Development Cycle Archive
Thread: IT 6-1: Player City Items
I just wish I could have a city... I dont want a big city, just a little one for my 12 member guild of friends... but all planets except for LOK have reached their caps =( we are already out there on Tatooine, we have shops, we have a client base, we already have our houses and factories, just want to call our selves a town so we can put down some city items like streetlamps and such. Maybe give people the ability to place those structures without declaring as a city. I mean the houses are there anyway. Or what harm would there be to allow us to call ourselves a village. We are a small group of friends, causal players, we are not interested in being part of a larger community as we have limited play times and dont want to hold back some of the more ambitious communities.
If it is database issues, take some of the monthly money we pay and add more servers, but why cut some people out of the game with these caps. They are stagnating the casual players once again? It takes causal players longer to get the base for things like starting a player city, just because we arent immediately there when caps are raised should we denied a part of the game. I would think that they would be grateful that the game community is growing and instead of trying to tie our hands behind our backs, encourage us to continue to grow, more profit for them if the player base is happy and continues to expand. Add more servers, more planets, more buildable space on existing planets.
I do tend to agree that the 3 week idea is not a good one. It isn't going to correct the problem it was originally designed to correct, it is just going to hurt the honest or 'innocent' players that are either military or business people that have commitments that can keep them out of the game for a few weeks. Also for the casual game players. It is not going to solve cross server trading or swapping. I think this idea needs to be rethought and an alternative solution developed.
I just have to ask tho.. if you guys are so worried about griefing mayors.. why the hell do you live in that city?
There must be a better method. I have atleast three guild/city members who are deployed for months at a time. Guess who pays their maintenance? Moi. Another for instance, I just had a guy come back from spending time in Japan. You guessed it, his house is gone, along with everything in it. His account was active the whole time he was gone.
This week I lost two citizens because they have not signed on and I do not have admin right to thier house. Fortunately our guild has a great recruiting officer. If not, we'd have lost our "City" Status and our shuttleport. Which in turn would make it more difficult to get to our mall. Driving prices down to attract business. I'm not sure how other's city's fair, but at this point, the only reaon my city stands if because of donations from it's citizens. Without those rich architects, weaponsmiths and countless of other crafters keeping us alive with their profits and donations... Well the city would be a$$ed out. From what I read, the new default is to automatically remove these residence? This is unfair and not very conducive to having cities in this game. One thing I've learned from running a few guilds, when you attach the word "Mandatory" or "do this or there will be consequences" well... it's not going to get done, who really wants more responsibility. Paying $15 a month to play a game is enough responsibility, now we have to chase after people in R/L forums and emails to remind them to logon and pay maintenance?
Please Devs, we need an alternative... YESTERDAY!
FlyingElmo wrote:
Background
I am assuming the dev's logic behind changes deal in part with three major issues. These are all valid issues and should be addressed in one way or another. The deves solution to this problem is to drop inactive players after 3 or 6 weeks.
- Some cities, in an effort to bolster their standing, make server trades with other players. These players have no intention on being active in those cities, and are only their because their home city will recieve another citizen in exchange for their cooperation.
- Because of the caps on player city rank, some cities will never hope to be able to progress to a metropolis and will be stuck in their current standing only.
- Most player cities look abandoned when visited and this change might make them look more lively.
Intended Benefits of the Fix In a perfect world, implimenting the 3 or 6 week rule would result in the following benefits:
- Eliminate the cross server ghost citizens
- Allow every city to have a chance at progressing
- Make player cities more active when visited
This is very well written; it's an honorable attempt to state the other position fairly. I think there are other benefits of implementing the 3-week rule that aren't listed here, but I'll get to those later.
Discriminates against Casual Gamers - Last time I checked, casual gamers were paying customers of this game. They make a consious decision that they want to be part of a city, however, given their real life, whether they be students, military, or just hard working parents, now they are not entitled to live in cities if they can't keep up with the powergamers. End result: Mayor: "Are you a casual player?" Casual player: "yes." Mayor: "Sorry, you are not welcome here. You have a chance of just becoming another lot hogging person not affilated with the city because you can't play as much as our powergamers."
Disagree. As a true casual player with lots of things I have to do in Real Life,I have no problem logging in to my preferred galaxyonce every two or three days.To gothree weeks withoutlogging in to a specific galaxyisn't "casual," it's "dead." The fundamental notion of expecting people to actually play characters they've created on a galaxy is a reasonable one, and three weeks is a reasonable practical limit for participation.
Totally Surprise Nerf - When this patch hits, everyone who doesn't read these forums will be completely surprised by it. Thus, if they have city services or decorations near the edge of this city, those structures (perhaps millions of credits worth) will blow up or stop working. This is because the development team as given us NO communication on the issue, so mayors will not be expecting this change. Imagine how happy they will be when they lose double digits worth of citizens and millions of dollars in infrastructure potentially in the same day.
