Mob Arena Design Issues

Hi, i've noticed a lot of people having a go at making arenas which is great, however, more thought needs to go into designing them.

We need to set up approval and rules for the arenas because some i have seen being built will be so easy to kill mobs you can just farm gold, not what we want.

Things like bottle neck mob traps should not be allowed, funneling them into a room that drops them into lava isn't an arena, its a killing machine.

@Skeight, before you make arenas active, please think about how they will be played, maybe test them before making them public, I know it will be harsh not to allow somebody's arena to be used, but it could upset the balance of the economy as bad as having no money at all.
(maybe make them none money ones, just common items as prizes as a compromise)

Some of the rules that should be in place for designing them I think are;
(In a 21x21 arena [size of mine])

Possible Rules

No more than 4 blocks of lava exposed to players/mobs (more can be used for decoration)

ALL areas of the arena that are accessible to the players, must be accessible to the mobs (to stop archer camping)

Spectator boxes must be at least 16 blocks away from arena floor (to stop spectators distracting mobs)

(Maybe rule, needs more thought)
Large mob traps need to be wired so they can only be used once every minute or so

The arena must include an enchanting table with 6-16 bookshelf around it

The arena should have 3 areas; The area for fighting itself, a spectator area (16 blocks away from arena) and a lobby, All 3 areas must be cut off from each other to avoid complications.

The arena fighting area must have the following; a player spawn area (where the players start), and a minimum of 2 mob spawn areas, i believe you can have more, 4 would be nice.

Any other rules you think need to be added, post them below for consideration, ill add them to this post.

Harsh guidelines don't you think

Harsh guidelines don't you think

there should be rules or at least guidelines about how an arena should work. and akarins rules seem good to me.
that said, as mobarena is pve, there will always be tricks, glitches and other ways to abuse AI. so primary goal of balancing should be the amount of credits you can earn per time and: people should enjoy playing.
f.e. Iron arena: the tower isn't accessible to most mobs so archers farm almost every kind of wave. but without melee, it takes a long time to go, so i think i can live with it. and: iron is straight forward and players seem to enjoy that...

in terms of good map design, everything that gives you an advantage, should have an disadvantage too. so maybe you need to take some damage from traps,... to get to the tower, or opening the door to the tower will result in some changes to the area which makes playing a little bit harder (cliffs to fall down, traps...)

I do think about how they will be played and have provided feedback to almost every person that has showed me their arena. There's a reason we don't have 10 arenas setup right now and it's not because I don't feel like setting them up.

Lava use is encouraged as it can create a cool environment but it does have to be controlled. For example, I love the nether arena that was built but with all that lava lying around I'm not going to set it up until it is blocked off and I've told the creator to do that.

The funnel thing may or may not be an issue but that's on a per arena basis. I set the spawn points so I can set spawn points inside buildings, etc to prevent people from "camping" an area, making the arena too easy.

I don't want too strict of guidelines as that may stifle creativity and we'll just have a bunch of cookie cutter maps that have similar layouts with slightly different themes.