Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Weekly Roundtable Discussion (Week Ending 3-29-04)
Thunderheart....
Please pass onto the dev's that us tailors don't want any more darn componants for OTHER professions to use. Most of us want the tailoring profession to be a profession not merely a componant supplier. I just found out that wookiee armor requires yet another tailor made componant. What is wrong with the Dev's??
Come on.. it's getting to the point of being rediculous:
trim - chef
sny cloth - medics/doctors
syn cloth - armorsmiths
rpf - armorsmiths
And NOW stupid wookiee componants? Stop it already and give tailors a 'real' profession that is useful and unique. More schematics, ways to enhance clothes to make them unique (a signature mark like glitter for Masters) but ya gotta stop making us into componant factories. I am a TAILOR not a factory.
thanks
Seems the thread started to discuss ongoing Forum login problems has disappeared.
/sigh
Logins are still a problem. Only now we have a new login screen, which I kept getting sent back to after typing my password (and saving it) half a dozen times. Login. Back to login screen. Login. Back to login screen. Login. Back to login screen. Repeat several more times. Check Save Password every time. Doesn't work (of course).
Limbonik wrote:
2. Factionally-aligned crafters:
- Armoursmiths: Republic/Imperial armour.
- Weaponsmiths: Republic blasters are in the game, where is the Imperial Blaster?
- Tailors: Republic/Imperial Uniforms.
- Droid Engineers: Faction specific droids. RX-7 (Republic) and Death Star Droid (Imperial) as examples.
- ARCHITECTS : FURNITURE AND STRUCTURES
What's the status on stomachs being emptied on cloning? Wasn't it supposed to be in the last publish?
Can you still target bases and damage them? What's going to happen to players who knowingly did this?
Any thoughts on how to stop everyother pvp player from using a jawa rifle or stun baton?
How do you vote out a mayor who no longer plays when alot of the town no longer plays?
Why don't poisons/diseases get the pvp damage reduction?
Do any players still use creature mounts?
What happened to the Republic Blaster cert?
Why are the "crackdown's" a joke to anyone over novice level?
Where'd all the entertainers go?
Who killed Jimmy Hoffa?
hmm.... i guess that'll do for now. Awaiting breathlessly for your answers TH.
Limbonik wrote:
3c. AT-ST
- Give us a way to repair our AT-ST already.
- Give us the option to trade in our AT-ST. Some of us purchased ours at the start of the game, and would not have bought one had we known how bad you were going to screw them up.
- Make the ATST a driveable vehicle? They do a good job of vehicles in Halo, Quake, Battlefield, so I don't see why there would be 'insurmountable' coding difficulties (you programmers at SOE are sharp!). The ATST is a vehicle after all, not a pet droid...
-Techron
On my server it's Dant that has no spawns. Excepting mission lairs, a completely barren(but colorful) wasteland.
Thunderheart wrote:
LOK has no spawns
I spoke with Blair and we will be beefing up Lok so that more mobs spawn.
Thunderheart wrote:The challenge is knowing what house is not being used for what reason. There really is no way for us to know and the original design was meant to protect peoples houses if they werent going to be able to keep their account for a couple of months and for the time being we come down on the conservative side of leaving the houses for players to come back to.
It is something we think about with some frequency though.
There needs to be a balance between considering the needs of players who have legitimate reasons to take an extended break from the game, and the remaining players who need to have room to populate a city. Perhaps the house and items in it could go into some sort of "escrow holding" so the player can retrieve them, should they come back into the game, but clears the room in the city so that the people still playing in game, can get more people in.
As it stands now, the cities loose the citizenship after 6 weeks, but don't have any means to reclaim space, if the person has left the game, and not been polite enough to clean up after themselves when they left, or couldn't clean up for whatever reason. In the long term, what's a city to do? even if they have people, if they can't place a building to declare citizenship anymore, due to "dead buildings", you've just forced the city out of existance.
Something needs to give in this situation, as player turnover is just a daily fact in this type of game. Even if it's a low number, it happens.
And while I can sympathise with those who have to leave for personal/finaincial reason, I think the needs of the players currently player needs to have a higher priority.
Thunderheart wrote:
Intrepid1888 wrote:
This would be "a good thing".
1beachbum wrote:
The 6Week rule should trigger a Tax Forclosure on the derilict player's House. The city should be able to auction of these forclosures to keep there cities alive and add to tax revenue. It is inevitable that players will leave the game.
I seems to me that this would be a good balance. I have not heard a better suggestion.
It is a good thing, but it is a double edged sword. The main reason we keep these houses on the server is best demonstrated in the following example:
Thunderheart wrote:
ErrikksonFLask wrote:
What happens to your character when you have to cancel your subsciption for a month?
I have a baby that is going to be born in April (Woohoo! 1st born!) I am pretty sure that I won't have the time to devote to SWG for a few months until the baby sleeps through the night, so I am canceling my subscription at the end of the month.
I plan on coming back in a few months... so I have a few questions:
- Does my character get deleted? Or can I come back in a few months and pick up where I left off?
