Politician Archive
Thread: Cross-server citizen swap to get around the 10 person cap
My kingdom (or outpost) for an edit button.
The requisite post by Thunderheart can be found here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Developers&message.id=11108
The pertinant parts:
* Player Outposts: This is the first evolution of a player city and begins with a city hall. Originally outposts could tax their residents and were counted in the initial (and temporary) planet cap. Instead, we are going to raise the population count of outposts to 10 and outposts will no longer count against the planetary cap. Now, small groups of players will be able to keep and maintain their Outpost Cities (which we feel is very Star Warsy). From there, it will be the responsibility of the players to vote for their mayors and grow their city. City Growth Cycle 2 and above will keep existing rules and taxation rules will be in effect.
And:
The most important change is that for all of the small settlements that want to be Player Cities, we don’t want to disappoint you. What is going to happen is that we are changing the functionality of Player City Outposts (City Level 1) a bit and removing them from the taxation and voting cycles. This way, any group, even small groups, can have their settlements evolve into a Player City. It will be a small outpost, but from what I’ve been hearing, many of you want that.
And:
As with all game systems, when it gets introduced onto live servers and thousands and thousands of players engage the system, there are always issues the come up and need to be changed. To better balance the creation of cities and to make things fun and playable, the developers have decided to make the following changes over the next few days and weeks...
I think Jean is opposed to the Green Party, given his apparent dislike of gardens... (I'm teasing in good fun.)
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Oh, how judgmental, Jean. You don't know this person. You think an 80 person PA has more right to place a city than a 5 person team? You are a dirty elitist and I'm glad the Devs did what they did.
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Lets get something straight. I'm not an elitist. The original poster is the one that prompted the rude post. He said that he can't see our side from an "intellectual" side or viewpoint, which is what royally pissed me off. I never intended to post as an elitist, and the whole point of my post was in sarcasm to his previous post. With his comments, he suggested values are for the lesser minded un-intelligent. The way I took it it, only the non-intelligent have values according to him. Perhaps I read his message wrong, but it's an argument I've been in to many times where people think by not having values, this makes them more intelligent than everyone else, especially those that have values. I'll have to go back and re-read his message, I admit its possible I interpreted it wrong and posted rashly. However if you read his post, he sees absolutely nothing wrong with what he's doing, and fails to even see a hint of our side. All I was saying is that used by the wrong group, this could totally inbalance and ruin player cities. (how am I supposed to know he isnt going to use this tactic to achieve a level V metropolis in the future). If I was wrong in my interpretation of his comment, I'll apologize. I took his comment as that of an elitist and was just "striking" back.
Also from what I understand, all cities in game right now are still "the chosen". So he will retain his slot as a chosen city too, and keep this slot until his city hall is deleted. The patch will hit next week at which time new cities will appear. They will start as the lowest rank, and all current cities will jump up a rank ensuring they stay around. However, they never specified whether the chosen cities out right now even have a chance of loosing their spot. My assumption is no, not until they are deleted. So even if he keeps his city as only an outpost, he will still be using a vital city spot, preventing others from having a chance at a real city slot. Possibly I'm wrong, however without this a normal city will never be able to fall below a level II ranking without loosing their "golden" city status, correct? Hopefully we'll get some clarification from the devs soon.
P.S. I didn't intend to offend anyone with my previous post. I was just trying to point out my values to someone who could not understand them and used some verbage that I might of misread initially.
For myself, I wholly understand your views, Jean, although your voicing of them has been somewhat less than optimal. I will hope that anyone on these boards will not allow themselves to be used to create a ghost town that steals someone's needed spot, and instead will only use the power to help someone that just wants a small, harmless outpost. With a garden. *grin*
Yes, right now, he has one of the precious ten. But a few days will not really hurt, in the long run. It will be 100 political exp less, as I understand it, for the aspiring folks (and I may very well misunderstand). I think that his current spot isn't worth flailing over, nor is his ten person city.
This could be used badly. I'd like to see it used well.
Evidence #1:
Quote:
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It is really a win-win for both of us, even if you have 10, or 20 people, you can increase your xp per week this way too.
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This quote is located in the original starting post of this thread.
"10 or 20 people": Well this contradicts your whole "outpost only" philosophy and you using this tactic to simply keep outpost status. 20 people puts your city in the official "city using a city slot staus". You have played up the whole "I only want an outpost idea" and "I won't be using an actual city slot" throughout the thread, however more evidence will express the reason I have for pointing out why you're doing this for the wrong reasons. You even offer to help those that already have 20 citizens using this tactic. That also goes against the legitemacy and rightous purpose "to save all the outposts" out there.
