Politician Archive
Thread: A need to SAVE player cities?
In restrospect I think that player cities were a bad idea. It's easier to live at a 1m ride from a starport than to have to take another shuttleport to go home, when you are even lucky to have one, and it just made more cities dead because people are spread out everywhere. When they were introduced it was a good thing because there were no bikes to make you go home faster than a shuttleport can take you. Now it's just more desert towns that are slowly dying. The only advantage I can think of about player cities are the specialities (I love research center).
If PCs had a starport? I'd be the first one to leave my city to go live to one with one. It would just help kill the small cities faster.
Message Edited by Songe on 06-04-2004 07:10 PM
Player cities is no doubt competitve. You had to compete from day 1 in placing your city hall and cities compete for the coveted cap slots. They also compete for citizens. So if a small city dies due to a larger city being more appealing that is natural selection.
Our city was basically our guild city. When our guild disbanded our city was in trouble. For about 2 months we struggled to keep our shuttle. So a handful of us decided we better take action and do something about it. We formed a new guild and recruited hard. We took our city from almost dying to one of the largest on Naboo. Keeping a city alive is hard work. What did keep us alive is other cities could not get a shuttleport so the guilds therebanded with us. I think caps are good. They keep player cities to a minimum and they force groups to work together. Otherwise, as an architect, I can tell you every single Joe Blow wants to have his own city to "give it a try". That will just, in my opinion, clutter the planetary map with hundreds of stupid names of dead cities.
My point is cities are alot of work and small ones will no doubt die out eventually. I see most small cities as homes to groups who want to be on their own. Larger cities must band with groups to survive. I don't see a reason why starports can not go in player cities. I posted in the starport thread that game cities will always be social gathering places for players. These are neutral spots for mixed groups to meet. People will not come together in player cities, in my opinion, unless they live there, shopping, or need to use the facitiies of the city. I never see people in player cities spamming to sell goods or services. Also if you take this feature out, although annoying, you would only succeed in creating a problem for those who have no merchant abilities. Every action has a reaction. Some have addressed this issue in the development forums by increasing the bazaar limits. I feel this would only starve out new players because most players want insane prices for their items. The bazaar is at least a nice place for new players to get cheaply equipped.
I would like to see bazaar terminals and starports added to player cities. They are a convenience that I feel in player cities will help in saving time for players to have fun rather than sit around waiting at shuttle terminals. I think one killer to cities is the maintenance costs. These are astronaumical in my opinion. We have the basics in our city and we cost 545k per week. The only means of getting this money is to tax or donations. The later is what we subscribe to. When you tax you only hurt the little guys who already are struggling to find a reason to play the game. The city structures and trainers need to have the money earned go into the treasury instead of the void. At the moment city structures are placed only as a convenience to those visiting. I feel they should be sources of income. The players supporting our city sometimes wonder the merit of spending their hard earned money every week to keep the few luxuries in our city. The DEVs need to make player cities more appealing for their survival. If they want to push socilization in the game they need to give us a helping hand to keep our means of socializing. We have enough credit sinks in the game as it is.
Well those are my ramblings 
Perhaps the Devs could consider strictly zoning NPC cities for PC structures and allowing PC politicians to run for mayor of them? Those who wished to create thier own cities off the beaten path could do so, and those who wished to live near the NPC facilities could also do so. Either way, the politician profession would prosper due to PCs running ( and perhaps even competing ) with eachother for mayor positions of the NPC cities.
I mean just imagine... "Mayor of Mos Espa"