Hmm... interesting, but usually a mapper has some intuitive knowledge of how his or her map should flow. Items determine greatly how players will move. Weapon and ammo spawns, and "hot" items like mega health and red armor, along with powerups, will be natural player magnets. Environmental damage areas, like fog of death, lava, slime, etc, will naturally repel players (except those unfortunate souls who are magnetically attracted to the above). Good map creation is based partly around understanding how you want the physical layout of your map to interact with your item placement. You can have wonderful level geometry that provides excellent flow of movement, brilliant texturing and great rendering speeds... and completely screw it up with bad item placement. The same works in reverse of course.
What amazes me is how some very bad maps can become very popular. Take for instance Map01 in Doom 2. The level is not well suited to deathmatch. You have a U-shaped corridor that connects three main rooms. One room has a crapload of weapons, including TWO BFG9000's, a rocket launcher, supershotgun, and chainsaw. Most deathmatches I've seen on this level are 1 vs 1 games that consist of one person standing in the hallway area camping and waiting for respawns so they can spawnfrag the other player repeatedly. Whoever spawnfrags and camps best wins. Yet... this level is played all the time as a 1 vs 1 map on Zdaemon servers. Perhaps that's a nod to nostalgia, but it still plays like crap and I don't think it's very fun!
I compare that to a level like Q2DM1. This is a level made explicitly for deathmatch. It's well balanced, the flow is exellent, the item placement is great, and it can be played with as little as two and as many as eight players and still provide decent gameplay. Why is this? It's the combination of the level geometry and item placement. The item placement isn't perfect, as it does favor the mega health room for some camping, but a little imbalance is needed for any map so that the gameplay doesn't become dull.
I can see how this tool might show how a map is utilized by players, but like any statistical tool it can only produce averages. Averages are always a poor reflection of actual reality. Take Tabun and myself. We both produce a high frag count when we play, but our playing styles are drastically different and thus we roam maps much differently, despite item placement being a constant. It's our fighting styles that differ. I tend to be an aggressive attacker, Tab is more of an aggressive defender. We go for items in different orders of priority. We advance or retreat and make weapon selections for different reasons. Now, add in other players to the mix, each with their own playing style. Throw in some newbies who don't know exactly where they should go. Now, throw mods into the picture that alter weapons, item behavior, and player physics. Will your map play the same in Rocket Arena or "Qdude's Frag House"* mod? I don't envy mappers their task. Creating a good map is not easy, which is probably why there are so many bad ones out there. I'm not sure how much this tool will help in that process, especially when you factor playing style into the picture.
*Qdude's Frag House is just something I made up.
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