Politician Archive
Thread: In a Perfect World
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Mastaccolli wrote:
I believe, as many of you do, that we are a forgotten profession.
Try being a Smuggler.
Politican XP converts at a 3:1 ratio to FS XP (heightened senses)
Jaspor wrote:
My Short Term WIsh List:
* Fix Taxes.
* Make Politician XP tradeable for FS XP.
* Remove (or at least lower) the skill points requirements to maintain Master Politician.
* Allow Mayors to transfer control of the City.
Hvzeda wrote:
Politican XP converts at a 3:1 ratio to FS XP (heightened senses)
Jaspor wrote:
My Short Term WIsh List:
* Fix Taxes.
* Make Politician XP tradeable for FS XP.
* Remove (or at least lower) the skill points requirements to maintain Master Politician.
* Allow Mayors to transfer control of the City.
you are correct, i was just at the village yesterday, and saw that in the list.
Hvzeda wrote:
Politican XP converts at a 3:1 ratio to FS XP (heightened senses)
Yeah, I know that now, thanks. 
I wrote that post awhile ago when stuff was still on TC and nobody had reported any Politician conversion (and it was widely assumed we had been forgotten.. well, widely meaning by the 3 or 4 players who cared. )
Mastaccolli wrote:
I believe, as many of you do, that we are a forgotten profession. NEVER will you see a big revamp, get the love Jedi do or anything of the sort. Everyone wants an exciting profession but lets face it, we are not one.
Avallach wrote:
Player cities strike me as the *perfect* venue for building that sort of community. But in order for them to be effective at that, there's got to be a worthwhile reason for people to hang around in player cities and build community. (/e remembers writing something along these lines in ages past and goes off to look for it...)
I think you pretty much nailed it right here.
Right on.
The Vision: Player cities are intended to be player community building devices. Players come together to form a city with the intent of being able to provide benefit for the mutual good, much as Locke thought. The politician is intended to be a dynamic class, with several different goals for the city represented by several different leaders vying for the mayoral seat. Over time, as cities grew and prospered, they would gain access to new and often competing abilities which would require further civil discussion. New players coming to SWG would find the allure of a well run player city so enamouring that they should not be able to wait until they can afford a house and petition the civil government for membership. Older players would find the friendships and relationships built as part of the shared work of the city to be a binding force, keeping them playing SWG when other interests have waned.
The Reality: Player cities are largely deserted. Many are presently run by a sole politician who often can't give away the job for the benefit of a small circle of friends and often little else. Certain specializations, such as research center for a crafting oriented city or increasing mission payouts for a combative one are simply no-brainers in the political decisions. New players have little to no incentive to join player cities, because identical facilities and better business can be found in NPC towns. (City specializaitons remain the one deviation from that and are, it seems, insufficient.) Older players find few if any ties within a player city to bind them to the game any longer than it takes to hit the cancel button on their account.
The Problems: Before we examine solutions, let's define problems. The biggest issue is a philosophical one. The vast majority of SWG's design philosophy in general, and player cities in specific, is based around the Lockian idea that people are essentially good. That given the right environment and tools, people will work together to create amazing things and MMORPG players, given sufficient ability, will generate their own staggering amount of content. Recent events in our world, as well as the experience of SWG (especially player cities) have revealed this to be simply wrong. The fact is that the first impulse of any person given a new tool to play with is to bash someone over the head with it and enjoy playing with two tools for a while. People are by nature selfish. We may strive to overcome that state, but in the end we remain as we are. Players are not, in general, going to work hard to create a city for the benefit of other players outside their circle of friends. Exceptions exist, but they are just that, exceptions to the rule itself. They may well do so accidentally, providing a service to others as Aventine provides skill trainers for half of Naboo, it seems sometimes, but that is rarely, if ever the intent. I realize that this is a controversial point, and that philosophers have hardly settled it, but I think we see ample evidence of the desire for individuals to get ahead at the expense of the greater good all over player cities. The griefing that occured with /citywarn, the cross server trading of lots to artificially inflate cities, and the desire for each small circle of PA's/friends/whatever to have their own class 4 city (myself included, of course...) seem to be the most prominent examples.
Secondly, there is little to no reason to live in a player city. Most all of the important features of a player city are not only duplicated, but often exceeded in NPC cities due to the presence of more players. It's something of a catch-22; If player cities had more players, they'd have more players. As it stands now, when player cities first came out I offered to extend citizenship to a couple of players living not far from our city, but outside its radius. Given the presence of mounts and now vehicles, their immediate question was why they should bother to move their existing buildings and pay taxes in order to enjoy what they could now given a very brief ride. There simply is no good, tangible in game answer to that question. I can offer intangibles, like community and friendship, but for most that's a secondary consideration, at best. As it stands now we offer a very generous package to people moving in to our city and still have difficulty gaining new members.
