Politician Archive

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Korrack wrote:

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jawlz wrote:
I'm curious... Say I have a level 4 city on the same planet of the same server as this person who couldn't grow from a level 2 to 3. Does this mean my level 4 city is safe from falling to a level three city, thanks to the cap? How does the cap work? Obviously it keeps lower level cities from growing if the cap has already been reached, but does it also keep higher level cities from shrinking? If this is so (and knowing the state of other things in the game, I wouldn't be surprised if it were), this would present a VERY serious problem to the "natural ebb and flow of cities" and all that.

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Great question! I wonder if they thought of that. I'd guess it drops to level 3. Anyone know for sure?

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Many cities are going to fall once the novelty of it will be gone.

Already i see some very large cities on my planet (Dantooine) where there are never a soul to be seen, no vendor with any stock and disapearing building due to lack of maintenance.

Wait and see.

Right now cities have very little purposes, other then playing simcity online. Once your city have everything, you sit back and say: "Cool! We made it.... now what...".

To the original poster: if your ultimate goal with your city is to get to level 3, then I'd say just hang on. Chances are a slot will open up as the level 3 cities trying to get a shuttleport give up and merge with already existing level 4 cities.

If you want to eventually get to level 4, well, then I think you may have a problem. I think it will be very unlikely for existing level 4 cities to degenerate to level 3. The shuttleport is the key. The only kind of cities that will have longevity without a shuttleport are ones that are either very close to exisiting shuttleports, or that are simply collections of houses with no merchant citizens. Most merchants need locations that are easy to get to and I think they will eventually leave smaller cities to move closer to shuttleports. That trend will probably offset any other attrition that level 4 cities might suffer.

This is an excellent and critical part of this social cycle.

That's just bullarky

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Bajeezus wrote:

Here is the post I just made to the correspondent's forum with regard to this issue:

[quote]There's a pretty-much-non-stop stream of theads in the politician forum from mayors of cities that did not grow to the next rank as they expected. I'm sure every one of these folks has filed CSR requests, and probably has asked their citizens to do the same thing for the same reason, flooding the CSRs with complaints over what is probably in many cases a city-growth cycle that has not malfunctioned at all.

Yes, there are tons of city update issues due to something on the servers, multiple updates, no politician XP, but for all of these situations where the city failed to grow as expected, it probably comes down to one thing, the city cap.

When the city updates and has enough citizens to grow to the next rank and fails to do so, a message should be generated for the mayor explaining why the city did not advance. "Dear Mayor, your city was not able to advance due to the limit of X number of Y-size cities on planet Z."

For players to expect one result, get something else, and never get any game feedback leaves them feeling that there has been a bug or malfunction of some kind, even when everything has worked as it should.[/quote]

I don't know if this is the case for you or not, but it is a needed feature to prevent confusion for players affected by the city cap.

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Oops ... you just lost credibility with the developers ... cause that is already there ... as our correspondent please double check your facts before posting thissort of stuff.

As a programmer, when a user complains about stuff that is already there and working, I tend to tune that user out and after a while I am completely skeptical of everything they say.

On behalf of the merchant community, please be more careful in the future. The original poster stated in his first paragraphthat we was properly notified:

>>Last night my city grew on Naboo from lvl 2 to lvl 3 to be met with the notification that my expansion was denied as there are too many lvl 3 cities on the planet!!

The worst part about the original thread starters post is that he/she is completely willing to screw over all 37 citizens by cancelling his/her account. If I was a citizen in your town and just read your post I would leave your city and encourage the other citizens to leave with me.

I was under the impression that if a Higher lvl city drops below the required citizens at its lvl, it gives a lower lvl city the opportunity to expand if it meets the next lvl requirments for citizens.

?!

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Hero_DarkJedi wrote:

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Bajeezus wrote:

Here is the post I just made to the correspondent's forum with regard to this issue:

[quote]There's a pretty-much-non-stop stream of theads in the politician forum from mayors of cities that did not grow to the next rank as they expected. I'm sure every one of these folks has filed CSR requests, and probably has asked their citizens to do the same thing for the same reason, flooding the CSRs with complaints over what is probably in many cases a city-growth cycle that has not malfunctioned at all.

Yes, there are tons of city update issues due to something on the servers, multiple updates, no politician XP, but for all of these situations where the city failed to grow as expected, it probably comes down to one thing, the city cap.

When the city updates and has enough citizens to grow to the next rank and fails to do so, a message should be generated for the mayor explaining why the city did not advance. "Dear Mayor, your city was not able to advance due to the limit of X number of Y-size cities on planet Z."

For players to expect one result, get something else, and never get any game feedback leaves them feeling that there has been a bug or malfunction of some kind, even when everything has worked as it should.[/quote]

I don't know if this is the case for you or not, but it is a needed feature to prevent confusion for players affected by the city cap.

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Oops ... you just lost credibility with the developers ... cause that is already there ... as our correspondent please double check your facts before posting thissort of stuff.

As a programmer, when a user complains about stuff that is already there and working, I tend to tune that user out and after a while I am completely skeptical of everything they say.

