Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: Player City Destruction
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Artistan
Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:04 pm
#1
Having had city deleted twice by this, once intentionally, once accidentally (and by the same person too..grr), I would love some safeguard. Those who haven't experience it don't know what it's like to wake up one day, log in and find a level 5 city gone.
phantom542
Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:29 pm
#2
This happened to at least one city on shadowfire, the place never recovered. I think the treasury is the main concern.
Steven7856
Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:31 pm
#3
the treasury is protected from being wiped out by an angered mayor when they limited withdrawls to 50k a day which doesn't do anyone any good when the mayor simply deletes teh character. Not only is the treasury gone, but the whole city is destroyed every civic building by every character who placed one within the city limits is automatically deleted, everything inside, gone. No warning, no chance to recover lost items nothing. It is a horrible set back for a city to face.
Brigham
Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:32 pm
#4
This is why a lieutenant mayor should be either elected or appointed by the mayor.
Steven7856
Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:35 pm
#5
how can you have a lietuenant mayor? We had city milita, we had another canidate running for office, there can only be one mayor unless there is a game mechanic I do not know about, which, although too late for us now, I would certianly like to learn.
Pappi
Tue Jan 18, 2005 3:47 pm
#6
this is an issue I've brought up with the devs, but haven't received any response on. the best I can suggest is to contact a CSR to see what damage control could be done, or email [email protected]. I doubt they can help much, but it doesn't hurt to try 
Binstubbs
Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:03 pm
#7
The problem here is not the system allowing so much power in one player's hands........
it is the fact that the system is being used in a way that surely could not be intended.
my point is that there are far too many player cities for the amount of player population, it was that way even when the system was first patched in. I am yet to hear of a city in which the mayoral "race" was not a forgone or agreed-upon conclusion before it ever takes place. I am also willing to bet there isnt one single city on ANY server that has 3 or more candidates on it's terminal. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. A bunch of people (guild) decide to buy up or make alot of town stuff, get everyone to move to X location, decide who is going to be mayor, have everyone vote for that person and, voila, that is our great town system.
The only time there is ever more than one person on a ballot is when a rival guild enacts a hostile takeover somehow (happened on scylla), or when someone cancels and a new person agrees to take over.....once again a pre-decided outcome.
If players cities were far rarer and not all over the place, then perhaps there would be so many people living in them that multiple candidates would be running. Sure each one would likely have all their guildies vote for them but if towns were not primarily guild populated, then those "in-the-bag" votes wouldn't be enough. Politicians would have to actually DO something to earn people's votes (likely only the most commited players would then become politicians, as opposed to someone's alt who rarely gets played).
Of course this doesn't solve all the problems, but your problem of getting hosed by one vindictive guy would not be possible would it? There would need to be incentives for being a politician and wasting all those skill points obviously. The possibilities are up in the air here but one that came to mind and that I think is quite possibly the best is the following.....
Say at master politician, or at some predetermined skill level, that politicians were the only people able to request live events from Pex? How cool would it be then to be a politician?? SOE could implement a ticket system that functions much like CSTickets but instead of going to CS it goes to the live event teams (another reason to cut way back the # of player cities so that those poor guys don't get overrun with requests). Make some sort of guidelines, onerequest per week to be accepted or denied within X number of days. And then watch the new player cities become hotspots on the maps (npc cities need work too, but thats different topic). How cool would it be to have a city on tat that gets raided by tuskens or jabbas thugs? How about if a battalion of rorgungan commandos marched on a city on rori? An imperial assault of ATATs and ATSTs with troops on a known rebel dantooine city?
