Politician Archive
Thread: Cities are meant to actually have politics and turmoil that is gameplay
I'm with Positronic. A competative mayoral race against citizens of a town for the betterment of the community is one thing. Another group coming in and voting for their favorite person with the sole intent of getting the other out of power for their own purposes, whether it be to take the town over, destroy it, whatever, is NOT "fun".
All I can think of when I read these posts about town seiging being good is Trammel vs. Fellucia. For those of you who didn't play UO, I'll give you a little background.
Back when the game UO started, it was PvP all the time. You had no choice. While many thought that it added an element of realism to the game world, it quickly became a major pain in the arse for a great number of players, because they would get randomly killed for no reason. A blacksmith would be walking back from the mine and *WHAM* a fireball would knock him dead, the player who killed him would take a quick peek in his pack for anything good (which there never was, as people had learned never to carry valubles), and then move on. Someone out hunting in the woods would get set upon by other players fo no reason whatsoever. After six months, people started quitting out of frustration. What was the point of playing a game where all of your hard work, even if it was just time, could be interupted for someone else's idea of fun?
After watching the game population plummet for a while, Origin tried something new: they split the world into mirror images, and called them Fellucia (PvP) and Trammel (PvE). People flocked over to Trammel and began having fun in the game, as they could now elect whether or not they wanted to be attackable. If they wanted to fight that day, they went to Fellucia. Done with fighting? Go back to Trammel. It's been this way ever since.
The PvP'ers have also been screaming bloody murder ever since, because Fellucia is always completely empty; the game population at any time is 90% Trammel. According to them, people who play on Trammel are carebears, who have no idea how FUN PvP is, feeling the blood pounding in your veins as you try to sneak around and protect your goods, or pouncing on someone unsuspecting. The PvE'ers of course, say that they are perfectly happy being able to keep their hard work, they are having fun in their own way, and that those interested in PvP can all get together and fight whenever they want.
Recently Origin (EA, whatever) tried something new, to try to get people back over to Fellucia and keep those who were advocates of PvP happy: they doubled the amount of resources on that side, to try to entice people to go over there for the double profits. No one went for it. Fellucia is still a ghost town.
It shows that in gaming, people like to be able to choose their battles. What's fun is accomplishment, and having someone come along because they have more friends and higher skills and just take it from you is not fun. It's not blood-pounding, it's not exciting, its stupid. If a group decides to have a nice, quiet little town where you have to have something in common with them to live there, deal with it. If you want to muscle your way in and get voted in yourself because you have 30 friends as opposed to someone elses 25, go do it with someone who shares your playstyle, because most of us are NOT interested.
~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
(Snitter): There isn't any island, Rowf...
(Rowf): There is... there... can't you see it... Our island...just stay with me.. I'll get you there...
Skedoozy... who cares??? that's part of life... so is patience and time and hard work... IMO SWG should institute 1 new rule to slow down quick building cities... that each citizen must at least log on and go into their house every 48 hours.... if that limit is exceeded then that citizen loses residency and can not declare for 1 week.... A city is a thriving, growing, and entity. Not a bunch of homes in order to get a shuttleport
One a week, yes, but not once every 48 hours. Even I go off planet for several days in a row sometimes.
~~Shabhaii, Mayor of Tombra, Naboo
www.cityoftombra.com
The REAL BT
(Snitter): There isn't any island, Rowf...
(Rowf): There is... there... can't you see it... Our island...just stay with me.. I'll get you there...
I think there is a happy medium somewhere. I am not trying to advocate raging hostile takeovers where groups swarm in and destroy cities halls, or try and say the town is now our PAs town instead of your PAs town. I would like to see cities where there are 2 or 3 candidates and actually elections that aren't 40-2. I know the arguments about splitting XP and leveling up..... But it seems to me the mayor is just an urban planner, how to place structures, grant zoning rights.... I had a ton of fun running a campaign on my PAs site before the patch to be our candidate, and was looking forward to running against others.
Maybe if there were other issues to vote on. If you want to implement a new tax you have to have a vote, and the mayor would have to lobby for it. You have a vote for what city improvement comes out next, and you have to lobby for what you want.
Yes, recruiting citizens is needed, and planning events are often a mayors job. But I was doing that before the class came out.