First of all, this is easily cured-- pop upa systemmessage when players log in that says this is going to happen in X days. Players who can't be troubled to log in within a week or so of this warning are probably not sufficiently active on that galaxy to care as much about what happens to their stuff there are they do about a galaxy where they're more active.
Second -- and this is something I'll be coming back to, so I'm going to state it very strongly here-- nobody forced players into these cross-server deals. This is something some players did voluntarily, knowing full well that they weretaking advantage ofthe game's external structureto affect results inside the game. More specifically, they used knowledge of multiple galaxies to affect gameplay in a specific galaxy, which shouldn't be possible. Galaxies should be entirely self-contained universes. If you're as good as you think you are,you should be able to"win" without going outside the rules of the galaxy.
If "ghost" players and mayors of ghost towns don't like the results of their actions -- trying to gain an advantage onGalaxy A bycreating characters on GalaxyB thatthey have no intention of playing -- then they have only themselves to blame. "Ghosting"verges on being an exploit, and anyone who does it deserves to become a non-citizen. Allowing these players athree week grace period is beinggenerous.
Disappearing Space Effect - This is the worst side effect. Lets say I have a old city and its inactive members are closer towards the center of it, while its active ones are near the outside. When this patch goes into effect, I will immediately lose radius because of all the lost old citizens. However, because all my new, activecitizens are on the edge of the radius, they will be lost as well when the radius decreases. And so I'll lose those citizens and then be liable for another loss in rank the next time the city updates and the radius decreases yet again. So why cant I just replace them? Because in some cities, all the central space is either used up or non-buildable. Those inactive citizens put hundreds of thosands of credits into their homes to make sure they dont grief the city or have their city status change. So eventually, as more and more players leave, my buildable space will not increase...rather, it will decrease, since the inactive residents still have houses in the city. And because the developers ABSOLUTELY WILL NOT let us remove people's houses (a good decision, btw, to prevent griefer mayors), we wont be able to do anything about it. Therefore, eventually I will hit a invisible citizen cap because there will be no space to build anything else.
Again, mayors who encourage ghosting have only themselves to blame if they don't like the results of the actions they voluntarily took. Mayors shouldn't have allowed ghosting in their cities in the first place, but some ofthem got greedy.Now they'llreap what they have sown, which is exactly as it should be.
I should add that I understand the frustration mayors havewithhouses belonging to non-citizens taking up roomin one's city. I agree that this is not a desirable situation. Personally I'd be fine if the developers also added code thatallows mayors to relocateany house belonging to someone whose citizenship is revoked based on the 3-week rule to some location outside the city's radius (preferably after a few days of warning messages). Mayors who encourage ghosting shouldlose inactive citizens, butbeingunable to eject the houses of non-citizensis excessively harsh punishment.
Does not solve the issues it tries to fix. I've already spoken to some mayors who artificially inflate their city rank using server swaps. They keep track of the emails of those they do deals with, and will have them log on at a moments notice. Therefore, the vast majority of the cities that will be hurt are the ones that actually have a legitimate city rank, while server swapping will still be as dominant as ever. And as far as livelyness goes, don't expect to see your city any busier than it is now. Guess what: in order for cities to be lively they need a reason to be; thats what will make players flock to player cities. Right now, there is no real incentive for them to do so, and when this patch hits, it will not create any more activeness in cities. The only change mayors can expect to see is now, their citizen count has decreased, and they now have useless properties in their city.
I disagree. Some ghost players may come back if requested by a mayor, but many won't, and they certainly won't do so repeatedly.
Cities will be the sizes they should be based on the number of active citizens they support. That's not a problem that needs fixing; it's cities working as designed.
Creates unnessesasry competition between cities. With this change being active, rather than cities being able to focus on important, game enhancing events and high land values, mayors will be forced to recruit almost nonstop. Why? Try running a metropolis. As a mayor, I can tell you that I lose at least 1 or 2 from mine a day. If I have to compensate for players who don't log on as much as the developers like, all of my time will have to spent recruiting, as will the mayor of any other large metro.
First of all, this will give mayors something to do so they won't spend their time here complaining about being bored.
Second, this is what mayors should be doing.Any mayor who'snot willing and able to constantlyrecruit new citizens shouldstep aside and let someone else be mayor.
Third, competition in a free marketishealthy.Having to compete forhonestly active playerswill encourage mayors to create the best cities they can. Those who can't compete successfully will be replaced by those who can, and the planet/galaxy/game will improve as a direct result.
Undue Fix, Should have been thought about prior to player city release - Quite simply, it is unfair that the developers make us develop our city to conform to certain conditions, and then completely change around that structure based upon an abstract number that one of them thought of. This should have been thought about prior to release, instead of so far into the player city lifecycle. Now some of us will be unable to cope with this change for whatever reason, and pushing this onto us and punishing us for your lack of oversight is a terrible mistake.
I actually have some sympathy for this argument.It's easytothink that the developers of the player city system could have and should have guessed thatghosting would occur, and that they should have instituted the 3-week ruleas an integralfeature of the initial launch of player cities. At a minimum they shouldhave identifiedghost citizensas a potential problem during testing, right?
