CUEmu - Thread Posts

FlyingElmo

Fri Jan 23, 2004 5:31 pm

Bajeezus - YOU NEED TO TELL THEM THIS IS A BAD IDEA, and that we venomously oppose it.

This is yet ANOTHER poorly thought out idea that is both unnessesary and DESTRUCTIVE to the current game. Its yet ANOTHER design decision that SHOULD have been thought out prior to player cities being released, and now we will all suffer because of their irresponsibility.

Immediate Problems

1) Our metropolis is composed of mainly college students. Most of them are on vacation right now and have been since christmas. We will be hit VERY HARD, 40-50 people gone right away.

2) Our city has million worth of credits in infrastructure that is close to the border of our metro radius. When this patch hits, all those structures will blow up or become unusable. We will be hit completely by surprise because we dont know when that will happen.

3) The city was designed to run on the tax income those people make. This patch will make us not able to support ourselves.

4) Mayors already have enough problems as it is. Being a politician is a FULL TIME job, and this would just complicate things to a point where it wouldn't be about having fun anymore...it would be like nonstop work.

5) My city is a mountainous region. If we lose citizens but not their buildings, we wont be able to add any new citizens.

Logic Problems

1) You cannot expect everyone to retool their entire city based on some abscure number that the developement team thought was reasonable. These citizens are PAYING CUSTOMERS and if they want to live in a city but can only play once or twice a month, THEY SHOULD BE ABLE to. Who does SONY think they are, dictating exactly how a player should be able to live their ingame lives?

2) It isn't fair that the developers structure the cities one way and then restructure them after everyone has geared their city towards the first structure. THESE DECISIONS NEED TO BE THOUGHT ABOUT PRIOR TO PLAYER CITIES BEING RELEASED. Some cities, llike mine, are in the unique position of not being able to restructure due to terrain or size or things like that. And now, we are being punished because some guy sitting upstairs drinking his coffee rolled a dice and decided 3 weeks was a good limit.

3) When people leave the citizenry, their houses remain. That is lost space, because their homes do not blow up. So we will be stuck with a potential citizen cap because our radius, already decreased because of the patch, will limit what we can do even more.

4) Basically, what the developers really want to do is make people's cities look like junk. Because people will no longer be able to thing about having cool things like roads and layouts and things like that, because how much space they consume. So to deal with that, mayors will have to throw buildings together tightly to conserve space, as nobody knows when those noncitizen houses will blow up.

THUNDERHEART, THIS IS A TERRIBLE CHANGE. WE DONT WANT IT. TELL THE DEVELOPERS TO GET THEIR PRIORITIES STRAIGHT AND FIX THINGS THAT ARE BROKEN. NOT SYSTEMS THAT ARE WORKING FINE ALREADY.

Bajeezus

Fri Jan 23, 2004 6:58 pm

#80

OK, folks, time for me to submit to Thunderheart. I went through and counted up the responses in this thead so that when I tell him there is a "split", he can see for himself how the weight of numeric support fell on either side. I tried to just count individual responses, not counting multiple responses from the same poster, and the way I count it, this thread had 26 unique negative respondants, and 13 positive. Being the math whiz that I am, I'm going to put that in percentage form and call it 66% negative, 33% positive.

Here's what Thunderheart will see:

Thunderheart: There's been some heated discussion of the new rule on citizenship status in the latest patch notes.

Citizens will now be removed from a city if they haven't been online for about 3 weeks (6 weeks).

I told the politician community that I would track on particular thread on the subject, and forward the general consensus to you. However, there is no consensus, only what seems to be a majority opinion. The Politician community is split, with two-thirds of the responses in that one thread coming down as negative, against the new rule, and one-third in support of it.

Those who oppose it, in some cases are outraged by it, fear that it will hurt casual and sporadic players and their cities by lowering the number of citizens in those cities and dropping their city level. They point to the need to be away from the game from time to time and to the fact that while they are away, they are subscription-paying customers of the game. They feel it is unfair for the system to mandate how often they must log in to be considered citizens.

