Politician Archive

My name is Arrius, and I'm the Mayor of Legion's Retreat... a town on Dantooine, Bria. This toon was created back in March strictly to become a Politican when our guild opted to leave Tatooine, and set down roots elsewhere, with the thought to providing relatively safe streets to walk for our noncombatant residents/members (i.e., crafters/merchants).

Since the town's inception, our population has grown and hovered between 45-52 citizens. Even though we're centrally located on Dantooine (a nice location, with plenty of room to expand), have all the amenities except a shuttleport (for now), and are only a 2 minute swoop ride to Mining Outpost, we're having trouble recruiting new citizens and retaining old ones. Granted, recruiting and retention are two different issues. Our retention problems tend to stem from people getting bored with the game, and moving on to other venues... usually bailing out with no notice other than the system email to the Mayor that we've lost a citizen. We seldom lose a resident to another town.

Recruiting is a problem in that it's always been my position as Mayor that all citizens have a responsibility to assist in the recruiting process. If we don't grow, we wither and die. However, when I agreed to become Mayor, I had no intention of spending all my gaming time recruiting new citizens... an attitudeI'm sure the rest of you mayors can (hopefully) agree with. So, I've often asked our citizenship to assist in the recruiting effort... with little response except from a few folks with a significant stake in city success. We've tried everything... offering free houses, bikes, financial assistance, zero taxes (city finances are all via voluntary deposit)... to no significant avail. The problem seems to stem from the residents' ability to solo group close to home for large sums of cash, hence limiting their need to interact with other players. Limited interaction equals limited recruiting effort during game play. The most common excuse I received was "I'm not good at recruiting", even though we'd composed a "script" they could use to assist them in the process, and all they had to do was direct the potential citizen to me for futher discussion and assistence.

My hope has been to get our citizenship rolls up to (at least) 65 residents, give or take. This allows me to place the shuttle, as well as having some breathing room in the event of a small exodus. We've no real desire to achieve Metro status... though that would be nice.

Anyway, have any of you other mayors had this problem? If so, how did you solve it... if you've solved it? Are there any towns out there on Bria struggling to stay afloat that would be interested in joining or little community? If not, if you're on Dantooine, perhaps you'd be interested in having our community join yours... or, as a 3rd option, perhaps we can find a suitable location where both towns can move, combining into a single, non-guild centric synergistic community.

My in-game email on Bria is Arrius. Feel free to post here, or drop me a line in-game.

Regards,

Arrius

Mayor, Legion's Retreat

Dantooine, Bria

/offsoapbox

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Arrius - M. Politician (Mayor), M. Droid Eng.
Umbra Domini - 12-pt WS, M. Merch, M. Art.
Mibea - 12-pt AS, M. Merch., M. Art.
Budmann - M. Carb., M. Bounty Hunter, Pistoleer x4x4


Vendor dropoff: UD's Little Shop of Horrors, -1299, 99, Legion's Retreat, Dantooine, Bria


"Old age and treachery will usually win out over youth and skill."

I had a similar problem when i ran Shadows Haven, chilastra. But that city is gone now and i have moved onto another city. The way that i handled recruiting was i had a master recruiter in my guild that would run groups of recruiting once a week for 4-5 hours a day and would just talk to any non-guilded player of the needed faction. Another thing that we did while recruiting was wore a guild uniform to make it seem as if we were a close-knit group. Looks very very nice. But just keep in mind you will lose citizens, and those that leave, you dont want anyways since they will just take off and not care. All this stuff takes time and i know i would rather have quality players, rather than people that will just leave. So just stick to recrutigin and talk to EVeRYONE. makes it a lot easier. i restarted a guild now on rori two nights ago, and we are about 13-15 people strong, i also make deals with other guilds and get them to move into our city and spark huge economy on crafters and such. thats what i did in my old town, so start talking business with people and get some allies to move in.

Yes, I think this is a problem all Mayors face.

Two quick tips on recruiting:

1) Hold events! Advertise them! Give away free stuff to attract people! The more people you get to come to your town, the better the chance that some of them will think "Wow, I'd like to live here" and possibly move in. Any public event you hold also happens to be something of a recruitment drive.

2) People seem to like this one, so here it is again... If you have vendors in your town, have them sell "City X Citizenship Information" items. They can be chance cubes or something simple like that with a custom name. Write up a description something like "Are you looking for somewhere to live? Looking for a nice community with friendly people? Well, City X is always on the lookout for new citizens! By buying this item, you express an interest in becoming a citizen here, and the Mayor will contact you with more details about how to move into City X!" Customize the message as needed. Sell on vendors for 1 credit. When these items are bought, the vendor owner knows who bought them, and you now have a recruitment candidate. We've gotten dozens of new citizens using this system.

Good luck!

