Development Cycle Archive
Thread: Friday Feature Player Cities Part 1 First
Yeah, that's good...for those people who had plans dashed by YOUR brain-damaged cap, rub their noses in it.
What are you thinking!?
You know what the cap is? It's a bare-faced acknowledgement on your part that one of two things is true:
1) Your base infrastructure is so non-robust that you're not sure it can handle an arbitrarily large number of player cities.
2) Your long-term design is so lacking that you don't want to face the prospect of planets overrun with player cities but had no alternative but to release them because "you promised."
I'd prefer not to consider the alternative:
3) You want a few cities (to CYA), but not many, so by limiting the initial number you assure a few will succeed and the rest which come later will flounder and decided the best way to implement that was with the landrush, and tough luck for those who aren't fortunate enough in the first 15 minutes (13 on Eclipse).
Here you are crowing about player cities which ranks high among all of your FUBARs to date.
Are you suffering from complete denial?
I'm willing to spring for the red sponge nose...you already have the clown shoes.
-Lens Larque/Eclipse
-Harcourt Mudd/Tempest
This is a joke right? I mean, with all the disgruntled players who have loudly proclaimed the disproportionate unfairness of this patch launch and the relatively little skill in obtaining this monumentus accolade other than who logged on the fastest with the most knowledge prior to a patch that was neither broadcast to the masses nor told that a player city cap was in place... this is your Friday Feature?
Why don't you just hit up your Marketing and PR Department and ask them to emblazon mud on the 99% of your player base who were left out in the cold for their Player City?
Not to piss anyone off, but more for SOE's protection...but
Kettemoor- City: Mos Xanth - Mayor: Alexius Xanth
Xanth is a trademarked and copywritedname, by Piers Anthony, for his series of comedic fantasy books based in and about the land of Xanth...alter-ego of Florida.
You may want to get that changed, or at least take it down from that list, as it implies that you support the use of that name, and are publishing it on your own site. It is a violation of the naming policy...but then, you dont pay much attention to that. Or at least it seems that way with all the names out there that are blatant rip-offs.
Dont get me wrong, I am a fan of the Xanth books, and I would support the use of names like this (esp for a city..makes great sense to me), but you have that policy for a very real reason, legal protection. If you do not enforce it, a half-decent lawyer could show in court that you promote and support the inappropriate use of trademarks and/or copywrited material.
Sorry to those that this bothers, especially the citizens and mayor of Mos Xanth...but we have enough issues with the game...wouldnt help if their attention was diverted by a legal battle over something as mundane as this.
Wow! I have vented about a lot of bugs and ignored issues by SOE, but you guys for the first time since its birth this patch came off almost bug free. How about giving the devs some credit for actually play testing something pretty good. The patch went in, the servers were not down for 12+hours, Very few bugs resulted after the patch compared to past patches. This is a milestone for SOE. Play testing things before launch congrats SOE.
*Now that the logical grown up side has spoken you will now be hearing from my inner child.
Bunch of fu**ing cry babies. **edit** and move to another planet. Let me sit here and whine like a little b*tch cause I missed my oppourtunity to place a player city on Naboo, Tat, or Corellia. Any retard with the IQ of a turnip could of guessed that it would be mass hysteria on release day. So obviusly those who jumped at it got it. Grats to all those who got the main planets. Go and move to another planet and place a player city there. Dear god goto lok,dant,talus etc.. I dont recall any of them being filled atm except maybe for dant on chilastra at the time of this post. These planets need development more than the major planets anyways. I saw this coming and intentionally choose a planet and remote location that will aid other players in playing. Our player city is near some dungeons and other fun stuff to interact with. I was under the impression thats what we were supposed to do with player cities. Not to say that those few on main planets have not done the same.
I also saw a post talking about how power gamers got the main planets first and that this is unfair. Well tough sh*t thats life. Lemme call the waaambulance for ya! That is the way it will always be for anything in real life or in games. Those that work there asses off usually get farther ahead than those who dont. Common sense would tell ya that. Oh, wait I forgot I am talking to the turnip crowd. Power gamer this Harcore player that, give it a rest. For those of you that played the father of MMORPG's called MUD's there also existed people like you however admins soon realized who stays and plays the game the most? That little crybaby who plays maybe 3-5hrs a week and complains cause everyone around em is farther ahead? No, its the hardcore gamer out there who is striving to do everything they can. Take that first Jedi for example. I hardly doubt that that person just played casually. What's next more crying like a beat up hooker whos john didnt pay em cause you cant be a jedi yet? Face facts the more time you put in the farther ahead you will probably be.
