Politician Archive
Thread: Not enough control...
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Illuminatrix
Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:50 am
#1
As a mayor of a half dead ghost town of a city, I'd like to bring some obvious attention to the fact that mayors simply don't have enough control over their city.
Right now my city is pretty much falling apart. I built it from the ground up and literally placed EVERY structure within the city with the sole exception being the Cantina. We, at one point or another, had over 200 structures in the city. The design was flawless and we were proud.......
The problem I'm facing now though is that a lot of people simply don't play any longer or quit the game with the impression that they "may return one day" or whatever and as such, dumped a million into their house or, in my case, their Merchant Tents...
At the moment, we have 5 empty Merchant Tents in our city and unless I desire to change the entire structure of the city, which I don't, I am unable to move in new merchants until the old tents are gone... Kind of sad really because most of them still have 300+ days before they decay.
What I am proposing is a Mayor only, "Eviction" button. The idea behind this would be to select a building by clicking on the sign (or the control panel which would only work for public structures unfortunately) and giving the mayor the ability to remove the structure through an eviction process.
Upon Evicting someone, an e-mail would be sent out to the owner of the structure and to the citizens of the city. The owner of the structure would then have 15 days (or whatever, 30 days.. etc..) to (re)move their structure or risk losing it and all the items inside.
There are obvious griefing factors involved with this which is why, upon hitting the evict button, a ballot box located within the city hall simultaneously adds the persons name to the list of those to be evicted with a simple Yes or No next to their name. Require 10 yes votes to have that persons structure removed or maybe a percentage based on citizen ship levels and viola, problem solved.
I know not everyone will like the thought of this idea but as a mayor, a feature like this could really come in handy, simply for cleaning up unwanted, dead, inactive structures.
Probably already been suggested, I don't read the forums often..
Right now my city is pretty much falling apart. I built it from the ground up and literally placed EVERY structure within the city with the sole exception being the Cantina. We, at one point or another, had over 200 structures in the city. The design was flawless and we were proud.......
The problem I'm facing now though is that a lot of people simply don't play any longer or quit the game with the impression that they "may return one day" or whatever and as such, dumped a million into their house or, in my case, their Merchant Tents...
At the moment, we have 5 empty Merchant Tents in our city and unless I desire to change the entire structure of the city, which I don't, I am unable to move in new merchants until the old tents are gone... Kind of sad really because most of them still have 300+ days before they decay.
What I am proposing is a Mayor only, "Eviction" button. The idea behind this would be to select a building by clicking on the sign (or the control panel which would only work for public structures unfortunately) and giving the mayor the ability to remove the structure through an eviction process.
Upon Evicting someone, an e-mail would be sent out to the owner of the structure and to the citizens of the city. The owner of the structure would then have 15 days (or whatever, 30 days.. etc..) to (re)move their structure or risk losing it and all the items inside.
There are obvious griefing factors involved with this which is why, upon hitting the evict button, a ballot box located within the city hall simultaneously adds the persons name to the list of those to be evicted with a simple Yes or No next to their name. Require 10 yes votes to have that persons structure removed or maybe a percentage based on citizen ship levels and viola, problem solved.
I know not everyone will like the thought of this idea but as a mayor, a feature like this could really come in handy, simply for cleaning up unwanted, dead, inactive structures.
Probably already been suggested, I don't read the forums often..
SenDerlo
Wed Aug 11, 2004 1:22 pm
#2
I suggest one modification to make it feasible and less of a griefing tool:
Change the feature to /condemnstructure. Once a structure is /condemned, the owner has 14 days to visit the structure to have it uncondemned. All that is required to uncondemn the structure is to execute a command - the mayor cannot override it.
This would allow us to remove buildings owned by defunct players, and not allow us to grief existing players.
Change the feature to /condemnstructure. Once a structure is /condemned, the owner has 14 days to visit the structure to have it uncondemned. All that is required to uncondemn the structure is to execute a command - the mayor cannot override it.
This would allow us to remove buildings owned by defunct players, and not allow us to grief existing players.
Message Edited by SenDerlo on 08-11-2004 01:23 PM
Vinjar
Wed Aug 11, 2004 3:37 pm
#3
Sorry to hear about TSA. This is a great idea except for one thing: If anyone is in the military, and the accounts are still paid for, it would be a crappy thing to come back to having your stuff destroyed. If and account is closed, then yes, the structures should be deleted or redeeded as in the case of houses.
StumanKadir
Wed Aug 11, 2004 4:48 pm
#4
With the upcoming account clearout - if the player has been gone for 6 months their goods and deeds should theoretically be deleted from the game. So irrespective whether they have dropped 300+ days of maintenance in or not, after 6 months they will be gone.
Its not much of an option (to have to wait that long), but as with everything else in this increasingly borked game, its about all that is available to us.
TheBoyScout
Thu Aug 12, 2004 12:18 am
#5
This would be great if implimented but couldn't/ wouldn't for the reasons you stated.
It would be too powerful a feature for someone to have and could be used to grief, just think about how much stuff you keep in your house and how annoyed you would be if you where away for whatever reason (long termactive service/(military))
benze
Thu Aug 12, 2004 3:45 am
#6
/agree
i really like this idea, excellent post!!
this would also help mayors having something to do (with their 77 skill points being used on this skill) after all the civic structures has been placed, as i see it its all about changing skill trainers and /grantzoningrights after 2 months... gets pretty boring after a while TBH...
