- Maps for Heroes 3

I agree that it's more logical, but what about the gameplay itself?
I don't really like skipping necessary or unnecessary locations, and not visiting important places that I sometimes really want to visit in order to increase my hero's stats, but instead just rushing straight through and achieving victory. I don't like this strategy, although if necessary, I can do it for a while, but usually I don't have time for it, unfortunately.
I think that you should primarily look at the points, and if several players have the same number of points, then, of course, you should look at the speed. This is my personal opinion. And if it's not too much trouble, please post the map here so we can all try to evaluate it, okay?

The gameplay depends largely on what the map contains. Very often, to complete it faster, you need to choose the right route and priorities. However, maps like "Forward, Vikings!" are also very interesting, even though the game boils down to constantly hiring new and new heroes. The player's task is to choose a plan for the game and implement it. Otherwise, the tournament competition is meaningless. The same goes for playing for points; the statistics of point-based tournaments have finally convinced me of this. Another point is that to evaluate the completion of a map, a starting save is still needed; otherwise, comparison is impossible.
Regarding playing on SOD. I've already tried completely disabling TE settings in the starting save... We can try this system again, where it becomes completely irrelevant what you play on.
But in any case, if a player can play, they will play.
The time for preparing the save will have to be increased, but for slightly different reasons. However, increasing the game time will lead to the need to hold single-round tournaments. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
I still don't quite understand what, besides the time, you don't like about our system?
Playing in an arena tournament boils down to the main hero visiting all the upgrade locations, fighting with minimal losses (but this applies to the troops that will be needed in the arena), and choosing the right buildings. And the difficulty of creating arenas is just a minor thing.