Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: Turn NPC cities into Player cities!
bluejanus wrote:
GanymedePharuu wrote:
bluejanus wrote:
It's expecting too much for the devs tochange hard-coded NPC cities. So, say the players in the city want it to be Imperial only even if the control of the planet was Rebel. How does that work? Theresidentsdon't want newbies to start the game at the city, where are the devs going to spawn newbies?
It's never asking too much for the devs to provide us with a fun and exciting product. If that means going back and changing a core part of the game, then so be it. That's basically what's happening with the CU, so it's not unprecedented.
If the city was Imperial on a Rebel controlled planet, that could be instant player-basedcontent. The opposite faction would encroach on the city and there would be raids on the city's NPC defense forces. Player residents could participate in defending the city as well.
Why wouldn't cities wants new players to start in their city? if they made the city into a great one then you'd have instant new residents, meaning new customers for your shops, and new taxpayers.
I don't agree that doing this would make the game more fun for the majority of players. The point I was trying to make about the faction control of the planet was that when that occurs the NPC cities are patrolled by the winning faction troopers and the opposite faction goes into hiding. A player controlled NPC city could contravene that game mechanic. What is the value of making the NPC player controllable. What can be done in a NPC city (other than the bazaar and starport) that can't be done with the existing system in a playercity. While I would think that most cities would like new citizens from new players, lots of player cities are hostile to strangers. What happens if you have players controlling a citythatare hostile to strangers andare hostile to new people trying to experience the game for the first time.
about the faction control. you're thinking in the boundaries of the current planetary control system. the system would be revamped to include the decisions of Player Politicians.
the value of doing this would be that we have less empty unused cities scattered around, whether they be NPC or Player cities. empty cities make for an eyesore. they're a symptom of a system which isn't working well. cities should be populated, cities should have adecent amount ofpeople in them at almost all times. i realize that this is a game and not real life, which means there are downtimes and peaktimes for amount of players logged on. but during peaktimes most of the cities should have at least some people running about doing things. right now seeing players in a player city is the exception, not the norm. i want that to change, and i think this kind of system would change that. (no this would not kill player cities because player cities would be the only type of cities left)
Btw why is making NPC cities player-controlled any more fun than starting a player city?
Because the large cities are iconic places in the Star Wars universe. Because the're the centers of culture and travel, and should be the centers of business as well. Because they'd also be the center of content related events. Because you can't build a Player city up to the proportions of a true metropolis, and you rarely see any players in Player cities because they're all hanging out in NPC cities when they're not out killing or crafting things.
I oppose the idea, because I think player cities would be greatly diminished if a city had the benefits of a starport and bazaar that the other cities could not match.
player cities would not be diminished because there would only be player cities. there could be no other type of city. and cities that did not grow their business sectorlarge enough to open a starport could do other things to attract people to come there. take Las Vegas for example. it was a small town turned into a big city based on becoming a center forentertainment. this system could give each city a chance to create its own identity to an extent.
Btw taxes largely don't work. The taxes on services and property taxes are the only ones that regularly work. Since there is no property tax on hard-code buildings, how do you expect to pay for anything? Btw, what happens if the residents don't produce enough income for the NPC city to operate? What happens?Automatic shutdown of all NPC city services?
Taxes work. if you're saying that the game mechanics for taxing doesn't work consistently enough, then they would need to make it work so thattaxes are collected regularly and put into the city's treasury. actuallythere wouldn't be property tax on the "hard-coded" buildings. the apartments would have rental costs, those could generate plenty of credits to run a city alone. so the only truetax would be sales tax. also things like the starports, shuttles, and parking garages would generate income for the city just like normally (you've seen my other post about vehicles and parking garages, so maybe there would be a parking fee to store your vehicle there. on a similar note starports would have a parking fee for ships).
if the city doesn't generate enough income on it's own via city services and apartment/shop rentals, then there is something seriously wrong. the city would fail and maybe run on a bare-bones emergency budget? i dunno.
Taxes do not work. You say that the mechanics don't work as well, so how can you say that taxes work. This is incidently on the list of issues that the politicians have been asking about but really not much has been done about it. Not all cities btw are well-travelled. There are always a good number of NPC cities on every server that are seldom visited.
i didn't say that the mechanics don't work, isaid"if you're saying that the game mechanics for taxing doesn't work consistently enough, then they would need to make it work so thattaxes are collected regularly and put into the city's treasury"if that is the case and taxes currently don't work, then they would need to fix that so they do work.
andi think i've covered the issue of the good number of NPC citieswhich are seldom traveled. this system would make thatgood number become a much smaller number.
maybe you'redisagreeing with this system because i sound like i want to get rid of the player cities, including the ones people have worked so hard on tobuild up. that is absolutely not what i want in any way shape or form. ifanything i think the best way to handle it would be to remove the hard coded NPC cities from the game, and mayberelocate the best of the player cities to those locations. or perhaps allow the leaders of current wellorganized player cites decide how to handle it.
you seem to be thinking as if i'm asking for the devs to throw this system onto live servers tomorrow, without changing core systems within the game. i'm not asking that at all. i realize it wouldn't really work the way the game iscurrently set up.certain thingswould need to change for a system this immersive to work successfully. but once they changed them this system would be a lot of fun i think.
bluejanus wrote:
GanymedePharuu wrote:
maybe you'redisagreeing with this system because i sound like i want to get rid of the player cities, including the ones people have worked so hard on tobuild up. that is absolutely not what i want in any way shape or form. ifanything i think the best way to handle it would be to remove the hard coded NPC cities from the game, and mayberelocate the best of the player cities to those locations. or perhaps allow the leaders of current wellorganized player cites decide how to handle it.
I don't see how your idea wouldn't diminish player built player cities. Since bazaar terminals and starports are not player craftable or settable, the NPC cities would have a tremendous advantage over the player built cities. Plus the NPC cities, have better styling, roads and structures than the relatively residentent player built cities.