In Quake and Q2, most competitive players spent their time bunny-hopping around the levels, and thus footsteps weren't much of a point, except when the player touched the ground to jump again. You can put footsteps in CPM, and all you would do is hear when people were touching the ground when they were bunny-hopping. Removing footsteps also adds in speeding up gameplay. In the end, it all adds up to a faster game. And the point that is made about level control seems rather curious.
Professional gaming is all about control of a game.
Players like to know that killing the other player will give them an advantage to keep going. Spawning shouldn't be an easy thing. In the recent CPL Asia event, Fatality was killed by Blue after Blue respawned, and MG'd Fatality, and after which, Fatality never got back into the match. Rockets should kill a player with one direct hit. Players should be able to spawn rape.