Sniper battles from spawn, and no nade hallway of doom?
Yeah just tradeoffs I guess. I mean at one point you could get a kill and buy a mac-10 first round if you were lucky enough.
Mostly balance issues, I think. Balance matters in pubs.
If dust had the underpass-stairs option from the beginning, and maybe moved the T spawns forward by 1 second, it probably would be just as popular today.