In my city i have similar problems, especially with houses being placed very close to city hall (because of the fairly small zoning size at lvl 1), and now at lvl 3 (where zones are fairly large) would like to have the option to "move" some peoples houses, in order to make room for shuttle and such close to city center. i totally agree that this is my own fault for not saving room for shuttleport when city was still small, but it was nearly impossible because of the terrain.
therefore in addition to illuminatrix ideas i suggest.
1. mayor of city being granted an additional6 lots (large houses), for the sole purpose of placing the house for a new city member, and then use the /transferstructure command, itry telling people excactly where to place the house and still theyscrew it up, thus having to redeed it several times...
These lots would not be usable for the mayor outside city zones, and no control over the house should be available to the mayor except the /transferstructure command to avoid exploit.
2. the ability to move a house to different location inside city after it has been placed. Im not sure if it will be possible to move the house with furniture and vendors inside, i can imagine thiswould cause a lot of bugs... but telling a guy that his house is blocking the spot initially intended for shuttleport when he has a vendor with 400 items in it is just mean!!
could be done with placing a house in the "new intended" spot and a /transferinterior command...
of course this would have to be done with both mayor andhouse owner being present...
Just some thoughts, might be completely impossible to implement this in the game.... trying to find out if its just me that is being completely unrealistic
Chibi-Bar
Fri Aug 13, 2004 7:53 am
#7
I like the idea.. with changes (repost and modified from above posters)
1. Account must not be active for at least 3 months (as in closed and not being paid for) I think that is more than fair.
2. If the account is closed then you can "attempt" to condem... unless you don't get enough voters to vote them out...
That would make it "less" griefable (if that is a word)
Brytax
Fri Aug 13, 2004 10:20 am
#8
I love the idea of a move option. Our city is entirely guild based, and when it was small, due to the lack of space, we had to cram everyone together. Now the city looks like utter crap because of guildies who stopped playing, or (due to the audacity of our last mayors actions) we have people who simply flat out refuse to move. I can't blame those people, because they've had to move over and over again. But just so I could do a better job of cleaning up the city, it would be nice to have a feature that allows mayors to simply pick up a house, vendors, furniture, and all, and relocate it. By doing this, it should automatically send an email to the home owner letting them know their house has been moved.
Erann
Fri Aug 13, 2004 10:22 am
#9
I'm all for a eviction or a transplant ability to move structures around inside the city.
FiveStars
Fri Aug 13, 2004 3:00 pm
#10
Great post! And I had the same idea. People vote for a Mayor, and the Mayor does what the people want, so if someone is evicted with enough notice I don't see how it is griefing. What is griefing is some people place a home just outside a city, when the city grows it takes in that home and then that individual is in the City Limits.
I have had a couple of people do this to grief, they intentionally place a home where a street would be and name it something insulting or offending, then ask for credits to move it. Why am I a Mayor? I have no ability or control over my city other then the financial aspects.
So I say go with your idea. Yeah, someone may use it to grief - but people are griefing now, and your recommended change would put an end to that.
BlueLagoon
Mezzellion
Fri Aug 13, 2004 4:18 pm
#11
I whole heartedly agree that there should be an eviction option. Needing votes to do it is an even better idea!! That alone stops most griefing. In the case of cities, greifing is ussually one/few players messing with the rest of the citizens. If votes are needed then a single player does not have ultimate control over the city - he/she would need the cities backing.
I think the process should take 3 weeks though -- 1 week for the eviction vote, then 2 weeks before the structure is destroyed. (Side note - destroying stuff helps your database out devs). The evicted individual should also recieve an email everyday telling them how long they have left. The 3 week limit also means that if a mayor is pissing people off then they have 3 weeks to give him/her the boot.
This also, would help out the community as a whole since the active players would need to talk to one another in cities to actually get stuff done. GREAT IDEA.
-S.Shaw
Mezzellion
Fri Aug 13, 2004 4:24 pm
#12
Oh, and it would be nice if mayor deed placement overhead view were high (ie could see more of the map). Say instead of scrolling the viewable area around, let us see the whole snapshot onscreen at once. I remember placing my city hall was a pain in the neck trying to make sure the spacing was correct on all sides.
-S.Shaw
Laeren
Sat Aug 14, 2004 12:38 am
#13
Though this feature would be handy for the mayors, it would be a hyper-griefing tool for them too. The initial intent behind the feature is a benevolent one, but that was also the case with /citywarn.
What I think would be cooler is if you could shape the areas of your city better. I.e. if there's a structure inside your city radius that you definitely do not want as part of your city, you could exclude that spot, and gain a square outside your current radius (but within a city's MAXIMUM radius) as a part of your city. This would allow cities to shape around POIs or weird land features, and still retain the ability to have X square meters of city coverage.
So, for instance....
A city of 200m radius wants to exclude 3 squares within its current radius. The maxiumum square meterage of a city is:
pi * 450^2
They would be able to place the 3 squares (let's call them 20m x 20m squares) outside the 200m radius and those and whatever is inside them would be considered part of the city. However, the max square meterage of the city has now dropped to:
pi * 450 ^2 - (3 * 20 * 20), unless at a future point this squares are re-incorporated into the city.
Technically the city is losing squaremeterage in this manner, becuase it cannot put the 'excluded' blocks of square meterage outside of the 450m radius that is the max for all cities. So, a city might have a bunch of excluded blocks in the middle of the city, and be shaped along a line or around various canals or POIs. However, this would allow mayors to excluded certain buildings from the city, and gain that land space back to place something somewhere else.
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