Politician Archive

With the loss of ability to set and enforce laws, what role does the mayor now play?

So we build a player city, placedall thecivic structures, parks/statues/fountains abound, looks great! 70 players now reside inside the city limit. Now what? Was the entire PC process just for the sake of stroking our egos?

What is the developers intention with the player cities? To create more empty places to visit? Hell there is enough of those around. Random civic buildings and vendors arnt going to make a city populated... even with a shuttleport... there has to be a reason for someone off-planet to take 2 shuttle flights to get to your city..If its just for the vendor...most likely they would have made the run before you we even a official city.

So the reason for PC must of been Roleplay and to create more identifiable areas of tension within the galaxy right?

Wellthe militia is impotent without city warn...The mayor cant deligate any power....In fact his only role now seems to be that of permenantdecorator.....god forbid a cityelect a new less skilled mayor, cause you only have one weeks votes to get the enough xp for the new guy, inorderto keep your civic structures...."oh sorry,the new mayor didnt have enough xp for civic 2 andthats why we lost the bank and shuttleport."

So it would seem most cities are left with "Decorator...I mean Mayor for life"...How increadibly boring and wasteful... you can only re-arrange gardens and street lamps so many times.. Gone are the plans for grand mayor power-struggles, because frankly no-one wants that title if all they get to do is decorate...

Now Faction based cities might have a more interesting atmosphere, there will be raids and counter-raids...but to what end? THe raids and counter raids were already happening, only the location has changed.

All the mixed and neutral cities (of which most on my server are part of) dont really have much to offer that they didnt before PC was introduced...We had cantinas before and med centers... they just wern't official..

Why do I paint such a bleak picture.... well because the picture is very bleak when players continually have options taken away... City warn was the very heart and soul behind creating a cities character...some might have been diehard isolationist towns... others with strictly enforced order/laws... others perhaps a wild-west town of random combat... I thought PC had a chance......was it just a dream?

Someone show me the light!

Vanrax despin

Free Haven, Naboo

Valcyn

The existance of civic structures in your city is tied to city level, not mayor skill level. They won't fall if a less skilled mayor takes over.

The mayor skill simply allows you to place the civic structures like bank and cloning center and shuttleport. Got nothing to do with maintaining them.

My understanding was that city size plays a role... you need a lvl 4 city tobe eligablefor a shuttleport, but you also need a politician with lvl 2 in the civic tree in order to place that shuttleport, If a new mayor takes over without that skill, they then have 1 week to get it or the structure will be destroyed.... If I am wrong, thank you for correcting me.

Varnax Despin

I believe you are correct, Varnax . . . I think its the city size and the Mayoral ability.

Regardless, you are completely correct on the original post. Cities are now nothing but completely pointless moneysinks. Why bother trying to do anything special for the players of the galaxy when you can't make sure that the basic rules are followed?

~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
"The FS system only rewards the Veruca Salt's of the MMO world . . . not the Charlie's"

You definitely keep it. Seen it in practice.I took over as mayor with no politician xp and we kept items that had been placed by the previous mayor who had those skills. Once it's placed, it stays. The mayoral skill is for placing it the first time, or picking it up and moving it, not maintaining it.

Being a mayor does give you noteriety. People are more likely to consider your suggestions and ideas. This is especially true if your city is a sucessful one.

Also, others mayors are going to be interested in talking to you and cooperating with you if you, as a mayor, propose some events to make both your cities more interesting.

The game mechanics that you can use specifically are the citizens email, the chat channel, and the city decoration placement -- you can use those as clues if you are doing an rp campain.

Actually, you caught me on a good day for this as I am setting up a prologue campain. Here is a rough draft of the write up that will kick off the event:

===================================

The Hunt for Neutron-7

The sound of blaster fire finishes echoing off of the mountains surrounding Jugganoth Valley. Ravage looks at the corpse at his feet. He is not a fan of failure. For three weeks now he has heard about some new brand of Neutron Pixie being developed and it was happening without HIS permission. The fool of a smuggler at his feet was the third such one to come back empty handed, the third such one to gain the same reward. Ravage holstered his blaster. Let the body stay bit, he thought, as a reminder.

The problem is that due to the recent confrontations with Baldric and his crew in Kraytia, he was without his best operatives. Yes, he would have to recruit some scoundrels outside of his dominion for this. It would attract some unwanted attention, but at least it wouldn’t be his people paying the price. Yes, that would work well.

