I've decided to expand upon the criticisms I posted in the V5 WEEKEND suggestion, and open a thread for others to voice their compliments and criticisms in an effort to help the developers improve V7. I've moved anything about INFRA to the end of the post to put more of a focus on everything else.
- Bazaar's current iteration looks like a rushed fix to the first iteration. A single-floor shopping center with an extremely tall ceiling looks unnatural. Couple that with the clothing shop having a railing that drops down into the shopping center, which is something I've never seen done before, in real life or in a videogame. In my opinion, there was definitely a better solution to Bazaar being dead than this. Don't even get me started on the random connection to the subway, which adds onto the feeling that this iteration was rushed. Subway tiles on one wall, then it magically becomes the wall of the shopping center? I know this one is a minor thing to get hung up on, but I can't help but keep noticing it every time I go into the Bazaar.
- Slums Warehouse is a property I asked for when playtesting, but it didn't get added until after V6 came out. I like it, but it needs a better interior design. Also... we need to be able to shoot through the glass.
- Suburbs is generally an improvement, but it feels isolated compared to the rest of the map. The same thing can be said about Lakeview, which is also another good property.
- I like how the forest looks. I don't like the roads going through the forest. It's like they were designed to intentionally cause as many crashes as possible. The decision to keep the roads blank with no lines painted on them is most of the problem here.
- The roundabout next to Bazaar parking, and by extension the entrance to the Business District is probably the weakest part of the map to me. It lacks logical design - there's no signage, the entrance to Business District is a long asphalt corridor walled off on both sides, and the roundabout serves its purpose by slowing people down but at the cost of looking out of place.
- Tidals is a fun property. I like it's addition, even if I miss Projex a little bit.
- J&M Glass Co. should've been moved somewhere else instead of outright removed. I like the road that replaces it, but I want Glass Co. back.
- Industrial 3 is cool. I remember seeing it during a playtest and I thought it was awesome.
- Cuckgate is cool. I knew for a fact it would be the most popular property in the server when I playtested it, but I think The Bunker took its spot eventually.
- The wood cabins are largely okay, but I really don't like the one next to Lakeview. This is nearly impossible to raid if PD are on, and if you are not a large group. Cool idea though.
- Parker Tunnel is cool. It was one of my favorite things to see in the original V6 trailer.
- Slums is cool, I was okay with both the current and previous iterations.
- Typically, gas stations only have one-way exits when it's a high-volume gas station, one with hundreds of pumps like a Costco or Sam's Club gas station. Gas stations with single pumps never have one-way exits, because they're supposed to be entered from both sides so people can access both pumps no matter where they come from. This would help the flow of traffic through these parts of the map.
- Bank is cool, but being stuck within the bank during a robbery got old fast. I miss driving around the city and sniping cops, but this cannot come back with the current city's layout.
- Office's current iteration is... okay. Better than the first and second iterations, and a shit-ton better than V5 Office for raiding.
- Foundry needs to be removed or reworked substantially. It is incredibly difficult to deal with 9 kilometer sightlines that have little to no counterplay (bombs can't reach most of the defenses within the property). This wouldn't be as big of a problem if the entrances weren't so funnel-y, and if long-range optics were actually viable to use outside of specific situations. There's other issues with the long-range optics on the server that don't fit here, but if you go looking in the suggestions section of the forums, I'm sure you'll find what I'm talking about soon enough.
- The area around Roadcrew is heavily underutilized, and I'd love to see more things there in the future. Maybe more player-owned shops, or apartments? Not sure.
- PD is cool. I'm a big fan of the new garage and interior, as it adds more depth and defensive capability to any PD defending a raid.
- Storage is cool. I liked the old one as well but it had the same problem the gas stations do with the one-way exits, so I'm honestly okay that it's gone.
- City shop is great. We need more shops or player-owned properties in the City.
- The Bunker is better now, but still insanely broken. The addition of 3 lanes in the sewer entrance is an improvement, but it suffers from the same problem Bazaar currently does - it looks unfinished and artificial. The middle lane is a perfect example of this, as it drops off to a ladder for no reason, with 2 roughly player-width columns in front of it. These changes are largely an improvement in the case of Bazaar and The Bunker, but they needed more time for polish, so they could be brought up to parity with the rest of the map.
- Speaking about The Bunker...
- After a while of playing on V6, it seemed like it took too much inspiration from whatever @peeps was playing at the time. I'm not saying that's bad, but I find it jarring to see so many textures and models ripped from INFRA, to be Frankenstein-ed into a RP map. The assets in this game aren't conducive to a modern city, despite INFRA containing some city assets. That's not to mention the usage of the Morko concept from INFRA in the V6 easter-eggs, which also take an insane amount of concepts/ideas from INFRA. I would much rather have a RP map that mostly used TopHattWaffles RealWorldTextures than something that tries too hard to look and sound like INFRA. As a result of this "inspiration", we have properties like The Bunker and Foundry, which are, in my opinion, out of place and harm the raiding meta by being extremely difficult to attack no matter how big your group is. That's also not to mention the similarities between The Bunker and a building you see about 1 hour 30 min into INFRA, which also confirmed my suspicion of V6 taking too much inspiration from INFRA in the first place. There is reason to believe that both The Bunker and Foundry would not exist if INFRA did not exist. You also have the STALBURG Pumping Station, and Stalburg Tunnel...
