First pieces of GU8 going to TC

TCPrime/TestCenter Update Notes - February 24, 2009

Update 8 is going to be up on TCP and TestCenter shortly.
Player City Updates

• City Update Pulse that is normally 1 week has been reduced to 2 days. This will cause a City Election Cycle to be every 6 days instead of the normal 3 weeks. (TC/TCPrime only)
  
• The City Mayor can change City Specializations 'at will' during the initial testing period. (TC/TCPrime only)
  
• City Maintenance has been disabled for the initial testing phase on TC/TCP - No cities will be required to pay maintenance during this time. (TC/TCPrime only)
  
• Cities will not collect taxes from its Citizens during the initial testing phase on TC/TCP.
  
• The above changes will be reverted after sufficient testing has been done for the City Update changes. They will return to their normal Live Configurations. (TC/TCPrime only)
  
• An existing citizen will get his profession and level initially updated in the citizen roster when he logs in for the first time after the update is up and running.
  
• Storyteller Items placed in a Player City gain 8 hours of bonus longevity (meaning they will last 24 hours instead of 16).
  
• Increased the base amount of Decorations Cities can have by 50%.
  
• Increased the base amount of Civic Structures Cities can have by 50%.
  
• The Cloning Lab specialization has been changed; it now reduces the cost of removing Cloning Sickness by 50%.
  
• The Improved Job Market specialization now gives a console message informing the player of the bonus payout for missions run from that terminal.
  
• Research Center specialization now gives the Crafter a message when the bonus is applied.
  
• Manufacturing Center specialization now gives the Crafter a message when the bonus is applied.
  
• Encore Performance (Storyteller): Cities that have this Specialization enables Storyteller Items to last an extra 12 hours.
  
• Removed Stronghold Specialization.
  
• Outdoor Enhancements is now available. Mayors who choose this Specialization will receive a 33% increase in the number of City Decorations and Civic Structures they can place.
  
• Beginning 5/1/2009 12:01AM PDT, during every galaxy restart, if a citizen has not logged in for more than 90 days, he will be automatically removed as a citizen of the city. The citizen's structure(s) will not be affected. You can use the updated citizen roster window to see how long it has been since a citizen last logged in. In-game mail will be sent to the mayor when a citizen is removed because of this 90 days inactivity. If the citizen logs back in after he has been removed as a citizen because of the 90 days inactivity, and his resident structure is still within the city limits, he will be immediately added back to the citizen list, and the mayor will be sent in-game mail indicating that the citizen has been added.
  
• Player-owned Theaters, Cantinas, Hospitals and Merchant Tents can now have their storage increased.
  
• A confirmation code is now needed to 'Delete All Items' inside your structure.
  
• Players can now move items Up/Down in the Hall of a Small Generic House, style 1
  
• Players can now move items Up/Down in the Hall of a Small Generic House, style 1a (aka. "style 1, floorplan 2")
  
• Players can now move items Up/Down in the Hall of a Large Generic House, style 1
  
• Player City: A "Citizen of Same City" search condition has been added to the Search Community tab to allow searching for citizens of your city. A search that includes the "Citizen of Same City" search condition will return all matches, and will ignore the other characters' anonymous and hide location settings. For example, if you just search by the "Citizen of Same City" search condition, the search results will display all online citizens of your city and their locations.
  
• House Signs: When viewing a player's house sign, it will show the actual name of the sign; previously a player would see 'a sign.' instead of the sign name.
  
• Storytellers can now have Storyteller Zoning Rights for multiple Cities.
  
• City Citizenship Report and City Structure Report now display using a sortable Table UI.
  
• Citizen Report now shows Citizen Name, Structure Type, Structure Location, Citizen Last Login Time/Location, Level and Profession of each Citizen.
  
• Selecting an item in the Citizen Report will now create a waypoint to the selected Citizen's Structure.
  
• City Structure Report now shows the Structure Name, Structure Location.
  
• City Structure Report now shows all Civic Structures and Decorations.
  
• City Structure Report now shows all items (previously capped at 50).
  
• City Structure Report now shows Garden Names (if Mayor has named them).
  
• Selecting an item in the City Structure Report will now create a waypoint to the selected item.
  
• Mayors can now change the sign name on City Cloning Centers.
  
• Mayors now receive Deposit Mail Messages when Citizens make Credit Deposits to the City Treasury.
  
• /grantZoningRights now has a UI. The user can now choose to grant Full Zoning Rights, or Storyteller Zoning Rights.
  