Why do you think that would stop the current cities from expanding? BUILDINGS DO NOT EQUAL CITIZENS. I know of no city who is using ghost citizens to reach caps. Are you one of the people who did not get a city? Why do people want to make cities so much harder to grow and thrive? It's difficult enough as it is.
BigGuy_WAN wrote:
Skedoozy... who cares??? that's part of life... so is patience and time and hard work... IMO SWG should institute 1 new rule to slow down quick building cities... that each citizen must at least log on and go into their house every 48 hours.... if that limit is exceeded then that citizen loses residency and can not declare for 1 week.... A city is a thriving, growing, and entity. Not a bunch of homes in order to get a shuttleport
What we want is to stop "unreal" growth.
Stop PA's from placing buildings just so no one else can place one there.
Stop ghost citicezns.
There should actually be fewer player cities, but the one that exist should be good ones. Free ones, where anyone might become mayor, where politics are real. Cities that are not just an extentions of PA's.
No I have an outpost that is legit... AND we are remote... a city should not simply just GROW... a city needs to LIVE... forcing mayors to develop a living thriving city should be the goal of SWG... cities are not guilds and should not be treated that way... and yes KEEPING a city going should be VERY DIFFICULT... because it is not easy in real life... think the mayor of your town can just sit back and watch it grow???? LMAO
Quote:
"What we want is to stop "unreal" growth."
The 'Unreal' growth is caused by requiring cities to contain a certain number of citizens in order to have particulat services/buildings. This could have been avoided by simply setting their costs at an appropriate level and then allowing ANY city to build them. That was small rich cities would have the option to pay for services without having to artificially boost their size. Real world city services are not a function of citizen count, they are restricted only be economic factors.
Quote:
"Stop PA's from placing buildings just so no one else can place one there."
Why? Because someone placed (with their limited lots) a building in a location you didn't like? I thought you were all in favour of removing the zoneing rights of mayors.... yet you seem to want to impose a building restriction that suits you. You can't have it both ways.
I know the situation that you are refering to, and I happen to think the mayor in question is foolish.. but that doesnt mean he shouldn't be allowed to do it... you rightly left that city.. others will too, and eventually nature will take its course and the town will die. And if it doesn't, so what. It will remain an outpost... and no bother to anyone.
Quote:
"Stop ghost citicezns."
These only exist for3 reasons...
1) To get cities to a size required for services (shuttle etc).. which should instead have been restricted by economic factors.
2) To defend against hostile border takeovers by inflating the number of incumbent votes.... avoided by changing the expansion rules so that hostile takeovers simple can't be staged. There has benn NO indication that this was intended... it is simply the result of poor game mechanics.
3) To increase the xp gaining rate of Politicians... who already have the hardest class in the game to gain xp in. So why is anyone botherd about the small amount extra they can get this way? Perhaps the grinding that almost every other class can do should be banned too? My novice scout was out last night gaining about 2000xp every 5 mins from harvesting hides on a group hunt. My Novice politician got 2000xp in a week, with at least 100x the work, and the cooperation of 20 other people.
There should be NO ARTIFICIAL CAP on the number of player cities. If you realy want politics etc in the game you should allow cities to be born, grow, shrink or die or combine based simply on the natural interaction of players. Forced caps has caused alot more problems than it will ever solve.How can you say that cities should be FREE when you dont even allow unrestricted creation of them. Noone would have torestrict andguard their creation if it wasn't for the jelousy and resentment that the caps have caused.
You are making it too easy for me Posi.
I am against your ability to stop a takeover in these ways, you should not be able to stop it, unless you just get more people to vote for you then the other guy. Otherwise they need to stop calling them player cities, but should just call them PA extensions.
Artificially increase the rate of experience gain? .... that is almost the definition of an exploit.
To get cities to a size? The rapid growth of cities is not the issue, the issue is we have rapidly growing cities that are not cities at all.
I would remove all caps, I agree with you on that one point, but in addition I would remove zoning rights, remove ghost criticizes, and remove the ability to pepper a 450km area with buildings in an effort to keep others from moving in. ( yes this has been done by larger PA's )
The problem Posi is you don’t want a political city, a living city. You want to be dictator of a specific area. I don’t think you should be able to guarantee that. I give you your right to try, but the rules favor your succeeding, I think the rules should favor your failing at that.
If you don’t want to fight for control of a city, then you should not have become a politician, that is what a politician does.