Politician Archive
Thread: QAville Maintainance excedes 1 Million
While the numbers sound very large, cities are not for newbies. I know the common thought is that EVERYBODY deserves a city just like EVERYBODY deserves a house for next to no cost. There has to be some features in this game for powergamers.
Look at it this way, it is much easier to reduce the fees after it hits live and too few cities appear than going the other direction. Having high fees to start is definitely the lesser of two evils.
Here is my plan for a budget, assuming 500k per week in maintenance for a good size town with 75 residents.
1k income tax 75k
5% property tax 20-30k
2% sales tax 10k
150 surcharge to shuttleport 150k
250k in donations
Being a member of a large PA with good combat guys, we can pull 40k kunga missions on Dantoine. 250k is 3 guys doing 2 missions each. Yes it sucks to have to subsidize a city this way, but we want lots of visitors and tourists. We figure it is better to donate the money and encourage visitors and trade then to jack up taxes.
-Sans
I think this is where we disagree. I don't believe every PA needs their own city. And I know the current thinking out there from a lot of people is that their PA will build an essentially privatecity with a shuttleport and a nice specialization bonus - that cities will basically be an extension of the PA hall. But I do not think that is a right, and I think there should be a significant financial burden to have those things. How you shoulder that financial burden is up to you - if you set things up correctly, it should be fairly easy to get enough visitors to pay shuttle and sales taxes to help balance your budget, on the otherhand, if you want to keep the city private, its going to be expensive for the citizens.
Neilla wrote:
I think you need to look at cities from the viewpoint of a PA. Our PA needs to live in a city which has economics meeting the needs of all our members.
To me the issue of balance between the larger and smaller cities that players want is the fixed cost of a City Hall. I believe the city hall maintenance should be based on city level, which in turn is based on population. In RL, larger cities have significantly higher expenses related to city management than smaller towns yet the city taxes between the two are roughly the same. Here is my example assuming you were going to pay the complete 100K with just property taxes:
100K / 80 citizens = 1250 per citizen per week
100K / 5 citizens = 20K per citizen per week
City Hall maintenance should be scaled to allow for a similar rate per week per citizen regardless of the size of the city.
As for everything else besides city hall, I feel that the way things are is realistic. As a city grows, it gains the finances and population to support new features. In RL, there is certainly not an airport in every town around, only in the larger cities. In RL, you don't find big parks and theatres andhospitals in every town either - just in the larger towns and cities. Larger population means a larger tax base and a bigger need to provide additonal services.
The bottom line to me is to adjust the city hall maintenance to a sliding scale based on city level and leave everything else as it is.
Thanks.
Arrya wrote:I think this is where we disagree. I don't believe every PA needs their own city. And I know the current thinking out there from a lot of people is that their PA will build an essentially private city with a shuttleport and a nice specialization bonus - that cities will basically be an extension of the PA hall. But I do not think that is a right, and I think there should be a significant financial burden to have those things. How you shoulder that financial burden is up to you - if you set things up correctly, it should be fairly easy to get enough visitors to pay shuttle and sales taxes to help balance your budget, on the otherhand, if you want to keep the city private, its going to be expensive for the citizens.
Neilla wrote:
I think you need to look at cities from the viewpoint of a PA. Our PA needs to live in a city which has economics meeting the needs of all our members.
I chose my words carefully. We need to live in a city with economics meeting everyone's needs. This is regardless of whether we go it alone or join a larger city. A city with 50 citizens from 2 PAs and maintenance of 350k (7k/citizen/week) is too expensive for the casual players. So is a city with 150 citizens and maintenance of 1050k/week (7k/citizen/week).
The posting you quote was in response to someone else who was arguing that cities aren't for noobs so its OK for them to be expensive; my rebuttal was to point out that most PAs include a mixture of hard-core and casual players and that moving to a city has to make sense for the whole group, not just for the wealthier individuals in the group.
There is one point to be made:
Cities are a privilege, not a right.
Remember this young Padwan's. Just cause you can't afford them, doesn't mean it's bad to have the cost structure that they have. I personally think the costs are perfect.
Milo Mills
City Planner, Master Architect
Alonde Nuin, Naboo
It seems like the current model is skewed towards a large PA being ready from the get go to sink in a lot of money with the intent of becoming a metropolis. But as someone else said, small towns should be viable as well. While they won't have all of the services of a large city, it should be perfectly feasible to have a smaller, specialized community.
Someone else suggested scaling the City Hall maintainence based on town size. This is an excellent suggestion, one I hope Plinka takes to the Devs.
Another suggestion I would have, but I don't know if it is practical from a programming standpoint, is to have the availability of the shuttleport scaled on how far your city is from existing shuttleports, thus allowing remote outposts to get shuttleports earlier, while suburbs of existing cities wouldn't need it as much.
Frankly, I'll be satisfied with a small town with a cantina, a specialization, and some engaged citizens. Some of us may have to subsidize it for a while, but that's expected.
Neilla wrote:
I chose my words carefully. We need to live in a city with economics meeting everyone's needs. This is regardless of whether we go it alone or join a larger city. A city with 50 citizens from 2 PAs and maintenance of 350k (7k/citizen/week) is too expensive for the casual players. So is a city with 150 citizens and maintenance of 1050k/week (7k/citizen/week).
