Here's my opinion on the matter (crap I wrote a lot, sorry) - As ShootMania is, Elite is simplistic gamemode, you have an easy goal in mind whether you are defending or attacking while being hard to master.
Let me explain why to those unaware even though, whats coming, seems to be a tutorial on the whole game and you probably already know it.
Aim & ammo preservation is essential, even when pre-firing (or spamming you guys like to call it).
Defense: Of most of the round, you and your team needs to know where the attacker is, I wont bother explaining this thoroughly but as you know, getting out of cover is dangerous and your peaks need to be damn fast. With this in mind you should be able to spot the target and help your team figure out the behavior of the atk (which is completely map dependent), when the attacker is close to a defender (which happens more than you think), you have to move in a way to throw the atk off and make yourself hard to hit while also trying to hit the atk yourself. All this could be happening in seconds while your teammates can choose to come to aid.
Attack:Throughout the round, as atk you will have constant prefire on your location, your job is to move fast and quietly as possible while making it hard for defense to know your location. Shooting/missing will only reveal your position and allow defense to pre-fire more and have a good peak on you while trying to figure you out. When close combat (yes map environment dependent as well), atk needs to surprise the defense while making their target easier to hit.
Movement / Environment
Well I got to say this is a huge part to elite, once you learned how to play and have some experience, the only way to get better is to improve your movement. Wall jumping is great and dynamic, using this mechanic allows you to move around faster or simply get a good peak / pop-shot on the enemy. Using a jumpad may be great for a boost, but its loud, predictable and anyone can use one. Want to build your map with a jumppad to take any player to a higher stronger attacking route? well if you design that part in a way its obstically walljumpable, then it's far rewarding to the player and more enjoyable while being challenging if defense are near as you can do things differently. Jumpads don't really allow much dynamic play tbh and its quite uninteresting. Maps are great when they allow you to be a bit sneaky on the defense and surprise them (although some mappers do take this way too far and create a route dedicated to it which uses half of the time of the round). boooriing
If a player is a master of movement and speed around an elite map, they can gain any control they want and should be able to outsmart the defending team and take them out.
When I was playing in a team, the most interesting part was noticing our mistakes and how the enemy team behaves on different situations around the map and how we play as a team or on a 1on1 situation, once you get the picture you realize that when maps are designed extremely differently with new personalities, the environment changes how players behave. That's one reason why high level teams prefer to stick with maps they know now, which also means mappers need to work their ass off to impress the average and high level player, which is awesome because it promotes more creativity in both tactics, flow and 'good looks' to a degree in the map-building business.
I don't think there is much wrong with the gamemode itself, its simplicity is what it is while new maps give something new. Yeah other 'newer' gametypes can easily stomp elite in more depth in strategy and skills, but elite has been around for longer and still has the larger playerbase which gives it the edge amongst others. You can also see its a very developed gamemode, to the point when the maps matter so much to the gameplay, especially now when its still pretty hard to build a better more favorable competitive map than the current old ones (Spitfire, Rust, Paladin 2k13 & Collided v2)
From what I've learned in elite playing at a high level (some time ago), watching and learning from the highest level teams and from learning as much as possible in elite mapbuilding on what the needs are. I enjoy playing far more than I used to, however I now rather enjoy playing new built custom maps made by the community as the official standard maps that come with elite today, can get boring unless you are in a team in training. If not, play elite in a custom map server and I promise you will enjoy it far more, especially playing on maps made by yourself or by friends.
If custom maps take off better than now and if we have a list of maps with the highest rating from votes ingame on all servers, I am sure we can come up with an awesome fun map pool that's non-competitive. But then again they might just be as competitive, nobody knows what the future holds.
