Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Player Cities: Where we are and where we are going.
Ok, TH, thanks for the info ... this was extremely necessary ... it needs to be stickied on the Politician board and the SWG board at a minimum.
This means that when you said this on the 13th ... yesterday ...
The caps will be lifted by the next publish which is currently schedule for the first week in December.
Everyone who worked hard to gather their groups into a city will be able to realize their City Plans at that time.
The caps are temporary as they were always meant to be.
No one will be prevented from making their City Dreams come true.
... you were in error, or they changed their minds pretty substantially since ... yesterday.
The caps will be raised, not lifted ... not everyone who worked hard to gather their groups will be able to realize their plans at that (or apparently any) time ... caps per se are permanent, although this level of caps is temporary ... some people might be prevented from realizing their particular dream, but not as many as before ...
There's a difference ... several big ones. Can we count on this decision lasting someone longer than 24 hours?
I think Q may be community relations manager.. I'm braindead right now..
But you're our biggest voice at the moment, you need to say something on behalf of us.
So will the cities that are allready started be garunteed to make it past the outpost level if they have the required 15 (moving to 20 right?). It would seem so, since they will have had an earlier start date, and should cycle before any new ones that are placed right?
Im going to have to agree that this patch, although going in relitively smooth, has degraded the relationship of SWG customers and the devs. I have always said, and still do, that SWG gives out more information to its customers than any game I have ever seen before, and I like that, but there still needs to be more understanding of the player base.
People literaly put months into planning for Player cities (even years, 1 year 3 months in my case.) And Thursday I lived in suspense fearing that it was fornaught. The fact that the patch was annouced not even 24 hours ahead of time, but the cap only shortly before that was the worst way to handle this. Now direct contradictory statements from 1 day ago. Alot of players struggle to pay 15 bucks a month to a game, and countless times I see players threatening to cancel. Why? Because thats all they can do and *think* they'll have some sort of impact. In the long run it doesnt have a impact, because right now new people are joining everyday.If players had known about the cap even 1 week ago, alot of people wouldnt be pissed off right now because it would have allowed for planning. Please remember that Player Cities are one of *THE* attractions to the game, and treat it as such.
Respectfully,
TH, please reconsider the population changes. Many cities have already placed and planned their growth around the older numbers, and will be badly effected by the changes. Particularly troubling is the move of an outpost from 5 to 10 settlers. This means that many who placed early with 5-9 people will suddenly find their hard won city endangered, and for those who don't read the boards this will be a Very Bad Thing. :-(
I'm attempting to come up with an alternative to suggest, but I'm really unclear as to what the raised numbers are meant to accomplish. For the lower end cities, which you seem to want to encourage, they'll be very difficult to deal with. For the higher level ones, they'll be a bother, but that's all. If the object is to make the player cities feel more rewarding, I'm not sure that's necessary since the accomplishment of placing and arranging a city has been plenty of a reward at this point.
As I re-read your post a few times, it seems that the population increase starts with the idea that outposts now must be 10 people since they won't count against the cap. Yet I'm not clear why this is the case. I love the idea of outposts not counting, of course, but it raises a number of questions. First, if they don't count against the cap, why limit them to >10 people? Is there really any harm in allowing them to be made up of 5 citizens? I'm not a databse programmer, but it seems to me that theload isn't altogether different for cities of 10 andthose of 5, and that you're not going to see a HUGE increase in the number of cities because of my second concern:
Is the 1000m limit between cities still going to apply to outposts? I presume it will, since said outposts might someday grow. If so, then there's a few issues. First, the potential for small outposts to unintentionally block other larger planned cities exists. This may be unavoidable, but perhaps an option to allow the players to choose to permanently remain an outpost is in order? This way they wouldn't count against the area limits or the cap, but would forfit their ability to grow larger. This could be joined with a new outpost structure that would take the place of a full city hall for those only wanting smaller outposts, perhaps?
Finally, what happens when the outposts which don't count against the cap under the proposed changes manage to grow enough that they do, but the cap has been reached? Is the outpost simply out of luck? Perhaps a queue for the next cap increase? I'm not sure how to handle that particular issue.
In closing, please reconsider raising the citizen caps. I'm unconvinced that it will benefit the game in any meaningful way, and I know that it will result in a number of upsetting situations. As you may have gathered from the great land grab, players have been working on their cities for weeks now, planning every detail, using the existing numbers. To change those numbers at this point is to make void a great deal of effort by a great many people at very little benefit. Thanks for reading this far, and for considering my words. May the Force be with you.
Avallach wrote:
Finally, what happens when the outposts which don't count against the cap under the proposed changes manage to grow enough that they do, but the cap has been reached?
This is my main question as well. Can we get an answer on this so we can make plans?
*Zen
Hehe, I'm standing on Tatooine, about to place our third city hall (long story. sigh). We had assumed that the refinement to the system, specifically the ability for any organization that wishes to do so, to place a rank 1 outpost had already taken effect.
Alas, we were mistaken. In that case, can someone make an educated guess as to when the number of rank 1 cities may be expanded? I understand that the cap on rank 2 and above cities will be adjusted between now and the next update, but no mention of timetables is attributed to the question of rank 1 cap increases.
-Ovasi
Karui
PS Tyldak, good to see you again 
I doubt you remember me, but it's Leth! Yay! From the chatroom! Yay! (LethMan, the official swg chatroom hermit).
"Avoid teh forums like teh plague!"
1st, 2nd, 3rd Place BMCC Trivia Winner
Will the caps be LIFTED or RAISED?
If they're only raised, it'll be the no life again who will get it, know that. The cap must be LIFTED, and the economic factors should decide which city can grow or not, or even survive.
I think if you do not have more than 10 in your guild/city...you are taking a city place away from other people who have a larger group
On kettemoor...our city of three imperial guilds...around 100ish people+ got denied the allowence of a city...
One city has 5 people in it...another seven and another 10. We have been around since day one. Now..it just seems rather unfair that since their city was 800m from town...they were able to get trained...run to their town...and put down the hall.
And now they are bragging about beign the only imperial city on naboo. just makes me steamed