It's just a serious commitment to keep up with the build orders on other maps to have any form of success. I haven't played in 3 months now and I already dread playing Seton's again because I am rusty on the build orders and know I will mess up the first couple of games. And that is for only 1 map. Dual gap is just super relaxed because everything is so sheltered and you have time to develop.
Often makes for a boring match though.
I'm not convinced you have any more than a 65% understanding of why people gravitate towards dual gap.
Why do build orders matter so much in the first place, because of the required expansion and protection of these expansions?
Sound like a good reason to play other maps than setons where build orders don't matter that much. Perhaps try map generator or maps that aren't played often. At a map gen map, a build order can't really exist because the map is generated for you before the game starts.
Btw, precisely because dual gap is played a lot, I am sure there are a lot of build orders for that map as well. Just play many different maps and you will be able to make your own build order. Way more fun as well if you ask me.
Build orders don't matter at all it's just an excuse people make up. Pretty much every map you start with 3-5 mexes in the core, and a few more around the base, maybe a hydro. You know it takes 2 mexes and 1 pgen to run a factory. It's trivial to see how many factories you can run and how many pgens you need. Dual gap is one of the exceptions where u get a bunch of mexes right next to each other and have to eco hardcore, so you need a special BO instead of a generic one.
While the importance of build orders is far overblown (besides gap and the setons air slot..), this part:
"It's trivial to see how many factories you can run and how many pgens you need."
is actually a lot harder than it seems.
You are right in that, once you have a "feeling" for faf eco, you can play any map decently well and BOs only matter at the highest level/in tournaments.
One of the many reasons gap (and setons) are so popular is that it's far easier to robotically follow a BO you already played a dozen or more times to get to t3, than it is to develop said feeling.
This of course comes at the cost of generalizability (a gap BO won't work anywhere else) but it does allow you to stop fighting yourself/your eco management and start actually fighting your opponents with little effort.
Dudes major clownworld about map gen btw, the problem isn't not knowing hilly or canis or wonder "bo" it's about being too incompetent to realize what the mex spread causes the meta of the map to be.
Map gen solves it by making the meta as obvious as a truck ramming into your bedroom wall and devolving teamgames into either do nothing but t3 mex or do nothing but gun acu into Waco, Texas at mid.
