Politician Archive
Thread: News Flash: Planetary Caps Leaked
The problem is a large number of player planed to own a private city. I have never ever heard a developer say you could own a private city. I did hear them say that players could vote people out of office and elect someone else.
You can plan to own the USA but that doesnt mean it will happen. Just because Jack's construction company pays for and builds the White House does not mean that Jack is king of the USA.
The problem is tht people on thier own decided they could have a privately controled city, the developers never said that. If you plan for something that was never supposed to exist, it is your problem.
I expected the cap to be lower, 10 sounds like a lot, but we will see what happens.
Plinka wrote:
It means that politicians are going to have to actually be politicians. They are going to have to win votes and not expect to just be a politician mule. This, to my mind, is a VERY Good Thing(tm).
It means that the big three planets will be a political arena where campaigning and voting are real gameplay elements. Again, a VERY Good Thing(tm).
Cities and the Politician class were never intended to be a reward for having played since the beginning. They weren't designed to be something every PA has. They also weren't supposed to be easy for everyone to "own." Ownership of the city is meant for the hands of its citizens and the care of the city for the hand of the person ELECTED to be caretaker.
Yes, there will be a lot of people disappointed to not have their personal city right away. But there are, built into the city and politician system, options for those very people.
The political game is upon us. How will you play the game?
-end quote
hehe I was just wondering what would happen if Plinka can't camp her computer and get her hall down.
the politician correspondent would have no city. haha then what? I wonder if campaigning will be as fun as she thinks...
Dayln wrote:The problem is a large number of player planed to own a private city. I have never ever heard a developer say you could own a private city. I did hear them say that players could vote people out of office and elect someone else.
You can plan to own the USA but that doesnt mean it will happen. Just because Jack's construction company pays for and builds the White House does not mean that Jack is king of the USA.
The problem is tht people on thier own decided they could have a privately controled city, the developers never said that. If you plan for something that was never supposed to exist, it is your problem.
I expected the cap to be lower, 10 sounds like a lot, but we will see what happens.
It is reasonable to expect that the devs will provide us with decent information. There were stated restrictions on how close you could build cities. There were no stated restrictions on the number of cities on a planet.
Having small cities is different than having private cities.
Right - I have never heard a developer say you could own a private city. Just like I've never heard a dev say they won't reset every character on the server, or zero out everybody's bank account, or quadruple the HAM of very mob on Endor, or quintuple the number of resources needed to build things, or eliminate all spawns of Ore, or remove the schematics for Harvesters from Architect and move them to Tailor.
The development organization does a really, really lousy job of communicating with the community. For stuff like cities, which take MONTHS
Cities have taken MONTHS of planning. The devs have provided VERY little information. What are we supposed to do? We can suffer for lack of planning or we can suffer because the devs faked us out, but we suffer one way or the other, and its not a lot of fun.
I'm getting a little tired of having my enjoyment of the game tubed because the devs messed up the database. It seems to me that the the database problem should be getting better on its own, because a LOT of people are leaving the game - about half of my PA has quit at this point.
I know how this numbers are calculated. We have 24 servers and on each server are 130 possible cities. We HAD 300.000 customers , where 50% already left the game. So it will be 150.000 citizens for 3120 cities, this is a city for every 50 customers.
**edit** SOE, i play your games from day 1, everquest for 4 years, but this is the worst idea you ever had.
YOU cant have a small city because YOU cant have a city, the city is owned by the people that live in it. It grows or not depending on whether people decide to live there or not, that aspect of it is not controlled by YOU.
A city lives and dies and grows or not growsby its own volition, not by whoever founded it. The second you place a town hall, the running of the city is no longer in your hands, it is in the hand of whoever is voted in as mayor ( well prhaps for a week it is in your hands, but after that it is a political game )
What never ceases to suprise me is the lack of design in this game. The databases was not setup with regard to lots (had to reduce them), housing (number of house items bouncing all over the place) and now player cities.
None of these were designed into the game!
Mounts and vehicles were never designed from the start either. The server mechanisms for movement are making it near impossible to have them move at any speed, spawn activation distances are not designed to handle burst running - never mind vehicle speeds.
And they are going to add a space exapnsion??? hahaha. Seems all these features have been vapourware from the start then cobbled together at the last minute. Player cities have been planned from the beginning and only NOW do they know there is a limit (but they have a fix... honest... next month).
You did actually design the game guys? you did have functional and non-functional requirements for the database? you did at least multiply the expected number of players on a server by the amount of space each would use for houses, harvesters, cities? Someonedid write that downdown didn't they?
I got a feeling thatthe designerscame to the the first development meeting and claimed that the cat had eaten their homework, leaving the poor devs to make it up as they went along (how close to the truth am I here Devs... too close eh?)
Player A: Run there is a Tie fighter comming up behind us!
Player B: Yeah we can burstrun and gain some distance from him...
Player C: Even better letsswim ove the river - I bet he'll bounce back.
Player D: Thats your imagination folks - Ties cannot enter the atmoshphere.In fact nothing flies in this game - its sorta 2dwith bumps.
