I think I can agree with most of that.
One thing to add though. If you always go for highly complex set ups, then there is a risk of the party being paralyzed by choices. If they know that the maps are going to be looping, with lots of secret doors and what not, then they are going to start acting on that - taking time to search every square inch, going back to the same spot time and again - that sort of thing.
Once in a while, that might be a good thing, but, for every adventure to follow that track, I'm not so sure. Sometimes that pirate smugglers cave is just a series of four chambers with access to the sea. It doesn't make much sense for every adventure to be so complex.
From what I've seen, Life's a Bazaar from the Shackled City AP is a lot more looping than linear. But that could just be my impression.
From the rather large amount of dungeon crawling I've done in the past year, I've seen what it can be like given a wide open map versus a channeling map. Wide open serves best when there are numerous plot lines occuring. When you have numerous factions that need to be separated and compartmentalized. A linear map is better when you have only one story to worry about.
IMC, Region B of the World's Largest Dungeon is wide open. There are five separate factions in the region as well as two large "no mans land" areas. The
map is very complicated. There are a few chokepoints, but, by and large, you can take a large number of paths through the region. And, there are any number of possible endings for the region.
Region C OTOH is much more linear. Makes sense. While there are a couple of factions, the entire region is subject to a rather large black dragon. Eventually, all paths in the region are going to lead to that climax. Because of that, the map does need to be somewhat linear so that you actually MEET the dragon. There's not much point in having a BBEG if you can't find him.
Definitely food for thought.
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