Click here for the same image without viewer enhancements (shadows and ambient occlusion disabled)
Brief Background:
The city opened in early June as an urban role-play environment with a touch of rural roots–which can be observed with their cottage style homes, and dirt back-roads leading to a small ‘farm country.’
Look and Feel (2 – OK Quality):
The environment reminds me of a long-gone City of Richmond during one of their many re-builds. The roads which are lined with a heavily used freebie road texture, mix-matched intersection asphalt textures and a light colored brick texture for sidewalks are reminiscent of one of the re-builds of the City of Richmond. The environment goes as far as to use some of the builds that were utilized in the City of Richmond long ago, whether this was intentional or not–I don’t know.
The look and feel is admittedly dull and feels thinned out with its mixture of urban and rural styling. The environment is lined with a few commercial buildings, and ample rental homes, including a questionably-infringing “Wall-Mart” building along with a McDonalds® buildings as seen in the images below–the latter also used prior in the City of Richmond.
A downside I found immediately upon visiting the environment was the extravagant use of local lighting in the region where many of the items appear to have the local lighting intensity on max (1.0) which washes out much of the area. With shadows and ambient occlusion enabled this issue is made worse to the point that I had to disable local lighting to take some of my snapshots.
Local lighting was disabled to take this image as it washed out most of the image due to its intensity.
Telehub when one first teleports to the region.
The telehub as seen in the above image looks drab and uninviting. When visitors first see the region this is what they will see, so it’s important to make a good first impression. Unfortunately, the current telehub design fails to deliver in this respect and leaves a poor impression as soon as you enter the environment.
The Role-play (2 – OK Quality):
The quality of role-play is less than what would be found in a typical casual role-play environment. Much of the role-play consists of ‘chat speak’ which precludes much of the detail found in similar environments. In addition to the ‘chat speak’ genre of role-play, it appears many of the players also partake in meter-based role-play and voice role-play. These may or may not be a positive attribute to you and as such, it’s recommended you visit for yourself and try the role-play out if you’re curious or unsure.
The Management (2 – OK Quality):
On one occasion when I visited the environment I noted estate managers using the region-wide dialog message to have a discussion with each other in the region along with shouting across the region to get others attention. For a first time visit my impression was notably poor. It’s a distraction to role-play and to those visiting the region.
Apart from the immature usage of region-wide dialog messages to carry out conversations, the management appear on-par with other role-play environments. Much of the applications for the city are note-card based, not including the drivers license application form which is Google Docs based.
Overall (2 – OK Quality):
All-in-all the environment is below the quality level of similar casual role-play environments and fails to provide a unique role-play environment to players. Improvements could be made to the look and feel, role-play and the management. The addition of a usable online presence would also be useful to players and could help consolidate information.
Additional Information:
Regions: Relentless
Region Ratings: Adult
Roleplay Style: Casual Role-play, Meter-based Role-play, Voice Role-play
Voice: Enabled
by Caitlin Phenomena
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Is it me or does it sound like teenagers are running that place? Either that or people who must me new there..
[img]http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/7/72188/1655235-you_must_be_new_here_super.jpg[/img]
be* http://media.comicvine.com/uploads/7/72188/1655235-you_must_be_new_here_super.jpg *
Late night typing, how does it work..
The owners probably don’t even understand what this review is, if they’ve bothered to even look at it.
Maybe it’s perhaps you’re hard to find a single positive comment or review on this entire site, or the old standby from my random stop in’s here on these boards, the same old people comparing it richmond (which is terrible, richmond was a horror unto itself not to be equaled) Perhaps if anyone would ever use these comments or “reviews” in a positive manner (as I have been very hard pressed to find much of anything anyone has nice to say about anything in particular) then TRR would be given more credit. Perhaps we should be thankful that folks are still trying to bring on modern rp places when many fail and die. Be as long as the same old folk continue to troll on, I doubt many, such as myself, will garnish any creditibility to any reviews given on this site. It is such to the point that after recieving several links to some very enjoyable places reviewed here on TRR (though all have their faults, which are always expressly highlighted in these reviews) I have taken it upon myself to finally leave a comment on this little sim.
This was a throughly enjoyable little sim, and while you all scream “questionable” copyright infridgement, I think the wall mart is brillant. You failed to show that inside, at least when I was there, they were working on adding groceries and other typical things you’d find in a small town “wall-mart”. The mcdonalds I never seen, I think the review was done here during the initial builds where, yes, the admins were silly and had some place keeping things down. I wonder if anyone took the time to stop and ask if the sim was open.
