Politician Archive
Thread: On March 24th, All Existing Cities Will Begin to Die of Cancer.
arsheba wrote:
SOE will never countenance erasing the possessions of a player whose account is paid in good standing. Period.
They won't? They do it all the time. If you let your maintenance expire on a structure, it poofs. Cause and Effect. Action or Inaction = Consequences. How is this different from accepting certain responsibility in exchange for enjoying the benefits of living in a larger community, such as a Player City?
The difference is that when a structure is damaged to 0% and removed, it has followed predictable rules which any player can and should know in advance. It is the structure owner's responsibility to pay maintenance, and if they have paid it, the structure remains inviolate. Player Cities are a (wonderful) structure layered over top of the ordinary fundamental rights and rules of structure ownership in SWG. They do not replace those rules and rights. SOE does not and (I repeat) will not allow Player A to dispossess Player B in the game. And no matter how grandly my fellow mayors and Imay think of ourselves, we are simply Player A in this situation.
If I want to join a player city and benefit from commercial traffic or close proximity to trainers, mission terminals, shopping, etc etc... I must make a conscious decision to accept those benefits in exchange for a certain level of responsibility not to damage that community. I see nothing unreasonable about this.
The problem with this statement is that the concept of "joining a player city" is not really what some folks seem to think it means.
The only formal sense in which someone "joins a city" is in becominga Citizen, meaning their declared residence is within city limits and they have not revoked their citizenship or been inactive for 6 weeks. As a Citizen they pay taxes in exchange for being able to vote for - and run for - Mayor, as well as join the Militia. That's the quid pro quo. Nothing else. But because some people get guilds and cities mixed up, and because somepeople want to run their own little iron kingdoms, they add all sorts of other imaginary meanings to the phrase "join a City." And when it turns out at the end of the day that there is absolutely no enforcement mechanism in the game for these other meanings, they cry foul. But it's not foul. It's working as designed - for the most part.
What IS unreasonable is asking structure owners and elected officials to be held hostage by inactive players.
I don't see how structure owners are being 'held hostage,' but I do agree there should be lawful means to help mayors with derelict houses. Eminent domain is not the way to go, and more important, we ain't going to get it - SOE won't do it.
When it comes to YOUR HOUSE, YOU should be the one who controls that property. Where is SOE's concern for the property and possessions of ACTIVE players? Making them suffer for the action or inaction of INACTIVE players makes no sense, and only ends up making more players quit out of frustration and impotence.
SOE's concern is for PAYING players. The people you are vilifying are still paying their $15/mo same as you, and SOE will protect them as long as that's true.
Let's get a non-citizens tax rate in place and stop wishing for griefable powers we'll never get.
Another thing is...
The inactive citizens are probably closer to the city 'core' than others. This forces the newer active citizens into the outer rings. If the city loses a rank and the radius decreases then the cascade effect of losing citizens in the outermost ring could destroy a city in a relatively short period of time 
There is no real definition of "maintain their accounts" except in terms of the Credit Card. If an account is actually cancelled then all structures are removed, regardless of maintenance etc. If the account is paid in good standing, then it doesn't matter whether the player logs in or not. They've paid for the planet space they're using.
Pooka wrote:
I know for a fact several people in my city that has houses occupying precious spots but they no longer maintain their accounts. They just let other player pay the maintenance of their houses "in case they'd like to return some day". And that stinks.
Karquile wrote:
There is no real definition of "maintain their accounts" except in terms of the Credit Card. If an account is actually cancelled then all structures are removed, regardless of maintenance etc. If the account is paid in good standing, then it doesn't matter whether the player logs in or not. They've paid for the planet space they're using.
I am sorry, Karuile, but you are incorrect in your statement. I DO appreciate your participation in this discussion, though. As per a post by Thunderheart, as long as maint is paid, structures remain. Even if the account is canceled. This is at the heart of the "derilict house" issue. Here is an excerpt from that post, as well as a link to the original post:
Thunderheart Wrote:
just confirmed the answers and here is how it works:
Off the top, we don't guarantee that things won't be deleted. So far,characters and houseshavent been deleted and we have no plans on deleting characters/houses, but if something happens in the future and we need to, they will be deleted. Again, this isn't an absolute guarantee, but you should be fine. With that being said, here is how it works:
1. When you unsubscribe, don't delete your character manually. When you re-subscribe, it should be there.
2. Put a bunch of cash in your house to cover maintenance. When you re-subscribe, it should be there.
(Thats the reason houses with maintenance are left on servers - - to cover these types of situations.)