- What happens to my house? If I pay enough maintinance will it stay in existance? Or will be be deleted after a certain amount of time?
I am really going to miss SWG, but real-life takes priority. I am will be looking forward to returning in several months time and would really like to keep the character and house I have worked so hard to build up.
Congratulations on your newborn
I just confirmed the answers and here is how it works:
Off the top, we don't guarantee that things won't be deleted. So far,characters and houseshavent been deleted and we have no plans on deleting characters/houses, but if something happens in the future and we need to, they will be deleted. Again, this isn't an absolute guarantee, but you should be fine. With that being said, here is how it works:
1. When you unsubscribe, don't delete your character manually. When you re-subscribe, it should be there.
2. Put a bunch of cash in your house to cover maintenance. When you re-subscribe, it should be there.
(Thats the reason houses with maintenance are left on servers - - to cover these types of situations.)
ZionHalcyon wrote:
Just a question -
The issue is, and has seemingly been covered up, it that on death, Armor chestplates have been massively degrading on condition, even when insured. Usually, insured items were supposed to degrade 1% if insured, I thought, and 5% if not. Well, we are talking at least 10-15% for INSURED Armor Chestplates.
Death-Decay was removed, not usage decay. If you get shot a lot, then you will see decay register on it when you clone.
LOK has no spawns
I spoke with Blair and we will be beefing up Lok so that more mobs spawn.
Thunderheart,
You DO realize that it is VERY easy to replace a house. In fact it's far easier to buy a new house than to remove old ones that people leave laying around. Heck I would buy players a new home if they had to take an extended LOA and have them get rid of the oldhouse in the game. If they know they are leaving the game even for a month, just pick up your house.
Why not create a storage area (like a bank) that mayors can use and then give Mayors the ability to remove the house and the contentsof the house (and the house itself)automatically gets stored in the storage area. When (or if) the player returns they can then open their storage box and collect their items. Sure the house would be removed, but Mayors need some way to control housing and structures in their cities.
The challenge is knowing what house is not being used for what reason. There really is no way for us to know and the original design was meant to protect peoples houses if they werent going to be able to keep their account for a couple of months and for the time being we come down on the conservative side of leaving the houses for players to come back to.
It is something we think about with some frequency though.
I think I'd feel better if you thought about it with some effect, instead. Here are some possible options:
- As Avallach suggested, don't decay citizenship until the house decays; keep them in step
- Have a city policy that dictates whether your house will survive when abandoned
- Allow a Mayor to choose to reclaim an abandoned residence
- Place an upper limit on the time a residence will remain in the world while abandoned at around 8 weeks
- Allow a Mayor to EXPEL buildings from the city: this would move them to the closest border, and send an email to the owner explaining what's happened, but not destroy the building.
Our fictional City, let's call it Thundertown, has 48 residents. 12 of those belong to the Dev PA, 18 belong to the Correspondent PA, 16 belong to the GTC PA, and two are unaffiliated. Each of these residents has a medium Naboo house as their primary residence, some of them have merchant tents also. The three PAs have their PA halls in town.
Next, you release a new publish. The players in GTC are not happy with this new publish, and as a group decide to up and move to a different game. Six weeks later, only two GTC players are still logging in. At this point, Thundertown has FOURTEEN medium Naboo houses, a handful of merchant tents, and a PA Hall occupying priceless land in highly sought after city locations. Those structures are all unoccupied and unoccupiable, yet still very large and very solid.
The Mayor of Thundertown, let's call him, oh, Caurtt the Wookiee, does his best to round up some new citizens. A lot of them ask why there's so few citizens when the town has so many buildings, and being a truthful Wookiee, he rumbles out an explanation. The prospective new citizens then ask why they can't have the prime locations in the center of town. Caurrt roars out, "Because the players who quit and have no intention of coming back have priority over the players who are here and playing right now."
Wouldn't it be better if Caurrt could instead grunt out that he was just waiting another week to see if any of his citizens could get in contact with the owners, and then he would happily remove those buildings and allow the new citizens to relocate?
Thunderheart wrote:
The challenge is knowing what house is not being used for what reason. There really is no way for us to know and the original design was meant to protect peoples houses if they werent going to be able to keep their account for a couple of months and for the time being we come down on the conservative side of leaving the houses for players to come back to.
It is something we think about with some frequency though.
TH -
Can I ask a question? If this is currently the case, and now the boards are public again, can we get some assurance that - technical emergencies aside - that any such wipe would be announced in advance in the forums?
This is an interesting issue, and I see both sides - I know Mayors would like more control over their cities, and that citizens at the same time need to be protected when it comes to personal property. As a player, I'm glad you are erring on the side of caution more than the side of city asthetics.
Mayors simply need to realize that when they place a home or allow one to be placed that they are entering into a sort of "contract" with the citizen. The citizen has rights to that property until they decide to leave or the house goes poof - and in exchange you get another citizen for your city tally.
The one thing that consistently bothers me about SWG is how everything feels so darn temporary that is player made. I run and check the maintainance every day on virtually all of my structures (across three planets) even thoughI pay it up weeks/months in advance. I am terrified that my hard work and the culmination of of my entire SWG experience (my home which has all my valuables that I don't keep in the bank) is going to "poof" someday, even if it's paid up.