The possibilites are endless. Maybe make the civic structures able to take damage (obviously graphics would need to be patched in), not so that you lose the items inside (make them accessible to admin at the structure terminal, like a bank inventory) but so that they are visually demolished or damaged to whatever extent and remain until a set amount of refurbishment costs are paid. Doesnt need to be exhorbitant, just enough so mayor dont request more than their town can handle. Perhaps implement a tier system of what difficulty level of events can be hosted at that town. Similar to the city rankings, as a town progresses in population, more difficult events are available (scalable by Pex) as lower tier events are accomplished (defend town from 1000 jawas for one hour) then the city moves up to eligibility for the next event tier ( fend off an ATAT, whatever). Say when a city is at the highest event ranking, the really tough events can be enacted...a Krayt Dragon migration, ATAT imperial raids, overwhelmingly large #'s of rebel troops, shield generator equipped gungans with bio-engineered (tougher) fambaas and kaadus. Obviously things would need to be ironed out to make the events go well, keep them from being impossibly hard, or laughably easy. But anything is better than the current system.
You get the idea here. This all gets back to the biggest problem of this game, lack of content. Had the player city system been implemented with a little more foresight, the original poster here, and his friends, would not have gotten screwed by someone who got pissy for whatever reason.
So with the story of the SoB mayor screwing his citizens, being the catalyst for this brainstorm, toss these concepts around, make some input, and see fi the correspondent can get an ear at SOE to mill something like this over. Everyone knows people will be up in arms over player cities being cut back, but wouldn't it be worth it in the end?? Is a better, more fun game not worth a bit of asspain to relocate and lose city status for all but the largest 3 or 4 cities on each planet??
I think it is definitely worth it, because the way it is set up now......the system is going no where and there is nothing it currently contributes to stopping the steady flow of players leaving this game.....much less attracting new ones
Message Edited by Binstubbs on 01-18-2005 07:04 PM
Message Edited by Binstubbs on 01-18-2005 07:18 PM
Gilpen
Tue Jan 18, 2005 10:10 pm
#8
Binstubbs wrote:
The problem here is not the system allowing so much power in one player's hands........
it is the fact that the system is being used in a way that surely could not be intended.
my point is that there are far too many player cities for the amount of player population, it was that way even when the system was first patched in. I am yet to hear of a city in which the mayoral "race" was not a forgone or agreed-upon conclusion before it ever takes place. I am also willing to bet there isnt one single city on ANY server that has 3 or more candidates on it's terminal. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. A bunch of people (guild) decide to buy up or make alot of town stuff, get everyone to move to X location, decide who is going to be mayor, have everyone vote for that person and, voila, that is our great town system.
The only time there is ever more than one person on a ballot is when a rival guild enacts a hostile takeover somehow (happened on scylla), or when someone cancels and a new person agrees to take over.....once again a pre-decided outcome.
If players cities were far rarer and not all over the place, then perhaps there would be so many people living in them that multiple candidates would be running. Sure each one would likely have all their guildies vote for them but if towns were not primarily guild populated, then those "in-the-bag" votes wouldn't be enough. Politicians would have to actually DO something to earn people's votes (likely only the most commited players would then become politicians, as opposed to someone's alt who rarely gets played).
Of course this doesn't solve all the problems, but your problem of getting hosed by one vindictive guy would not be possible would it? There would need to be incentives for being a politician and wasting all those skill points obviously. The possibilities are up in the air here but one that came to mind and that I think is quite possibly the best is the following.....
Say at master politician, or at some predetermined skill level, that politicians were the only people able to request live events from Pex? How cool would it be then to be a politician?? SOE could implement a ticket system that functions much like CSTickets but instead of going to CS it goes to the live event teams (another reason to cut way back the # of player cities so that those poor guys don't get overrun with requests). Make some sort of guidelines, onerequest per week to be accepted or denied within X number of days. And then watch the new player cities become hotspots on the maps (npc cities need work too, but thats different topic). How cool would it be to have a city on tat that gets raided by tuskens or jabbas thugs? How about if a battalion of rorgungan commandos marched on a city on rori? An imperial assault of ATATs and ATSTs with troops on a known rebel dantooine city?