• /grantStorytellerZoningRights allows your target to place Storyteller items within your City without giving them the rights to place structures.
  
• Mayors can now add Administrators to the City Hall.
  
• Mayors can now withdraw a maximum 150,000 credits/day from the City Treasury.
  
• Mayors can now view the Structure Status Menu on Civic Structures.
  
• Fixed an issue where a Citizen's Vote would be wiped if he/she was added to the City Militia
  
• New Residents of a City will no longer Auto-Vote for the Incumbent Mayor.
  
• Removing a Citizen from the Militia no longer Auto-Votes for the Mayor.
  
• Mayors can no longer destroy City Halls during an 'Election Week'.
  
• Mayors can now create a Message of the Day for their Citizens.
  
• Mayors can now create a Message of the Day for people who visit their City.
  
• Mayors now have the option to place a 'Recycling Station'(Junk Dealer) in their City.
  
• Mayors can now name their City Gardens.
  
• House Signs: Mayors, while inside their City Limits will now see the Structure's Owner when viewing the House Sign.
  
• New Gardens are available. These are classified as ‘small gardens' and can be crafted using the ‘small garden' option in the crafting menu.
  
• New Fountains have been added as City Decorations. These items are in the drop-down menu when crafting fountains.
  
• New Statues have been added as City Decorations. These items are in the drop-down menu when crafting statues.

Gameplay

• Added another version of 'a veermok' to the Veermok Victimizer Collection.
  
• Holo-Pets will now delete when you choose to destroy the Holo-Pet Emitter using the House Management Terminal to 'Delete All Items'
  
• The Stage Controller collection is now available. It can be found in the Lucky Despot.
  
• Added optimizations to heals and the GCW aura buff.
  
• 69 Month Vet reward (Gamorrean Greeter) added
  
• Group XP bonus has been increased
  
• Fixed an issue where the "Equip Appearance" radial option would appear on items that were already appearance equipped.
  
• Fixed an issue that could cause you to start your own instance instead of joining your group in theirs.

User Interface

You can now customize the overhead map using the following options (located under the UI tab of the options menu):

• Overhead Map Opacity
  
• Show Player
  
• Show Creatures
  
• Show Waypoints
  
• Show Labels
  
• Show Buildings

Voice chat speaker output and microphone volume values now properly save when set.
Player Associations

• Mail can be sent to all guild members of a particular guild rank. You must be the guild leader or a guild member with mail permission in order to do this. For convenience, the To: field on the mail compose window now contains a drop down that contains the existing predefined recipients citizens, group, and guild, as well as the new predefined recipients for the various guild ranks.
  
• Guild war kills tracking is available for all to see for active guild wars and the 100 most recently ended guild wars. Everyone can access this information from the remote guild management terminal in the datapad. It can take up to 1 minute after a kill for the guild war kills tracking information to get updated.
  
• Guild war kills tracking has been added for guilds that you are mutually at war with. You can see this information in the Guild Enemies window. It can take up to 1 minute after a kill for the guild war kills tracking information to get updated in the Guild Enemies window. If the guild war is ended and then restarted, the information will be reset to 0.
  
• A list of guilds on the server and their member count is now viewable on the PA datapad device (if the player is in a guild or not).
  
• Added guild war exclusive and exemption lists to allow selectively choosing which guild members will be PvP enabled for guild war. Only guild members with the War permission can update the guild war exclusive and exemption lists. The Guild Enemies window will display how many members are guild war PvP enabled for your own guild, for guilds you are currently at war with, and for guilds who have declared war on you, but *NOT* for guilds that you have declared war on.
  
• If 2 guilds are at war, the following rules are used to determine if members from the 2 guilds can PvP each other under the guild war rule. If they can already PvP each other because of other rules (like dual, factional, bounty hunting, etc), then they will be able to PvP each other because of those other rules, even if they can't PvP each other under the guild war rule.
  
• If the guild war exclusive list is not empty, only those guild members will be flagged for guild war PvP. If the guild war exclusive list is empty, all guild members will be flagged for guild war PvP except those on the guild war exemption list.
  
• If a guild member is currently guild war PvP enabled and the status is changed to guild war PvP disabled, it will take between 1 and 2 minutes for the disabling to take effect, during which time the guild member will still be flagged as guild war PvP enabled. Switching from guild war PvP disabled to guild war PvP enabled occurs immediately.
  
• An existing guild member will get his profession and level initially updated in the guild roster when he logs in for the first time after the update is up and running.
  
