Politician Archive
Thread: focused discussion for 1/19 changes (I'm only reading this thread!)
Khristen
Sun Jan 23, 2005 6:02 pm
#131
Dvnce on the Architect forums is also looking for feedback on the Test Center changes, specifically on the house maintenance issue. There have been a lot of good suggestions here that may be useful over there as well. I encourage everyone to take a look.
Gron_DM
Sun Jan 23, 2005 8:23 pm
#132
normally i wouldnt bother to argue here but.........sp's needed to go...this isnt becuase by them going it gives the devs an excuse to not generate content it is because politician isa prof that much like a guild leader one that is decided by and supported by other players. if a guild wants to change leaders or let the guild die they can chose to do so by voting him out or ppl leave guild until less then 5 remain OR by not maintaining any pa halls so no one new joins guild....player cities require a ton of cash that is the tradeoff, not to mention there isnt any SP requirement to be a militia and if the mayor is inactive and the militia is too a city will die in time. there are all things to consider. mostly i believe that the fact cities eat credits is a fair trade for poly not eating SP's. no other prof requires so many ppl to exist and have a purpose...and no other prof requires soooo many credits to exist....(after a year in a half out metro has cost us a total of 74weeks x 750000=55.5million or more.)
just my 55mil credits worth of input.
CalArsou
Sun Jan 23, 2005 10:19 pm
#133
Imcus wrote:I posted this in a seperate thread, but I want everyone to consider this...While I personally like the idea of politicians not having to use any skill points (I have been a mayor for a year and having the skill points will allow me to do even more in the game) I have one idea that should be attatched to this 'fix'.I believe that a mayor should no longer have the option to destroy a city hall. The devs have stated time and again that the city belongs to the people and not the mayor, so any mayor who can destroy a city hall has to much power. A city hall should only be destroyed when the city does not have the money or residents to support it. Some simple coding could remove this option from the city terminal.
Where's this tread? This is a focus thread after all, but it's a good idea
. Found it.Message Edited by CalArsou on 01-23-2005 09:22 PM
Geevo
Mon Jan 24, 2005 12:50 am
#134
I agree, a mayor should be able to 'put it up fora vote' to destroy a city...but not actually destroy it.
However, the same problem happens if someone is just trying to get a shuttle ... destroy the shuttleport to get a new one. There are always going to be issues, and you can only hope that there are mechanics in place to control such outcomes.
Pappi
Mon Jan 24, 2005 2:03 am
#135
Geevo wrote:I agree, a mayor should be able to 'put it up for a vote' to destroy a city...but not actually destroy it.However, the same problem happens if someone is just trying to get a shuttle ... destroy the shuttleport to get a new one. There are always going to be issues, and you can only hope that there are mechanics in place to control such outcomes.
gonna play devil's advocate while trying to slack off for a few minutes...
one problem with not giving mayors the ability to destroy city halls would be when the mayor wants to quit, but the citizens can care less (about voting or the city).
I did ask the devs to put in some safeguard for destroying city hall when there's a challanger, but I heard nothing about it since.
MTolwyn
Mon Jan 24, 2005 3:29 am
#136
i think the devs are doing a great job to finally destroy the player cities
the situation get s worse each patch
i as several others consider the new voting system as a complete failure
and now the 2 new changes are a nightmare
- houses that are not destroyed when the maintanence runs out. Paying via bank is a terrible idea, cause mostlong time
players have millions in their bank and with that the houses will stay up till the character are getting purge (which never
happened before)
- 0 points for politician is just an excuse for the lack of interest from the devs. Instead of thinking about useable features
they just dump the whole profession. I ve been mayor since the beginning and wanted to be politician since i read first
info about it long before player cities, causei thought it s new interesting challenging job. With the decission to remove
the SP costs they could easily just say "sorry we screwed it up" and remove the profession from game, cause theres
no more use to it.
