Not anymore. I think that's to blame on both the players and mappers. But with the PP system players are always going to want to gain PP and gain ranks, there's not really a fix to that. However mappers that intentionally push and condone this PP mapping style which rank hungry players feed on ruins the most played section by saturating it with farm maps that players grind out all the time thus shooting them to the top of the most played section.
unfortunately it's fairly common that the most fun and interesting maps don't reward PP or are much harder than their farm map counterpart, so a lot of people pass over them ignore them in favour of grinding out a generic repetitive map that gives a lot of PP. I don't know what a better alternative would be but perhaps the maps with the most favourites could be a slightly better option than by play count.
unfortunately it's fairly common that the most fun and interesting maps don't reward PP or are much harder than their farm map counterpart, so a lot of people pass over them ignore them in favour of grinding out a generic repetitive map that gives a lot of PP. I don't know what a better alternative would be but perhaps the maps with the most favourites could be a slightly better option than by play count.