Third, the goals of player cities are too easily satisfied. If you're a crafting town, you work your way to R&D. If you're combat, you up mission payouts. I've never heard nor seen a city using medical center, entertainment district, or sample rich environement thus far. There are no real competing goals to be worked with as things stand now, because there is too little for player cities to do too easily.
Finally, cities are great places to "live", but horrible places to actually stay. This is related to the second point, but reflects the fact that even after people have declared citizenship and become a part of the community, they're rarely, if ever, to be found in that community. The need for harvesters, harder missions, or big game hunts pull them out of player cities before there's any chance for community to form.
Possible Solutions: These are pure, off the hip thoughts, so expect no polish... The initial, and most basic solution, is to rework our theory of community in SWG to reflect a more (though never completely!) Hobbesian view of human nature. People band together, according to Hobbes, because life in the natural state is nasty, brutish and short. They create and institute government to protect them from threats internal and external. If you want that creating to involve player cities, then consider making it more difficult to establish communities and homesteads away from them.Increase the maintenance exponentially for every house within 10m of your house unless you're within an established player city radius. Or, perhaps make animal/gang attacks on structures more likely, draining the maintenance pool more quickly when damage is done. Allow player cities to establish defensive perimeters to ensure these attacks are rare or non-existent inside their borders. In short, give players some external threat to make joining a player city more advantageous than the right to pay taxes. (Please note that I'm *not* suggesting a purely Hobbesian approach, which leads us near to Stalinism more than anything. Merely that if we stop assuming people will band together because other people are so wonderful to be around and start giving them reasons not to live aloneit will work better.)
Secondly, in addition to the stick, there must be the carrot. Player cities must offer some compelling, tangible benefit that causes people to regard them as a significant advantage over living alone or in a NPC city. In addition to the above, there must be some benefit to living in a player city. Perhaps not every NPC city on the planet has every type of facility possible to have. It's entirely possible that some NPCcities might not even have med centers, or cloning centers. (Continuity debate aside there...) When I think of what advantages I have in RL in living in the city I do, I come to the conclusion that the only things that I really gain from living here over 60 miles in the country are benefits in terms of commercial and transportation options. NPC cities should *never* exceed player cities in these categories, as they presently do (starports and bazaars). Also, the creation of a compelling set of worthwhile choices to be made by the mayors of player cities will, if done properly, consist of advantages to players that entice them to live in cities that choose a compatible path. I realize the roleplaying advantages of a player city are incredible, but that's a very small enticement to most people it seems.
Third, as mentioned above there should be several worthwhile, mutually exclusive goals that cities can pursue for each playstyle. Break apart the benefits given to each specialization, and spread the new, smaller speciallizations across the politician tree. Allow mayors to pick several (depending on how many total there are) but never enough to min/max for every alternative. Think of them akin to SIm City ordinances, with benefits, costs, and balances to be maintained. Some suggestions:
- Fiscal responsibility policy-Reduces the city maintenance costs by a randomly determined 1-25% (bell curve, leaning towards the middle) every week.
- Improved Job Market-Mission payouts remain unchanged, but every view of a mission terminal returns twice as many missions available as normal.
- Industrial Subsidy-costs of running one chosen type of factory are reduced by 25%
- Musical heritage program-All entertainer gain an additional 10% experience
- Virtuoso training-All citizen entertainers' buffs become 10-20% more effective.
- Bacta contract-All healing attempts are 10% more effective
- Fortified drinking water-All citizens gain an additional 3-5% resistance to poison and disease.
- Target range-Citizens gain +5% accuracy on all ranged combat rolls
- Teras Kasi Dojo-Above, but for Melee
- Research center-One crafting skill type is chosen (engineering based, medical based, natural based (BE/Scout/Ranger), Domestic based) and the corresponding citizen professions gain +1 experimentation point.
I'm sure there are more out there, but these are just some startingideas. Make the mayor give serious thought to which policies will keep the most people happy this week.
Finally, give people a reason to stay IN player cities. The bazaars and starports would help, of course, but there has to be a way to get people away from Coronet and Theed. Make player starports faster than NPC ones. (Shuttles as well!) Add NPC's to give flavor and a bit of a crowd to current player cities. People, even fake ones, attract people. (I've been tempted to scatter our skill trainers all over town for that reason, but I'd hate the flood of e-mails saying "What did you do with trainer X?" :-P) Give players some strong reason to visit, or make their home in the player cities. I think this is possibly deriviative of the above issues, and should probably be re-evaluated once those issues are properly addressed.
If you've read this far, thank you. If you've read this far and you're a developer, many more thanks. Remember that we're all on the same side here. We all want each and every player city to be the very best it can be, and for each mayor to have relevant, worthwhile things to do with his or her skills and time. I've got to get some sleep here, so be well, and thanks for listening.