*Player A Jumps high into the air without ever leaving the ground.*
Dayln,
Im afraid you are incorrect.
A city will grow because the person controlling it in decides that is what they want.
If i planted a city hall, and then planted 13 houses for my guild mates within 150m then I could prevent the city ever growing again.
You could plant all the houses outside the radius that you want, but you wont get the city to grow. There need to be 15 citizend INSIDE the radius for that to happen.
The city i have been building with multiple guilds was designed to grow. We didnt want anything private. But now we have pretty much no chance of anything at all.
Where do you suppose all the guilds and groups that want a city but cant get one will go? They will drop their houses anywhere they can just outside the current radius of a town, and hope it grows over them. This is going to be a huge mess... not cities at all, but slums of chaotic structures dumped all over the place.
Might as well change the code to allow them all to grow instantly to their maximum size.... no point in having outposts, villages etc when there is zero chance of any of them being that.
There are those that will say "But they will let there be more towns later". Guess what... you blew any credibility you might have had with this. I for one am not paying for months on the offchance they fix this. Ive seen their so called fixes befor.
Bah.... humbug
To paraphrase, the Devs suggest (not say, because that is too definite, rather, they suggest) that the cap will be raised or removed entirely...next month.
Devs, how much longer are you going to dangle that carrot before you realize your horses are starving to death and that if you keep this up, there will not be enough left to pull the wagon?
I will gladly pay for my next month IF you are willing to admit that player cities, er, SETTLEMENTS (correction courtesy Thunderheart's use of semantics in another thread, see Dev Tracker), are not ready and will need another month in order to meet the expectations you purposely gave us.
Fine. There are no player cities, there are player settlements. And shuttleport dots all over the worldmap seem to be an issue for some. So again I say make shuttleports a highest-level city structure if you must. Raise the minimum population.I can live with that. Look, some of usactually want a small neighborhood of 15-30. But we want a mayor to represent us andassign us duties in a role-playing environment.
Thalen Cynelles,
Tashal (I hope, anyway), Naboo
Starsider
Dayln wrote:
I love the "If I cant have my own personal private city I am going to quit" posts
You want to be Mayor of a city..... then offer more, be a better mayor and represent more of the people ( not just your PA ) than the other guy does.
What did you guys think? there would be as many cities as players in the game? 3000 cities of 1 person? Of course there are limits, I would have limited it to 6 myself , I think 10 is too many.
Of course what you're not seeing...the original Mayor has COMPLETE veto power over allowing folk to build in the city radius.
So how the hell are you ever going to become a resident to vote him out?
Oh that's right...people are generally good, especially on the Internet, and will be sure to place nice. 
Before I begin, I want everyone to know I have never gotten on these boards and whined or complained. Check my posts. This cap thing has upset me beyone words. It especially dissapoints me about the way they chose to wait until the last moment to inform us of this. I have poured months into our city. 2.5 to be exact. We have structures nearby that cannot be moved... so where does that leave us if we do not get our city? Stuck out in the middle of no where. No one will come, and our members will move because of the hassle.
In addition, I thought the reason to have cities was so people would not all crowd around the already existing cities? This is going to be a race on the day the code goes live, seconds will matter... and those of us not building a suburb of Theed, Coronet or Bestine are going to be out of luck. It currently takes us 20 minutes to get to our city now. There's just no chance. I cannot understand why bugs, enhancements, and additional content were all sacraficed for so long just to allow 10 people on the starting planets to have something to do.
Honestly, if this doesn't work, I just do not know ifI will have the heart to log back in and face the 50+ people that put their faith in us that all this suffering for the last several months would be worth it. I could ramble on for another 1000 words on why this is wrong, but I won't. I need to go to bed early and call in sick just in case the code goes live tomorrow morning.
Ieolus wrote:
Do not get on the political correspondent for sticking up for the good of the profession. Just because everyone here is so **edit** selfish and can't see the big picture, doesn't mean the political profession should suffer because everyone wants their own **edit** city.
These cities were never meant to be a PA's private little kingdom, they are meant to be shared and allow politics to thrive... and thrive it shall, if people can step back a bit.
If you think there will be many cities will real elections you are being naive I think. Most if not all cities will have a set mayor on day 1 and that will never change. The politician is nota real profession, it is merely a means to an end - namely the city. Many politicians will be bot second accounts.
Also most cities will be PA owned and operated...
Dayln wrote:YOU cant have a small city because YOU cant have a city, the city is owned by the people that live in it. It grows or not depending on whether people decide to live there or not, that aspect of it is not controlled by YOU.
You've been yelling that for weeks, dalyn, even long after being proven wrong you're still repeating yourself every chance you get. It's called Grant Zoning Rights, and it does precisely give Mayors the ability to keep undesirables (yappy nit-wits, for example), or even just non-friends out of their city.
Sorry, but you don't get to enforce your view of how cities should be on everyone else. They get to choose that for themselves, and they do so with the flip of a switch.