I think that it is fine for you to have that opinion, but it is not one that I share and I don't think you should assume that everyone shares that opinion.
I also find it interesting that you are looking at the grand total instead of looking at the seperate costs. The costs of the city are not dictated by the number of citizens it has. Maybe it would help to break the costs out and talk about which ones might be too expensive (or too cheap).
City Hall: 100k
Shuttleport: 125K
Specialization: 150k
most of the othermunicipal structures look like they probably cost about 100k per week as well.
Can you justify adding a shuttleport or a specialization to a city of 50 people? Maybe you would be better off without one, or structuring your city differently so these types of buildings pay off and help generate more revenue for your city instead of just viewing them as a money sink.
For instance, if you have a research specialization for crafters, it is my opninion that the sales tax from the goods they make should at least be equal to the amount it costs to maintain the specialization. 150k with a 5% sales tax means 3 million in sales.... and really 3 million in sales above and beyond what you would gain without the specialization... is it worth it?
Arrya wrote:
Neilla wrote:
I chose my words carefully. We need to live in a city with economics meeting everyone's needs. This is regardless of whether we go it alone or join a larger city. A city with 50 citizens from 2 PAs and maintenance of 350k (7k/citizen/week) is too expensive for the casual players. So is a city with 150 citizens and maintenance of 1050k/week (7k/citizen/week).I think that it is fine for you to have that opinion, but it is not one that I share and I don't think you should assume that everyone shares that opinion.
I also find it interesting that you are looking at the grand total instead of looking at the seperate costs. The costs of the city are not dictated by the number of citizens it has. Maybe it would help to break the costs out and talk about which ones might be too expensive (or too cheap).
City Hall: 100k
Shuttleport: 125K
Specialization: 150k
most of the other municipal structures look like they probably cost about 100k per week as well.
Can you justify adding a shuttleport or a specialization to a city of 50 people? Maybe you would be better off without one, or structuring your city differently so these types of buildings pay off and help generate more revenue for your city instead of just viewing them as a money sink.
For instance, if you have a research specialization for crafters, it is my opninion that the sales tax from the goods they make should at least be equal to the amount it costs to maintain the specialization. 150k with a 5% sales tax means 3 million in sales.... and really 3 million in sales above and beyond what you would gain without the specialization... is it worth it?
Again, the issue is that the city has to work for everyone. The reality is that we have crafters in our PA and, if we do not live in a research city, they are going to be at tremendous competative disadvantage. The result is either they leave the PA outright or they live in a different city than the rest of us. Suppose the rest of the PA moves to a research city with the attendant high costs. The casual players might then be priced out of the city and, again, they either have to leave the PA or they have to live in a different city than the rest of us.
The basic point is that you cannot look at the economics of citys from the viewpoint of individuals, you have to look at it from the viewpoint of the entire PA. I really don't want my PA to be torn apart because of the high costs associated with cities.
I will point out again (please listen) that I was responding to someone who thought it was just fine if cities were so expensive that noobs couldn't afford to live in them. Its not fine because its PAs, not individuals, that move into cities and the move has to make sense for the entire PA.
The general consensus is that cities are too expensive. I agree with that. I can afford to shoulder my ludicrously high tax burden. I play a lot and run a modest shop. Not everyone can. I certainly can't afford to shoulder the burden of many OTHER players. But those many other players are also part of the community. This damages player communities, and therefore I am opposed to the exhorbitant tax rate. There appears to be no net benefit to running a player city as opposed to building a lot of houses outside of a NPC city. Shuttleports, banks, mission terminals and such can be 500 m away to an NPC city or 250m away to the pc one that we are paying over a million a week for. Does that seem reasonable ? The only new advantage presented is making them center of research, strongholds or the like. 15% to experimentation is pretty cool, but if its the only new advantage, is it worth a million a week ?
To those that have decided cities are for the 1337 and powergamers I can only express sadness. This is a player built game, with a player economy. This isn't Evercamp. Or at least is isn't supposed to be. This isn't the epic quest, its us, the players building content into the game enjoyable for all. I don't expect cities to be littered all over the maps either, but I really think that this is a grotesque overcompensation for a failure to remove credit duping bugs. Its clear the developers don't have a stranglehold on what might make a working economy. Ultimately, cities might only be afforded by those with the foresight to dupe credits. No one wants that.
Elgin of Scylla
well it seems to me that mayors should be able to set property tax based on a person's wealth just like in real life. Say there's a cut off for someone to be considered wealthy (500,000 in the bank maybe) and then anyone with 499,999-100,000 in the bank would be the middle class. Then anything below that would be considered the poor. You could then tax those as needed.
Then mayors could make some intersting pitches, do you tax the rich less so they'll spend more and get more costumers to their shops thus making the sales tax high?Or tax the hell out of the rich getting the money you need but potentially scaring them off at the same time? You could even start a welfare system if you wanted... say 5% of the taxes collected would be handed out to those who are the most poor (newbs or chefs) and that 5% would be split amongst them. OOh that sounds so freakin neat.. I can't wait for liberal towns to start fighting conservative towns 
Ezran wrote:
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)
There shouldn't be alot of level 5 cities, but there is no reason for their not to be thousands of level 1 outposts...
And with maintenance the way it is - all there will be are big level 5 cities...