Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Player Cities: Where we are and where we are going.
Okay I'm not sure I follow how this affects people. Does this mean that anyone can place a city hall, and that come next week when its time to vote if we're not one of the first 10 outposts to grow to village we lose the ability to grow at all until the cap is lifted?
Now isn't the vote timer based on dates that the city hall was placed? So if we placed our city hall on the 13th does that mean our vote comes up before who placed their city hall on the 15th with this new patch?
Thunderheart wrote:
I do want set realistic expectations here though. Planet Caps are going to be raised, but not removed. The cap amounts will be progressively raised until a point where server stability is effected. Whatever that maximum number is will represent the maximum possible number within technological limits. That will be the maximum. We don’t know what that number is, but we will push it as far as it will go.
Does this mean that AFTER you introduce a new round of server instability you are going to stop raising the limits? It truely amazes me how you guys push stuff out to the live servers that has not been adequately tested. Have you ever heard of stress testing?
I appologize for my rant but really...I am a software developer in R/L and if I tried to get away with half the stuff that happens with this game I would have been fired long ago.
Thunderheart, the one big thing that player's who complain (for various reason) about various things in your publishes have in common generally, is the following belief which I paraphrase:
SWGrelationship with it's customers suffers greatly because large changes to the game are ommitted from release notes.This occurs because play of the game involves a planning aspect for many players - players have plans. And changes impact those plans.
I say, you should make it an absolute top priority to give sufficient warning (to whatever extent you are able)of each and every change or new rule that will be introduced into the game. Please, try to give folks at least a week.
TH, Blair, anyone, I expect you know just raising caps will have people do a madman login race again...Don't tell me it won't, it will. Just as sure as we can build city Halls in 5 minutes. 
People who have jobs want to play, too.
I like it, I hope it works.
IMHO setting city limits by numbers of players rather than rush to build halls is better anway. Granted, I'm part of a big group that got hosed by a tiny group, but still, IMHO frustrating few players is a valid goal. Therefore requiring larger populations makes sense.
It also makes sense because each city is a very precious commodity. It is important that the design maximize the use that these precious commodities are used to the fullest. That is simply efficiency. More players required for a city generally will mean more players using a city, and therefore more benefit from the city being there in the first place.
Finally, if the problem is largely storage, not the cities themselves, then IMHO put in really low storage capabilities and bump them up. Limit what you are afraid of running out of.
Let me add that I have to agree with sluggy.
The race aspect of city creation does not reward teamwork so much as it rewards people with lots oftime on their hands.
You know what would have been better? Allow anyone to plunk down a city hall (with nostorage or functionality) and then parcel out "success" according to populations after 24 hours. Everyone gets 24 hours to declare their desire for a city hall, then the winners are those potential cities with the most declared residents.
Then leave the halls up, and as you expand the number of cities you can support, award a new "winning" city every week or two or what have you.
We SERIOUSLY need an answer ASAP on this!!! I placed a hall and have 7 citizens so far. We figured there's time to grow now. Tell us PLEASE if this means my hall will go poof next week if I don't have 10 people by then!
We will all be very angry if the plans you told us we could make are now dashed and all those resources and cash I spent are going to go poof.
I need to place a Hall, when will the OP limits be in effect? Please don't tell me december i hvae bout 25 houses on my site at the moment waiting
This change leaves a bad taste in my mouth.
First off, I want to start positively. I'm glad that outposts are being allowed to creep in under the 10 limit cap. I think that this was a good, and timely, change, and I'm pleased that the pain of those who did not get to place a city is being so rapidly addressed. I also understand, and agree with, the thinking behind raising the limit to 10 citizens.
However.
Somehow, I missed the announcement that the patch was going in. This was my bad. I didn't have the chance to gather up all the components so I could do a quick final combine and place my city hall (had to wait til the last minute for my ore harvesters), nor did I have the chance to get 500 apprentice experience in a crafting grind with a friend. As there was no system in place to bring some equity to the placement of the first ten cities, I missed the deadline by a mile.
I didn't like how the announcement of the cap was handled, but hey, no big deal. All city dreams will be realized, with just a little patience. I could wait til December. I stored my city hall deed and went on my way. I told my six citizens that we'd just have to wait a little bit.
Then this announcement comes down the pike. Like I said, I understand and agree with the thinking behind it. But what about all of us that just wanted a little place to call home? A mission terminal, a garden, maybe a statue. I mean, even Mos Taike only has about five buildings to its name. It's a good thing I didn't come in under the ten city limit. My city hall would be destroyed without reimbursement.
I suppose what I'm saying is that I'm very unhappy at the lack of reasoning behind this implementation. Anyone who has played any MMORPG is aware of how rapidly players can mobilize. I predicted about half an hour to cap, and in most cases, that was too generous. I was excited to see that a little outpost could be five people. I knew it wouldn't ever get big, and that was fine. To see it moved to ten without apology or recourse for those already at five only underscored the fact that someone did not put two and two together.
My intent is not to insult. My intent is only to state my own personal unhappiness in the hope that, next time, it will be better.
Damitri wrote:
I understand this, and i am willing to be this 10 cap is due to the main planets. Why not leave the cap at 5 for lok dant rori and such?
This is exactly what I was going to suggest. Those of us on planets other than Naboo, Corellia, and Tatooine are having a harder time finding residents due to things such as inconvenient starport routes, less content, and less overall development on those planets.
Why not reward us for working on frontier cities by letting us have fewer resident requirements for city levels than those on the well-established, higher population planets?
The groups trying to put together thriving communities on secondary planets have a much harder job ahead of us. Ifany of ushad set up the minimum distance from Theed we'd probably have metropolis-ready cities as well. Hopefully we can make planets like Rori and Talus more popular places to be. But it's hard to attract many residents to planets like that until our cities grow a little, please don't make it that much harder on us by raising our population requirements.