Evidence #2:
Quote:
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Only once you hit 20 do you (and btw I have 20 real server players in my city, but their houses are not in the initial 150 radius, but will be in the 200 radius - we have a lake in the middle of town hehe My main thought for this whole idea was to save outpost that only had 5 citizens and now suddenly and unexpectedly are told they need 10.
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Btw he has 20 real server players in his city. 20! Then why the hell does he need to find fake citizens to satisfy his 10 citizen outpost status? Why not get these 20 real people to move into the radius of the town? Oh yea, the lake. He has a lake in the middle of the town, why didnt he plant the city hall closer so that the city radius included the lake or the part near the lake he wanted to build houses on? This would been very simple to do.
Another fact, a 200 m radius is only for "Level II-Village" cities, not an outpost. He wants fake citizens to get to a level I-Outpost state which in turn will immediately give him a Level II ability (since the other real citizens are out of city range, but will be in range once outpost status is reached), which again throws his whole oustpost only reasoning out the window.
Quote:
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I can only assume you didn't mean me - since I have many more real citizens than "ghost" citizens.
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For now maybe. But you act as if you can't even keep up with the responses you're getting about people interested in "helping you out". How many fake citizens are you going to allow into your city? If it's just to get Outpost standing so you don't loose your city hall, you've already told us that you'll have enought to reach Village Level II once the radius is expanded to 200 m. So you don't plan on just being an outpost, you plan on being an active city,and that means you will take up a real city slot. Something smells fishy here, which is the whole reason I've been an advocate against this.
Quote:
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Let's say I was a millionare, so I just bought 50 accounts and made a big city - is that worse, better, or the same as this? Honestly curious as a purely intellectual matter as to how the other side to this debate's value system would deal with that.
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He said, "Honestly curious as a purely intellectual matter as to how the other side to this debate's value system would deal with that."
This is the comment that pissed me off, and prompted that earlier post. As stated in my post earlier, I took this as he thought by not having values, he's smarter than the rest of us.
In conclusion (as if anyone is reading this), his intentions are hidden and not rightous. He will be taking up a city slot, and will achieve this by exploiting. He's already stated he'll be a Level II city right after he reaches Level I status, as most of his citizens are out of range atm. This sounds more like a combat to a hostile take over than anything. Perhaps he doesnt really need the citizen count, but does need the Votes to stay mayor. He emphasizes mayor votes and xp the most in his original post, more so than actually using this tactic to not loose your city hall. Perhaps the gang by the lake are the people he's fighting the city for. Who knows, but his whole setup (having his crew setup outside the city while he sweats it and doesnt even know if he can make outpost before the city hall deletes itself) doesn't make a lick of sense. Again, this is an exploit and is infringing on the playability of 100's of others.
TroThorns wrote:
You all realize that outposts won't count against the cap after the hotfix next week, right? So a 10-20 person outpost doesn't limit the number of player cities in any way. There could be 100 outposts on every planet and people could still put down city halls.
Sorry, I don't believe for a minute that the # of outposts won't have some effect on the total # of cities allowed on a planet. There is *not* unlimited database space, so it has to have an effect.
Ri'a
ok, Sana, let me respond to your post to me.
I also was one who was extremely upset when i heard this was happening and hit an extreme in my posting. its rare with me, but it happens.... so, let me address your point in a different way.
I'm not saying you can't have your playstyle... you don't want to be inundated by the average l337 kid running around... heck, I dont' either. you want a quiet out of the way place to have your outpost so you don't get crazy amounts of people running thru... ok, I'm good with that. Not everyone plays the same way... to be honest I'm probably more like you in my playstyle if thats how you play.
I've met a lot of people on both my main and on a couple secondary servers I've played on but there are very few I'd want to live in a city with. A friend of mine and I have 5 accounts between us and joked about starting our own city..... but ya know what? we didn't even consider it after the caps were introduced because we didn't think it would be right for us to have one for 2 people when others were scrambling to form for 50 people. So, now they've lifted the cap on outposts but raised the limit on the number of people specifically to avoid the creation of towns that contain 5 or 6 people because it seems inappropriate to reserve a square km of land for 5 people. that was never their intention as they figured the cities would be allowed to grow by letting others move in. well, thats not happening... if you aren't one of the chosen few there are not many options for cities to live in. My friend and I never even considered getting fake citizens to fill acap so we could build a city for 2 people. To be honest even though we could afford to do it we never would have built a city with just our 5 accounts... if we built it would have been with others along with us.
I'll be honest, my main issue is the cap isn't insanely large... they're not saying 20 or 30 people to form... its 10 people... 10.... you can count them on both hands. In your case you're only talking about 4 people to be added since you have 6 already. Are you really saying you can't find 4 people you can live with on a server of over a thousand? if the number was unreasonable, ok, but its 10! and in your case you need 4!
