Cities And Housing Archive

Condemned structures are consuming more and more land leaving less available for active players. I understand the reasons for the change but it was made with only short term considerations and the long term consequences are becoming apparent. The property rights of those who leave derelict structures needs to be balanced against the needs of those who need the ground they occupy.

With the current system a structure will begin to draw money from the owner's account once its maintenance pool is insufficient to cover each tic then when the owner's account is empty the structure becomes "Condemned". For a "Condemned" structure to be put back into use the owner would need to get additional funds in their bank and go to the location of the structure.

Within my city I find myself hard pressed to find ground to develop for the many new players who want to be part of the new community. I miss those who left the game and would be happy to get them setup again if/when they return but, until they do I'm finding it harder and harder to fill the need of active players. The needs of those who DO play the game on a set server must outweigh the needs of those who no longer play the game or play on a different server.

Outside my city there’s a HUGE harvester farm established by someone who no longer plays the game using lots borrowed from players on other servers who I have no idea whether they play the game or not any more. They waste this ground in a maze of smoldering wreckage. When that player still played he wanted to be rid of those harvesters and couldn’t do it. Ultimately he left the game with them still there.

There should be a “Condemned Timer.” After ONE month of being condemned the structure should go poof.

I implore the powers that be to do something. Don’t hold the rights of those who no longer provide you income to trump the rights of those who do.

They have already said that in October they will be deleting houses that belong to someone who stopped paying 6+ months ago. What more do you want? Can you imagine if they listened to you and did the purge right now? Can you imagine the, oops, umm, there was an accident, and yes, we deleted all these accounts 6 months out, but, due to a (.) period being in the wrong spot, we also 'accidently' deleted 5% of these other houses. I am sorry, there is nothing a CJR will do for you. Oh what? You had how much equipment in there? Dang it, nothing we can do, earn it again.

I hate these old houses. I hate these condemned harvestors sitting on good resources. BUT, more than anything else, this is one bug I definately don't want to see because they rushed it out the door. They are doing it, let them take their time.

A post from the Test Center on 1/23/05

http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/post?board.id=TestCenter&message.reply_to_id=113627

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SOETyrant wrote: Our character and housing purge systemis coming. Houses which belong to inactive accounts will be removed from the world, regardless of maintenance fees. More details will be out on this within a few weeks, well before it hits the servers.

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I haven't seen any details on this from a developer as yet and I certainly haven't seen a date on it.

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rocco81b wrote:

They have already said that in October they will be deleting houses that belong to someone who stopped paying 6+ months ago. Link please. What more do you want?I want a formal statement on the matter, see it tested and see the wasted land cleared so paying customers can make real use of it. Can you imagine if they listened to you and did the purge right now? I can see them going into QA and testing out the scenarios with an accellerated timeline then putting it onto the Test Center.

Can you imagine the, oops, umm, there was an accident, and yes, we deleted all these accounts 6 months out, but, due to a (.) period being in the wrong spot, we also 'accidently' deleted 5% of these other houses. I didn't say make it live untested. I'm saying they should acknowledge the issue, make a statement, make visible steps towards resolving this problem and then making a quality release to address the problem. I am sorry, there is nothing a CJR will do for you. Oh what? You had how much equipment in there? Dang it, nothing we can do, earn it again. Take the structure and its contents and put it in the inventory of the owner. If they never come back itdoesn't matter. If they do come back they don't loose the property that, by all rights, should have been forfeit due to their neglect.

I hate these old houses. I hate these condemned harvestors sitting on good resources. BUT, more than anything else, this is one bug I definately don't want to see because they rushed it out the door. They are doing it, let them take their time. It's been 6 months now and I do not see a light at the end of the tunnel.

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In my two years in the game I've lost a couple structures. Once I lost a small house that had all my rare materials and advanced components and I lost a factory with millions of units of resources. It was my mistake and just like I accept the consequences of death when I do something stupid I accepted the consequences of neglecting the maintenance on these structures.

I have to agree on this matter. The Devs have been stating since October 04 that the "great purge" was coming... well, where is it? Condemned Structures are a HUGE issue for player cities especially. I've had houses in Solace that have been "condemned" for far too long - time to start seeing some changes that are going to positively effect Player Cities instead of negatively effecting them *cough*footprint changes*cough*

I assume when marketing figures it has gotten enough people to return then they'll purge.

Can anyone explain why they went from after your home, harvester or factory rain out of maintainence, then went through a three week decay period they would go poof! Problem solved. The old system worked out just fine. What was the purpose behind implementing this system that litters the servers with this junk?

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RogueBoomer wrote:
Can anyone explain why they went from after your home, harvester or factory rain out of maintainence, then went through a three week decay period they would go poof! Problem solved. The old system worked out just fine. What was the purpose behind implementing this system that litters the servers with this junk?

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To make it more attractive for returning players.

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bluejanus wrote:
To make it more attractive for returning players.

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And less attractive to remaining or new players.

And to fix the fact that the decay notification system didn't work most of the time. It was supposed to send an e-mail to the player when it reached 0 and started to decay, and at various % of decay thereafter. Generally what happened was the first notification you got was an e-mail stating that the structure was at 1% and would be destroyed when it reached 0%, usually too late to do anything about it.

It was designed to be a failsafe to protect those that experience long-terms away from the game and to build in a safety measure for those that simply forgot. I don't know of anyone who hasn't accidentally forgot to check maintenance at least once and had a structure start to decay. In that regard, the new system is a vast improvement over the old.

Where the ball got dropped is that there is no time limit on how long a structure will sit condemned. Putting that time limit in would be an easy way to fix the issue of abandoned structures without taking away the fail-safe for everyone else.

Putting the condemed house option in game IS in the top 100 worst ideas they had for this game. As it sits now the game is running out of room because the long over due server perges that were supposed to happen every 6 months don't happen, many of us now have to make due with the left over room from houses and harvesters of those who left the game and are the only ones who benefit in the game. If people can not be responsible enough to check there houses every couple of days or put enough maint into there house then thats on them they shouldnt be give the benefit that there stuff will still be there if they dont pay for the maint. I learned the hard way once of not paying the maint on my house but it made me more aware of paying maint on my stuff.

Might be a stupid question - but since we don't have that case in our town (yet) I would like to ask it anyway: what happens with the citizen when a house goes into condemned status? Will it be a "lost citizen" then?