CUEmu - Thread Posts

StumanKadir

Thu Feb 26, 2004 6:52 pm

Here are few questions that have been asked before, but do not seem to have been answered definitely.

-Does anyone know for sure when6 week period countdown started from? Is it from the release of Patch 6? Will it be included from Patch 7?

- Does the term "login" refer to people who have logged into the game, or logged onto that server?

- Will mayors be notified beforehand as to whichresidents are going to be booted from the city or will we just login one day and find that our cities are now smaller in size?

- Will the houses of those who have been booted remain in the city or do they stay until they disappear from decay?

- What happens if the Mayor of a city is one of those who has not logged in within the 6 week period? Does the city vanish, does it remain?

There are many and varied reasons for why residents do not log into the game. They could be busy in r/l- for example, we have almost a quarter of our residents away on active duty with various armed forces and have to rely on their spouses - if they have them -to login so that they can maintain their houses. Those without spouses generally either have huge amounts of maintenance in their house or have a friend or city official do it for them.

We also have a few residents who play on more than one server (most have moved to the European servers to avoid the Australian prime-time server restarts but still play on Valcyn occasionally) and some can go for weeks, evenmonthswithout coming into Valcyn. Some of our residents have just upped and quit (more and more it seems unfortunately) but intend to return when bugs have been fixed or when Space Expansion gets eventually released. There are others that have had troubles with net connection (our first Mayor was offline for 8 weeks with a DSL problem when the city first got established). And still others have been away from the game for extended periods owing to work or family issues.

So can we have an answer for these questions (and please note, not a guestimate or a feeling- but a real answer thanks).

Stuman Anikadir
Maker of stuff - on hiatis until they work out what they are doing to this game
Will be back once the Crafting Upgrade is announced
Sick of playing with kiddies, come play with the old folks, we are just as gamey as the next person

Youch1

Fri Feb 27, 2004 5:17 am

#2

Given that no one bothered to answer our questions or concerns before this disasterous patch was implemented, I'm afraid I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any answers now.

Apologies for the guesswork that follows, but I'd currently be prepared to wager that the first time we will find out about the loss of "6 week" citizens will be when you log in to find your city possibly reduced in rank - exactly six weeks after the patch went live.

While many active cities will continue to thrive (and well-deserved congrats to the hard-working mayors for achieving this) I'm more convinced than ever that a majority are in for a very nasty shock.

I predicted before this patch that we will end up with a EQ-esque situation where only a handful of mega cities will continue to prosper, and having spoken to many people since I'm now more convinced of this than ever.

As cities lose ranks - and hundreds across the servers will -folk will leave in droves for the few remaiming bright lights, making it a vicious circle.

If ever there was an ill-concieved and unwanted change, the six-week rule was it. I'm still staggered as to how short-sighted the devs have been.

Anyway, sorry to ramble on!

Skarra, Master Architect and founder/builder of Orc Town, Radiant

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Skarra, Master Architect of West Bestine, Tatooine, Radiant - fine Furniture, Homes, Harvesters and Resources at -2200, -3444 just 1 minute west of town.

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PadreBook

Fri Feb 27, 2004 11:41 am

#3

Youch1 wrote:
Given that no one bothered to answer our questions or concerns before this disasterous patch was implemented, I'm afraid I wouldn't hold your breath waiting for any answers now.
Apologies for the guesswork that follows, but I'd currently be prepared to wager that the first time we will find out about the loss of "6 week" citizens will be when you log in to find your city possibly reduced in rank - exactly six weeks after the patch went live.
While many active cities will continue to thrive (and well-deserved congrats to the hard-working mayors for achieving this) I'm more convinced than ever that a majority are in for a very nasty shock.
I predicted before this patch that we will end up with a EQ-esque situation where only a handful of mega cities will continue to prosper, and having spoken to many people since I'm now more convinced of this than ever.
As cities lose ranks - and hundreds across the servers will -folk will leave in droves for the few remaiming bright lights, making it a vicious circle.
If ever there was an ill-concieved and unwanted change, the six-week rule was it. I'm still staggered as to how short-sighted the devs have been.
Anyway, sorry to ramble on!
Skarra, Master Architect and founder/builder of Orc Town, Radiant

Hey mayors of lessor cities or ones that got left out in the cold because of the Naboo city cap (the main area of complaint across all servers except the one with 30 level 4's on Naboo), were big whiners about it--hey not all cities have 20-30 ghost residents ok? The citizen's I'll lose will be guildmates and others that decided in many cases to just stop playing, and a few that switched exclusivly to other servers. When leading citizens just stop playing that hurts the city bad enough as it is now I have to just wildly invite more people in just on the hope that they won't quit playing--ever!

