Politician Archive
Thread: Cross-server citizen swap to get around the 10 person cap
Just a friendly reminder for all the MORONS who keep saying that cities are being destroyed because of cross-server citizens...
In case you can't read...Thunderheart clearly told us that right now it's not against the SOE tos. So quit lying! Sheesh...if the city was taken away, there's another reason for it.
I don't care what your opinion is on the matter, I'm just sick of seeing ignorant, mis-informed posts on here. If you're gonna post your opinion, at least take a minute to read the whole thread and be educated on the subject.
-Banndakuut
banndakuut wrote:
Just a friendly reminder for all the MORONS who keep saying that cities are being destroyed because of cross-server citizens...
In case you can't read...Thunderheart clearly told us that right now it's not against the SOE tos. So quit lying! Sheesh...if the city was taken away, there's another reason for it.
I don't care what your opinion is on the matter, I'm just sick of seeing ignorant, mis-informed posts on here. If you're gonna post your opinion, at least take a minute to read the whole thread and be educated on the subject.
-Banndakuut
Awfully sorry, old chap - I'm obviously being a complete moron, as you say. Please ignore. You guys just go ahead and create your fraudulent cities - nothing will happen you to - Banndakuut says that it is OK.
You lucky people!
I'm not in a city yet, but our guild will probably try to form an outpost since our houses are clustered around our PA hall. I'm hoping we won't lose our chance at a real city due to the number of phantom cities.
Initially, it would have been probably been OK if only one character per account could belong to a player city. I personally don't know many people who have serious characters on more than one galaxy. This would have at least allowed people to choose which galaxy they wished to join a city in the most, rather than the situation of peoplecreating characters/joining citieson galaxies thatthey have no intention of actually belonging to.
I'm not sure if it would be feasible to implement this idea after the fact though, but the idea of "finding loopholes" around the rules doesn't seem appealing to me - I'm glad I'm online with a guild of people who aren't like this. I do realize this could limit legimate people who seriously play on more than one galaxy.
IMHO
Zanik wrote:
Sargothas wrote: Just what in the world do the devs expect to happen? They create a game, promise us features, ommit or nerf them all to hell, then implement them and change the rules the following day. Personally, at this point anyone "exploiting" this system is nearly justified by putting up with the utter crap the Dev team has put us all through.
"...I never condoned anykind of thing like this before, but the devs deserve it, in my opinion.
I love it. You use the DEVs as your justification to take out frustrations on other players. Great moral construct you've created there. So the DEVs deserve your ire. Fine. Do the other players on the server deserve it? No.
I still haven't seen an answer to my question before. Why won't any of you goons just post requests on your server's message boards requesting that you are looking for RP'ers to join your cities? Instead of trying to create something that people can say is really cool--you're just a bunch of exploiters trying to hang on to your land snatch.
-Zanik
First off, the "taking it out on other players" is a total laugh. How will it POSSIBLY affect other players in a bad way if someones town grows bigger? Oh... I know... the city cap nobody knew about until the last minute? Is that how people helping eachother out across the server will grief players? Let me point out to you, wiseguy... The devs did that to you. Not someone looking to overcome the latest rule changes for population requirements.
You fail to see the point here. The community as a whole was told that the requirements would be one thing. Then AFTER people invested their time, the rules change. So is it fair for the Devs themselves to grief the players? Now.... you claim its cheating others out of a good game experience, and I say the Devs cheated those same people of of good gamin experience when they released this crap ONE way, but immediately changed theirrules within a week. Despite the loud voice of the community stating that was not what we planned/paid for. Ever hear the term "bait and switch"? That is EXACTLY what is being done here. Intentionally or otherwise. It is still fact.
We pay a sum of money to play, and with that comes the privilege we get the option of a character on each server. Nowpeople have some "ethical" issues ofHOW we can use the service we paid for? What a joke.Next, will you cryEXPLOIT to those who buy a second account to do similar things? I can PROMISE you the Dev's dont want to ban those people. Hell no... they get MORE MONEY when people get a second account. Maybe thats the goal here....
And for the record... my city has over 20 people, placed on Rori. So before anyone spews at the mouth about my standpoint, let me add thatwe wont be affected much at all, but it infuriates me nonetheless.
Finding loopholes around the rules and around the spirit of the game is what every GM of every roleplaying game tries so desperately to avoid. Roleplaying games, both pen and paper and MMORPG, are about telling a story. In a tabletop game with about 5 players, the GM has complete control over the universe and can make it work like it really should, and can anticipate and react to players' actions and words.
Imagine if you were sitting down to play a tabletop game with 5 friends, and playing 5 games at once. And now imagine if you could do what people are trying to do here, with the cross-server residency thing. The GM would put the finger of god down in a heartbeat.
Now imagine you're sitting at that tabletop game with 600,000 people, and you're running 20 games at once, and a good portion of them are playing in a few of those games. It makes it very hard to police everyone. Everyone would have to be kind of on the honor system to police each other. Well, that's what's going on here. SOE didn't setup the rules of the universe so that if you could find an exploit like this it ok because it technically works. Technically, we all know where Princess Leia is hiding out on Corellia, and if we wanted we could go tell Vader and he could have the whole area turned into a smoking crater. But we don't. We can't. It violates the spirit of the game, and in doing so, makes it difficult to tell a story.
