Development Cycle Archive

Blair,

I have a guestion. How can a huge company that makes millions upon millions and is a leader in gaming technology, like SOE, not know what its servers and databases are capable of? Please clear my ignorance up on this issue.

Ecco Ton

Stupid question? Is it 10 per planet or 10 per server.. Sorry for that, but I honestly dont know the answer..

Thanks

I liked the first reply to this post. Lets not have a whole bunch of little outpost cities. I think it would be better to have a few class 5 metropolises, or whatever there called. WIth 500 little outposts on each planet, there wouldntbe room to grow, or roam around, or hunt. All the planets would turn into a Coruscant. That wouldnt be fun to me.

Ahh.... Ok, DarkApothis. Your post seemed somewhat hurried and I took what you said to mean computer scientist, in-particular, and not scientist, in-general. I apologize for the misunderstanding. That's quite the collection of scientific skillsets you and your associates possess. I was a Chemistry major real early on in college and wanted to ultimately pursue studyingchemistry and astrophysics. Then I ran into Organic Chemistry lab...

Yeah, the "fix it, and break something else" syndrome. Gotta love it. Hopefully this game will be one of those times where the development team IS able to eventually get the code reasonably sound. They may end up rewriting a significant portion of the code, but hopefully it will happen. Of course, that is no excuse whatsoever for what has actually happened. That was a wetware problem, not a software one.

I'm beginning to think that they should go out and remove any "orphaned" city halls (i.e. a hall with no other buildings around it). All those people did was to try to reserve themselves a player city slot and if they haven't transplanted it by now, then theyshouldn't be allowed to keep it.

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. Or is this a misunderstanding on what they are talking about?

I still think it was BS our guild didn't get a city cause we couldn't log on.

And naturally, they very last piece we needed to get crafted had a critical failure. Out of a thousand crafts, last one.

Cap is fine, but the way it was implemented was terrible.

I may be one of the few with a dissenting opinion here, but I totally agree with the approach that the devs took on this one. I managed to place a city before the cap, and now everyone and their mother is coming to me askign for thigns, like hospitals, cantinas, to join the militia, et cetera. I'm taking the same approach to this: moving slowly and starting small. There were complaints, but eventually most peopel came around to seeing the reason in it. I'm hoping this community will do the same. Unfortunately, the forum community is often plagued with whiners and instant gratification junkies, and if I were a dev reading these posts, I'd often have to skim through quickly to avoid the worthless criticisms that based on conjecture and short sightedness. Is having a cap of 10 on the big 3 fair? Well, "fair" doesnt' come into play here; it's a misnomer. It's what's best for the game and for the long run. And THAT is all that matters.

Mayor Pash Aylor, Valshara, Naboo, Valcyn

Congradulations to all the successful cities thatwere founded! You worked hard and planned well. I can't wait to tour them! This post is not intended for you. TheImperial LandReclamation and Redistrabution Directorateworked well for you. Woot!

This whole land grab thing kinda reminds me of the Great Oklahoma Land Grab of 19th century America long long ago in a galaxy far far away on a mythical planet called Earth. THAT was exciting....... let me tell you! At least for the colonists who "won" and "worked"for the (native's) land by racing for it. Woot for them. I guess the Dantari and Gungans are the modern equilivant to an aborigional people who need to be.....resettled for their own good... but i digress....

That Great Land Grab was inherently unfair and unbalanced on mythical Earth; and so was this!

How dare they not publize in a more open and transparent way the caps on cities and on what planets and moons! How dare they not advertise no earlier then 10 to 24 hours BEFORE this (for Galaxies) momentous event! How dare they alienate and segragate hundreds and hundreds and hundreds (no exageration) of SOE Galaxies account holders by this clearly not well thought out release!

what could've been done?

*once a politician was trained he visit an Imperial Zoing Official located in the planetary capitals (this means Theed for Naboo... not the mountian vacation destination for crying out loud!)to register his player city. The Zoning Official recongizes the request and allows for the city to be created. The registry will auto register the intended city and once the city hall is built the settlement auto appearson a map... so that players have an IMMEDIATE refrence for where settlements have already been built.

