Oct 17, 2017, 10:12 PM
+Support.
The problem with Rockford isn't that it's too big, it's that the space is all filled up with stuff nobody wants to use - whether that's a cinema with seats you can't sit in, or it's the uneven ground undesirable for builders wherever there isn't already a building, or it's the massive parking garage which only serves to make everything feel more dead because there is absolutely no reason to park there, or it's the pre-fabricated out of town shops which nobody wants to run.
I'm well aware that there are plenty of vacant buildings throughout Rockford, but compare the placement of these in Rockford to the placement of these in an EvoCity map. In EvoCity maps, empty lots are emphasised, encouraging original and interesting RPs. How many times have you been into the Burger King in v4b1/v33x versus the number of times you've been in one of the main street shops that are empty by default? Nobody wants to pretend to be a Burger King employee, because that's already been set out for them. The fun is coming up with something new and interesting, building it, organising a group of people together, and then doing the roleplay. In Rockford the first thing you see when you walk out of the town hall is a wall of fake buildings and a bunch of apartments. You have to be looking for the shops in town if you want to find them, and you'll be lucky if there is actually anyone doing anything in them. Drive out of town and you'll find Taco Bell, RTA, Shell, and 7-Eleven with nobody in them. Hidden behind all of this is a huge, wonderful strip mall with six empty interiors, begging to be used, where nobody can actually see them.
Of course, there's a reason that the map has been designed as such. It's not because the map is bad. The mapmakers didn't want the map to look like it's a bunch of empty buildings because the majority of DarkRP servers want everything to be pre-fabricated. Most DarkRP servers have much tighter limits on building tools - they've probably disabled Advanced Duplicator, and maybe even the construction tools altogether. Limelight is just not the kind of community that Rockford was designed for; Limelight's players are able to give life to a map, rather than the map needing to provide the life for the players.
v5p is a good compromise between a map like v4b1 and Rockford, so it has my vote next time round.
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