Honestly I haven't played Containment in a long, long time. I did remember liking Longbow back in the day. I'd have to look over the maps more in detail to give a strong objective answer, however my gut reaction goes to Containment with 2 flag in mind. I remember the gates being pretty interesting at each of the bases.
So pretty much they are both 8v8 vehicle maps with a little bit of verticality and each one is good in it's own way so how would one be better than the other if they scored the same number of criteria points in a competition
You are not getting the point. I’m not refuting that different people have different ideas about “moderate pace”. I accept this as a fact. I am refuting the idea that one ought to base their designs on something as subjective as “moderate pace”. “Moderate Pace” as you’ve described it is ‘what people are used to’. Chokepoints vs Flow will absolutely lead to a different pace. What if what people are used to is a flat, neutral grey cube? Does that make it ‘good design’, beyond the fact that it caters to what the intellectually brutalized and demoralized herd already wants?
Even though I believe you can judge levels objectively, I don't believe you can assign point values to do it. The best way to measure them is to compare them to levels like them / or with the same goals and evaluate who does it better. That and evaluate if it succeeds at the goals it sets for itself. Essentially relative quality. I'd have to do some research to make a fair assessment.
Not even Bungie, the creators of Halo, knew what it was. H1 Through HR were noticably different in terms of map design and base mechanics. Halo has always had an Identity crisis. ld call halo a sandbox FPS and as such, is extremely flexible in the type of experiences it can provide. Level design is as much subjective as it is objective. This statement is verifibly and objectively true. It's functional art. Look to other functional arts such as Language arts, musical arts or Culinary arts and you will find this statement to be true. Let's compare it to literature. There clearly is poorly written books we can objectively consider bad. Then there are books whose "subject matter" isn't of our preference or it's written in a manner that isn't digestible/relatable to our perspectives so we're inclined to call it a bad book, even tho it may be an excellent book for those whose tastes it appeals too. I see this same trend happen far to often when it comes to judging a maps worth. Players don't like the subject matter of a map and what it promotes and all of a sudden it's labled a bad map. People have different tastes, this is turth and it's ever evident throughout all the functional arts. Diversity is key. I don't think 2 base 2 tower maps are objectively bad, but stagnation in design and writing the same book over and over and over again without improvement, often regression, I would call objectively bad. Therefore MANY 2b2t maps are BAD. I'm at work currently so typed this out faster then I would have liked to, so will extrapolate more when I'm off.
Guys, if you're having a short appreciation phase while forging on your map again where you simply just fly around, do nothing and look around (literally everyone here has been there)... Listen to the first half of this masterpiece and feel 10x better about what you just cooked up. But watch out! You could fall into a self-glorifying cycle!