*No caps on player cities.. OMG let the market dictate this.. not EVERY community wants to be a metropolis, maybe they would want to be a small hamlet in the mountains or seaside resort! Or a hunting outpost! With that and the current max on radious of cities and the distance between actual city halls there will be PLEANTY of hinterland and unorganized smaller settlements. And if not... expand the planet! Keep Nature Preserves on every planet that cant be developed at all.. everyone can agree to this!

*And per above... ONE kinda city hall? Howvery strange that the small settlements have a HUGEand DECADENT and PALATIAL city hall for their 10 residents.

According tothis thread posted by a SOE producer (whoofficiallystated) the intention was"starting with a small number of cities, then increasing them as time goes on." Additionaly that "we can increase the number (of cities) with a hotfix."And goes on to state "it will not require amonthly update."Finishing with "we are currently evaluating when we should roll out the next city update." Time has gone by, two days is long enough to evaluate.Time to "increase them" by elimating them all together. My multiple accounts and the hundreds of hundreds and hundreds of SOE account holder memebrships hang in the balance! This company did a great dis-service to me andit's clientelby not publishing and advertiseing with greater clarity and effeciencey the need for a rolled out approch for player cities, or the method that the cities would be aquired in game. FIX IT!

I am new to role play and internet games like this... but I am not new to good customer service and relations. I am not new to planning and coordinating. I am new to spelling... lol

Thank you for letting me throw my two cents in. I feel.... uncomfortable posting my great dissapointment in shuch a sharp critizism. Really. I wouldn't be playing if I didn't think this was the greatest thing since sliced bread!

In closing:

WOOT PLAYER CITIES ARE OUT!!!!!! I honestly can't wait to tour everyone's cities and towns! I would like to meet with local politicians and talk shop! Sharing ideas and connecting with other like-minded folks!

drachenfire74

aka:

Theseus Starfire,

Royal Academy of Arts Guild Chairman

Athena Beach, Naboo mayorial canadate

Sunrunner Galaxy

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I am confused by your coding here, as a person who can write and understand computer code along with all of my cadre of friends all of us scientist (we work for a university) and all hold advanced degrees we can not figure out how it is your coding gets so wacked out even after testing? The point of a test or a run through is to insure the functionality of a program and the test center is a brilliant way to do this, why doesnt it work? Since computers can not think they do not mess up the programs themselves, simply put the answer is a 1 or a 0 true or false, on off, yes or no. Does the program function?

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I cannot believe you could be so arrogant. What does having an"advanced degree" have to do with mmorpg ? Judging from the fact you didnt say advanced degrees in COMPUTER PROGRAMING, I will say zero. Do not pretend to understand or belittle someone that you obviously have no experience to guide. This is not a flame, just a note. Check yourself, go back to the lab and let the people who do this for a living figure it out.

How about some way of determining BEFORE a Master Architect makes a City Hall if the planet has reached it's CAP? I built a Naboo City Hall Deed, and now I am stuck with it because I cannot place it on Naboo. Maybe put that indicator on the world map?

RogueR2: I think that they contracted their database work out to another company. If that is in-fact the case, then anything done to the database(s) may have to be done by this other company, hence a delay. I don't know what "database problem" it is that you're referring to, but if you heard that something being fixed was being delayed due to a database problem, then the outsourcing of the database is probably the reason for the delay.

Dagobaz: To be perfectly honest with you, I do not appreciate the tone of your post. I was not trying to be rude to DarthApothis or anyone else. I do not think that CNS Associates degree programs are "lowly" being that I have seen some extremely difficult degree plans for that degree type. I definitely do not work for a "major corporation" (unless you consider acompanythat employs about 50people to be a "major corporation"). And I am certainly not singing in the rain, much less doing so as you have described it.

I *gasp* made a mistake. I misunderstood something that DarthApothis said and reacted out of some degree of mild shock and disbeliefwith a "surely you realize" -type statement. I was like that because even most of the university comp sci types that I have been around have been programmers in software development houses at some point. And none of them, regardless of background, seemed to me to ever have any false ideals regarding how things were often done in "the real world". They just didn't accept that kind of work in the classroom. Furthermore, I have since apologized to DarthApothis for my error.

