Merchant Archive

I am sure everyones heard this before, or thought it, and I realize it's a lot of work on the part of the devs. With that said...

I believe all major cities should have at least a few enterable, player rentable buildings, only rentable by merchants, so that they can place vendors in these cities. This would cause players to be more in cities to shop, browse, and make areas beyond the starport/cantina not feel so much like ghost towns.

The bazaar is for the non-merchants. Only you guys could rent these buildings, with more skilled merchants getting priority/better locations. There would possibly be a small amount of items set up, to make displays. These buildings could be set up like shopping malls. To prevent people from paying a million credits in rent and then never stocking the vendor or quitting, you could be required to stop in and pay rent in person once a week, and not be allowed to pay in advance. If you miss a week, you get an eviction notice to remove your items, and then the next week it's open for a new merchant to take.

Since items dont load till you go inside, this wouldnt make cities much laggier at all, aside from bringing more people in and making cities more active again. I will leave other ideas up for debate, I just want to throw this idea to the merchants out there, and see what you think. If you like it, push for the correspondant to mention it. Something this small, though it requires much work, would make cities feel real again, to me.

I have said it and will continue to say it. Player Cities are worthless. The profession is simply not needed in the game. Each planet has several NPC cities, we need no more. All a Player City is, really, is a Player Association. Where before these PA's used a Guild Hall and set up Vendors, they now have their city with all their "eye-candy" buildings. For my Droid Engineer, cities matter little. They're just taking up valuable space that I could be setting up Extractors. For my Ranger however, they are a real nuisance. To hunt the good creatures, you need to be away from civilization. Well, that is very hard when you have 20+ cities on the planet and a lot of them are no more than 2000m apart.

I was okay when they had the cap at something like 5 player cities. But when they raised that cap, the problems for me started. Heck, PC's have doubled in the last month it seems. And I still see lots of Villages popping up, so what the heck is the cap on these things now? 30? 50? None?

Thats cool and all, I am talking about cities like Theed, and Coronet. Player Cities would therefor stay as-is... my proposal only concerns static cities. It would only effect player cities in that people would potentially move their vendors out of them to get spaces in real cities.

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Puck_Starfire wrote:

I have said it and will continue to say it. Player Cities are worthless. The profession is simply not needed in the game. Each planet has several NPC cities, we need no more. All a Player City is, really, is a Player Association. Where before these PA's used a Guild Hall and set up Vendors, they now have their city with all their "eye-candy" buildings. For my Droid Engineer, cities matter little. They're just taking up valuable space that I could be setting up Extractors. For my Ranger however, they are a real nuisance. To hunt the good creatures, you need to be away from civilization. Well, that is very hard when you have 20+ cities on the planet and a lot of them are no more than 2000m apart.

I was okay when they had the cap at something like 5 player cities. But when they raised that cap, the problems for me started. Heck, PC's have doubled in the last month it seems. And I still see lots of Villages popping up, so what the heck is the cap on these things now? 30? 50? None?

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I believe the caps started at 10 on very populated worlds (Tatooine, Corellia, Naboo) and 25 on lesser populated worlds (Dantooine, Lok, Talus). Since then those caps have been doubled to 20 and 50. I believe.

As the mayor of a player city I just disagree there. Cities give players the ability to work together for a comon goal and give them the power to affect some change over their environment. Static cities are out of our control. In my city we decide who gets to enter the cantina or the hospital which trainers to have and where to place them. Which faction our city will be part of. There are lots of opportunities for our citizens to shape their own community. What could be better in an MMO than a cooperative community? I understand that it impacts your abililty to find game and your ability to find resources but that is just one of the many challenges you face.

Yeh Doc, but I'm sure you can admit that 30 cities on Naboo on a map that isn't that big to begin with is ridiculous. Have you checked out the "desolate" Dune Sea lately?

I think I would be okay if they made them real all-around. Imps seizing taxes. Tuskens invading. Different factions making it hard for a PC to do their thing. Disease. Woorts infesting the cities. Right now it's not that hard to make a PC great.

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Puck_Starfire wrote:

Yeh Doc, but I'm sure you can admit that 30 cities on Naboo on a map that isn't that big to begin with is ridiculous. Have you checked out the "desolate" Dune Sea lately?

I think I would be okay if they made them real all-around. Imps seizing taxes. Tuskens invading. Different factions making it hard for a PC to do their thing. Disease. Woorts infesting the cities. Right now it's not that hard to make a PC great.

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On My server most of the player cities are centered around the center of the map without one or two at the edges so The Dune Sea isn't overly populated. I'm all for "nature preserves" that prevent building in certain important areas like the Dune Sea.

I also would LOVE some more interaction by the system with Player Cities. If I had my way most of the activity would be out in the player cities. The lagfest static cities like Coronet are no fun at all. Give me my friends all sitting around the cantina shooting the breeze and watching the local dancers and muscians.

Yeah that's what I miss. I remember starting this game and my fledgeling Artisan would hang out with the locals in the Tyrena cantina. There was always a crowd there, no matter what time of day. It wa great. I nevr went to Coronet until Tyrena died out. Or my fledgeling Bounty Hunter hanging out in Mos Eisley(my favorite cantina and soooo mad it died).

I think people get too much into the GCW and only stay in those faction towns(Theed, Coronet, Anchorhead, Besitine). It's a shame, because towns like Mos Eisley And Keren IMO put Bestine to shame.

I agree that a 30 cap on some planets is ridiculous, but that's another issue. As far as merchants are concerned I am also a Mayor and all the maintenance of the city is paid by my 2% sale taxes and the shuttle tickets. Needless to say that I like our merchants here.

The current problem with player cities is that they are damned empty. There's no lack of reason to be there, but people habitually flock to static cities. What I WOULD like to see is static cities ceasing services like medical centers, cloning centers, cantinas, and mission terminals. Keep the shuttle and space ports, and give people a reason to congregate in player cities.

Well the problem is that EVERYONE is centered around one or two cities on each planet. Go to Correllia. You'll find 75% of the online population in Coronet, 15% in Tyrena and everyone else in the wilds. I'll bet that holds true on just about every server. There might be the occasional wanderer in certain starports KorVella, Doaba Guerfel, etc etc. but it usually breaks down like that. I don't know where everyone is congregating on Tattooine these days, but it ain't Mos Eisley like it used to be. And it's not in player cities, cuz I've been in them.

And in response to your problem, I disagree. I think the problem isn't how they're run, or what they have or don't. The problem is that people are habitual creatures, and Player Cities are still too new. Most of us came up in NPC cities. Most of the newbs who look for stuff got it from us in those NPC cities and they're coming into their own and they're staying there or near by because that's their habit. No one's gotten rich hanging out in the Player Cities yet. The second that happens the more migration out there there will be. The problem is what can happen to kickstart that exodus? Because honestly there isn't ANYTHING in a Player City that you can't get in a NPC city, and there's ONE thing in an NPC city you can't usually get in an NPC city and that's MASSIVE amounts of customers. That's where they are concentrated. We need to scatter them. The only way I can see to do that is to elimanate the services of NPC cities now that Player Cities exist in abundance WITH all of those necessary utilities. Hospitals, cloning centers, cantinas all need to be Player City functions only. Or at least ONE of them. Something to spur people out into the towns.