Jaspor
Master Politician / Master Smuggler / Master Pistoleer
Imperial Colonel / Imperial Pilot Ace
Guildmaster of Guild of the Zodiac - Constellation, Naboo

We don't seem to have this problem...we have people come to us...from other servers even. We're all wookiee which sounds like it would be difficult to keep the numbers up, but get a new member each week or so, sometimes more. It sounds as though we have a good reputation, that is what helps recruitment. Get your name out by holding events, plan a live event even with the help of Tiggs.

Mayor JoseCuervo - Kashyyykur, Rori - Corbantis
-AoWL - Army of Wookie Liberation

I have the same problem, for us i think it is because we are an independant, neutral town, we are not affiliated with a guild and thus do not get residents from new guild members. We struggle to retain our level 4 status and every day i spend hours trying to recruit or set up people to the point where i have little time for anything else. I really wish there was an easier way...

Dedicated Player Associations.

That is the saving grace for Aurora. We have great people in very friendly guilds that call Aurora their home. Also...god leadership of those guilds and the city make people want to play in and around the community. We communicate a lot. Some people have left Aurora due to the amount of spam we have sent on occasion but we feel that communication is the MOST important part of a successful community and helping it grow/prosper.

Hadrian Augustus
Mayor and Master Architect of Aurora
Naboo, Flurry Server


Catapultam habeo.
Nisi pecuniam omnem mihi dabis, ad caput tuum saxum immane mittam.

Translation: I have a catapult. Give me all the money, or I will fling an enormous rock at your head.

Our guild is implementing Guild Recruiting officers. They will only have the ability to sponser members but we only giving trusted guild members this ability. Recruiting becoming a big job even for the guild leaders and we needed help. we started from a group of 7 guildmates to over 50 pretty much over night.

Trashawn- Master Carbineer/Creature Handler/Politician/Alliance Pilot
Mayor of Gold Beach, Corellia -Bloodfin Galaxy.

You have gotten some great ideas to start off on from the posters. Jaspors second idea is seriously one of the best i have seen yet! It's always important to remember one thing though "Quality over Quantity". Sure it's great to have a city filled with many houses to say that you have a full city, but really what is the point when half of those citizens don't care wether the city lives or dies? It's a difficult task for us mayors to keep cities alive, but many of us do so in various brilliant ways. Before Solace hit Metro which took about 5 months i believe, I wouldn't allow any other guilds to move in as I wanted to assure these new guilds at a later date that Solace was there to stay. I have a wonderful guild that has helped tremendously in so many ways.. not many that are willing to get out there and recruit, but a few that love the interaction recruiting does bring. I've recently put into place a CDT (City Development Team) and with their help if we fall below a certain number of citizens they get out there and actively try to recruit. They spend a few days with many of them to assure we are getting the "quality citizens" we are looking for and overall it has been a HUGE success.

But def. try to get the public involved in city events. Planning a city event is always fun and exciting. Brings many new prospects into the city and they see that there are those of us out there that do care about what we're doing to improve the "community" feel to the game. Also, as someone else stated, try to get with another guild and see if they'd like to join up with you all. Since we've reached Metro i've accepted 5 new guilds into our city and it is so great seeing everyone join forces like we are. Plus when someone knows they don't have to use their sp on Politician for their guilds city that is always a HUGE plus Without the support of my guild-Imperial Frozen Legion, Dark Forces, Legion of Darkness, Moted and Impire my city wouldn't be as great as it is today. Mind you, we wouldn't fall if anyone chose to up and leave as my guild alone has enough to have the Metro Ranking but it is an honor to have the other guilds join us in Solace. All about connections these days

Good Luck!

5 Star reply from Jaspor! Now there is a bloody good idea!

I am a Mayor of a City and having some fluctuating turn arounds, but just dont really have much time to recruit and have been thinking of ways to "advertise" and this is by the best!

Cheers Mate, I will try that tonite.

Steveo (IGN)
NGE Jedi
Im not an "Elder" Jedi but I lived the legacy
Created 31st March 2004 and still here!

I encourage other residents to recruit since it was our community, not mine or theirs, ours. This has worked. Having everyone else to look for future citizens is better than having the mayor do all the work and a great way to burn the mayor out.

guess most mayor have that problem, unless you have a massive guild running a city

i spent the last4 weeks daily searching for people or guilds to move to our city. It s a pain to do, but once you have a good core team or some properous guilds in you city you don t have to care much more for expanding cause it will just happen

I can imagine running a city with out a central communication channel like Guildchat to be difficult. I would be nice to implement a citychat system were all citizens get a citychat tabso unguilded or multi-guilded cities can communicate better.

Trashawn- Master Carbineer/Creature Handler/Politician/Alliance Pilot
Mayor of Gold Beach, Corellia -Bloodfin Galaxy.

Jaspor
Master Politician / Master Smuggler / Master Pistoleer
Imperial Colonel / Imperial Pilot Ace
Guildmaster of Guild of the Zodiac - Constellation, Naboo