Every sim goes through it’s growing pains, this place was one of the newer ones I’ve seen about, and I think it’s unfair that no one on this site fails to give any credit to folks just out there trying to give it their best. Kudo’s to the tiny staff out there at Alpena for trying to give it the best, and I look forward to fishing on lake superior again soon.
I appreciate your comment. I’d like to note however, the environment was open and had a good fifteen-or-so people in the region when I stopped by for the first time. In addition, the images shown in the review were taken on the day I posted the review. I wrote the review on the 14th. The “Wall-Mart” was empty and only had a “Vision Center” inside.
I can understand where you’re coming from however, but I do disagree with the notion that TRR isn’t beneficial to the role-play community. The entire notion for TRR in the beginning was to provide a beneficial resource to the role-play community and the role-play environment within which did not exist.
I do take issue with your notion that I should have been kinder because their new or because they are simply giving it their best. It’s the very center of the issue that I present in some reviews. It’s all well and good to try your best, but some people are looking for quality environments and not ‘they tried their best’ role-play environments. One of the issues is that some people simply aren’t accustomed to the idea that their role-play environment could be reviewed (before TRR, I’m not aware of any blogs that did). If I simply said, ‘they did their best’ and gave them a 4 star review because they did their best, what would that help the community? Role-players would be at a disservice because I’d be handing out good reviews to places that just don’t fit the bill. I’d also be doing a disservice to the role-play environments owners and management, instead of pointing out the flaws I saw and the way they could improve those flaws, I’d be handing out another good reviews because ‘they did their best.’
Are you able to present to me how–if I was to say that everyone did a great job and pointed out how they did their best even if their are some unnamed flaws–would be beneficial to the community?
People are free to disagree with what I have to say, as you have done, I do thank you for presenting your critique in a much more constructive manner than is typical. I look forward to hearing your side, and hope that it will help me improve TRR.
Fox,
Its as Caitlin says, the TRR is not out to villify or deride anyone just because. Caitlin offers up honest critiques in the hope that it will give the region owners something to look at if they decide to improve themselves.
All regions can be improved, Caitlin has even pointed out faults in my own regions. What I did with that was take it, work on what was pointed out, and work on increasing the points that were good. That’s what this review is for. If you feel that your sim is the best it can be, then that’s fine. No one is telling you that you have to improve or change, merely that there are places that could be improved.
TRR also helps sort the right type of roleplayer in with the right type of region. You feature casual, voice, and meter rolpelay. That is going to be a poor fit with the more in depth paragraph roleplayers. This isn’t to say your system is wrong, if it works for you it works. However, that system is not going to work for everyone, therefore a review like this will help paragraph roleplayer know what to expect. It also helps those who are a perfect fit for your roleplay style to find you.
I will say, as you point out, that some credit is do for trying but that doesn’t mean all the reviews should be glowing because of that effort. Again, as Caitlin states, if all the reviews would merely state that they tried their best and give four stars, then the credibility of TRR would greatly be diminished. I can not speak for others, but I for one am willing to help out a new region if they wish. Instead of merely critiqueing, i offer up my tips and tricks learned from watching others and building regions. I don’t roleplay in metered or voice areas, but if you contact me in world I can offer some suggestions.
Finally, I’d like to echo Caitlin in thanking you for the very civil way in which you lodged your complaints. The purpose of all this is to foster discussion on the state of roleplay in second life in general. That goal is poorly served when the comments turn to pits of name calling and mudslinging.
“Be as long as the same old folk continue to troll on, I doubt many, such as myself, will garnish any creditibility to any reviews given on this site”
This is why I stopped visiting. I was tired of seeing the same people fighting.
Nobody just “takes over” a sim and it’s account for SL funds. They have to be sold or given, exchanging ownership, and in some kind of agreement.
Lots of arguing about the same people over and over… To be totally honest. I’ve seen most of these mudslingers roleplay before and I’ve have to say 90% of them put more effort into petty fighting on here/in world than I ever seen them develop a good RP character/story for any of these sims.
I’ll go back under my rock now and pretend to know nothing.
I don’t think it’s fair for someone to say that reviews on TRR are less credible because of the people that comment on TRR. Sure, you can disagree (I welcome constructive criticism–I know I don’t do everything perfectly) with the reviews and thus is why I keep the comments open to peoples opinions, and I rarely censor or remove any comments (unless of course they are repeated spam attempts). Some are more constructive in the comments than others are. I’m not about to censor those that aren’t, however.
Let me ask you (or anyone else) a question: what would you like to see from TRR? Keeping in mind, that I have no control over what others comment with or say and I don’t wish to censor them either. What can I do on my end, to make TRR a more valuable resource to yourself, and others?
This sim is closed now, the owner pretty much dipped out and didn’t pay tier, leaving those who rented without any refunds. Shocking, I know.