The only downer I really saw with this patch is that it finally fixed the call pets without a camp..(well sorta 
)
And the fact that MCH cannot call out the farm and solo anything anymore. We all knew it couldnt last forever so hoped you enjoyed it while it lasted. All in all this patch helped stablize the game.
P.S. Issues that still need addressing
Fix professions ie DE (everything) BE (make bols tamable from BE and in wild) BH (only thing that needs to be said about them is "investigation". If you dont know what i am talking about here then your not a BH or dont know anyone who is. There are others atm but those pop to the top atm.
Creature warping 20-200m towards or away from you.
Fix wookies (allow more choice of clothes that can use BE enhancements, allow to wear armor) "How this was still missed in beta is beyond me, but its time it gets fixed"
The new and improved Lag thats being caused.
And coming in at #1
The insta spawing on top of you as you move. This was just an annoyance prior to decay, but now it ABSOLUTELY sucks (insert adjective here). Really not cool to be riding mount or walking and boom 5Npcs or creature lair spawns on you. If your lucky you can burst run out and live if not death and great decay. I dont mind death and the decay system at all, its just bs when you have no control over it. ie i choose to go into combat or moved too close to those agros and got killed. The way it is right now might as well just have a zap button that insta kills you as the CSR's discretion.
Wow Zulca...were you paying attention at all?
Perhaps on your server things were different, but my understanding is that (pay attention here) EVERY SINGLE CITY was built within 13 minutes on Eclipse.
People are whining (and mewling and pewling for that matter) but with cause. Let me try to draw a simple picture for you since you evidently can't comprehend slightly complex things without a "for Dummies" guide:
If SOE sticks with their "we'll bump the cap a month from now" plan, anyone (or any PA/group) who didn't get a first pass city will have to try and compete with complete, fully formed cities. Where would you rather do business, a city-less business 5 minutes from a major city, a small city 5+ minutes from a major city, or a full servicecity with a shuttle port. All things being the same it's a no-brainer (just like you!).
Most things in SWG are supposed to rise and fall on merit. The best weaponsmith can charge as much as he likes. The rest try to scramble for position. But that's based on merit. When it comes to city...first come first served?
If SOE's infrastructure is built to support it, they should allow billions of cities and evolution will take care of the problems. But "first" isn't survival of the fittest...it's survival of the firstest.
SOE has made many (many, many) mistakes (and for the record, a huge number of successes as well), but the implementation of player cities rates at the very top of their failures.
-Lens Larque/Eclipse
-Harcourt Mudd/Tempest
It certainly wouldn't be the first time I'd lived up to my "bonedome" moniker...
I am a member of a fairly "high profile" PA on Eclipse, and my understanding is that every single fricking space on every single fricking planet was actually and genuinely filled up in 13 minutes.
My master archi over on Tempest sold two city halls over the last couple of days and my understanding is that both were converted into actual cities...note the difference between the servers. On Eclipse my PA got jobbed completely despite huge preparations in less than 15 minutes...on Tempest, my master archi made 800K from the two city halls that were placed over a couple of days.
To Zulca, thanks for your temperate posting...if I was (more than) a tad peeved I assume you'll understand thatgiven that my friends who spent a huge amount of time planning things got hosed as a whole, my/our org is vastly unhappy...and I hope you'll look at the rest of my points about SOEs failure regarding player cities. I think my arguments (regardless of my personal invective) are valid.
Short version: Gahhhh! Everybody but me sucks!
Longer (and slightly more coherent) version: If cities are going to work from a month from now, they should work now. Discard the cap. If discarding the cap breaks anything, the devs have screwed up and it's going to have to get fixed sooner or later. Since the test center is evidently insufficient, drop it into the production servers and pray. At least it will be survival of the fittest, not survival of the firstest.
-Lens Larque/Eclipse
-Harcourt Mudd/Tempest
