Cities And Housing Archive
Thread: player cities: a solution
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Binstubbs
Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:27 pm
#1
First off, shame on me for pasting this in a new thread, but I kinda hijacked another thread with it and feel I had a concept that is a fantastic starting point for the game, not just the "player city dilemma".
Take a read and see what you think
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. 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).
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.
Toss this concept around, make some input, and seeif 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 07:28 PM
Binstubbs
Tue Jan 18, 2005 6:35 pm
#2
omg, or even faction declarable cities...
once a declared city reaches a certain rank, faction npc's (like the crackdown ones, to prevent farming) would be available to spawn, an imperial mayor can enact the crackdown in their town at such a rank. GCW dtoryline (if it ever happens) could be accesible in the town. To ensure someone doesn't drop a house on a coordinator or a recruiter, the space would be dropped just like a garden or civic bldg, in which the npc will spawn or base can be spawned.
/sigh
I hope my ambitions aren't exceeding my faith in the new dev and content team 
Binstubbs
Wed Jan 19, 2005 10:28 am
#3
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?
PS declared residents of one of these towns would receive a system email, much like vendor emails, notifying them of such events and their scheduled times, an onscreen system message would also be sent to residents of a town notifying them of the event taking place at their town. Send the email, say, 48 hrs prior, and the system message 15 min prior as an alert message, to later become a distress call as the event kicks off.
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