Why were cities allowed to be placed near points of interest in the first place?
And, for a game that boasted as being "camperless" because of dynamic spawns , why ARE there single desirable spots in the game?
Feb 2003, Haden Blackman:
" To introduce more unpredictability and reduce camping, the development team has ensured that the Star Wars Galaxies spawning system can randomly generate enemies based on a player's location and skills."
"a beginning character wandering the Tatooine desert is likely to run across womp rats, squills, worrts, and other minor threats, while a more experienced character exploring the same region might run into Tusken Raiders, a caravan of Jabba's cronies, or even a krayt dragon."
Going by this, there shouldnt be anywhere where you can camp krayt dragons. Sounds like a good concept to me, i cant wait for this game that supposedly reduces camping.
Madrox wrote: Imagine a line or ring of cities placed around the Kryat Graveyard, or around a spot known to drop a lot of Holocrons.
A small group of players could control those cities and just /citywarn players who they didn't want to have access to their Holocron drops. Now Im not saying this is happening now to this degree, but it is happening in smaller cases and most certainly WILL become like this in the future.
Actually, these are very good examples. You might say this is exactly whats happening in many cases. We had to pull this feature because of grief, not because we want to take something away from people who use the game mechanic fairly. This is just another great example of when something has any available grief, its used to grief.
Um, why so quick on the trigger. Revenge TEF took months to fix and was used FAR more often to grief people. Group TEFs are still available and are currently used to grief people constantly. Both of these griefs were used extensively.
Yet cityban is removed almost immediately because it is used by a very small number of people to grief?
I just don't get where the priorities are.
The world accoring to Garva:
"Also to be bluntly honest, everyone keeps saying "there are this and that many people leaving the game" when its just plain not true. There are no fewer people playing at peak time now than there were 5 months ago. (thats not even saying how many active accounts their are which has also infact Increased over the past 6 months steadily) while I know you will probably just see this as smoke it really is the truth."
6. Allow for global warnings and bannings based on faction, PAs, and arguably race (to allow for things like Wookie only cities , etc...).
Although you have fantastic ideas, this one is your worst. Allowing cities to global warning a specific Faction, such as Rebel or Imperial, would create a potential problem with coverts. If 4 rebel cities decided to surround a specific city, say Bestine, they could potentiall citywarn all Imperials, and any Imperial who wanders into that zone is attackable. They cannot go around because the city is surrounded. This is extremely exploitable, and I would not recommend this course of action. Global warns are too powerful, but I do like your idea that individual citywarns are permanent since they are personal and done for a reason. Indiscriminate banning of entire races, factions, or PA's is unacceptable on any terms.
Talent is hitting something no one else can hit. Genius is hitting something no one else can see.
Imagine a line or ring of cities placed around the Kryat Graveyard, or around a spot known to drop a lot of Holocrons.
Even if all of the cities involved are metropolii, there is still a 100m corridor between cities. And if you have 3 or 4 metropolis sized cities blocking off an area, that means you have 200 - 300 people cooperating. Doesn't sound likely for a group of griefers.
No decay + uber loot = /spit on crafters
Fix the economy and give crafters their $$$ worth... give us real revamp.
Remember... to Cancel you have to go to Register Expansion in the Launchpad.
yes that is an extreme example. You would need many cities to compeltely surround a POI and there is still space to go between them. Or I like the idea of disabling citywarn withing 500m or so of a POI.
Now Im not saying this is happening now to this degree, but it is happening in smaller cases and most certainly WILL become like this in the future.
You have GOT to be kidding me ... hasn't TH learned his lesson yet about making absolutist statements about what will happen with Cities in the future? He couldn't have been more wrong on caps. Hasn't he learned just to just keep quiet about things he DOESN'T know and CAN'T know? Come on, big guy.
* The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them Albert Einstein
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Bring back /citywarn unchange yet make the buildings in any city that uses it destroyable. That would make all the griefers think twice... and hey this is a war, don't peoples houses get destroyed?
Stujak Dumblede: Nub Bounty Hunter Extraordinaire
"One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us." Kurt Vonnegut
OK, since my name is being taken in vain (or not)--
We need to take it out right now. Yes, this hurts me lots. I don't want it gone. I agree that it leaves a philosophical void in the game.
But the griefplay is real and present and happening right now and the fixes are difficult and will merit careful discussion. Therefore the right call is to take urgent action, then step back and consider carefully what we can do to capture the original spirit of the system, while not incurring the griefplay. It makes no sense to make a lot of people's lives miserable in the interim. (And yes, IMHO the grief that is being suffered by those who cannot get to the content is worse than the loss of the feature for those towns who made use of it legitimately).
Is it the devs' fault that the issue arose? Yep, sure is. Dunno what else to say on that.
-Raph Koster Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment
Why were cities allowed to be placed near points of interest in the first place?
And, for a game that boasted as being "camperless" because of dynamic spawns , why ARE there single desirable spots in the game?
Feb 2003, Haden Blackman:
" To introduce more unpredictability and reduce camping, the development team has ensured that the Star Wars Galaxies spawning system can randomly generate enemies based on a player's location and skills."
"a beginning character wandering the Tatooine desert is likely to run across womp rats, squills, worrts, and other minor threats, while a more experienced character exploring the same region might run into Tusken Raiders, a caravan of Jabba's cronies, or even a krayt dragon."
Going by this, there shouldnt be anywhere where you can camp krayt dragons. Sounds like a good concept to me, i cant wait for this game that supposedly reduces camping.
Heh, well, the answer is "by player demand." Seriously... a ton of people complained that they could not find certain types of content reliably. It was extending the typical play sessions with tedium rather than with fun. And it too kaway from the sense of "world" that we wanted--you didn't get the sense that a particular locale was something's habitat.
-Raph Koster Chief Creative Officer, Sony Online Entertainment
Your going to have another problem 2 weeks from now when all the greifer's go back to the cities and do all kinds of unwanted things and the mayors who have busted their asses to build their cities can't do a **edit** thing about it!!!
Right now if someone builds a harvestor in front of city hall that says "Haha I rule" There is nothing I can do except for fill out a CS ticket... in return the CSR's will tell me "Wait for the person to return to pay maintenance and try to talk them into moveing it..."
To me and just about every other mayor here, there is no point in being a mayor any longer other than doing layout for the city, which at this point is mostly done. If you take /citywarn out you NEED to put some measure of city defense in it's place for the time being... IE, allow mayors to veiw who owns a building, or allow CSR's to move a building if it's obviously a greif play against the city.
My only experience with /citywarn was one in which the Marshall abused this command.
I understand that in theory the purpose of this command is to prevent griefing, yet some Marshalls are themselves the griefers. I agree that removing this command is not fair to those who use this command correctly.
But if even a small percent of Marshalls use /citywarn to grief strangers passing through their town, this is a good reason to remove it. People who do not do PvP should not have to be scared to enter a strange player city.
You're just changing who gets griefed, Raph, not changing the magnitude of the problem at all ...
Please don't act surprised in 2 weeks when you get just as many complaints in the other direction after you castrate every City's ability to maintain order within its borders.
On an unrelated note, is your continued influence on a game that you no longer have regular contact with considered "dabbling" at SOE HQ? And is that a good or bad thing?
* The significant problems we face cannot be solved at the same level of thinking we were at when we created them Albert Einstein
Seriously... a ton of people complained that they could not find certain types of content reliably. It was extending the typical play sessions with tedium rather than with fun. And it too kaway from the sense of "world" that we wanted--you didn't get the sense that a particular locale was something's habitat.