Padre

LashoonStillwell

Fri Feb 27, 2004 12:31 pm

#4

I don't think the countdown started for six weeks post patch...I think it took into account those already inactive six weeks and so on. I've already lost a dozens players due to inactivity.

I went from a city of 91 to 87 and that's with me constantly adding new players. I'll be lucky to have 85 and retain my Class 5 status come next update.

________________________________________
Lashoon Stillwell - Galactic Response Team
Master Weaponsmith - Master Artisian - Architect - Gunfighter

Visit Freedom Plaza!! Oceanview, Talus -2387, -6409
Lash-Mart Weapons, Deeds, Furniture, Tools, and Weapon Mods. Always in stock, always low prices. Taking custom orders.

Dralar

Fri Feb 27, 2004 12:52 pm

#5

Youch1 wrote:
If ever there was an ill-concieved and unwanted change, the six-week rule was it. I'm still staggered as to how short-sighted the devs have been.

Maybe by some mayors, but I welcome the change. If I look on the city terminal to see how many citizens live in a city I certainly don't want citizens = active citizens + ghosts. An active city will have nothing to fear. Yes there will be some people who stop playing, but why would you want to consider their ghosts as citizens anyway? Just because you don't want it doesn't mean nobody wants it, there are others playing the game besides you.

Eri'Ad She-Akt
Mayor of Talath, Rori, 3684, 3427 (Tempest)
Master Artisan (vendor: Rori, 3672, 3698)
Master Chef (vendor: Rori, 3669, 3517)
Master Architect (former), Master Merchant (former)

Youch1

Fri Feb 27, 2004 3:27 pm

#6

In response to a couple of threads above, as I've always sought to stress in my posts on this change, I have nothing but the utmost respect and admiration for the many mayors who keep their cities alive through untold hours of effort on their part - with often no more reward than the knowledge that fellow players are enjoying a better gaming experience thanks to their efforts.

However, the argument I've also always adopted is that while cities deprived of expension will now quite rightly hopefully get the benefits they deserve, this will come at the expense of many many more lesser cities hovering on the edge of a city rank.

I'm not saying active "deprived" cities shouldn't get their promotions - merely that SoE's chosen "system" for achieving this is going to punish a great many more cities/players than it will benefit - all so they can save a minisculeamount of server storage space.

An alternative plan would have been to simply to raisethe planet caps. Bingo - everyone gains, no one loses. There are onlya finite number ofplayers available to place a declared home per server. We would not be over-run with level 5 cities. Who cares if 10 or 20 cities have a shuttle - it's just one one more bit of artwork and a few extra kb on the database.

I'm still enjoying this game and have been here since the days of beta. Regardless of the 6-week timer, I'll almost certainly still be playing.

However, that isn't the case for everyone, and seeing weeks of hard work evaporating overnight as hard-earned shuttles/hospitals etc vanish will, imho, upset a lot more people than SoE seem to be anticipating.

Skarra, Master Architect

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~
Skarra, Master Architect of West Bestine, Tatooine, Radiant - fine Furniture, Homes, Harvesters and Resources at -2200, -3444 just 1 minute west of town.

~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~

LashoonStillwell

Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:15 am

#7

Alot of my inactives are serving in Iraq. There's not much that can be done about that other then adding new citizens to compensate.

________________________________________
Lashoon Stillwell - Galactic Response Team
Master Weaponsmith - Master Artisian - Architect - Gunfighter

Visit Freedom Plaza!! Oceanview, Talus -2387, -6409
Lash-Mart Weapons, Deeds, Furniture, Tools, and Weapon Mods. Always in stock, always low prices. Taking custom orders.

Dralar

Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:34 am

#8

Yours and everyone else's. Unfortunately there isn't a way to suspend an account so that the people going overseas do not lose citizenship. If there was a way to do that, that would be ideal. As soon as activity on the account was detected the 6 week timer is started.

Given that there are city caps on planets something had to be done to try to remove the inactives. Cross server ghosts were nothing more than an exploit in my opinion. Would you rather be denied city rank advancement rank due to the planetary city cap had already reached with ghost cities? That would piss me off much, MUCH more.

Eri'Ad She-Akt
Mayor of Talath, Rori, 3684, 3427 (Tempest)
Master Artisan (vendor: Rori, 3672, 3698)
Master Chef (vendor: Rori, 3669, 3517)
Master Architect (former), Master Merchant (former)

Chibi-Bar

Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:47 am

#9

personally... if it was up to me.. I would have code it to check if the account is active... the main reason this was put out because of "temp account" status.. where you create a char.. place a house.. become a citizen and add admin of real players to maintain the house...

