NEW MAP

[Tomo]

After some long hard thinking and mulling over the facts, here is my personal analysis and opinion of the maps.


Pines City

While Pines City is vastly more aesthetic than its opponent, its size to content ratio does not cater to everyone. While both maps have the same total area (excluding tunnels, which I'll get onto later), it is clear to me that V2D utilises that space far better and has more content within it. Just as an example, the city on Pines is twice the physical size of the city on V2D, yet it has only 16 buildings, compared to the 27 buildings present in Evocity. As well as this, the number of buildings outside the city is also greater on V2D than on Pines, leading me to believe that there is a lot of wasted space between regions on Pines which would simply dilate the closeness and interaction between players as a whole.

It's not just the number of buildings though, if we look into more detail at the types of buildings on both maps, as well as the locations, I find that Pines falls short again. In the city there are numerous identical shops, all lined up, and I just simply don't think they will be filled. I find it highly unlikely that there will be any more than 3 of the 7 shops occupied at any one time, purely because not everybody wants to roleplay shops, and unless the server is fairly full, people won't want to visit them all either. 

Furthermore, the city presents almost no options for low level criminal/aggressive roleplay, as it has a high-end/luxury theme to every single building within the city perimeter. There are only super high-end luxury apartments and everything else is shops or would not permit AggressiveRP. And as we head out of the city, the only real options for low-end criminal roleplay bases are the 3 huge industrial warehouses, which are all very similar to each other and are all in the same area. This is essentially confining a large portion of AggressiveRP to one small area of the map, which could cause issues with conflicting gangs, raids and crime, etc. Other than that, the only other buildings outside the city are modern villas, small modern apartments, or would not permit AggressiveRP. 

I see this as an insufficient amount of varied content for a map which is the same size as V2D. Pines is all strung together with very long highways, country lanes and tunnels, which would be fine if they had more content alongside them, but they don't, and therefore seem pointless and very boring to travel on. As for the tunnels, I can hardly be bothered to fly down some of them, let alone walk. Anyone without a car would get bored and leave before they get half way down. I understand that some tests done by other people showed that it's still quicker to get from the city to the furthest point on Pines than it is on V2D, and I respect that, but it's just the lack of any content along these super long roads, tunnels and highways that puts me off Pines.

I do like the way the map loops round and is not full of dead ends, but that unfortunately came at a price, which is the long, lazy roads/tunnels which connect all these areas or "pockets" of content together. I like the maps itself, like I said, I think it's very nice looking and well made, but I am just unsure of how well it would fit our gamemode and community. Whereas we know Evocity tends to fit the gamemode very well as it has done (in various forms) over the last 10 years.

V2D_Sexy_V3

Now, as for V2D, my only real issues with it are with the quality of the actual map itself. The lighting seems off and provides no atmosphere. The weather addon does work with it though, so maybe it's something to do with that? I'm unsure how it works to be honest. Also there are a few places where I find the map as a whole to be rough around the edges. You can tell it is an unofficial edit. There are a few places with messy joins or small gaps in the world etc, which could make it seem unprofessional. 

I do like a lot of the changes which have been made to the map in comparison to the original V2D. For example, the widening of all the stairs and corridors in the Nexus, as well as the general widening of streets, new Industrial layout, the alternative cave, and the new buildings which have been hollowed out of previous "fake" buildings around the city walls. However, some buildings were unnecessarily removed in my opinion such as Cub Foods. V2D has all of the Slums area, Industrial, UM etc to cover those types of criminal roleplays which I mentioned would be missing or scarce from Pines City.

Conclusion

While both maps have their flaws, my vote is now leaning towards V2D for the reasons mentioned above. This is just my opinion, I am not trying to persuade others to agree with me, I am simply stating what I personally want and don't want from our next map. If Pines was to win, I'd happily embrace it and work with the team to try and make it work well, but for now, V2D is where my vote lies.