Politician Archive

Ok ... QAville does have a lot of Gardens, 8 of them are large ones ... but with their specialisation "Stronghold" (150k/week) their 13 Mission Terminals and Trainers (13k), their 5 Decorations (sweet 5k/week ) and their unbelievable 751k for structures they have a Maintainence of 1'019'000 credits due for this periode ... (and only 950k in the Maintainance *hint* )

With the 64 Citizens this makes 16k per citizen per week ... so 64k in a month ... now some people might say that's nothing, but me and several of my casual gaming friends that are planing a city since long before release think it's a bunch of money ... and that's just for Maintainance, no savings for special events, new Buildings etc.

I allmost get the fealing the devs are desperatly trying to create a huge money sink ... effectivly only making cities possible for the wealthy powergamers, not for the majority of casual gamers that are now already always in need of money to pay for their own maintainance and needed tools

Agreed, this is far too expensive. We of Elysium have a well-organized city already, but numbers that large will cause enormous problems for us. We're an RP city, so pretty much by definition we don't comprise powergamers. These fees will ruin us.

As people have said before, for PowerGamers and people who sell stuff (deed, clothes, resources, etc), coming up with 100k a week is no-problem.

But for all of casual gamers who play for a few hours a day and maybe only make 20k (before hitting the bazaar )...

I understand that they want to keep the maint high to encourge growth, but at the same time amedium sizedguild doesnt want to have to pay 100k per week on top of the Guild Hall's maint and a Medium Sized City doesnt want to have to pay 300k per week just to have a few gardens and a cantina.

City Maintenance is prohibitively expensive for a reason. There shouldn't be alot of cities around.

There are many more methods of revenue than simply charging the residents. There are 4 kinds of taxes, and only 1 of them applies to residents exclusively.

Only those cities that have dedicated founders, and remain successful will last.

This keeps the map from being littered with cities. (Thank Goodness)

I started out thinking that the maintenance costs associated with cities (as stated) are a bit on the excessive side. But then I started running some numbers on how to finance things, and it started looking not so bad, but there are also some huge risks that need to be addressed.

A sample revenue plan

First, lets assume we have a class IV city with 50 citizens and a weekly maintenance rate of 350k, which is fairly modest given the prices being quoted here. How can this be financed without driving away the casual players? I think they key is to not hit any of the revenue sources too heavily.

Assumptions:

50 citizens
2 PA halls
35 small houses
13 medium houses
2 large houses
2m/week in sales by the city's crafters
50 shuttle trips per day in/out of town.

Total maintenance for the houses and PA halls is about 150k/week (I don't have house maintenance costs in front of me right now so I might be wrong).

Here's a revenue plan:

50k from income tax (1k/citizen/week)
15k from property tax (20%)
21k from shuttle fee (200/trip)
200k from sales tax (10%)

Total revenue is 321k/week, so we're within tweaking distance of the necessary funds. So these rates are OK? Maybe - but there are some serious dangers.

The problem with this plan

At some level, this looks OK, but this also means that the cities are supported almost entirely by the crafters. This is unfair to the crafters given how lucrative mission-running can be if you know what you're doing.

Even if you don't care about fairness, there is a risk that the crafters will find themselves setting up tents in a small number of market towns. In most economies, you are more likely to end up with one town having 100 crafters than with 10 towns having 10 crafters each.

On Gorath/Naboo, based on the number of clusters of crafters, I think we'll end up with about 5-6 market towns. Based on this analysis, only those 5-6 market towns will be economically viable. Those towns will be absurdly rich, all others will be absurdly poor.

Rescuing the plan

Perhaps the devs want there to be only 5-6 towns per planet, but I don't think that's what the players want: I think most players will be happiest living in smaller towns. Large, crowded cities lead to lag and to political conflict. Nobody likes lag, and most players hate the very idea of politics. I respectfully submit that the wisest course is to tailor the game to what the players want.

To rescue the finance plan shown above, I think cities need a true income tax on citizens which affects both mission payouts and revenue from sales regardless of where they take place. Failing that, maintenance costs need to be adjusted such that a modest city can be sustained on a revenue of closer to 100k/week than 350k. Otherwise I think players will find themselves crowding into a few mega-cities rather than living in the smaller settlements that I believe most of them prefer.

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DaQuilla wrote:

With the 64 Citizens this makes 16k per citizen per week ... so 64k in a month ... now some people might say that's nothing, but me and several of my casual gaming friends that are planing a city since long before release think it's a bunch of money ... and that's just for Maintainance, no savings for special events, new Buildings etc.

I allmost get the fealing the devs are desperatly trying to create a huge money sink ... effectivly only making cities possible for the wealthy powergamers, not for the majority of casual gamers that are now already always in need of money to pay for their own maintainance and needed tools

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I think you are thinking about this all wrong. The way I figure, 1 million credits can be paid for by 2000 visitors each paying 500 credits

Now if you want to make a private city as a little playground for a few people, then that is probably not going to be the sort of setup that can maintain a full service metroplis - and that is defnitely the way it should be.

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Arrya wrote:

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DaQuilla wrote:

With the 64 Citizens this makes 16k per citizen per week ... so 64k in a month ... now some people might say that's nothing, but me and several of my casual gaming friends that are planing a city since long before release think it's a bunch of money ... and that's just for Maintainance, no savings for special events, new Buildings etc.

I allmost get the fealing the devs are desperatly trying to create a huge money sink ... effectivly only making cities possible for the wealthy powergamers, not for the majority of casual gamers that are now already always in need of money to pay for their own maintainance and needed tools

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I think you are thinking about this all wrong. The way I figure, 1 million credits can be paid for by 2000 visitors each paying 500 credits.