Here is the link to the original message thread:
http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=game_guides&message.id=139328&highlight=cancel#M139328
We just lost 19 residents at once, and it left us on 86 (that was close
)As expexted, this will cause problems, as we are getting very low on space to build houses in, as we are in a reasonably hilly area. We need a way of moving inactive players items into "storage".
If we drop a level , we will not have room to fit more people in, to get the numbers back up, and yet we are a VERY busy city.
If it comes to that, I will have no choice but to pull up the entire city, and move it so that we can fit people in - littering the planet with dead houses :/
jemelby wrote:
Karquile wrote:
There is no real definition of "maintain their accounts" except in terms of the Credit Card. If an account is actually cancelled then all structures are removed, regardless of maintenance etc. If the account is paid in good standing, then it doesn't matter whether the player logs in or not. They've paid for the planet space they're using.
I am sorry, Karuile, but you are incorrect in your statement. I DO appreciate your participation in this discussion, though. As per a post by Thunderheart, as long as maint is paid, structures remain. Even if the account is canceled. This is at the heart of the "derilict house" issue. Here is an excerpt from that post, as well as a link to the original post:
Sorry, Jemeby 
, I missed that TH post. It doesn't so much counter my point as reinforce it, though. For reasons even more generously expressed than I had said, you cannot expect player houses to go away. Even an inactive player, to SOE, represents a potential future active player.
Give us a noncitizen tax rate and I guarantee you that the rest of this takes care of itself.
The cascading effect is one that will kill off most player cities - well almost all player cities that I have seen so far on Valcyn at least. You loose a rank and next week you loose another rank unless you spend all week redesigning your city. The logistics of moving 20 or 30 people, with houses and banksinvariably full is going to be a nightmare in organisation. But if SOE want us to cram everything into a tight little area to avoid this problem, I guess we have no choice but to go and cram it all in.
So its goodbye decorations for most I guess.
I can understand the reasons for it occurring on the busier planets, but on the sparcely populated planets such as Rori, Lok & Talus its a nonsense as there is lots of room to build new cities (we are the only level 4 player city on Talus and have room for another 19!! - so why should our city die just so some wanna be on Corellia can build their city?).
Karquile wrote:
There is no real definition of "maintain their accounts" except in terms of the Credit Card. If an account is actually cancelled then all structures are removed, regardless of maintenance etc. If the account is paid in good standing, then it doesn't matter whether the player logs in or not. They've paid for the planet space they're using.
Pooka wrote:
I know for a fact several people in my city that has houses occupying precious spots but they no longer maintain their accounts. They just let other player pay the maintenance of their houses "in case they'd like to return some day". And that stinks.
Acutally your statement is incorrect. I know a guy who has not played in over two months. His SWG account is closed. Yet his house is still in our city. The basic answer to this is, for the structures to dissapear, the character must be deleted. that structure has over three more months of maintance in it. so for three more months that house will sit there. Players that were banned that had houses will be there until they rot. Most of this is not about players who are still paying for their SWG accounts, it's about players who are long gone.
There are a myriad of reasons to why people leave... they get fed up, they get sick, they move, they die... Whatever the reasonis, it makes no sense that their structures should remain intact due to over-maintenance from their part before departure.
Take a tent or a small house for example, often used by merchants.
Credits are quite easy to get and most people have enough to last a lifetime so lets say Merchant X puts 40.000 credits inhis small house. That dreaded houses will now remain for over 100 days! (give or take a few days/hours due to taxation) even if his account in cancelled and/or banned.
It's even worse when it comes to tents... 40.000 credits would keep a tent going for over 130 days. That's more the 4 months for you people that can't count.
There is no excuse to this. Houses should not remain if a player no longer plays.
Yeah yeah, I know.... if a person has his items left in-game he might return and start playing again.
Then put them in "Escrow" or whatever... just don't let them clutter up perfectly good cities which has people who wants to move in but can't due to lack of free plots.
Please? 