TFA_Maverick
Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:44 am
#137
I'm just going to quickly state I'm with all of the people against the zero-SP part of the patch for sure, for reasons that have mostly been stated several times over and I'd rather not beat a dead horse this late in the game. Instead, I'll just point out...
I have seen precious few counter-proposals or other reccomendations to replace the idea, since we have declared over and over again that we wanted a SP reduction; so I suggest we just counter with THAT, a reduction, which should pacify both sides.
My suggested pattern:
TFA_Maverick
Mon Jan 24, 2005 7:47 am
#138
I'm just going to quickly state I'm with all of the people against the zero-SP part of the patch for sure, for reasons that have mostly been stated several times over and I'd rather not beat a dead horse this late in the game. Instead, I'll just point out...
I have seen precious few counter-proposals or other reccomendations to replace the idea, since we have declared over and over again that we wanted a SP reduction; so I suggest we just counter with THAT, a reduction, which should pacify both sides.
My suggested pattern:
0
111 1
111 1
222 2
333 3
10
Grand total of 38 SP for master... effectively halving the SP investment, but maintaining enough to hold on to our credibility and collective dignity as a profession.
And sorry about the multi-post, some sort of browser bug =P
Message Edited by TFA_Maverick on 01-24-2005 06:50 AM
Jaspor
Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:18 am
#139
Okay, I'll admit I haven't read every single post in this thread, but going to offer a quick opinion:
I'll be very happy to have those skillpoints to spend. But I also have to be a bit skeptical of the possibility of more people picking up the profession with evil intentions - hostile takeovers of long established cities. Without going into details about how this can be done, I'll just say that the skill point cost was a pretty strong deterrant for people trying this. So, look out....
That said, how about this alternative:
No skillpoint cost, but increase the Apprentice Points required to train Novice Politician.
The additional amount could be the difference in weeding out the "dedicated" wannabe Politicians from those just looking for a cool title or with not-so-nice intentions. Not to mention this is very likely an easy change for the Developers to make. (Adjust a single number somewhere?)
Message Edited by Jaspor on 01-24-2005 07:19 AM
JarrekConell
Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:25 am
#140
With the game enrollment in decline and many people already having reached their maximum expenditure in skill points, towns are turning around to find that their mayor has left and no one is available to step in.
Now, I suppose that you could argue to say that those people should just disband their city and join one that already exists, but in some cases that is not feasible. If you are a roleplay city on your planet, on some servers you may be the ONLY roleplay city on your planet. You may even be the only roleplay city on your whole server. Joining a city just for a shuttleport then having to put up with a constant OOC environment is not an option. Allowing someone already in the city to gain politician skills with a 0 SP investment allows at least for the city to continue.
Let's not forget - 0 SP does not mean instant advancement. One must still dedicate energy to maintaining the city, paying for structures, managing taxes, adding new facilities, keeping up population, keeping up votes. All of these things reflect effort that the PLAYER must make, regardless of whether or not they have spent skill points for the profession. Furthermore, a person who drops Novice Medic and takes Novice Politician may get elected but will not have the ability to build anything, so people who vote out the seasoned pro for the upstart will pay the price when they decide to get a parking garage and are unable.
I have one enhancement I would like to see, and it could be placed at a high level, like Master Politician:
Militia Barracks
Having a Militia Barracks would do two things: it would grant a small PvP combat bonus to people of that city when defending the city, maybe in the form of added defense and resists, and it would provide for a patrolling squad of non-factionalNPCs (law enforcement) who exist for the sole purpose of battling creatures who build nests or stray into town. The reason they would be non-factional is so that they are not exploitable as a faction farm. They should have white names so that they are not attackable at all by players. Their sole purpose would be to provide a safe environment to people living in or passing through the city, like a city guard in EQ2. Making this be tied to Master Politician ensures that only the most skilled would be able to maintain a safe town on worlds like Dantooine or in some of the outer reaches of Corellia or Naboo, where mottled wrix and narglatches and thugs threaten non-combatants.