Those who support it, many of whom point out that the longer the allowance period is the more fair it may be to casual players, and many of whom would only support it if it were longer in length that what has been stated in the patch notes, feel that it will help curtail the practice of cross-server citizen swapping, and that it will allow player cities with active citizenships to perhaps have a chance at a higher level slot which might previously have been taken up by a "ghost town" of citizen-swappers.

Nearly everyone acknowledged that it would be nice to have a way to defeat the citizen-swappers, but many suggested that this new rule is not the best way to do that. One suggestion, by Arkenor, was: "A better way to fix the same issue [citizen swapping], or at least lessen it would be for a character to have amassed 10 play hours (or whatever. Pick a number. ) before they can declare residence anywhere."

Please check out the thread at: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=24188&page=1for the full response. The players have been good enough to keep most of the discussion on this issue to this one thead.

Thanks

Thanks. You can keep debating. Hopefully we will get some feedback from the devs on this issue.

Hunden

Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:23 pm

#81

great work.. its nice to see a correspondant that is voicing the views of those he/ she represents without any personal slant... i still have no idea where you stand personal on this issue, because you havnt told us heh...

you deserve a pay rise, call it a 20% pay rise! (20% of zero is still zero right? but its the thought that counts hehe).

i would like clarifacation on if it is 6 weeks or 3 weeks as there are two versions of the patch notes, one says 6 the other says 3 as i belive that makes a huge difference.

hund

1st holo: BH - done... finaly.
2nd holo - commando - done
3rd holo - BE

Imcus

Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:26 pm

#82

This may or may not have been mentioned, but how about this. Only allow the owner of the house in a city pay the maintenance, not anyone. This would help slow (probally not stop) people from creating houses on another server and letting the local mayoror whoever pay the maintenance to keep them active. This would still allow people who are going to take an extended break pay ahead, but, hopefully would slow the cross server trading.

Imcus ¯¯¯¯ Elder Master Musician ¯¯¯¯Mayor of Symphonia, Naboo -3275, 755Rebel Alliance Colonel -- Vortex Squadron PilotFounding Member of DEF -- the Dedicated Entertainment Foundation"You know and I know my clone sleeps alone..." -- Pat Benatar

Krutchu

Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:44 pm

#83

For me the best way to prevent cross trading of citizen is to apply the 3 week rule only if that account have log on another galaxy during this period, and not to temporary Canceled account.

If they apply the actual 3 week rule, yes as a mayor i'll look for ghost citizen, just to be sure to never see our city level go back. The result will be that there'll be about 15-20 more house and those house will also serve as item stock ... so more lag on server ... great solution SOE

Eaca

Fri Jan 23, 2004 7:54 pm

#84

I'd be much more for this if the mayor, after a period of time the citizen was evicted, could have a way to "condem" and remove the house from thier city, instead of having to wait for it to burn. This would be for all structures owned by said former citizen, and only after a sufficently long grace period to let the owner log back in. I would propose an additional 3 week wait after the citizen was removed from the city count. The condemed house and all the possessions inside it would be transfered to the players bank account or inventory, in the same manner the lost vendor items were returned to the vendor owners after the last patch problems. This would be the only instance where the mayor would be allowed to remove another players property, and only after a 6-9 week wait. This allows long term thriving cities to cut out the dead wood and save valuable city space for new and more active players.

Eaca

Fri Jan 23, 2004 9:08 pm

#85

I don't mind it, I like having a busy town. I just don't want these removed citizens taking up prime realestate till thier character is either purged, or thier 6 months of building maint runs out. Give our mayor a way to remove said dead wood, and I'll throw my stamp of aproval on it

Arrya

Sat Jan 24, 2004 1:00 am

#86

I think people are blowing this way out of porportion here. Lets take a look at what this really means for a 'casual' gamer.

Many people have brought up the idea of people being able to play for say a month, and then being gone for aperiod of time - say 2 months. Whether we have a 3 week or a 6 week timer, they will still be affected by this, but will it make a significant difference to your town?

Say you have 10 people, randomly playing for 1 month, then taking 2 months off.

3 week inactive timer - this means over a12 week (3 month) period, the average person will not be a citizen for 5 weeks. 7/12 X 10 people means 5-6 people (out of the ten)will usually be on the city roster.

