I have to say I do agree quite a bit with the OP, in my opinion the map changes and pushing of one-time purchase content is responsible for this:
In terms of the map,
The map has been expanded to the point now where RP and PvP activity is spread out across a needlessly large area - with Core Sector and the HCZ update being the biggest offenders. It used to be the case that certain RP objectives such as test locations in the form of SCP containment chambers and the routes around the map would create 'high traffic' areas that see a lot of player footfall. These traffic areas would make the map feel alive and populated and players would bump into each other and have idle conversations - this doesn't occur any more as the players active on the map are spread thinner across a large area and it makes the site feel vacant anywhere other than D-Block and it's immediate area.
Code-5 breach response has also been accidentally reworked by the HCZ update into an incredibly unfun state - how many times since the HCZ update have you seen the Foundation organise a firing line at the HCZ entrance tesla gate to try and hold against breached SCPs? Zero? It is now the case that when an SCP is breached or a hacking alert is triggered, the responders have to fan out as individuals in order to properly cover the ground. The end result is that the breach response team is forced to spend 3-4 minutes per life travelling across the site to get to the most recent callout to just die either alone or in a group of two or three in the space of a few seconds. When this happens their death time is desynced with the rest of their team so they are destined to suffer the same fate of respawning, walking through empty corridors for 2-3 minutes and then dying in 10 seconds back-to-back until the breach is finished.
The HCZ is a geographically user unfriendly space, especially to new members of research and the GSD who now actively avoid going to it just because they don't know where anything is in there, and being a CL locked area there is no avenue for exploration to familiarise themselves with it. Attempting to do any form of RP in the HCZ is now such an inconvenience that people would rather avoid the RP altogether. I think I speak for all of us when I say all of the current content in the HCZ could be refitted into a HCZ one third the size.
In terms of Core Sector, I will start with the Research wing:
Why are there two seperate chemistry labs? They are identical rooms that serve the same gameplay function - which means splitting them down the middle only splits players into two different rooms. Why is the hallway that divides them larger than one of the chemistry labs? Hallways are not RP spaces. There are individual office rooms for CL1, CL2/3, Exec and DoR spawn points, with each office space having it's own document storage - the only reasonable segretation is to separate CL4 researchers from CL3- researchers so that they can store documents seperately to avoid info leaks, and this can be achieved with just two office spaces - one for the DoRs and their Execs and another for everyone else. Segregating out all of the researchers removes the need for them to collaborate on how to divide up their space. Has the research hall ever been used for anything? What justification was there for creating an additional lecture hall when the personnel wing lecture hall is lucky to get one or two lectures per week? Did we really anticipate that the PW lecture hall would at some point be so over-booked that we need another one?
The Site Administration wing:
All members of Site Administration are senior CL4, which means it is not possible for them to info leak to one another - they therefore do not need seperate document storages and therefore do not need individual office spaces. Site Administration also do not often commission or sign off on research tests or other forms of in character documents, they really do not need all of this space. The SA wing begins with a hallway that leads into a lobby that leads into another hallway - hallways are not RP spaces and are simply not needed. The needless amount of space in the SA wing make it a segregated space that is vacant until one of the ~6 players who belong to it log in. Why is this much space allocated to so few players? I will say however that the mappers nailed the Site Director's office, the person who owns this space should enjoy a certain level of segregation and grandeur due to their position on the site.
The Ethics Committee wing:
For the sake of longevity I will not echo what I just wrote about the SA wing, but once again there is a hallway that leads into a lobby that leads into a hallway that leads into another hallway - and each Ethics Member has their own individual office; The EC is an investigatory department which means they are all sharing all of the information and documentation they have anyway, so why not just have a universal archive room, an office for ECAs, an office for ECMs and an office for ECC to avoid shared documents creating info leaks? and each ECM has their own office space, how do we justify each ECM having their own office? For their own meetings? The EC wing already has two meeting rooms and a sitting room. Are we expecting all members of the Committee to somehow be holding their own meetings individually at the same time? Why are nearly a dozen different rooms being allocated to FOUR players? All of their gameplay involves roaming around the site with O-1, which means they aren't even using these offices 99% of the time anyway.
The Tribunal Room was a fantastic addition however and I cannot fault it.