The possibilites are endless. Maybe make the civic structures able to take damage (obviously graphics would need to be patched in), not so that you lose the items inside (make them accessible to admin at the structure terminal, like a bank inventory) but so that they are visually demolished or damaged to whatever extent and remain until a set amount of refurbishment costs are paid. Doesnt need to be exhorbitant, just enough so mayor dont request more than their town can handle. Perhaps implement a tier system of what difficulty level of events can be hosted at that town. Similar to the city rankings, as a town progresses in population, more difficult events are available (scalable by Pex) as lower tier events are accomplished (defend town from 1000 jawas for one hour) then the city moves up to eligibility for the next event tier ( fend off an ATAT, whatever). Say when a city is at the highest event ranking, the really tough events can be enacted...a Krayt Dragon migration, ATAT imperial raids, overwhelmingly large #'s of rebel troops, shield generator equipped gungans with bio-engineered (tougher) fambaas and kaadus. Obviously things would need to be ironed out to make the events go well, keep them from being impossibly hard, or laughably easy. But anything is better than the current system.
You get the idea here. This all gets back to the biggest problem of this game, lack of content. Had the player city system been implemented with a little more foresight, the original poster here, and his friends, would not have gotten screwed by someone who got pissy for whatever reason.
So with the story of the SoB mayor screwing his citizens, being the catalyst for this brainstorm, toss these concepts around, make some input, and see fi the correspondent can get an ear at SOE to mill something like this over. Everyone knows people will be up in arms over player cities being cut back, but wouldn't it be worth it in the end?? Is a better, more fun game not worth a bit of asspain to relocate and lose city status for all but the largest 3 or 4 cities on each planet??
I think it is definitely worth it, because the way it is set up now......the system is going no where and there is nothing it currently contributes to stopping the steady flow of players leaving this game.....much less attracting new ones
Message Edited by Binstubbs on 01-18-2005 07:04 PM
Message Edited by Binstubbs on 01-18-2005 07:18 PM
I agree and disagree at the same time, Less cities would be cool to make the present cities better but to open it up to have more people able to steal cities and such is just a bad idea.
Steven7856
Wed Jan 19, 2005 1:08 am
#9
A few weeks ago the mayor of our city resigned from the game. He left his toon active though until the election was over.We elected a new mayor who was also our guild leader, he had made Jedi a few days before this and used his alternate character to run for office. Well the day he was elected there was an internal guild fight and he left the guild and the city. Hethen intentionallydeleted his alternate account and this morning on city updatethe cityself-destructed.
So now we are left with no city, the 20m treasury is gone, and we are going to have to start from scratch to build the place back up. Thisto me seems as an abuse of the system, that one person who felt slighted can take the work of dozens of people, the months of time and effort they spent recruiting people to their city, building a guild anda place to call homeonly to destroy it all in an act ofrevenge.
My question is this. Why does the game allow a mechanic to exist that grants so much power to a characterwho can simply walk away and destroy everything. I understand the need to eliminate and clean up old cities that have been abandoned, but this is not what happened to us. Simply allowing the option for another canidate to assume the mayor duties in the event of a deleted character would have prevented this instead of destroying everything. Then a city that is inactive with no canidates would still be removed from the game but it would protect those who are left facing the anger of someone seeking to cause as much harm as they can.
Message Edited by Steven7856 on 01-18-2005 04:27 PM
Message Edited by Steven7856 on 01-18-2005 04:34 PM
Binstubbs
Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:47 am
#10
City "stealing" will be far too hard, not impossible, to be worthwhile if this whole system was set up right to begin with.
It really needs to be cut off except for the 3 or 4 largest cities on each planet, and force people to consolidate. There also needs to be some sort of "zoning tool" for politicans to use to effectively layout their cities so that they don't become jumbled messes like so many of them are now. Set areas to have default NSEW orientations, merchant tent only areas, garden only areas, civic only areas, etc etc.
Yes city stealing is a very real problem but it happens quite infrequently when you take the scope of the entire game into consideration. It will more likely happen when such a change is first implemented but will be overcome as more and more people consolidate into the 3 or 4 cites per planet and the actual player population (as opposed to a guild or two) determines who runs the towns.