Heck, go find 4 people on your own server and pay them to drop a house there.... people talked about trading lots, I do it.... on my server... i borrow lots from a friend to put down harvesters and my house.
I'd feel a lot better about that as at least the people play on your server... otherwise its a one time and your done deal for free cities and free xp.
Now, having stated my case a little more clearly... I'll again say i think this is pathetic and lame. An easy out that borders on exploitation of a system. Its not just a different way to play. Its trying to find a way to make the system do what you want it to, not what it was designed to do.
and you'll notice i'm not call people pathetic and lame, i'm calling the use of this "tactic" pathetic and lame. Have a doubt about that? Read the original title of the thread..... "swap to GET AROUND the 10 person cap".
Obviously if you have to get around it there's something wrong somewhere.
Jean, you really seem to have something against Tor. Maybe I'm missing something. Does it matter if he keeps his original spot? If it's just an outpost, it won't matter...
As for outposts actually mattering, maybe they will. Right now, I'm being told that they won't, and that's all that I can go on. If they do, eventually, matter against planetary totals...well, then I'll ponder removing mine, once I put it up. I don't want to ruin anyone's fun, but until someone tells me different, I can only assume that they won't. That's what the devs are saying, so it's all I have to go on.
As for it being easy to find the few more people I need...if it was that easy, I would have done it, don't you think? I still will. The problem doesn't come in with lots. It comes in with residency, which most people won't reserve for a paid-for lot. If I find more people to join, those borrowed lots will go away, because I won't need them.
Everyone has good points. But all I can do is go on the given information, and do my best. If those of you who believe it's easy would like to make a new friend, come on over to Sunrunner, say hi, and move into the town. 
That's what I'd like best of all. Non-yahoos are always welcome.
I think after reading the rest of this thread that some people here to have good intentions.
You seem to want a very tiny community and just need a few more people from other servers to achieve this (though on a server of 15,000 odd players why you cannot find a few goodplayers is beyond me, I meet 2 or 3 a day on my server).
I still question the why of all this though, my understanding is that an Outpost gives you the ability to place a small garden and that is it?
It costs 35,000 ish to run the hall a week, you get a small garden but you don't want anyone to visit or grow, I am kinda at a loss to behind the whole reasoning for anyone wanting to have a small community where only a small number of the actual citizens actually play there.
Can you please give reasons as to what you actually want to get fom this?
The other issue is that there will be other people with less honuarable intentions who will use this idea to much greater effect and have their own cities with far less people in it then there should.
I am not sure how plausible this idea is beyond and Outpost becuase of the weekly fee's, hopefully as things settle down it will become apparent that any 'ghost' citizen will become more ofa burden then an asset because they require so much extra maintenance that you spend all your time in game working to get the funds rather then playing.
Even after reading all the arguments I still don't agree with it and it wasn't Raph Kostner's view of the game either. I dug up this old quote for you.
You CAN have a clique. Just in the form of a PA, not a town. And that's because towns control space. I can't let a small group control a large area of space and on top of that be completely invulnerable. It's just practicality speaking there.
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I want you to have your own areas of the map. I also cannot give small groups exclusive control over large areas of the map. My safety valve for such a thing has been democratic votes. Players are asking to be able to skip democratic votes in favor of dictatorship-style towns ("we get to decide who can join or stay"). That removes my safety valve. Which means I can't really let you control territory.
-Raph Koster
Creative Director
Having players from other servers in your city effectively gets round Raph's wishes for player cities, whether his view on this has changed or not remains to be seen (this quote was from the original boards last year).
I am very, very interested in setting this up. I only have six people for my little outpost, and was totally burned and bummed to hear I couldn't set it up because the limit was being changed to 10 instead of 5. I have three slots to offer to anyone (I have two accounts, my husband has one).
Reply here, or leave e-mail or a /tell to Sana on Sunrunner.
Hmmm, after reading the rest of these posts there is one thing that has been overlooked. What if this guy has invaded a space occupied by others and is now looking to grow his influence around the lake to take in more of them. Think about it. You have a small community of 15 players who live around a lake that you would like to make your own. You can throw them out, you can't just randomly attack them and if you harrass them too much, they will get the CSR's on your case. So what do you do. You drop a City Hall on them and have your buddies make 20 "ghost " citizens for you so when it comes to vote time. You have the election in the bag. So now all that's left is to simply tax the crap out of them so they all leave you to your nice little lakeside retreat. Yeah, this is a great system. Good work.
I just don't get why people can't play the game the way it was intended to be played? There is no winning this game, there is no end result. If you want to cheat then go find a game that you can actually win and have at it.
ALways have to think of ones self before others eh