So - Floor 3. There are more hallways and lobbies on floor 3 than there are in the remainder of the site combined. There is an elevator room lobby that leads into a waiting area, which leads into a hallway that connects to another hallway and a staircase. If you followed the aforementioned hallway you enter into another hallway that is the same length as the personnel wing and has the O5 offices spread across it, if you went up the staircase you landed in a hallway outside of the A-1 bunks. None of the aforementioned spaces are used for anything other than access, hallways are not RP spaces. Why does Floor 3 have a 'secret operations room' - are not all of A-1 and the O5 Councils' operations a secret? For the same reasons as stated in what I said about SA and the EC, there is no reason for any one council member other than -1 to have their own individual office. Why is there a room that holds nothing but a series of walls that are textured to look like server stacks? Why is the CL5 operations center not only comparable in size to the PW lecture hall but also set up in the same 4-tiered cinema seating fashion? Are the one or two members of CL5 that are only ever going to be in there during code-black supposed to imagine that it is a populated control room? Why, behind a CL5 blast door leading in to the operations center, is there a small 2x2m square space with a book case in it - and a wooden door? What protection is the wooden door offering that the blast door does not? Considering Floor 3 is home to an ISD regiment capped at 25 players, 4 Overseers and a couple of OSAs there is no real justification for it to be this big.
Medbay. Medbay has a lot going for it - but it is the case that the space is too big to suit it's RP requirements and as far as I know there was never any plan to expand medical RP to the point that this much space would be needed. There is enough seating in the main lobby area of medbay for the entirety of the site to sit down simultaneously and it is the case that the medical players are not so busy that there is a waiting period to be seen, which means it is another big, open empty space. At the back there is another lecture theatre - are we sure that medbay needs it's own cinema-style lecture theatre when we already have two unused theatres in the personnel wing and research wing? I don't think there is a requirement for the small room adjacent to the entrace of the main waiting room, certainly not as a bunk space as the combat medic bunk space and spawn area is more than suitable for all non CL4 medical staff.
Okay. If you haven't gotten bored of me yet, onto the one-time purchases.
Pay-to-win guns. In my personal opinion, expanding the paid weapons to include the weapons that were previously only obtainable by climbing to regimental CO positions was one of the most damning and damaging decisions that CN has ever made in handling SCP-RP. I have heard staff members say in the past that these paid store guns are not pay to win and, as I have done in the past, I will state it plainly here and now that they are. They are paid weapons that out-perform most weapons in the standard loadouts and it's as simple as that. This is why the pay-to-win guns are so bad for the game: it used to be the case that if players wanted to upgrade their loadouts and perform better in PvP against SCPs and enemy factions that they would have to climb to a senior position in one of the MTF regiments. This meant that the MTF Commanders could use the upgraded loadouts as an incentive to get their COs to perform regimental duties in the forms of trainings, roster management and document maintainence in order to justify their position as a CO and their access to the better loadouts - this promoted good health within the regiment. By taking the MTF COs main weapons and making them paid content, there was much less of an incentive to climb to a senior position in an MTF regiment - which deprived the regiment's of COs and ultimately bought about the decline of their ability to manage themselves. Which means by making CO standard weapons paid content - the health of MTF regiments was directly and negatively effected. It is also the case that the roll-out of paid weapons was not premeditated on and resulted in significant balance issues that needed to be corrected, the best case of this is the MSBS rifle - which was one of the most popular pay-to-win weapons - was nerfed shortly after a lot of players had paid for it, effectively scamming the purchasers out of their money.
Paid reality bending SCPs.
I know that the staff team is already fully aware of how unfairly strong Type-Green and 8837 are so I will not talk about this particular point in detail - only to say that it should have been easily conceivable to the devs that highly mobile SCPs that can instantly kill people from around corners with no counter play and make themselves invulnerable would be very poorly received by the playerbase and that it is soul destroyingly unfun to play against them.
Much needed TL;DR - the map is full of vast empty spaces that serve no RP purpose and passive RP objectives are more scattered, which means players aren't playing together any more. The map is designed to function at max population and if the population ever falls below this margin then gameplay just falls apart. There is much less of a reason to put the time into climbing a reg and pushing paid content is being prioritised over balance. (Don't get me wrong - CN is a business and it needs to make money, I truly and fully appreciate why this content gets pushed. But I think that devs are overlooking the need to balance content additions properly before they are dropped).
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