If you are a smuggler, be the first to find Neutron-7 and tell Ravage to win [prize]. You will need to complete a series of mission to accomplish this. To start just pick up the first mission – where is that you might ask? Good question and I don’t know – though I do understand that criminals are fond of cantinas. Please note, that you probably won’t get ANY information from people unless you show your smuggler tag. And, um, Ravage isn’t particularily know for his good temper, so I wouldn’t recommend talking to him (or sending him a tell or email) unless you can tell him where Neutron-7 is.

Oh, right, there is one other thing you should know. Goda, head of Tusken’s Bane militia has got word of this. He is also hunting for Neutron-7. If he finds Neutron-7 before you, you all loose. If he finds YOU, and challenges you to a duel, and you refuse, you loose. If you accept the duel, and he incaps you (he will not db), you loose. He will be recruiting undercover agents from within the participating town militias (well not Jugganoth’s or Kraytia’s) to help him.

The following cities are participating in this event:

• Jugganoth Valley


• Kraytia


• Nar Emiki


• Three Stones Hill


• Tusken’s Bane

========================

Now, this may not be your thing. It is a lot of work to organize and pull off -- but personally, I have fun with it. But you asked a question, and this is my suggestion -- if it helps, great, if not -- fair 'nough.

Buy a faction base and put your homes and shops around it. Put it as close to an NPC city as you can so you can use the cloning center, shuttleport, and starport from there.

There is no longer any reason to have a player city, except ego.

There really has never been a reason for player cities other than ego even with city warn. Player cities allow players to create their own layouts andcreate a convience of services. Because we were never really allowed to be a part of NPC cities, players were forced to put their groups of houses or PA village away from cities. This of course was not desireable because you really couldn't live near your house do to lack of services.

Players still desire to live near NPC cities because they still offer some desireable items aka Starports. In reality most cities are just distant suburbs of NPC cities with no real feel of connectivity. The NPC city is mostly vacant. Now some player cities are placed to exploit points of interest that used to take a long time to travel to. This has mixed results by taking away some of the immersive atmosphere of some remote areas.

I like the player cities I'm a part of, but for the most part they are fairly vacant. Cantinas and Med centers are empty usually. My only reason for staying in the city is to use the mission terminals. Cities really spread people out and in some ways this is good for missions, but it also creates a lack of immersion as you just see ghostowns. People don't really live in the cities they just store their gear there and pass through.

"The existance of civic structures in your city is tied to city level, not mayor skill level. They won't fall if a less skilled mayor takes over."

True, but city specialisations depend on the lvl of the Mayor.

im kinda enjoyin player cities.. we just set up our headquarters, and our pa, and there are torturs on talus, so ive had no need to leave my city really..we also have some skilled crafters living with us. i like it a lot better than around coronet, or some otehr popular place like that where, first, u have to run deep inside the city to get a mission, which sucks for me cuz i lag when thers lotsa buildings and people aruond, and second, half those missions get killed by other people, or they spawn in the middle of a group of buildings and i have to chase them everywhere.

i think the worst part was removing player cloning facilites from being considered for closest facility. it was loads of fun when an imp would mistakenly clone in our facility and then get torn apart by our turrets

I dont mind the removal of the /cityWarn, I dont even plan on training the Miltia tree until last, but I can see that for certain kinds of cities it could be useful, i.e. Faction-affiliated cities. But the main thrust of this ost rings true....I will eventually have 77 precious skill points invested into this profession (what ever happened the the whole "when we add new professions in, we will raise the skill points a little" thing?), and I will get to decorate the city and City Hall.....ummmmm....boooooring. I *want* to have interesting things to do! I *like* the "idea" of being a Mayor, a servent of the citizens (or dictator, if you are in an Imp town and are their COmmander). But right now we are mostly all huddles in our towns, wary of squatters who want to destroy our towns, and playing around with city layouts. That will last maybe another 2 weeks for most, and then what? Please Devs, tell us there is more in store for this wonderfully (potentially) complex and far-reaching Profession!!

You say that like it's a bad thing.

The purpose of player cities is to basically move people away from the starter towns. However it will fail because of the starport spammer still being there. The only reason to go to a town is to shop or shuttle. On the uncivilized worlds it would be to get missions in a place where it will most likely not get stolen. After that there is no point butwho cares? Civic pride would be a major thing as well as law enforcement. You guys may have given up about citywarn but I"ll be damnded if I do before the year is up. They just needed to tweak it not destroy it.

Oh well I hope they enjoy hell since the fastest route is through the road of good intent.

Trust us, Psycho . . . no one is giving up on /citywarn yet.

~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
"The FS system only rewards the Veruca Salt's of the MMO world . . . not the Charlie's"