Here are something you need to understand. This are meant as role play and players actions effect how it goes. If no one turn in quests, the town will be poor and there will not be any trade deal for the citizen. And yes there are good people who will help. There are a big diff in doing quests and turn in your own money and resources. On Siege, I know this will work great. You need to believe in the good in people
Wrong. I apologize if I come off harsh, but I gotta nix this idea right here because this seems to be what the devs think too and it DOES. NOT. WORK.
Right now, people can contribute to the cities by standing at the bank, pulling out some money, and dropping it on the herald. Ta-da! So easy.
Guess what DOESN'T happen?
I've held
extensive city themed events and asked for donations afterward. People say they enjoyed the events. Often they get nice cash prizes (out of my own pocket of course).
Guess what DOESN'T happen?
If people won't drop money on an npc standing right next to the city stone at the bank,
why in the world would you expect them to run all over Britannia doing a quest that benefits the city and that they personally get very little from?
The incentive for fencing is tangible, personal wealth. The incentive for taking the items to the city requested is helping the cities LESS than you could for a comparable amount of time hunting if you donated the money...
which already no one does. No one is going to do a lengthy and somewhat tedious quest for the smaller of two possible reward pools just to benefit a city that 1) they may not even be a citizen of (since its random) and 2) they don't bother donating to anyway.
I keep seeing people say that we haven't seen the maxed rewards for city quests. Unless they are pretty spectacular (and no such rewards were announced, unlike the nice Slim rewards) this whole thing is almost insulting as far as the governor system is concerned. I am a governor, have been since the beginning, and I'm telling you right now that even the governors won't be doing this quest out of some weird sense of generosity for long--we'll do the Slim quest, sell the loot, and continue resentfully funding the deal ourselves (or not having one at all) and wondering why the devs won't listen when we ask for a better way.
That's a stupid system.
The signs and books are finite and decorative only. The forged pardons and SoTs are consumable and always in demand, and Slim gives decorative loot too. There will be an initial flush of money into the city stones when the system goes live... then very little if any once people get their books and signs (and really, what are we going to do with those signs?) and realize that "RPing evil" as some are characterizing fencing the goods consistently gives much, much better rewards. Once again, it will be almost totally on the governors' shoulders to fund the trade deals.
Of course... people aren't going to contribute to cities that don't have their preferred trade buff either, and that can change with governor. Or governor's whim. It really needs to be a choose-your-own arrangement in cities with active trade agreements. But then we're getting into my next point...
Devs always listen to me but I do not always get my wish. However, this Traders Quests and new loot is very much what I have begged for the last year. I wanted better over lands loot and wanted players to traveling more so I really feel they do listen.
I'm glad you think they are listening to you. However, every time the governors ask for a change, they make something worse (one vote per shard) or do something that doesn't really do much for cities despite hinting to governors beforehand that something good was coming to help (traders quest). They introduced this clever, interactive system that requires a great deal of player effort if it is to succeed, then don't seem to listen to what the players who use it have to say.
We know from experience that once something hits test center it usually doesn't change much before hitting production shards.
To be honest, I'm pretty disappointed.