Politician Archive

No one OWNS a city. A city is an idea.. The idea is a community of people coming together, for whatever reason.
Did you pay for a building? Perhaps
Did you drop cash in the treasury? Eh, maybe..
If it was YOUR town, then why aren't your lots not being used? If you want a GUILD, get a guild hall. If you want a guild in a city, then that's what you get.

Ownership is something you do with real property or personal property. I use the terms loosely.. since it's online. The only places that are "owned" would be Medical facilities, cantinas, and the like. Places like Shuttleports and Cloning tanks are "neutral" as in they aren't for any ONE person, they are part of the infrastructure. Exploiting persons of opposite factions by placing scanners and turrets will do nothing but get an account banned, and perhaps even a city disolved. I can see the developers banning covert faction detectors from city limits.

To those who feel they OWN a town, look around your communites.. This means you need to actually turn the computer off, walk outside. Then ask yourself, "Who owns this road?", "Wow, that's a nice court house, I wonder who own's that too".. If you think you own any of those, then figure out exactly HOW you own it. You don't.. no one does.. it's an investment into a communal idea.

/cityban is for criminals.. while the PVP aspect says rebels are criminals, griefing is still griefing, and the EULA and such state rollplaying is now excuse.. ban rebels, ban imps, ban jack@$$, but don't grief them just because..

Just my three credits..

yes a city is an idea.

However a city can have an idea of having an iron fist or a dictatorship. As such they can own a city

Here's my take on the public vs. private thing.

I'm part of a PA. That PA has worked its butt off to stay organized, pool efforts, and build stuff together. From the very beginning of beta, we have been working towards building our own self-sufficient community.

It is not practical in this game to operate a population center - whether you want to call it a public city, faction base, whatever - without certain essential facilities. Those facilities are, quite simply, mission terminals, a shuttleport, and a cloning facility. Without those facilities a location is nothing but a place to visit - it cannot be home.

Within SWG, the only way to have those facilities is through either a static city or a player city. Factional bases can have mission terminals, but cities are the only places with shuttleports or cloning facilities. That means my guild, if it wants to create the community that it has been striving for (and I'm guessing we're not in a minority on this) is left with no option but to build a player city.

Now I know some of you are of the opinion that cities should be "public" and belong to no individual or guild. But the simple fact is that your position is just not practical. In what I would guess is better than 90% of the player cities created so far, a guild has been the central actor. Almost all the citizens of that city are members of that guild. All the structures in the city are built by and being maintained by that guild. We do so because IT'S THE ONLY AVENUE WE HAVE AVAILABLE TO US. Give us the ability to place factional shuttleports and cloning facilities and we'll gladly let all cities be public. But as long as a PC is the only mechanism in the game whereby we can implement what we need then a PC will be the tool of private organizations and that's just the way life goes.

Clearly, the devs realized this would be the case as they decided to allow the mayor to restrict who can build, create a militia capable of banning people from the city, and place factional bases and terminals. Why are these systems in place if the city should be public and open to all? Clearly, the system is designed to allow for cities that are open to all AND cities that are more guild/faction-oriented and private. You want one that's open to all, go find one and move in. But don't try to show up on my doorstep claiming you have some right to what my guild has invested itself in creating - you will politely be asked to leave. And if you don't, well, lets just say we have found a few uses for some of those systems mentioned above.

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SeTSwiPe wrote:

yes a city is an idea.

However a city can have an idea of having an iron fist or a dictatorship. As such they can own a city

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Lol, pwned.

A city is "Owned" by it's citizens.. ie. Those that already live in it.

They determine who gets to join the city, and who gets to use its facilities.

The mayor is the elected representative of the Citizens, and enacts the citizens wishes.

The Mayor, for his/her term of office (1 week) has supreme executive power. Failure to responsibly excercise that power should result in the Mayors removal at the next election.

Therefore "The Mayor" owns the city, temporarily, on behalf of the people.

In theory, nobody actually "owns" the city, but in practice, look at all the cities on your server, and identify which of those were formed by non-PA's. Not too many, I think. Now, forgive me for my upcoming rant, but I feel it must be done...

/rant on

My guildmates and I spent considerable time and effort to coordinate our guild move and city formation. I believe that gives us the right to own control of the city. I personally hand crafted a good 75% of the structures in our city, so I may have a biased view and inherent interest in this, butmy point remains that those who put in the most efforts to build the city up should havecontrol of it. All our guildmembers participated in some form or another to found and build up our city to where it is today. And I willnot allow it to be griefed out of our control by a larger guild or larger group of individuals wanting a free ride. Those who have complained to me that we don't own our city and have no right to enable city zoning, I say to you, try investing several weeks of community time and effort into this, and then come back to me and tell me you still feel the same.

/rant off

So, i guess you can say we run a consensual, city-wide dictatorship. Though, our non-guild population is slowly growing, and if in they outnumber us some day in the future, and vote us out of control, well then that's a different story.

Let the flaming begin

"complained to me that we don't own our city and have no right to enable city zoning"

What a crock! If you have no right to enable zoning then what the heck is that nifty little option on your city management terminal there for?

Casey the problem isn't people who want to try to make it private. That's fine and dandy. I think the thing is people complaining about potentially losing city to others. That's where THEIR city is in question of being THEIRS.... Its not... Any large faction or group should be able to simply walk in and take over a town... It is YOUR job as mayor to try to convince them to be a part of YOUR idea or to beat them out... NOT SOE to make Player Cities into big Guild Halls, which they were NOT intended.... Sure you can and should be able to try... but if you fail, accept that and move on.... I am not saying you in particular feel that way. I am just responding to the whole PUBLIC idea... because in reality they are

Amen, alaskadude. That is how it has been explained by the Devs....yet we still have people that don't want to let any "other" people into their city.

I'm with you on that BigGuy. There is an in-system that allows for taking over a city and if you loose your city that way then too bad so sad! Go do some politiking!!!!

The problem,BigGuy, is even though I'm all for the whole negotiating and playing politician thing, if 50 houses plant themselves just outside our city limits in the span of a day, what do you think their intentions are? I don't think any level or quantity of discussion will resolve anything.

Just to clarify my previous post, If citizens vote us out of control and office, I have no problem with that...it's a democratic process (as far as SWG goes anyway) and as much as I might dislike the results, I'd live with it. What I do have an issue with is deliberate griefing tactics to seize control. And yes, I realize it exists and is a part of the game, but that doesn't mean I won't disagree with it

Andy large migration groups have occurred in real life throughout time.... 50 houses means alot more politicing than 5

Can you clarify a little more, not quite sure what you are trying to say.

If you mean I'd have to speak to 50 people, then I can do that. Butlet's say for examplethey're all part of a guild and completely ignore you and your requests for a dialogue. If you were the mayor of a city, what would your course of action be then? Oh btw, this isn't actually happening, just a theoretical situation.