Cross-server residency swapping does this as well. It allows 1 person to have a metropolis and lockup an area 1km in diameter, even if those other 84 people only log in once a week to vote (though, they don't even have to!). It's bad for the game, and bad for the story.
The only all-encompassing fix that can be applied (that i see) universally and without having to do hands-on game mastering 24/7 is to require people to actually cast their votes. Or perhaps, if they voted last week, their vote counts for one or two weeks after, thus requiring them to vote again. Something along those lines.
Of course, the best step SOE can do to DETER this sort of behavior is to catch a few people doing this and stop them, and make it konwn that they stopped them. They won't be able to catch everyone, but they can make an example out of a few of them. Kind of like the RIAA is doing with MP3 swapping (except this actually accomplishes something good!).
- Mayor Pash Aylor, City of Valshara, Naboo, Valcyn
I don't know if this has been brought up, but won't all these new "citizens" have to pay taxes? And since they won't be, I'm assuming the mayor will be paying their share of the taxes, and the upkeep on their homes? Isn't that an awfully large amount for the mayor to be covering? Will he then have to raise taxes on his legitimate residents? Just a question.
Paubocca <SYN>
Tarquinas
Stop whining people because things don't fit what you think they should be. I can put 10 characters on the servers. If I want to make an alt character, and join a city, then that is my business. If the servers can't handle the load, that's SOE's problem. The money that we all pay them should be going into upgrading the servers instead of finding ways to nerf our fun.
Cities are what they are, cities. They're not communities. Me and most of my guild that have a city, hardly spend any time there. Why? We go after other things in game, not to sit around our houses chatting.
This game means many different things to different people. Your idea of what a city should be is different than what someone elses idea is.
Also, I think the caps on cities is BS. If someone with only 15 people wanted to build a shuttleport, then they should. If they can maintain it with credits, what is the problem? I've seen RL towns with only a small amount of people with a small airstrip. Ain't much, but it is big enough for a shuttle. I think most small towns have bars. Driven through one town in the mid-west to see a handful of houses and a bar. Nothing else around.
Ok, again I must state tht is somethine is done to this, it will hurt us all. In the grand scheem of all the player, and player cities, VERY few are really doing this. Even if 100 here say they are going to, divide that by however many servers we have now.....this is NOT a problem. Also I have about 5 characters now, and I have mulitpul houses and several servers. Some i do not pay my main on incase i forget to log on, but they are my homes/shops. Please explain to me how this could be done, and not effect a casual player? Please everyone....I know you are mad you didn't get your city, but just wait. When they allow more city halls people will stop complaining. Give it time, also if the developers would not have(going to) bumped up the minimum outpost cap...this would not bea problem.
Although I do think this is wrong, I also think it was wrong of the Developers to change such a drastic matter. I would be willing to be that if they don't up the outpost limit, and leave it at 5, this won't be a problem. If you read this, it was people with 5-7 that needed 3 more BECAUSE SoE changed the rules. They had no intent to exploit(which this is not technically) when they planned there cities. Anyway i stand by if SoE does not up the limit to 10 this will go away. And also I am willing to bet that in all 20+ cities on you server only about 10-20 MAX houses are ghost....and who really cares?!
The only people this hurts are people gripping they can't get a CH down....well soon you will be able to, so don't worry, and stop hating on people for this. It was truely brought on by SoE. Had they said 10 to start, this would never have been brought up.
SunzsuMonk wrote:
The only people this hurts are people gripping they can't get a CH down....well soon you will be able to, so don't worry, and stop hating on people for this. It was truely brought on by SoE. Had they said 10 to start, this would never have been brought up.
Except it's not just the 10 person limit any more. I've seen posts from people wanting to "swap" 20 or 30 citizens. Then it's not about the "unfair" change from 5 to 10 citizens, it's about gaining extra politician exp and growing a city larger than the real # of citizens would allow. Oh, and those posts dictate that any citizens brought in must vote for the incumbent mayor. A great way to stay in power!
Assuming that there will be a limit on Level 2 cities once the city caps are raised, padding your city with ghost citizens to get to that level and beyond has ramifications far beyond letting a small group of players keep their private city private.
Ri'a
I think people are too worked up about this. Is it feasible? Sure. Is it practical for the long term? Not really.
First the house maintainence. Either the mayor would have to pay the maintainence himself, which for more than a few x-server ghosts would get expensive, or the x-server citizens would have to play their characters enough to maintain their houses, which makes them as legit as any other character.
Second, as the city grows, the x-server ghosts would quickly be outnumbered by voting citizens. If the current mayor is doing a good job, expanding the city, and seeing to the needs of the city while keeping the citizens happy, then he deserves to stay in office. If he's a schmuck, he'll get voted out (and the ghost votes and xp will start going to the new incumbent, assuming the ex-mayor doesn't just let them decay, opening prime real estate at the town's core.
I think there are more important things for the Devs and CSRs to do (like fix my character and take less time to respond to in-game calls) than come up with some arcane method of trying to determine if a given citizen is legit.