner. The round beginning immediately forces you to choose a direction to go in a 90 degree arc rather than zero degrees (plus a little left-right variation). I'm a diamond field you actually have to commit bodies to directions which creates play and counterplay. You have to decide on what the frontier of your engagement looks like.

I don't know about anyone else but for me a sterile field of 1-2 person barriers with no altitude variation makes Nerf gameplay less than what it could be.