Cut it to 3 or 4 cities per planet and then raise the population requirements for civic benefits, that way no one or two guilds can monopolize cities by keeping "random" players out. With fewer cities, you could raise the population requirements enough so that guilds HAVE to let "randoms" move in just to get the basic perks of a player town.
I also think you will see the main cities move further out from major cities like theed and coronet, not to remote locations, but to a distance where a bike ride isn't unbearable between the POIs and the major npc cities. On my server most the biggest towns are right beyond major cities borders, like theed coronet and the imperial outpost, mining outpost. Its lame. I know people want to be close to starports, but seriously, suck it up a little and ride a bike 2or 3km, it takes like 1 minute tops, not a big deal.
RashDraco
Wed Jan 19, 2005 11:00 am
#11
Binstubbs though yes I agree that the mayoral races are not really hard fought,BUIT there are cities that re not Guild run, Twighlight Citadel on Valcyn is one of those cities, Its background is Roleplay, within the walls of this city are at a minimum members of 4 guilds living and breathing and striving to make it better. SEMRA. PEARL. ACOY. SPA. BH and others are in and out of the city daily, some with residence with in the walls some with them elsewhere. The problem boils down to this, every guild wants a city, but noone want to be mayor, so who becomes mayor the one that chose to do so, to dedicate ther epoints to be mayor instead of a combat class or artisan.
Im sure Mayor Parrish would gladly take on a mayoral race if someone wanted to come to town and try for the bid, but as it has been you have to gain the cities trust to do so and establish yourself here first.
But for those that want to see a city not run by a single guild, sop on bt TC south of Mos Eisley on Tatooine , rebel, Imperial and neutral welcome!!
inperial_lacky
Wed Jan 19, 2005 2:49 pm
#12
hm... i think the less player cities would be a great idea. IT would make politics and polictions more politicial like... ACK, isn't that a bad thing though? well, I suppose player cities and such won't be updated unless its sorta updated in the galactic civil war revamp i suppose. but that probally won't be much. it would be neat though to have large and more organized cities, not ones with houses made of 50 walls that are so hard to navigate in.
Binstubbs
Mon Apr 11, 2005 7:06 pm
#13
Well, the issues wont really be "political" at all. They will likely hinge on taxes, attractiveness of a mayor's zoning scheme, and a mayor's commitment to keeping the event schedule lively, regular, and creative.
The city halls should also be much more functional. They are literally bumps on a log in this system. Politicians and the player city system should have the same relationship that any elite crafterhas with theircraft.
It should becompletely immersive.
Mayors should be given zoning abilities for their municipality that work much like the structure-compatability-shading works. Meaning, just like when you drop a structure and the terrain shades itselfred (no drop) or green (drop), the mayor can designate a certain area as the commerce shade for merchant tents, an industrial shade for harvestors/factories, a municipal shade for guild halls / gardens / municipal buildings each with its own recognizeable pattern, and finally a residential shade for homes possibly incorporating a pattern type for vendor limits per house so as to encourage use of tents in the commerce sector. If people have a problem with the limit they can petition the mayor to raise the limit on their house on a case by case basis. Some sort of "sim city type" interface would be necessary for politicians to effectively execute this, the current structure placing interface is absolute garbage. All of this would be done at a terminal within the city hall.
Terminals should be located within the city hall and accessible to both residents and non-residents. A player should be able to see what the current layout is (accessing the terminal would bring up a "Sim city type" view of the town) and what the proposed layout for the future, unused lands are. The terminals could give demographics of citizens, a feature that can be enabled or disabled according to citizen wishes.They should be able to see what events have taken place in the past in that town, along with some sort of stat report.... X number of citizens killed, X number of Enemies killed, over X amount of time, something to give prospective residents a sense of what is happening in that town and whether or not they feel they could be a help. Maybe an armorsmith finds a town that is getting owned by jawas? They look into the archives (you know maybe give that library-type-room an actual purpose?) and see there is only one AS in that town with only one armor vendor, voila!! Said armorsmith has found himself a new home. Maybe a Ranger sees that there are many chefs and tailors, but very few ranger/scouts, he too now has found a home.
