There are a few things that make AH appealing or less so to newer players and fighter jocks. Maps can and do make these things more or less likely to develop.
1) Flight times to the fight.
2) Intensity of the fight determined by two things.
a) Distance of the fields from one another.
b) Strategic import of the base (altitude, proximity to other bases, proximity to critical strategic targets like HQ)
3) The number and location of ports and CV TG's. The more the better as far as I am concerned. On certain maps the only good fights occur during the brief time a CV stays alive near an enemy base.
4) Vbases in relation to airbases. On some maps there's a 1 to 1 ratio, that's far too much focus on vehicles.
So, there are a few factors that make maps less appealing, therefore more boring to fighter jocks and newer players which rely on frequency and intensity of air to air fights and furballs for their enjoyment.
1) Relatively long distances between airfields (not airfields and vbases).
2) Bases all being at sea level. Higher altitude bases add strategic value.
3) Too few CV TG's for the land/sea area.
4) Too many Vbases and V spawns.
Obviously, some maps seem to have all the negative aspects and none or few of the positive aspects. Maps do affect gameplay very profoundly. Maps are what bring the furballer and the land-grabber hurtling at each other or in totally opposite directions. When the Furballer, GV'er and Land-grabber are all pulling in a myriad a directions because of map design that map becomes very boring and detrimental for gameplay. Some maps bring furballer/GV'er/land-grabber together in common goals for their different reasons, that makes for a very exciting and action packed map. Small maps are good at this because with only 60-75 fields relatively close together and/or alot of CV TG's per area common objectives for the 3 playstyles abound.
Pizza map was a great example of a map that did not bring the 3 play-types together. Furballers were pretty much left out unless a CV was close to a coastal base or one team was near another's HQ. Milkrunners had an infinite number of strats to milkrun and GV'ers had a virtually hermetically sealed off GV war. Pizza map was particularly appealing to GV'ers because, for the most part, they could just play with other GV'ers and not have to worry about aircraft, it was like one gigantic inter-connected 'tank-town' (ie: the canyon vbases and the rim vbases). This eipitomizes what makes a map boring for the majority of us. That is a map that takes the various playstyles and by its very deisgn hurtles them in diamterically opposed directions.
Zazen
