i miss the casualness of darkrp and the amount of jobs on offer making things feel a bit more lived-in
it's comparing a potato to an apple with some things but what gta lacks is the content that a decent darkrp server provides, you'd have hobos playing music, people trafficking drugs cross-map, cops looking to arrest/shoot people, the perpetual gambling stand that people use as a hangout if they're cringe, the smaller maps making things a little bit more condensed and therefore causing you to see people way more
2200 hours on c18_divrp_v4 was a trip that i use as a perpetual litmus test of what darkrp can and should be, no VIP on divinity, no messy rule systems, just about having good fun and really pushing the envelope of giving you the tools to gather up with other players and have fun. always seeing people out on the streets, interesting builds coming from some incredibly creative people, constantly never knowing what you might connect and witness someone concoct from a bunch of balls with breen's face material'ed onto them and jiggling in the shape of a humanoid like it's 3dBallz, people making an entire pirate ship on 'water', huge houses spanning to the moon, slides, etc.
then you have the basebuilding where we automized printer-farming (minus putting ink in and loading printers into slots) lots of really cool genuinely interesting and insanely creative things coming from years of tools being offered to you
GTA on neb doesn't offer as much due to the early access scenario not having as much content (no player businesses just yet) but you can still find the overtly casual uncaring nature, the fun of hanging out with people, running down local civilians for kicks, going on joyrides etc.
I've always adored the aspect of a social MMO, it's something that can and should be way bigger in the gaming atmosphere but seems to have perpetually remained a relatively niche thing, and due to that attracts its own niche audience (which has grown smaller due to gmod moving out of the gaming limelight since ten years ago)
It's a very interesting aspect of handling a videogame where the players getting together and chatting each other up is very much the grand-scale focus, not to undermine the gameplay that you can receive from it. due to the fall of divinityRP but the rise in my interest in such a thing in gaming i've actually been delving into playing older MMO's for the sake of trying to find that spark again - as there's many from the turn of the millenium, older, and younger that have that same focus (Phantasy Star Online, Final Fantasy XI, Tibia, Everquest, Ultima Online ((which has surprisingly gotten its own tiny universe hand-made by an anon on /vm/)), very early World of Warcraft, really just lots of games.
I still pay monthly for a FFXI sub but I've been delving so much time into nebulous' gmod server that it's been on my perpetual backburner forever. The idea of a world with 20+ years of content that you can spend time digging through on your own is something that's enraptured me since I was a child, and with the ability to meet up & talk to other players the entire time is a huge boon to it. On garrys mod it actually evolved into meeting as many new players as possible, hanging out with them, befriending people, working your way up the social ladder - it's an entire aspect of the game people often don't talk about! you can work to figuring out the past of the server via oral history, wars between player groups, old drama, new drama, and the entire time you're learning about how these people did the things they did, integrating their playstyle, builds, means of attack into your own - becoming your own force-of-nature compared to a player who is just around to have a chat (not to downplay them). the 'world' around you becomes less about exploring the game-map, and more about exploring people, how they play, and making friends. hanging out, having fun, and using all the knowledge you've acquired to have MORE fun.
Much of this has been damaged outright in the modern gaming sphere due to wikis, datamining, and 'meta' builds taking a HUGE prevalence over just enjoying the game yourself - it's something I've had heavy disdain for after becoming that very problem in div and focusing almost entirely on basebuilding/farming printers right up until one day i just retired from it and started having actual fun again. Many of these older games rely on you to pair-up with people with different builds to finish-out quests and content, which is a great drive.
But, to wrap this back to GTA/Gmod, it's a snake that resurfaces at times to remind you of its existence. There are players on the GTA server focused solely on getting money as fast as possible and as much as possible over just having your own fun, a perpetual thing you'll see in videogames these days. A smaller community makes these players have more presence over them just being another person you see out in the fields.
Meanwhile, in gmod, this entire iteration's focus has been handing things out to players outright for the risks they take, with equipment taking a backstep and putting the roleplay in the spotlight. There is no grind to get anywhere, you are free to prove your writing capability and be handed whatever you wish, within reason. It means that I am not forced to grow weed and resell it for cash, replay simple jobs over-and-over for money, and eventually i can own a car. Yet - all of it remains social. I have socialized with other players, getting me friends, items, people to hang out with, inside-information about the personal stories going on in large resistance groups, a chance to hang-out with the characters who are big-name players (and therefore hang out with the people playing those characters), and the entire time I've made a list of friends whom I can talk to, hang out with off-server, and play other games with. I've joined a community of people - sometimes making very long-lasting friendships (i literally slept in the basement of a friend I used to play darkrp with when driving across the USA to california - and his father helped weld our car back together, saving the entire trip, at no charge to us - all because I socialized.
Much of this coalesces together, yet much of it remains distant. It's what kept me playing gmod, it's what's keeping me playing the GTA server, it's what's keeping me playing roleplay. But to basically wrap it - although they are the same at times, they are both carried by the end-goal of people coming together to accomplish something interesting. SeriousRP is about a story, unserious is about fun. Much the same, yet so very different.
i'll still likely always prefer gmod for what it can do and look forward to s&box for bigger (but most certainly not better, not even close for a long while) darkrp servers, with an eye on what serious servers do end up coming around.