Now if you want to make a private city as a little playground for a few people, then that is probably not going to be the sort of setup that can maintain a full service metroplis - and that is defnitely the way it should be.

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One of the things to remember about MMORPGs is that different players want different things. To the extent that the game can accomodate everyone, I think it should. If someone wants to live in a thriving metropolis, they should have that opportunity. If someone wants to live in a modest town supported by 1-2 PAs, they should also have that opportunity. Its not reasonable, however, to insist that players who want to live in small towns be forced to live in a huge metropolis to gratify someone else's desire to have a metropolis.

There has to be balance. The metropolis has to be viable, but the small town also has to be viable.

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Neilla wrote:

One of the things to remember about MMORPGs is that different players want different things. To the extent that the game can accomodate everyone, I think it should. If someone wants to live in a thriving metropolis, they should have that opportunity. If someone wants to live in a modest town supported by 1-2 PAs, they should also have that opportunity. Its not reasonable, however, to insist that players who want to live in small towns be forced to live in a huge metropolis to gratify someone else's desire to have a metropolis.

There has to be balance. The metropolis has to be viable, but the small town also has to be viable.

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I'd agree with that. But how are you defining a modest town here? Most people seem to be defining it as one with few people, but still include all of the best features. Things like shuttleports, banks, cloning centers, med center, cantinas, etc - those should be geared more towards metropolis sized towns.

It is possible to have a 1-2 PA modest town in place for 100k per week. It is also possible to have that town cost 1 million per week. Small towns are viable, they just need to be planned realistically.

I have mixed feelings about the high maintenance fees. I think it will be good to help keep the number of cities down. On the other hand I think they are a little too high and not fair to casual gamers. By not having the city hall maintenance scale withe the city size devs are discouraging the formation of small towns.

To get a budget to work I think early on you need to plan on having 1/2 to 3/4 of your income coming from donations. If you try and capture all the income via taxes you will scare people off. Get together do 1 night per week of missions with all oney going to the city. You should be able to come up with at least 100k in a night of missions with a good group of people.

I don't understand the guy saying 2000 visitors at 500 credits each. Is he suggesting a 500 credit surchage to shuttle fees and assume you get 2000 shuttle tickets per week? Please explain what you mean. There is not an entrance fee you can place on your city like a house. Would be nice, entering XYZ city you must pay 500 credits to enter.

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Mkappus wrote:

I don't understand the guy saying 2000 visitors at 500 credits each. Is he suggesting a 500 credit surchage to shuttle fees and assume you get 2000 shuttle tickets per week? Please explain what you mean. There is not an entrance fee you can place on your city like a house. Would be nice, entering XYZ city you must pay 500 credits to enter.

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Sales tax is how I am thinking most of this money will be generated.A ticket tax could be used for part of that, especialy if you are near a popular POI.

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Arrya wrote:

I'd agree with that. But how are you defining a modest town here? Most people seem to be defining it as one with few people, but still include all of the best features. Things like shuttleports, banks, cloning centers, med center, cantinas, etc - those should be geared more towards metropolis sized towns.

It is possible to have a 1-2 PA modest town in place for 100k per week. It is also possible to have that town cost 1 million per week. Small towns are viable, they just need to be planned realistically.

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We're aiming for a modest Class IV city with the following:

City Hall
Shuttle Port
Research Specialization
A few mission terminals
Decorations + Gardens

I would hope that something like this would be within the means of 2 mid-sized PAs with 50 citizens. I think we can live without a bank and a cloning center in order to save money, but the shuttle port is very important and the research specialization is critical. I hope that decorations aren't prohibitively expensive - I'm more interested in having a beautiful city than a large one.

-------------------------------------------------
Neilla Bastune, Mayor of Baishi
Master Architect and CEO of Baishi Heavy Industries

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Neilla wrote:

We're aiming for a modest Class IV city with the following:

City Hall
Shuttle Port
Research Specialization
A few mission terminals
Decorations + Gardens

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Based on what I have seen:

CH: 100k, SP: 125k, Spec: 150k

The terminals and decorations will probably run 20-50k, possibly more depending on how far you go with them. That comes out to around 425k per week, or 8.5k per person.

To me, that certainly seems pretty reasonable. Your biggest expense will probably be the specialization (which I am totally guessing on its cost) so you might think about if your crafters can use that specialization to generate an extra 150k for the city to support it.

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Arrya wrote:

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Neilla wrote:

We're aiming for a modest Class IV city with the following:

City Hall
Shuttle Port
Research Specialization
A few mission terminals
Decorations + Gardens

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Based on what I have seen:

CH: 100k, SP: 125k, Spec: 150k

The terminals and decorations will probably run 20-50k, possibly more depending on how far you go with them. That comes out to around 425k per week, or 8.5k per person.

To me, that certainly seems pretty reasonable. Your biggest expense will probably be the specialization (which I am totally guessing on its cost) so you might think about if your crafters can use that specialization to generate an extra 150k for the city to support it.

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I think this is a little too high. Referring to the sample revenue plan I outlined above, this might force me to raise the sales tax to 15% which is a pretty significant drag on the economy. And if we throw in a cloning center and/or a bank it completely breaks the budget.

I think something closer to 300k would be more workable. As a note, if the aim is to drain money from the economy, then haveing more small cities is probably the way to go. 1 mega-city at 1 million per week is drains less money than 4 modest cities at 300k.