• The membership roster has been updated to have six columns instead of one (Name, Title, Profession, Level, Rank, and Status). It allows browsing and sorting of each column. The maximum amount of members that can be displayed in the interface is 500 (the largest size a player association can be).
  
• A "Member of Same Guild" search condition has been added to the Search Community tab to allow searching for members of your guild. A search that includes the "Member of Same Guild" search condition will return all matches, and will ignore the other characters' anonymous and hide location settings. For example, if you just search by the "Member of Same Guild" search condition, the search results will display all online guild members and their locations.
  
• War exemption and exclusive added to the guild interface on a per member basis.
  
• Guild Master elections have been added. Elections can be started by nominating yourself for election on the Player Association Device.
  
• Guild Ranks have been added. Guild Ranks can be assigned by a Guild Master or a guild member that has the permission to assign ranks.

Sweet - now we can guild war!!! And the best thing of it is that crafters are safe!

Beginning 5/1/2009 12:01AM PDT, during every galaxy restart, if a citizen has not logged in for more than 90 days, he will be automatically removed as a citizen of the city. The citizen's structure(s) will not be affected. You can use the updated citizen roster window to see how long it has been since a citizen last logged in. In-game mail will be sent to the mayor when a citizen is removed because of this 90 days inactivity. If the citizen logs back in after he has been removed as a citizen because of the 90 days inactivity, and his resident structure is still within the city limits, he will be immediately added back to the citizen list, and the mayor will be sent in-game mail indicating that the citizen has been added.

Bye, bye CH. Particularly not packing up structures is a very retarded move.

Well not sure what will happen to CH in this case. We will have to wait and see. I do agree the lost land is a biggy. Though with the structure purge coming up maybe we will have more land. Basically lose citizenship at 3 months, structures at 6 months. I guess the point is for mayors to nag people to resub.

On the flip side, we get more pretties for the city.

with the 90 day thing if not being online is gonna have an impact at some point, and a devious plan to keep people subbed.

ahh ya beat me to it mikee..but ya not sure how this will affect CH..doesnt look good though.

Interesting stuffs . I'm pretty sure thier can be exploitable ways around the system .

This was posted by Loche a few hours ago...


Hey Folks,

Just wanted to chime in on your concerns about the new rule going into effect on May 1st. This rule states that if the character has not logged in for at least 90 days, and is a citizen of a city, the character will get removed from the citizen list, without the character's structure(s) being impacted.

We have been thinking on this for a long time, and with your responses to the above stated rule and after much discussion here, we have decided to extend this to flag the character's structure(s) in the city, for the character who has not logged in, to be eligible for packing up. To be absolutely clear, we are talking about when this particular character/citizen last logged in.

This packing will not be like the current house pack-up mechanic, you will not get points for packing the structure. It will not be marked as abandoned, it will be flagged in some other way.

For players who for any reason that cannot log in the character at least once during the 90 days, we will enact a feature to allow the mayor of the city to flag that citizen’s structures as "safe", meaning it will not get flagged for packing and the citizen will not get removed from the citizen list. There will be a limitation set on the number of citizens you can "protect" as this is a feature for those cases which would normally not occur very often.

What does this mean? It means that if you have structures in your city, whose character owners have not logged in in at least 90 days, the characters/citizens will be removed from the citizen list and the characters' structures will be eligible for packing by other players. If, as a mayor, you don’t want those citizen’s structures packed and those citizens not to get removed, you can set them as protected.

Any structures outside of the cities will be unaffected.

If the city shrinks, those structures that are flagged, but haven't been packed up yet, that are now outside the city limits, will no longer be eligible for pack up, since those structures are now no longer inside the city limits. If the resident structure of a "protected" citizen falls outside of the city limits because of city shrinking, the "protected" citizen will be removed as citizen since he no longer has a resident structure inside the city limits.

If the city expands and picks up additional structures, the additional structures, because they are now inside the city limits, will be eligible to be marked for pack up using the rules stated above.

This is good news..honestly I think this dev team listens to the player base more than people realize.

This is good news..honestly I think this dev team listens to the player base more than people realize.

Agreed. I think what a lot of people don't realize is that the dev team's hands are tied by their superiors (Not literally!!!! Imagine the lawsuits!!!) on many issues. I even see Elias and Valara take crap on a regular basis because of decisions they have absolutely nothing to do with.

I'll be the first person to voice my opinion when they make a dumbass move, but I'll also say that this dev team really is trying to make decisions for and with the playerbase, if and when they are allowed to.