Politician Archive
Thread: when will the player city limit increase?
true.. but then we might not get much responses out of Devs.. (it happen with UO) before the devs were pretty open.. now they can't say anything unless they are 110% sure...
which means we might get less feed back if we are going to shove every word they say down their throats 
yea.. poor devs.. they kinda lose either way
but after playing MMORPG for quiet a while (even back to BBS games and DOORS games heeh) you learn that things change.. UNTIL it is in release notes or on test center.. at that point.. it is almost "true" until patch day.
Chibi-Bar wrote:
true.. but then we might not get much responses out of Devs.. (it happen with UO) before the devs were pretty open.. now they can't say anything unless they are 110% sure...
which means we might get less feed back if we are going to shove every word they say down their throats
See I am looking for a middle road - don't say something absolutely unless you absolutely mean it. If you will have a feature live on the 12th of July say it, but don't say it if you can't guarantee it. If you will raise caps - say it - but say "we hope to raise caps," or "we are looking into the possibility of raising caps" if you can't guarantee you will raise caps.
Maybe I am just a stickler for precision given my personality/occupation, but I think there is a middle ground where the devs can truly and openly communicate without fear of it being shoved down their throats (or at least not correctly being shoved down their throats).
On the issue of urbanization, on at least one server on a starter planet there are probably 20 player cities (not sure how, but the cap fubarred - 16 are registered now, and I know of at least 3 others that are not registered). And if you run around that planet it doesn't seem overrun or cluttered at all. If anything it could use more player cities - there is still a TON of open space for harvesting etc.
I think planets could easily support 50 player cities, assuming they weren't all cluttered right around the NPC cities and didn't all grow to level 5...
true... but datooine for example have 3 (NPC) that I know of.. (but then again.. 3 vs 6 on naboo doesn't add up to 25... 3+25 = 28 (datooine) vs 6+10 = 16 (naboo))
I think it has to do server load (more NPC structure on naboo vs datooine) and NPC. I have a feeling it is server load AND clutter... (too many object)
I think the main planets only have ten cities and the others have 25 simply to encourage people to make their homes on those planets...
I honestly don't think it has anything to do with server load or any thing else mentioned here...
It's only one server... if there were a load issue it would apply to everything on the server not just three planets.
with that said, serverload could be an issue in relaxing city caps.... but that remains to be seen... although in my opinion if every player has 10 lots and they use them all, it will make little difference on where they are placed... they can all still be placed... just a theory
well.. remember that the civic buildings are not owned by players (hence NPC building that can be control by players)
City hall, shuttle port (which links with other shuttleport) cloning center and decoration 
I just mention server load.. as in clusters.. (I don't think one machine handles all of lowca) they are in group of servers.. like a group of servers for naboo, tatooine, etc etc)
notice that in town (use to be) way laggy verses outdoor.. the load of the sub-server on the land was low.. vs the congestion of the sub-server (mos eisley for example)
now it is more spread out, people hardly in town...
The thing I don't get is, in TH's message he is envisioning the worst-case scenario. That being metropolises cover the galaxy, every inch of avialable space is taken, there is no room to breathe, and the only spawns that occur in the game are on cliffs and within no-build radii. There's nothing wrong with this. As a developer it's your job to imagine "what if" and try to make a contingency against it.
But let's face facts for just a moment...
There are not enough people who still play the game for this to happen on any single planet, let alone every planet on every galaxy in the game.
The game's retail sales have nearly stopped in comparison with it's early days. It's not like 10,000 new subscribers sign up on a daily basis. Sure the occasional new player or alt will emerge on your server, maybe even a small group of them, but for the most part the game's population levels have smoothed out. Xmas sales and the eventuality of the space expansion may change this, but even then I am not sure the servers will boil over with players who just got the game.
This begs the question, since not many people are purchasing the game, and even more people are leaving it for lack of content, then where oh where are all these hundreds of thousands of houses that will supposedly choke out the landscape coming into play? I am sorry, but unless the entire population of Rhode Island purchases the game, all log into the same server, and all put down houses opn the same planet, this worst-case scenario is then merely a scare tactic to get us to accept the current situation.
*NOTE: Assuming the cap is lifted.... IF the entire population of Rhode Island does purchase the game, all logs on the same server, and all plop down housing onto the same planet and the place does get choked out of all gameplay elements, you may freely tell me you told me so.
Naw.... what would happen if they lifted the caps (going by the previous post) is that you would see a LOT more of the cross-server housing exchange. If every player had the ability to place a City Hall, most would want to achieve level V, just because they would view it as another ladder to climb (people like that sort of thing). You would see TONS of the cross-server exchanges happening as everyone tried to get as many houses in their radius as possible. What you say TH envisions would probably happen.
If they lifted it by 1 or 2 or even 5, the same thing would happen, but on a much lesser scale.
"I agree and although I am highly upset at the devs for causing me much grief due to bugs, I have to side with them on this one. WHen the initialy say something, they have no way of seeing into the future There is always a chance that something will happen that forces them to make a change. The alternative is for them to never say anything, then we complain about that........ "
I would have been fine if they would have said after player cities went live "Hey, we understand how much this means to you, we hope to raise the caps but we're not sure we'll be able to." Instead, they say without any wiggle room that outposts will be removed from the cap system and caps for larger cities will be raised. Then they waffle off of that promise within two weeks. That's what cheeses me off.
It's not that they're finding they can't do it that bothers me. It's that they promised something, I planned accordingly, and now we're back to square one. We could have had a city up and running on Talus two weeks ago had we known this was going to happen, but I took them at their word.
Urabnization is just as likely without a city hall. PA's and other groups have always grouped their houses together, and will continue to do so. The addition of a city hall isn't going to make it anymore likely for sprawl to occur. It's jusy a way of saying, "We don't know if our sub-standard servers can handle the load."
How many non-city hall towns do you come across while travelling along on any planet? Chances are, those guys would like a city hall, and just maybe if they had one, they would consider moving further out to the invisible wall.
For example... increase maintenance costs for cities to the point where you *have* to be a successful city in order to be able to afford to keep it... in other words, no running at a defecit and running missions to pad out the bank
At least like that everyone could *try* to make a city... but would very quickly find out that unless they're actually able to run a city *well*, that the cost is quite prohibitive...
You'd end up with a lot less of 'this is my private city, and I have it because cities are kewl' syndrome... and there would be an incentive to move to populated cities then.
What does everyone think?
Chibi-Bar wrote:
yea.. poor devs.. they kinda lose either way
but after playing MMORPG for quiet a while (even back to BBS games and DOORS games heeh) you learn that things change.. UNTIL it is in release notes or on test center.. at that point.. it is almost "true" until patch day.
BRE, GW, TW
Many, many hours...... I find it amusing people complain about being able to log on (I complain also) but most have never know the feeling of having 20+ BBS numbers in their dialer and going down the line waiting till one answers so they could spend an hour or two (depending on BBS time limit) playing 