Politician Archive
Thread: Ghost Towns..solution required!
Due to the widespread belief that once a city hall is placed down, the city then belongs to the PA that placed it, mayors will go to any length to secure and maintain control of the city. Clearly, as per Plinka's post,a solution has been found for the /cityban problem and I am happy about that; but another major problem is the 'Ghost Town' phenomena.
This is where, in order for a mayor to win a vote, he is forced to use 'ghost characters' from other servers in what has become widely known as 'The Server Swap'. What happens is that 2 PAs from different servers agree to start up new characters on each others servers in order to populate their respective cities with sympathetic voters.
The end result of this is 'The Ghost Town'. Large areas on all servers filled with housing that belongs to characters that only inhabit the area once or a few times in order to keep up property maintenance; their main characters remaining on their home servers. Control of the city is secured but at the price of it becoming a dead and empty place with no real citizens. Clearly many mayors are prepared to pay this price in return for the satisfaction of the megalomaniacal zeal for dictatorial control. But this does nothing for the quality of the gameplay and creates large areas of what would otherwise be wilderness occupied by empty properties. The long term effect will be a vast increase in lag due to the vast numbers of objects the servers have to keep track of, or else the inevitable tight restrictionon city numbers to cope with the dead weight objects. This could potentially cut in half the number of cities that the servers can cope with and this is therefore a very serious matter.
This is a huge problem for the long-term well-being of the player city principle and also makes a mockery of the due process of democracy and the voting system.
I propose that as a matter of some urgency a solution be found to this situation in order to ensure that we dont have a proliferation of this already widespread practice. It needs to become more engaging in order for a citizen to be allowed to vote.
My suggestion is this. Voting elligibility be changed :-
1) There is no default vote for the encumbent mayor. In fact no automatic voting at all. This also helps alleviate the /cityban tactics used by some dis-honourable mayors.
2) Voting eligibility be tied in some way into on-server time such that a player must be active on a given server for a certain amount of time per week to qualify for the vote. I imagine this kind of information is stored on the database for each player from the moment they sign on, to the moment they sign off, so shouldnt be too difficult to implement.
Even with these measures in place, it still doesnt ensure a cessation of this practice, but it does ensure a greater degree of required effort and commitment to the city in question than is currently the case.
I would love to hear other suggestions on this potentiallygame-breaking tactic if you have any.
You would have to keep the casual players in mind...there are many who can only play a few hours each week. But still it would not be to harmful if every citizen of a city had to actually vote for the mayor and give support. The automatic voting is mainly what is keeping ServerSwapping alive. Although if they are doing it at all...I guess they wouldnt care about logging into the their "character" whom they probably logout of the Cityhall and hitting a radial menu once a week....
The unfortunate thing is, you just cant tell if a character is truly a valid citizen of the server...or just some newb with no skills who happens to login once a week...if there is I wish the devs would do it...
ok then to allow for casual players say that you need to play on a server for 3 hours a week? thats hardly excessive. I cant see anyone having a problem with that.
whether or not it was a regular server player or not wouldnt matter too much if they were forced to both, be online on the server for 3 hours a week, and actively had to vote.
but I don't think they will do this..... it is a game.. not a "career" or a "job" it might be to some.. a casual player just plays along whenever he/she feels like it... forcing them to play 3 hours a week might be too much for them... (I had a friend who only plays about an hour a week.. or maybe 3 hours in 2 week.. depending on real life stuff)
Sure they don't advance as fast or as high .... but that is their play style 
when a game "force" someone to play X hours... that is not right 
Zubzai wrote:
ok then to allow for casual players say that you need to play on a server for 3 hours a week? thats hardly excessive. I cant see anyone having a problem with that.
Then you aren't actually trying to see other points of view. I do have a problem with that. I don't think you get what a casual player is. What about vacations? What about business trips? I travel a lot. I have a problem with ANY required playtime. I don't care what they do to fix or not fix "ghost towns". Personally, I could care less who is a resident in some other city. But I sure as heck care about being required to play for 3 hours each week, and similarly all citizens of our city being required to play 3 hours. And everytime they don't, there goes even more of the precious little xp politicians receive.
I agree with needing something to fix the "ghost town" issue, but I have no idea what we could suggest to do. I do not believe they will just go away, due to the fact that most of these Ghost Town's think they're PA extensions instead of cities. They only want certain people in, so no one else can be there. They know that if they get ghost players, they get XP for the votes, and an increase in city size for no effort at all.