6 week inactive timer - this means over a 12 week period, the average person will not be a citzen for 2 weeks. 10/12 X 10 people means 8-9 people (out of ten) will usually be on the city roster.

I think the 2 months off situation is very rare too - I do not really know anyone that does this consistently. Some people take a week or three off on occassion, but those people would only very rarely be affected by a 3 week timer, and never by a 6 week one.

At most, cities are probably looking at loosing 5-10 legit casual gamer citizens for their city (although potentially many more ones that are not legit). I think that in 99% of the cases, mayors will be able to manage this kind of thing.

_______________________________________________________
Arsenal
The little green Napoleon
_______________________________________________________

Tack

Sat Jan 24, 2004 1:57 am

#87

I think everyone here is making a mountain out of a mole hill?

Why is it that anytime a change is made that might adversely affect a possible scenario, we scream bloody murder?

I can only see the good in this. If you don't play, then you shouldn't have a house in a player city. If your house is removed, you can always place another one and redelcare once you come back from your hypothetical leave of absence. Simple store all of your items in your safety deposit box. When you get back, place another house, declare again, and everything is the same. If your city loses a level due to your absence, then your mayor needs to start recruiting so that it can go back up to the level like it was at before.

I applaud the Devs in finding a viable solution to the server swaps. I think this is the best way to go.

If a vote is being taken on this, I vote yea.

And in case you are wondering, my city is a level 4 city. I've lost a couple of citizens recently so I might drop down to city level 3. But that rides squarly on my shoulder, not on the Devs trying to find a way to fix a problem that is plauging us all.

Tackleberry
Master Smuggler - Master Merchant
Member of The Consortium
TCON Sliced Armor: -827 -3377 Lok

Jonni

Sat Jan 24, 2004 3:31 am

#88

Yes, the ONLY way this could work in a positive fashion is if the mayor has a way to remove the property otherwise we are on the way to eventually losing all the cities ....it would take time agreed but the real estate issue will become acute eventually and then were all in trouble

personally i have always had reservations about a mayor having the ability to remove a property simply because the potential for griefing is incredible, however, with this new rule the ability for a mayor to remove properties becomes a neccessity.

COOLBLACK

JONNI MNEMONIC - S'CAMPI WIVMAYONNAISE - N'CHIPS WIVSAUCE

MAYOR OF LONDON

COOLBLACK

Steelheart

Sat Jan 24, 2004 6:39 am

#89

Doesn't this discriminate against our men and women in the armed services? People who have not only paid for this gain for a year, but also paid their house in game for a year?

Grievance has been reborn !

www.grievanceguild.com

SunLao

Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:21 am

#90

LOL...someone must be really passionate about this issue...lot's of one stars on this thread. This is probably one of the healthiest discussion threads I've seen on these boards...but the one star bandit strikes anyway!

I'll say it again: My opinion is that this is good for the health of the overall player city system. Lots of good points have been made, but I think the only real question is the time limit.

"Wait for the Combat Balance."- random red name since Nov. 2003
Diogenes Noslen - The Meatshield Mayor!
- Shooting pistols in SWG since June 26 27, 2003 -
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Tack

Sat Jan 24, 2004 9:50 am

#91

FlyingElmo wrote:
Bajeezus - YOU NEED TO TELL THEM THIS IS A BAD IDEA, and that we venomously oppose it.

Speak for yourself. Not all of us oppose it.

Is this going to be a game-breaking change? Is it really that big of a deal to make a fuss over?

So people will be removed from your city. They can simply redeclare when they return. It isn't like they are being kicked out forever.

I find it hard to believe that every citizen in a given city is going on a 3 or 4 week hiatus. How many cities are one or two citizens above the minimum needed for their respective levels?

Why can't people admit that they took advantage of the server swaps and are now going to lose a city level since most of their citizens don't even "live" there. What's the point of having a player city if there aren't any "players" actually living there?

Thank you Devs for fixing this issue. Maybe we will start seeing more people in player cities, since now any citizen that lives there will be an actual person and not someone who just plopped down a house and hasn't been there since.

Tackleberry
Master Smuggler - Master Merchant
Member of The Consortium
TCON Sliced Armor: -827 -3377 Lok

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