But it's alsotrue that the design of theplayer city systemwas very complex, and that the designers are limited, fallible human beings.They simplycan't think in advanceof every possible way that players will abuse a complex new system; no one can. (I invite anyone who thinks they coulddo better to try designing a complex system... and then submit it to SWG gamers for impact testing.)It's unrealistic to expect perfectionfrom designers --sometimes new systems just have to be tweaked after release.
And so it is in this case. The designers didn't think of everything; a problem has come up; they analyzed it and devised a change to mitigate the problem. In short, the developers are trying to improve the game... and we're smacking them around for it?
Sheesh.
Alternate Solutions
- Make players play at least 24-48 hours on a given server before being able to live in a player city.
- Allow players to be marked inactive after 3 weeks as long as they mayor can remove those houses.
- Cap the total number of cities on a planet. Not their ranks.
- Add incentive for a city to be less than a metropolis other than maintence cost ( such as allowing the same structures, number of decorations, etc to be built regardless of rank)
Bravo for taking the time and having the guts to dream up alternatives! Most people just whine, but FlyingElmo took the next step of actually trying to design and communicate another approach. I don't thinkan alternative approachis needed (since I approve of the 3-week rule), but I commend FlyingElmo for making the effort to develop another way to solve the real problem.
Now, having said this
, let me address his specific points.
1. (24-48 hour "residency" restriction) I like this suggestion. I don't think it does enough to prevent ghosting, either alone or with the other suggestions, but I would have zero problem with this rule being imposed because it certainly wouldn't make the ghosting problem any worse.
2. (mayoral inactive house removal) Agreed, for reasons given above. I think this is the single most important suggestion made in this entire thread, and I hope the developers will consider it (especially since it seems to be an action which both sides in this debateagree would be helpful).
3. (don't cap city ranks) Disagree. Cities still need an incentive to grow if the Politician profession is have enough things to doto be worth playing.
4. (check city growth some way other thanmaintenance costs) Partial agreement/disagreement. I'm not opposed to finding costs with which to balance the benefits of city growth, but I think maintenance costs are an appropriate way to accomplish this. Giving mayors more goodies at low levels would tend toreduce the value of the higherlevels of the Politician profession rather than providing a consistently fun challenge all the way up. Maintenance costs are essentially a consumption tax, which is the most fair kind, so I think they're probably what we want to continue to use to keep city management challenging.
To Conclude
I'm not sure why there has been no feedback on this. This is probably the most heated issue politicians have ever faced, any its like we are being left out in the cold.
I'm completely for looking at other ways to make cities locked by the cap to be able to progress to their next rank. I also wouldn't mind getting rid of the server swappers, and being able to remove those citizens who do nothing but take up space from my city. I think we all can agree on those points.But unfortunately this change isn't the way to do it, for the reasons I just listed.
I understand, and I hope I've been able to provide another way of looking at this issue.
Bottom line, it sounds like we'd both be OK with the 3-week rule if mayors could eject the houses of non-citizens to new (legal) locations outside the city limits. I hope the developers will consider this modification.
--Flatfingers
Valkyrie36 wrote:
Yea...didnt think so.
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you wrote that a lot. I guesss you do not need answers since you know it all and what the dev are thinking.
I believe the reason the cleaning up of the dead citzens happen was because people were using the buddy keys to make fake people and then making cities with no one real in them for Polition skill points. Since you can only have so many cities on a planet this was screwing the people what wanted to have real player cities. I am sure if a person, your"friend in afgahnistan",explained to SOE your the situation they could make exceptions. Did he do that before he left ( or if he left before the patch happend, did someone tell him to use his free call or if married have the wife call ).
Yea...didnt think so.
I can't see this being a good thing no matter how it's explained. Currently in our city we have a few people that aren't in a position to log in due to real life but their houses are paid up and they have every intention of comming back. Sadly since they have been gone for awhile they have no knowledge of this patch to even know what is in the notes.
One of these is AD military in England and is being transfered. This has taken him from the game for 2 months as his life is currently in flux.
We also have an AD member of the navy that can get deployed at anytime for up to 3 months. He is very active in the game and would come back as he is part of the team that helped to build the city into what it is.
There are also College students that may not have access to Game Worthy computers when on Campus.
The whole idea of getting their account info and logging them in goes against what SOE themselves have said about giving out account information. Further to penalize people for not playing constantly violates their own promise that this game is casual gamer friendly.
Even though I'm on quite abit I took off greater then 3 weeks to go to europe and I'm one of the PA leaders in the town and a founder of the town. I should be worried that real life might take away a game accomplishment due to enjoying my "real life"? Should anyone be on vacation and worried that something they worked for in a game be taken away cause they need to take time off?
This is a lowest common denominator fix and a very bad one. Kill the buddy accounts or remove their ability to declare residence. Have it so that you can only claim residence in 1 town across all the servers. Put a little more thought into the repurcussions of such a fix and how it effects the way you sell this game to the consumer.