On behalf of the merchant community, please be more careful in the future. The original poster stated in his first paragraphthat we was properly notified:

>>Last night my city grew on Naboo from lvl 2 to lvl 3 to be met with the notification that my expansion was denied as there are too many lvl 3 cities on the planet!!

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Oops...your post failed to look at the bigger picture Baj is talking about. He's talking about FEEDBACK. NOT a silly 3 second system message! If I had to guess, he's talking about receiving an email explaining in full the hows and whys, and possible remedies to the problem.

Man alive - are you this snotty in other posts, or just when a correspondent ,who BTW, has been VERY involved for a long time in this game for a long time, speaks his mind and offers ideas?

I'm sorry, but your post just infuriated me. Tone it downa notch buddy. Not all of us can know everything there is to know about our professions, even :GASP: the correspondents. There is such a thing as real life that alot of us concentrate on too.

I wouldn't worry so much about it. I know you hate that you are being denied, and quite frankly I agree with you. To make big game features only available to a select few is aggravating. <cough... cough.. Jedi...>

The reality of the situation though, most cities are barren wastelands anyway. I'm part of a fully dressed out city, everything is there, except for a garage. Well... not quite everything,You can't find PC's there. Nobodyactually plays from there. If you think a player city will every becomea Coronet, Theed, and to some extent Bestine and Mos Eisley, you need to visit some of the other cities. Just look at 9/10's of the pre-built cities on all the planets. They are devoid of life, empty of all PC's except the few that MUST travel there for training from an NPC.

While I think cities were initially a good idea, in practicality then mean absolutely nothing. Actually, less than nothing, cause they are a huge money sink of taxes. Tieing Cities into the GCW might make them worth something. Militia came close, but one rotten guild had to spoil that for everyone.

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Thunderheart wrote:

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Chibi-Bar wrote:

there also a chance that some city may fall.. there have been some cities that fall.. due to internal issues.. and you might raise to level 3.. some day..

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This is an excellent and critical part of this social cycle.

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As to those that fault the original poster, even if he should have known about the caps, that doesn't make caps a good thing or fair.

But it's not strictly First-Come First-Served, each city still has to reach non-trivial population caps to advance. You may say "but there are groups of 100's of people who placed in day 1 and are un-challenged", but doesn't that in effect simply mean that there are effective Politicians who were out there before cities went in, and they've therefore risen fast?

Having said this, the assignment of buildings to city sizes does seem a little arbitrary and in MOST cases, more an artifact of the usual "let's try and make up a reason for people to level" process rather than an attempt at a logical flow.

There is no real reason why Hospitals, Cantinas, other services which do not require a global infrastructure (Perhaps even Cloning centers, though a case could be made for these to be considered 'global') should be tied to city level (Apart, perhaps, from having a civic building cap based on level). Garages (when they finally get here) would fall into that category too.

Other things make a bit more sense:

Shuttleport - Why would the shuttle operators bother to fly to/from a 3 horse town.. You're going to have to be big enough to justify their effort.

Bank - There's a galactic bank infrastructure, you need to be big enough for them to want to tie your city in.

Mission Terminals - Same argument as bank.

NPC's - Consider this a prestige thing, it's a lot harder to attract skilled professionals to smaller towns, they're going to be more impressed by a larger city.

Cloning Centers - This one's borderline, but there is some level of cloning infrastructure (routing the notification of your death, etc).

Personally I wish more of the game mechanics in-game were given a bit more rationale than they are now. There's an awful lot of things that work the way they do for no apparent reason. This is acceptable for low-level 'laws of physics' type things, but once you get above thatthe game universe makes a lot more sense if there's some explained reason for effects (Note: Not everyone has to agree that the reason itself is actually sane or sensible, as long as the behaviour follows the rationale). Unfortunately the challenges to this, usually maintaining consistency, and effecting "balance changes" without significant ripple-through at design time, tend to discourage public dissemination of this sort fo thing, but reality is that the implications of "balance" changes will have that kind of ripple effect whether it's designed in advance or not, and I think we'd all rather it be considered rather than just seeing what happens!

Any mayor of a city that wasn't aware of the caps for various types of cities on various planets just plain isn't doing their job. It was posted on these boards, and it was prominently posted in the patch notes. I have little sympathy for anyone who is surprised by something that was well documented in the patch notes.

Sure, sometimes the patch notes are more like a patch novel, but the information is there, and being in a hurry to get into the game and not reading them is just not a valid excuse. Not reading them because you don't think they apply to anything you do is not an excuse. Being enraged because your city didn't grow, when the caps were plainly posted in the patch message is just plain silly.

I agree with the caps. People that want large thriving metropolitan cities with all the perks that come with it, should find one and plant a house. SWG is not a solo game. Every PA doesn't need it's own city. Large Cities should be capable of supporting multiple PA's, and once everyone realizes this, the cities will start to work as designed and become a unique place for many people who may not know each other well to come together and work toward a common goal.

Those who are satisifed with living in lesser villages and outposts in the boonies - well, there's a place for you too. I think SOE has done a fair job of trying to make a system work well within the hardware/software limitations they face.