Check the character if the account is active... if it is not active then give it 6 weeks.. then the citizenship is remove...

this will allow oversea people who continue to pay but not playing (that is what SOE wants.. the money right?)

login for cross server will not be solve by this method.. neither with current method.. I'm sure cross server will be more popular.. it is not hard to log in once a month and play around for 10minutes to 1 hour (just using macro!!)

but at least it will solve the SOE main concern of non-paying account that are citizens.

P.S. I love the idea that some player of after 6 weeks pack everything into packing crates and store in the bank (sure this will go over 100 items, but if the player reactivate.. all items are still there)

Sasheria Windsong

Master Artisian and Master Architect
Drop off Vendor Cynthia: -4752 -4341
Architect Shop Vendor Sasha:-4756 -4341
Citizen of Blood Gulch, Dantooine

Plzurpilot

Sun Feb 29, 2004 1:29 am

#10

I noticed that i lost 2 citizens at the exact same time. They botth were inacitve; however i know of 1 citizen that has not logged since i was elected mayor in November. Unless logging into the game counts and he/she is playing on a diffrent server. I accutally can't wait for this system to hit. I want to see how many of these great cities around me are still standing.

3 more weeks and counting.

Nostradamus Smyth, Former Mayor: Vodo-Siosk Dantooine
Master Droid Engineer | Master Politician | Master Artisan | Master Architect

StumanKadir

Mon Mar 01, 2004 5:49 am

#11

Hmmm, 3 stars for that - guess some folks don't like reality all that much.

I'm not sure that it has started, as we have found some residents who we now know actually left the game over 2 months ago, and another couple who signed up when PC got released and actually quit the game the next week. We also have players who have not logged in for the last 6 weeks and who are in Iraq (though we know that the wife of one has logged in at least once).

One thing that does disturb us though is that we have found residents who are actually now residents in other cities (one is actually the mayor of another city on Valcyn ) even though they haven't a house in the town (we have accounted for them all btw) and had actually left before we hit Tier 2!!!

Now do those get cleaned up as well?

At this stage we are not too fussed about loosing our shuttleport - it rarely gets used and frankly doesn't pay for itself (and really, why fly when you can ride just as quickly and cheaply), and will be happy to see all the "dead residents" get cleaned away.....just as long as we get our land back that is.

Not that we will get told I suppose

Stuman Anikadir
Maker of stuff - on hiatis until they work out what they are doing to this game
Will be back once the Crafting Upgrade is announced
Sick of playing with kiddies, come play with the old folks, we are just as gamey as the next person

Laeren

Mon Mar 01, 2004 7:56 am

#12

I think part of the problem will lie with what I call "Massive Cascading Failure".

Let's say your city has 55 residents, you have a shuttleport, you have citizens settled throughout your radius (not all clustered around town-center, in other words). Or, let's say you originally had that, and as your city expanded, your citizens expanded outwards or moved to 'development' districts like a commercial district or residential "communities", which was ONLY possible because of the city radius.

Now, let's say you lose one person from this scenario. Your city drops to 54 residents, you go to Rank 3, and your radius shrinks. Those residents outside your current radius are now no longer part of the city. Your shuttleport probably went poof, and even if it didn'tpossibly outside your current city radius and nonfunctional.

You now need to schedule a mass exodus of those citizens that have been shoved out of your city, back INTO the new radius, plus recruit more people to make yourself go back to Rank 4. Meanwhile, you've lost your shuttle, a major incentive for people to move to a player city in the first place. Also, your plans for the commercial/residential district or whatever development you had them move to in the first place are invalid and need to be taken apart, or you need to provide temporary housing for those residents to come back into your city, until you can regain your rank.

If you don't do that within your week, you might lose another rank. Your radius shrinks again, and more of your citizens are ousted from your city.

Massive Cascading Failure

Seems to characterize a lot of things in this game, but I think this move by the devs pretty much fits right in there.

A city that loses its rank in this manner should retain its radius, at least for the 'grace period'.

Message Edited by Laeren on 03-01-2004 08:56 AM

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Seiryuu

Mon Mar 01, 2004 11:15 am

#13

One thing that does disturb us though is that we have found residents who are actually now residents in other cities (one is actually the mayor of another city on Valcyn ) even though they haven't a house in the town (we have accounted for them all btw) and had actually left before we hit Tier 2!!!

We have had this as well. When a citizen picks up their house, they are not removed as a citizen from the city, but are in their personal information because that house is gone. When declaring at a new city, their personal information looks like they aren't a citizen, so they are added there.

Basically, redeeding breaks the citizenship pointer. The value is set to null without cleaning up what it references.

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Thread: The 6 week login period and related questions