With player city staus reduced to the 3 or 4 largest cities on each planet, the population size in eachwill grow so much that mayors will have no choice butto immerse themselves into the profession to satisfy as many citizens as possible in order to stay in office (much like a top notch elite crafter). Nosingle guild (of any size I have ever heard of) would possibly be able to monopolize an election. No politician could afford to neglect his duties and go grind jedi for 6 months.
So what is in it for the politician you say??
Well here is the tricky part......
Aside from the pride of being able to hang your hat on the fact that you are the architect of a prosperous, popular city.........perhaps a small kickbackfrom municipal proceeds (cloning/insurance fees, shuttle fees, garage fees, etc). I have no clue what type of revenue these cities could expect since we have no cities near the size that these would reach, but perhaps 1%? obviously the devs would have to tweak this and some trial and error would undoubtedly take place. But it should be enough to make it worthwhile. There may be a need for a ceiling on mayoral income to keep unique situations from turning any singlemayor into the SWG version of a Saudi prince, again an issue for the devs to wrestle over.
One last thing!!!
No body wants massive uncontrollable urban sprawl, especially when cities take root near POI's and the like. SoI believe a hard cap on a city's radius should be very much in place. How it should differ from current cities I cant say, as I dont even know what current radii are. But I do belive a metropolis should be considerably larger than they are now.However this raises the issue of a radius-cap creating a population-cap as room runs out on a city for more folks to move in.Well, Architects rejoice!!! New building schematics to resemble those found in static cities!! High rise buildings like in Coronet and Tyrena! Multiple occupant structures like thosefound in that pointless area of Bestine. Keep them restricted to each planet (no bestine style slums on Naboo, and make them un-vendor-placeable....strictly residential). Multiple occupant structures will obviously have maintenance issues...as in who pays and what happens if someone doesnt pay. To solve this, multiple occupant structures should be only placeable by the mayor, just like a garage, and the maintenance will be paid to keep you from beingevicted. It reaches zero...automatic bank deduction. That reaches zero......same as regular houses, except instead of the building disappearing, all the occupants stuff disappears and the admin rights for that unit are cleared for a new resident , with those rights granted by the mayor. The mayor cannot move or redeed one of these structures until all residents have vacated it. So placing a large 10 resident structure should be done with great foresight, as it will likely become a permanent fixture. A lower maintenance rate should be set for each resident of a multiple occupant building than what the rate is for a private home in some proportion. For example, if the building accomodates 10 people, the rate should be 20% that of a medium house, if it accomodates 5 people then 40% so on and so forth. Maybe set the max items at that of a medium house in each unit reagrdless the total number of units in one structure.Private homes should still be affordable as they are now, but multiple occupant structures should be far more attractive to not only the penny-pinchers amongst us, but more importantly, to the new player who hasnt found his or her economic niche yet. Maybe even enable this function on guild halls. At the terminal allow the leaders to enable or disable multiple resident capabilities. The benefit of multiple resident being that the total max items go way up (evenly distributed to each room to prevent someone from buying a guild hall just as storage and not having multiple rooms occupied by different players, but just so they can store more in one room). And the guild gets an increased sense of untity. Guild halls will undoubtedly become like SWG fraternity houses, lol, I can envision the streaking already. Multiple occupant structures, will expend lots just as homes do, also to keep a mayor or guild leader from using one for personal storage.
So there's ahuge tack-onto a brainstorm I had that I feel has immense potential for much needed content in this game. The new GCW stuff is a great step in the right direction, but I feel the player city system can really take it to another level entirely. You can take the basics of what I have cooked up here and go so many directions within the scope of features already incorporated into the game already. I just hope the content team is up for it and is truly commited to make something like this happen.
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