Stalburg being the entire namesake of the wiki pages created for anything in the INFRA universe (INFRA and Obenseuer), as well as the location where INFRA and Obenseuer take place.
V6 also takes the mysterious Morko from INFRA, and uses both the models, textures, and namesake for its own easter-egg.
This style of paper is not too dissimilar from the papers you can find in INFRA.
Another thing you can notice between the easter-egg and INFRA's story is the theme of corruption at the government level, but this isn't exactly a super niche concept to introduce in a story.
Look. I understand that Garry's Mod is THE game where textures and models are ripped from other games to either port or augment in some new form. I understand that permission was given for assets to be used, but I still think this is too far. IT IS OKAY TO USE THE MODELS AND TEXTURES FROM INFRA. I DON'T CARE!!! SOME PEOPLE HAVE MISSED THE POINT ENTIRELY HERE, WHICH IS OUTLINED IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF SENTENCES. Leaving little breadcrumbs that allude to INFRA would've been fine, but we're straight up taking names, characters, main story concepts, and iconography from the game. The identity of Paralake City has been corrupted by the lore of INFRA, and it results in a map that feels weird to inhabit when keeping these concepts (the easter-egg, Morko, The Bunker, etc.) in mind. I really hope that V7 tries to build it's own identity like V5 and prior had.
TLDR; V6 borrows so heavily from INFRA that it loses part of its own identity and starts to feel like an imitation rather than a distinct map.
These are the "flaws" I could come up with on the top of my head. This was not intended to insult anyone, but rather to offer my criticisms on the map after a long time of playing it through different iterations. The polish that I see in this current version makes me incredibly hopeful for V7, and I hope that we can have an even greater map than V6 when it comes out. The reason I made this thread in the first place was to separate it from the posts made in the V5 WEEKEND thread, so we could have a civilized discussion about the good (and bad) about this map. This way, we could help the developers improve the map for V7 and onward. Again, this thread's purpose is not to insult anyone, no matter what language I use in this main post and onward. I would've gone crazy a long time ago if I had to develop an RP map for 128 players using Hammer+, so I salute the developers for having to go through this at all.
- Bazaar's current iteration looks like a rushed fix to the first iteration. A single-floor shopping center with an extremely tall ceiling looks unnatural. Couple that with the clothing shop having a railing that drops down into the shopping center, which is something I've never seen done before, in real life or in a videogame. In my opinion, there was definitely a better solution to Bazaar being dead than this. Don't even get me started on the random connection to the subway, which adds onto the feeling that this iteration was rushed. Subway tiles on one wall, then it magically becomes the wall of the shopping center? I know this one is a minor thing to get hung up on, but I can't help but keep noticing it every time I go into the Bazaar.
- Slums Warehouse is a property I asked for when playtesting, but it didn't get added until after V6 came out. I like it, but it needs a better interior design. Also... we need to be able to shoot through the glass.
- Suburbs is generally an improvement, but it feels isolated compared to the rest of the map. The same thing can be said about Lakeview, which is also another good property.
- I like how the forest looks. I don't like the roads going through the forest. It's like they were designed to intentionally cause as many crashes as possible. The decision to keep the roads blank with no lines painted on them is most of the problem here.
- The roundabout next to Bazaar parking, and by extension the entrance to the Business District is probably the weakest part of the map to me. It lacks logical design - there's no signage, the entrance to Business District is a long asphalt corridor walled off on both sides, and the roundabout serves its purpose by slowing people down but at the cost of looking out of place.
- Tidals is a fun property. I like it's addition, even if I miss Projex a little bit.
- J&M Glass Co. should've been moved somewhere else instead of outright removed. I like the road that replaces it, but I want Glass Co. back.
- Industrial 3 is cool. I remember seeing it during a playtest and I thought it was awesome.
- Cuckgate is cool. I knew for a fact it would be the most popular property in the server when I playtested it, but I think The Bunker took its spot eventually.
- The wood cabins are largely okay, but I really don't like the one next to Lakeview. This is nearly impossible to raid if PD are on, and if you are not a large group. Cool idea though.
- Parker Tunnel is cool. It was one of my favorite things to see in the original V6 trailer.
- Slums is cool, I was okay with both the current and previous iterations.
- Typically, gas stations only have one-way exits when it's a high-volume gas station, one with hundreds of pumps like a Costco or Sam's Club gas station. Gas stations with single pumps never have one-way exits, because they're supposed to be entered from both sides so people can access both pumps no matter where they come from. This would help the flow of traffic through these parts of the map.