If I'm in a PA with 10 members and we server swap with various other servers. We could havea shutteport and anything else we wanted, and have only 10 activepeople living there. All the server swappers have to do is give admin rights to the mayor so he/she can go pay their house maintainence for them. I don't think this was the intention of the player city, but I'm not a DEV so I don't know.
I don't think the game should turn into a "job" for people since you're supposed to have fun playing the game, so I'd like to hear other solutions/ideas that people might have regarding this issue.
With all due respect, the logic you're using is faulty.
Say I want to buy a nifty new space widget. The game "forces" me to spend enough time online running missions or making things to sell so I can afford to pay for that space widget. That's a time obligation. Is that also "not right?"
The game isn't "forcing" you to do anything. The operative word is "want." You don't HAVE to become a resident of a city to play the game, in just the same way you don't HAVE to buy that widget. But once you decide you WANT to buy a widget or become a resident of a city, it's only reasonable to expect some obligation to incur to account for the benefit that accrues to you from that transaction. Even if that obligation is purely financial ... you still need to spend enough time online to make the money for that contribution.
I would argue the obligation needs to be presence and involvement. Cross-server swaps violate the most basic premise of player cities, that they are there to promote community and interaction. They lift up small insular groups to the same level as large coalitions who have come together in the spirit of community. That's why they are wrong.
I fully support the idea of eliminating automatic voting and requiring minimal gaming requirements to establish eligibility to vote. While in the American system, voting is a right, not a legal obligation for which you can be punished for failing to observe, I think it needs to be an obligation in the game. It's the one way to keep communities full of players, not ghosts. Two hours a week is not too much to ask of people who want to live in a community.
I agree... but we can't use real life rules to govern game rules....
basic definition of a game = entertainment...
unless you are a game tester.. people play game to have fun... not to work.
Thus some rules and regulations of real world may not cover the game world..... sometimes game world may need more stricter rules since it is so "free"
SneakyBothan wrote:
"when a game "force" someone to play X hours... that is not right"
With all due respect, the logic you're using is faulty.
Say I want to buy a nifty new space widget. The game "forces" me to spend enough time online running missions or making things to sell so I can afford to pay for that space widget. That's a time obligation. Is that also "not right?"
The game isn't "forcing" you to do anything. The operative word is "want." You don't HAVE to become a resident of a city to play the game, in just the same way you don't HAVE to buy that widget. But once you decide you WANT to buy a widget or become a resident of a city, it's only reasonable to expect some obligation to incur to account for the benefit that accrues to you from that transaction. Even if that obligation is purely financial ... you still need to spend enough time online to make the money for that contribution.
I would argue the obligation needs to be presence and involvement. Cross-server swaps violate the most basic premise of player cities, that they are there to promote community and interaction. They lift up small insular groups to the same level as large coalitions who have come together in the spirit of community. That's why they are wrong.
I fully support the idea of eliminating automatic voting and requiring minimal gaming requirements to establish eligibility to vote. While in the American system, voting is a right, not a legal obligation for which you can be punished for failing to observe, I think it needs to be an obligation in the game. It's the one way to keep communities full of players, not ghosts. Two hours a week is not too much to ask of people who want to live in a community.
With equally due respect, your logic is also faulty. You are using an invalid analogy. This is not merely a luxury item in the first place, it's a key element and selling feature of the game. People want to be in player cities. You are essentially telling them they can only participate in one of the biggest features of the game if they change their life to accomodate a required RECURRING amount of gametime. The comparison to needing to dedicate a fluid and optional amountof time to receive a certain reward is a thin one at best.
Casual players and people that travel for work should not be forced out of participating in one of the most major aspects of the game. Imagine if we had to play one hour per week or else our character would be wiped. How popular do you think that game would be? The answer is not very, and the reason is that it's unreasonable to require a certain amount of game time on a regular recurring basis for any reason.
Sure you can make the statement that the game requires SOME play to achieve things. But that is not at all the same as saying it requires a specific amount of game time on recurring basis. That type of requirement is unreasonable. There are reasonable requirements and unreasonable requirements. Weekly minimum play time is unreasonable.
*puts on devil's advocate hat*
how about this.. lets say the DEVs implemetn this... this will not stop those "pa" swap.. why? well.. you can macro a lot of things using in game macro... (not external.. in game!!) so... you require 3 hours a week.. no a problem.. to some people they just load to another server while they are at work and run a macro.. comes home.. and go back to their original server.....
no matter what.. if people wants thing bad enough.. they are willing to make it happen (ebay for example) so a dedicated Ghost town will conitnue to survive (expensive.. but can happen) cause they will do whatever it takes to keep it alive...
*remove hat*