This is based off the “Unpopular opinion about Vertigo”. That post had very flawed logic about Vertigo and claimed it had a ton of variety(didn’t know A smoke spams was variety). But, I saw someone compared it cobble with 1 site getting hit every round and very fast CT rotates which is probably the most accurate thing (just extra CT shooting down at Ts unlike cobble).

Anyways the point of this post is Nuke is one of the most dynamic maps in the pool and has been very popular in the pro scene with its actual variety. In pugs though, obviously the maps like mirage, inferno, d2, overpass and even train are fine with people understanding train to a good extent (to be fair it’s almost as old as mirage).

I can not speak to EU pugs on nuke, but in NA every game people are lost and 95% don’t even know smoke wall lineups which destroys half of the map with faking outside control. Nuke is literally the most avoided map(vertigo gets picked more as a pug map in faceit) and if people knew the basic utility like they do on mirage, it could become a very popular map. NA pugs, even at lvl 6-10 (low lvl 10s, can’t speak for 2400 elo), involve just sitting lobby or outside every round until you get picks.

If everyone learned nuke utility/setups and stopped banning it, I think there would be a lot less complaints about the stale map pool (expect mirage which is understandable after all these years).