Although I tend to agree it's not that important, many players put a high priority on skins. If you look at some other games, you even have to pay to attain special skins and people will happily pay for them! So, yes, it is a progression for many people.
Ah, that explains it. I had set it to 1 and it was allowing a 2 player difference between teams. I set it to 0 only to find that it disabled it, as you just pointed out.
Do you mean that only 4 maps are currently stable? If so, which ones?