If anything, houses should bemade MORE permanent - when maintainance goes out and condition hits 0 the house doesn't dissapear, but you are unable to enter it until maintainance is paid up. Long again we were told that a system was in the works that would "hide" or "hold" your house, so it then could be restored with CSR intervention if there was a problem with it disapearing.
As time goes on, this is going to become an increasingly hot issue - the more time we spend here, and the more we become "attached" to our characters and our homes (showplaces, in many cases) the more essential it is going to be to balance decay andthe feeling of long-term safety in SWG.
AO
Avallach wrote:
Thunderheart wrote:The challenge is knowing what house is not being used for what reason. There really is no way for us to know and the original design was meant to protect peoples houses if they werent going to be able to keep their account for a couple of months and for the time being we come down on the conservative side of leaving the houses for players to come back to.
It is something we think about with some frequency though.
It strikes me then that the same arguments apply to the six week citizenship timer as well. If it's important that the houses remain when someone leaves the game for whatever reason, whether permanently, temporarily, or what have you, then it's equally important that their citizenship, and by extension, their cityremain. If the return of the used land can wait for the maintenance on the house to expire, then the citizenship can remain until said time as well.The current system feels (at least from a mayor's point of view) like it's intended to punish cities and mayors for having citizens leave the game. I've done everything I know how to keep people active and involved. We had a wonderful RP event a few weeks ago that went very well and even had a little flare at the end courtesy Pex, yet I still have citizen who are choosing to leave SWG for a time. I have no doubt that some will be back with the coming changes (combat revamp, Jedi revamp, Space, etc), yet in the meantime I find myself scrambling to find warm bodies to put in houses to keep the city intact. It's frustrating to realize that no matter how hard I work I ultimately face the work of Sisyphus. I have no problem with the idea that players who cancel accounts should be removed as citizens. Indeed, when their maintenance expires or the character database is cleaned out, they will be, but their house will be removed and their land returned as well.
I realize that these changes were implemented in response to the cross server trading of citizens, but I think perhaps they're poorly aimed. Those who continue to engage in cross server trades are doing so with the caveat that each party log in once a month, while legitimate mayors with legitimate citizens who leave the game, even temporarily, are forced to fight a never ending battle against attrition and space. What I would offer then, as an alternative, is that you require a character to have been in game for more than 10 play hours before allowing them to declare residence in a player city. This is a minor burden to active players, while presenting an equal hurdle to cross server traders as the present system, if not more so.
Thanks for listening and considering the issue.
I am afraid that as much as I hate to be in agreement with Charin/Avallach on anything, I must agree here. What I have seen is that instead of reducing the incidence of x-server trades to bolster numbers (assuming that was the target of the 6-week timer) it has served to increase such trades as players scramble to save their cities as citizens disappear off the roster. Of course the only new stipulation in those trades is to log on once every 6 weeks to stay current.
Of course, I can't be in totally in agreement and ruin a perfect record. :-P While the 10 hour rule Charin mentioned would be an improvement I feel it flies in the face of the casual gamer. If you play 2 hours a night, or are a real power gamer and put in 40+ hours a week, no big deal. But if you play an hour or 2 every couple days, or a couple times a week, it could take quite a while to accumulate 10 hours. Invoking a 10 hour rule would probably just increase the number of people just sitting on the servers. But then it does so no less than the 6-week login rule. What the 6-week rule does is introduce a minor speed bump for cross-server trades but can be a major headache for people trying to populate their cities with live bodies… well.. warm electrons anyway… live bodies at the keyboard… you get the idea. And then after the name drops off your roster, you have a building occupying a slots in the city.
Ok.. so what's my solution? I don't know if it is possible, and is far from perfect, but here is what I think helps real cities the best:
- never delete a house for an account that is active
- have a system email sent to the mayor when an account owning a house in the city goes inactive or is cancelled.
- delete houses on cancelled accounts after 6 weeks.
- Drop citizens who have not logged in 10 hours total in the last 6 weeks (Chars younger than 6 weeks old exempt)
- have a system email sent to the mayor if a player has not logged in 10 hours in the last 4 weeks.
- have a visual cue (maybe on overhead map) on houses that do not count toward census, and a different cue for dropped citizens.
On the surface, this system looks like it does nothing to reduce cross-server trades. But all the restrictions in the world are just like locks on your doors. They are there to keep honest people honest. If you introduce a this simple approach along with the tools that help properly maintain a city, people won't look to cross-server to support their cities as much.
It would appear that the orphan house issue is becoming more problematic rather than less with publish 8:
From JustG's letter: "Lengthen the amount of time it takes for structures to decay."
Skipping all the emotional responses, I'll suffice to say that this makes my previouspost all the more urgent. If it'simportantfor inactive players to have houses/structures, it's equally important for them to remain citizens. Cross server trades areaproblem, and some form of citizen turnover needs to exist, but it needs to be a system that's fair to all concerned, not one that graduallycrushes existing cities under theweight of their own success...