"Your opinion? Young man, I am the better mapper. You don't have the authority to have an opinion, and if you don't like my work you are jealous."I have never said that. You can always have an opinion, but that doesn't give you any authority over those who have clearly done more than you on any given subject. All your rights to speak out are cancelled by the rights of others to ignore you. It can't get simpler than that.
While I've changed many things in my maps in this decade, I was certainly not going to put up with the childish rants of people like Trapt or Ant when they were based on their subjective opinions, and as such had no reason whatsoever to force me to change my initial texture or lighting schemes. You can call it arrogance or chips or fries, but I've had a lot of university subjects and classes on colour theory, lighting, construction etc, enough to not deserve some of my choices to be defined as "random" out of ignorance or malice.
If players like it they will say so. If they don't, well, then they just didn't think it was that great - if you didn't do it to please them, who cares?You're wrong. I said I should be the #1 person who'd have to be pleased with my maps, but not the only one. I make my maps for myself and for those who'll enjoy them (people who have similar tastes in architectural, gameplay or even story aspects as me).
You talk of players as a unified group of people, yet not everyone likes the same maps and mods. So even if 2000 people disliked my map and 500 people liked it, I'd still prefer to keep those 500 people and myself happy. Who wouldn't?
Get it your head, we are not in the game industry. The number of people we please does not translate to money. Hence, it becomes secondary.