- Bank is cool, but being stuck within the bank during a robbery got old fast. I miss driving around the city and sniping cops, but this cannot come back with the current city's layout.
- Office's current iteration is... okay. Better than the first and second iterations, and a shit-ton better than V5 Office for raiding.
- Foundry needs to be removed or reworked substantially. It is incredibly difficult to deal with 9 kilometer sightlines that have little to no counterplay (bombs can't reach most of the defenses within the property). This wouldn't be as big of a problem if the entrances weren't so funnel-y, and if long-range optics were actually viable to use outside of specific situations. There's other issues with the long-range optics on the server that don't fit here, but if you go looking in the suggestions section of the forums, I'm sure you'll find what I'm talking about soon enough.
- The area around Roadcrew is heavily underutilized, and I'd love to see more things there in the future. Maybe more player-owned shops, or apartments? Not sure.
- PD is cool. I'm a big fan of the new garage and interior, as it adds more depth and defensive capability to any PD defending a raid.
- Storage is cool. I liked the old one as well but it had the same problem the gas stations do with the one-way exits, so I'm honestly okay that it's gone.
- City shop is great. We need more shops or player-owned properties in the City.
- The Bunker is better now, but still insanely broken. The addition of 3 lanes in the sewer entrance is an improvement, but it suffers from the same problem Bazaar currently does - it looks unfinished and artificial. The middle lane is a perfect example of this, as it drops off to a ladder for no reason, with 2 roughly player-width columns in front of it. These changes are largely an improvement in the case of Bazaar and The Bunker, but they needed more time for polish, so they could be brought up to parity with the rest of the map.
- Speaking about The Bunker...
- After a while of playing on V6, it seemed like it took too much inspiration from whatever @peeps was playing at the time. I'm not saying that's bad, but I find it jarring to see so many textures and models ripped from INFRA, to be Frankenstein-ed into a RP map. The assets in this game aren't conducive to a modern city, despite INFRA containing some city assets. That's not to mention the usage of the Morko concept from INFRA in the V6 easter-eggs, which also take an insane amount of concepts/ideas from INFRA. I would much rather have a RP map that mostly used TopHattWaffles RealWorldTextures than something that tries too hard to look and sound like INFRA. As a result of this "inspiration", we have properties like The Bunker and Foundry, which are, in my opinion, out of place and harm the raiding meta by being extremely difficult to attack no matter how big your group is. That's also not to mention the similarities between The Bunker and a building you see about 1 hour 30 min into INFRA, which also confirmed my suspicion of V6 taking too much inspiration from INFRA in the first place. There is reason to believe that both The Bunker and Foundry would not exist if INFRA did not exist. You also have the STALBURG Pumping Station, and Stalburg Tunnel...
Stalburg being the entire namesake of the wiki pages created for anything in the INFRA universe (INFRA and Obenseuer), as well as the location where INFRA and Obenseuer take place.
V6 also takes the mysterious Morko from INFRA, and uses both the models, textures, and namesake for its own easter-egg.
This style of paper is not too dissimilar from the papers you can find in INFRA.
Another thing you can notice between the easter-egg and INFRA's story is the theme of corruption at the government level, but this isn't exactly a super niche concept to introduce in a story.
Look. I understand that Garry's Mod is THE game where textures and models are ripped from other games to either port or augment in some new form. I understand that permission was given for assets to be used, but I still think this is too far. IT IS OKAY TO USE THE MODELS AND TEXTURES FROM INFRA. I DON'T CARE!!! SOME PEOPLE HAVE MISSED THE POINT ENTIRELY HERE, WHICH IS OUTLINED IN THE NEXT COUPLE OF SENTENCES. Leaving little breadcrumbs that allude to INFRA would've been fine, but we're straight up taking names, characters, main story concepts, and iconography from the game. The identity of Paralake City has been corrupted by the lore of INFRA, and it results in a map that feels weird to inhabit when keeping these concepts (the easter-egg, Morko, The Bunker, etc.) in mind. I really hope that V7 tries to build it's own identity like V5 and prior had.
TLDR; V6 borrows so heavily from INFRA that it loses part of its own identity and starts to feel like an imitation rather than a distinct map.
These are the "flaws" I could come up with on the top of my head. This was not intended to insult anyone, but rather to offer my criticisms on the map after a long time of playing it through different iterations. The polish that I see in this current version makes me incredibly hopeful for V7, and I hope that we can have an even greater map than V6 when it comes out. The reason I made this thread in the first place was to separate it from the posts made in the V5 WEEKEND thread, so we could have a civilized discussion about the good (and bad) about this map. This way, we could help the developers improve the map for V7 and onward. Again, this thread's purpose is not to insult anyone, no matter what language I use in this main post and onward. I would've gone crazy a long time ago if I had to develop an RP map for 128 players using Hammer+, so I salute the developers for having to go through this at all.
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