Architect Archive

I am incredibly excited about player cities. I think they are going to add a new level of intrigue, strategy, and fun to the game. With that said, a lot of things about player cities is not going to make everyone happy. People not being happy is a shame, but a way of life.

Here are the most common complaints I see

1. City's can't be private. I want a city for just me and my friends.

2. We could lose our city. It isn't fair that I save resources for a month and we lose control of our city to a bigger PA.

3. I don't want to join a city, why should I be forced to I was here first.

I don't think the devs should change a thing to address these issues. I think the way they are developing them will lead to the most dynamic gameplay.

No one should be able to control who joins a city and who doesn't. The gamespace is finite, thus the possible number of cities is finite. People come and go from this game all the time. If private cities were allowed, someone joining the game in 6 months could find themselves unable to live in a player city if they so choose. As a mayor you can /ban people who are being a pain. I guess technically you could /ban everyone who is not your friend. They can still line in the city but are open to attack from your militia. You do have some control over the population. However, if you /ban too many people you will be voted out of office.

Unfortunately, yes a bigger PA can come in and vote in their own mayor right after you create the town. I doubt this will happen very often, but it will happen a few times. The only thing I can say about this is don't place your city hall till you can defend it. This is just like dropping a faction base, it can be destroyed or taken over.

Finally, if I don't want to be part of a city why should I have to pay taxes if I was here first. Sorry, but being somewhere first doesn't count for much of anything in this game.

Yes and No

But cities CAN be private if the PA is alert enough, banned people cannot vote, this is the most common form of griefing that will be tired, It will most likely fail at some point but a PA banning people as fast as they move in will probably be a common practice at first

Loosing cities will happen, and happen often. The problem is perception, people will think that it is their city, it never will be anyone’s city, unless the PA is alert enough as I stated first.

I was here first is the funniest argument people will use I agree. The Indians where here first and how are thy doing? In California the Indians were replaced by Mexican and Hispanic populations and then replaced again by other Europeans. I was here first is a political zero and means nothing.

To own a city all you have to do is be so good at the job that people vote for you, or ( as seen in California ) be so popular for totally unrelated things that people vote for you anyway.

The first rule of MMRPG's is that if there is a way to grief play, people will use it.

The real question is... is this a bad thing as far as player cities go?

Will people be forced to move? Yes

Will there be people that are upset with hostile takeovers? Yes

Will some PA's dominate cities? Yes

Will many people be unhappy with how cities are being controlled? Yes

Take all those thing together, and it sounds like Star Wars to me. The trade federation ( PA's ) controlling things. People living in slavery to a city politician class as part of a large PA or as outcasts.

I think it will be great and exactly what the game need, we need all the intrigue and excitement we can get!

Everyone assumes that a /ban player can't vote, or that you can even ban a citizen of the city. Still think this is too new to really understand how this will intricately affect the game yet.

We only believe that because the developers told us you can vote out a mayor and then ban him from the city and kill him if you want. I assume to be a mayor you have to be a resident of the city. It follows nicely that anyone can be banned by the mayor.

The banned people not belie able to vote is an assumption, and perhaps not true.

In fact I kind of hope I am wrong about that. Can you imagine the Militia guarding the ballot box and killing any banned member of a city who is trying to vote. Just think if the intrigue!

I love it!!!

I believe there will be a lot more thought needed in implementation of this. For a group to start a city, I would think they would need to find a remote, clear area and then incorporate it. After doing so, anyone who then builds a structure within the perimeter would be under the city guidelines. Pre-existing structures should not alllow a city to form, UNLESS the owners agree to join the city. I know that there are minor city groups already in place waiting to incorporate when player cities go 'live', so that would work fine. I, for one, have absolutely NO interest in living in a player city nor do I want to deal with yet ANOTHERlayer of maintenance fees. I can see there will be some very interesting problems arising from this........good board fodder.

They have never made any indication that an area would have to be clear before you could set up a city. People would scream bloody murder if that was the case.A lot of group already have cities laid out, and are just waiting to plop down a city hall.

Since cities can't be private, we can't say who we want in or out, you can't make it a requirement for people to allow a city to be built. That would be a huge problem. People could extort huge sums of money to allow a city hall to be dropped, not gonna happen.

They will be a griefing tool. Anything that allows anyone to inflict non-consensual PvP on another player is a griefing tool and will be used as such.

The universe is suddenly going to get a lot smaller for those of us that don't have any interest in PvP.

I'm not overly concerned about the whole 'taxing' thing. If you are just using a house for storage, move it. Easy enough. There are plenty of places without enough build space for a city where you could drop the house.

Its the merchants out there that are going to get screwed yet again. Drop a city hall near some of the rich merchants houses and charge an absurd tax rate. See if ya can bleed em dry.

Mkappus...

yes, they can force non-PvPers to move that way.......

Dont get me wrong, I am all for player cities becasue of that kind of intrigue, but it will cause a lot of upset.And mostlywith people that start a city and believe it is thiers, in moves a PA and poof, it is the PA's city.

I thought Player Cities were going to be capped per server / planet? Meaning only a certain number was going to be allowed.

They are. No more than 6 cities on a planet that players can build on. But Ithing it mayl be less than 6 cities on some planets.

There has been no mention of a hard cap of cities per planet. However, there is definitely a finite number of possible city locations. They have said a city can only be placed such that its maximum radius does not overlap with a NPC city, or any other player city.

Draw a big circle around each NPC city. Any land not within those circlesis the buildable space, minus battlefields, static dungeons.... Drop a few player city circles such that none overlap with any other circles and you will find you can't fit that many new circles. The big question right now is what is the maximum possible radius for a player city?

DayIn,

Where did you get that information? I have never seen it.

I believe it is in the developers chat log on player cities, but I cant seem to get to Stratics to get it. That is anways the worst website for me to get to for some reason.