The militia would start with a fixed number of guards each week, dependant on the size of the town, like one per city level, and those who die during the week would be replaced the following week.
If the patrolling aspect is too difficult to impliment, they could loiter near their station and just have a very high aggro radius.
Message Edited by JarrekConell on 01-24-2005 10:30 AM
Jutewr
Mon Jan 24, 2005 9:40 am
#141
0 sp cost - I've posted in this thread about that once before, I guess I'll just say it again, this is a wonderful change. To talk about one scenario that I don't think has been mentioned yet: In my city, about 2 months ago, our mayor announced that he had no more skill that he was willing to drop, so he would never be able to reach master politician. He has since changed his mind and decided to master anyway (even before the sp change was known), but I, for my own reasons, decided to run against him. He has proved impossible to vote out. He is also our guild leader, and most of our citizens refuse to vote for someone unless the guild leader tells them to. So imagine a mayor who refuses to pickup skills because of the sp cost, but can never be voted out. Not cool, huh? (And gobot, if you're reading this, I love you! 
)
)Oh, and, to those of you who say that this will make it easier for griefers to run for mayor and then take down cities, I think that if they were really that determined, they would sacrifice the 15 sp to get novice politician. I think you'll always have griefers under any system.
Housing maintenance - This, on the other hand, is horrible. Player cities will never be able to clear out abandoned structures. We currently have a cantina that was placed by someone who has left the game. Yes, we had been paying maint on it, since we didn't have any other dancer/musician/chefs in the guild/city. Now that we have a dancer/musician, we have decided to let the cantina go, and now this change comes around. We'll never be able to get rid of that cantina.
This change seems to cater mostly to a) people who have left the game that they want to lure back
and b) people who forget to pay maintenance
As I posted in the Architect forum, if you're too lazy or forgetful to pay maint on your structures,it's your own fault if they disappear.
Balin76
Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:07 am
#142
Jutewr wrote:As I posted in the Architect forum, if you're too lazy or forgetful to pay maint on your structures,it's your own fault if they disappear.
However, there's an issue out there where structures (a factory that I know of) popped when it still had maint. No emails went out. No notice, which should have been sent had the structure gone through the normal "I'm out of maintenance" routine. I'm seen factories that had massive repair bills, because maint had been... neglected.
It seems to me that the issue here is not primarily one of catering to players who've left (although that's probably a contributing factor). The issue is that the devs have a bug and are unwilling, or unable, to spend the time needed to track it and fix it. I work in software development as a testing specialist. THIS HAPPENS, IT IS PART OF LIFE! I also think it sucks. I don't like it when it happens in the software I work on, and I sure don't like it when it happens in game software. As one of the guys in the office is so quick to point out at almost every opportunity, "What's the ROI on actually finding and fixing this, vs doing a quick something to shut them up?" THAT, I believe, is what we're truly dealing with. It's quicker and cheaper to do this (condemn the factory) than to spend the time needed to track down an intermittant issue, that probably goes deep into the code.
I don't like it. I don't like what it's going to do to cities on my server. It's going to have minimal impact on my city, because we've been lucky. The two guilds that we have in town are primarily active guilds, and most of the residents belong to one of the two guilds. We haven't done any of the starport spamming to get residents. Therefore, most of our residents are guild members, and most of them play. We've got our own issues. And the 0 SP makes me wonder about the other guild in our city, but I like to think that relations are such that we'll be able to work things out, and the city will remain as it has been - a place we all like to park our speeders.
Fidgiter
Mon Jan 24, 2005 11:11 am
#143
Pappi wrote:
one problem with not giving mayors the ability to destroy city halls would be when the mayor wants to quit, but the citizens can care less (about voting or the city).
If a mayor holds a referendum vote related to the destruction of the city 0 votes would count as a "Yes".