R.I.D BASE OF OPERATIONS

Has the population rebounded yet or are cities still barren like they used to be? Anyways if anyone knows or can give a nice estimate on the population of starsider that'd be great, just a little curious. Thanks.

The population is still low imo, I was in theed for about 2 hours on saturday and saw a total of.......2 people, everyone seems to always be in eisly, but im not really sure, im used to playing on bria.

Yeah and I loath Esiley...

Me too, I really don't like Mos Eisley, I do like Bestine and Theed though... I wish the populations of thsoe cities rebounded.

Personally, I wish they'd do like Everquest 2 and have instanced housing in the main towns, and maybe even create some new towns.

I know people love the idea of Player Cities, but its caused so many problems and affected the server lag so much, I'd really just rather see it gone. It seems that its split the community up more, because everyone is spread out so far apart.

At least thats what I've noticed since I've been back. The idea in most every other game is for players to go out and explore/adventure, then everyone returns to a main town and has a chance to commune.

They could still do everything they have now, private Cantinas and the works, just have different parts of the cities zoned out for various structure instances.

But we'll never see that, theres too many people who will scream bloody murder if they try to make any changes to Player Housing.

I don't think that is quite the solution. I believe making structures inside town's useful again would force the populations back to major cities. Such as people needing to go to cantinas, and needing to go to medical centres, or the theatres, casinos, hotels, what not.

I agree with Leviathen, they need to make medical centers and cantinas more useful. Now since Entertainer is almost of no use, cantina population takes a downfall. I dont really know what to do with Medical Centers though. Maybe they should have it so that severe wounds can only be treated in the medical center.....

Leviathen wrote:I don't think that is quite the solution. I believe making structures inside town's useful again would force the populations back to major cities. Such as people needing to go to cantinas, and needing to go to medical centres, or the theatres, casinos, hotels, what not.

There has never been anything that you can do in a main NPC city, that you can't do in a Player city. Player cities actually have more benefits available. Well, ok, you can get quests in NPC cities I guess, and travel between planets. Other than that, there is no reason to go to one.

So since players have no reason to leave their cities other than travel and questing, the community is split into cliques and isolated from each other. Planets are huge, and what... seven hold housing? The Devs wanted PCs to be "all for one and one for all", hoping new communities of players would develop, but guilds and individuals figured out how to privatize their own cities and wrecked that intention.

I can't think of anything they can do to reverse the community problem other than move people back into the Cities by giving them instanced apartments, homes, cantinas and etc.

PCs were an innovative idea that failed to work out as intended. Thats the story of SWG... tons of innovation, but very little of it has worked well and hasn't needed to be completely redesigned.

CerexHendrix wrote:I agree with Leviathen, they need to make medical centers and cantinas more useful. Now since Entertainer is almost of no use, cantina population takes a downfall. I dont really know what to do with Medical Centers though. Maybe they should have it so that severe wounds can only be treated in the medical center.....

I think that Entertainer is very useful now. I'm not sure why people do not think so. Maybe not as an AFK buffbot, though that's pre-CU... not sure what a CU entertainer was like... but I think that they have a nice set of buffs, and they can dance, do music and do ID now. I was thinking of transferring my Entertainer over here, but I don't really have the cash to activate that account and buy a move right now.

Pre-CU, Cantinas were used for AFK grinding and AFK buffbotting, and still it was only for high traffic mission spots like Dantooine MO. But it was all AFK, so no community there either. All the events and other Entertainer-ish things were always done in Player Cities... well at least on Sunrunner. You would never find a non-AFK-buffbot Master Dancer or Master Musician in a NPC cantina.

I disagree, though some entertainers were AFK, not all were. Some of the best people I met in galaxies were by meeting them in cantinas.

In truth, I think both sides of this debate are right. I have always thought player housing for low-level characters would be an excellent idea. Since SWG is based on "levels" now, you could set it up so that anyone under level such-and-such can stay in city housing. It would kind of be like low-income housing for the poor.

On the other hand, I think a definite improvement needs to be made to the major structures in cities, like cantinas and med centers. Of course, I think part of the problem with these structures being in the state that they are, is that you can do the same thing in Player Cities. Player cities should be a means of convenience, where you go to get something because the main city is too far away. What they need to do is for whatever bonus you get for using a player city structure, you get another 50% bonus on top of that if you use a NPC structure. Say your an entertainer that gives out buffs. They are enhanced by being in a player city cantina. If they give buffs in a NPC cantina, they can give out better buffs.

OK, the above is what I think things should be like. I really have no clue what the state of the game is currently unless I hear it from you guys and it's been so long since I played, I forget how some parts of the game used to work. So, if the above paragraph doesn't make much sense, that's why.

Oh, the reason why cities are so laggy for people is strictly related to the terrain engine used by SWG. While the terrain generating engine was praised by industry developers and it won awards, it is the sole reason why player cities are "laggy." See, the terrain generator basically generated terrain with all-too-natural characteristics in it. The "war trenches" through Fort Oasis are evident of this. Typically, this is only a minor inconvenience for anyone who goes over these features. The lag comes into play when a structure is placed, whether it be a house, guild hall, or an extractor. When a structure is placed in a buildable area, the terrain generator has to temporarily smooth out the area around the structure. This is quite evident in cities. When you place a city hall, the terrain is "flattened" to a certain degree within the radius of the city. This "flattening" is really only temporary though, as a player city is not a permanent entity.

In essence, the terrain is static and can be stored in memory to save time when your computer draw the terrain. When entering a player city, your computer has to redraw the temporary terrain edits. This is what causes the lag. If the devs had simply gone with more generic land (without the craigs and such), they could have reduced the amount of terrain that would need to be redrawn. It is another example of how something good on paper doesn't always work out so well in the real world.

I like your suggestion, now someone needs to listen and change it.