However, essentially accusing myself, or anyone else, of being blissfully ignorant of, content with, or even happy that, this game is buggy is insulting. I realize that this game is buggy.I suffer from the various andasundryflaws inthis game just like everyone else. And I get frustrated and angry at times too. But Ido not let it ruin my day or cause me undue stress. Doyou know why? It is because I do not work for or with that company, nor have I ever: I ama customer. It is my responsibility to make the hard decision of "is this product worth my money", not how best to correct its flaws (thankfully). I believe in customer input on what is wrong, what does not work, what implementations are unacceptable/annoying, what would be nice to see, et certa, and I believe in reporting anything that you find amiss while you play. And I believe that a development staff should seriously take these things into consideration when they plan and make changes because no product can truly improve if that input is ignored. Right now, I believe that this product will improve and because of that I will continue to use this product. If my belief in this matter changes, then I will cancel my account and spend that time and money elsewhere.

Yes, broke is broke, without a doubt, and DEs and BEs are very good examples of this. But,it sounds like your problems with AT-STs and Item Decay have less to do them actually being broke and you not liking the current implementation. (And I don't like their current implementations either. Not only that, I personally think that the entire factional perk system is ridiculous in design, much less implementation,to begin with.) Mounts? Well, you would think that if your mountwas standing still you'd be able to stick yourself with a stim or aim a weapon. Maybe they're broke or maybe the implementation and/or design is just bad. :: shrugs :: I haven't a clue being that I haven't been following Mounts all that closely.

"Just fix it... how Hard is that." :: winces :: Dagobaz, I can't believe that you said that. I agree with most of what you said after that, but I can't believe that you said THAT.

There was a dev team lead that has written out responses to posts (those responses were posted by Q3PO) addressing concerns relating to the professions that his team are responsible for in which he does say that he has passed on things to other team leads and was going to pester them about it. Communicationis happening. It's hobbled, but still happening. We all just need to remember that we're talking about a rather unique situation here. Actual development staff posting on a (quasi-) public forum?! (Sometime back I'm sure that some SOE PR staff had to be given tranquilizers while someone held their hands and told them that "Yes, it WILL be alright" after being told this was going to happen.) Most programmersdo nottalk to customers directly,period. Most programmers do not like talking to customers directly, because nothing but trouble usually results. Especially if it's something that's liable to tick them off. And I would hate to be a Forum Moderator or a PR person and work on these forums. That would beakin tobeing a police officer and being on riot duty. These forums appear to be heavily populated by people that like nothing more than to bait, flame, troll, and/orwhine all the time. It'sa wonder that much of anything worthwhile actually gets to the devs.

... I just realized that myreply to Dagobaz's post is turning into a rant about other things periphial to the matter at hand, so I will now stop.

Now it's off to bed before I fall asleep at my keyboard.

DarkSetz

I dont really see a problem with the cap, for all of you that wanted to owna city, why not just build up your politician skill and run for mayor in other cities?

I didn't read every post on here because that would take hours and what I'm about to say might go un-noticed because this post is so full or because this has been said already but I think most of the distress in this situation came because of the crash to desktop bug. We had our Politician logged out at the trainer in Deeja Peak and our Architect logged out infront of his crafting station with all resources and components enough to craft 3 town halls ready in his inventory to craft. All was supposed to go smoothly until our architect was un-able to log in. We tried in a panic with 4 different people to log into his account all failed and got kicked to the desktop. So by the time we got another architect to come craft it for us all lots were taken. What bugs me even more is all player cities are cramped in the top half of the map. We had our houses all layed out and lots left open for the various player citystructures. I believe what the DEV's should have done was contacted the largest groups of people on each planet and allowed them to "test" the cities live.... That or place a Townhall in the least remote area's and then have whoever wants to be able to place houses there and vote for their mayorthat way the bigger groups would be the ones to get the cities and the smaller groups wouldn't be making these rinky dinky towns. Mostly it pisses me off that our whole plan was screwed because of a bug and now we have to wait a month for our city. Release the quick fix. You're causing to much frustration here then anything else and if you're worried about bugs don't worry we've lived through enough already I think we can live through a few more created by player cities.