Politician Archive
Thread: Soultion to the AFK vote.
Not voting is a vote for the status quo. And so when you dont take the time to vote you are truly voting for the incumbent mayor. Basically what your doing is saying hey you are doing a goodjob but I can't get to town this week. Or you suck...but I'm too pathetic to have a mind of my own so I will just follow you anyway.
As for making it harder on the competitor...well how would its removal make things easier? All it would do is force people to treck to ehtier city at least once a week. If they weren't going to vote for you with the apathy system why would they vote for you without it?
Plinka wrote:
It's not an AFK vote. It's a "I'm on vacation" vote. And a "My computer died" vote. And a "My ISP is down" vote. "I'm in the hospital." "I can't get to the computer." "My dog ate my hard drive."
There are hundreds of reasons why a citizen may not be able vote and this assures the mayor that they will get that experience duing the election.
Look at voter turn out in real life. Do you really want only 60% of the experience you could have had?
People don't need one more piece of drudgery in their lives. You can't force them to vote and if they don't have to they won't.
But you can bet that if they feel strongly enough to vote against you, they will. Forcing them to have to vote for you when you've already been elected though, won't get you votes.
I agree that the auto vote is good for the mayors gaining XP. Auto vote helps mitigate the situations you describe where someone can't actually vote for a week or whatever. However, it unofrtuantely, in it's present setup, facilitates cross-server vote mules.
In another post I suggested that the XP for the Non-voting citizens goes to the winner of the race in a block (although it could even be given out proportionally). Would this not eliminate the problem of only getting 60% of the XP that you would expect to get under the current system except in the case where the incumbent lost the race? If the incumbent loses the race it was contested in the first place and there is a significant incentive for people to vote. Further, if the challenger wins they probably earned the XP anyway given that the incumbent has a significant advantage with the zoning rights.
Plinka: As Correspondent Do you feel that vote mules are fair or an intended use of the game system? Do you, given your extra experience being a mayor on TC, have any suggestions as to what might be a better solution to eleminate this sort of activity?
Yes, but that's also once a year voting. In this case, you'd have to vote every week, and if I'm happy with the politician in power, I see no reason to have to drop everything I'm doing and spend, possibly, upwards of 10k credits round-trip (not to mention lost playing time) just to go back to the city and place my vote. That's idiotic, and no fun for me, the taxpaying citizen. Let me play my game, and I'll let the politicians play theirs. Until they screw up my home, that is. Then I'll be more than happy to vote them right out of office.
Dayln wrote:
In real life people have a day to vote unless it is by absentee ballot ( actually less than a day ), here we have a week. I think a week is enough time for people to actually vote, and if they are not interested enough to make that effort then thier vote should not be counted.
this is a game. for people it is more convenient to autovote for incumbent mayor and still be adventuring on remote planets. changing 4 shuttles just to vote is not fun.
also most cities are pas, or close knit communities that has already to put all votes in one mayor to maximize politican xp, and resultantly the city amenities.
making forced voting or losing the citizen status for citizens who arent coming or going into the town would just create unneccessary incumberance.
Sykes wrote:Remove it.
Last time I checked, nobody in RL "polictics" gets votes that are not cast. I can appreciate the desire to help policians gain XP, but asking somebody to log in, or visit their city once a week to support somebody isn't asking for much.
Every REAL politician should be in favor of this. Those 5 people. 50 structure cities abviously will 1-star me.
Since my vote is recycled every week, even if I do not vote, shouldn't my harvester automatically switch to the next available resource for me?
Getting something for doing nothing is one of the problems of this game.
I think the removal of the auto vote is probably a reasonable attempt at a solution for the cross-server vote mules. However, along with this there needs to be some other way to cast a vote other than hiking out to the city hall and casting the ballot. Something along the lines of an absentee ballot so explorer types aren't required to cycle back to town weekly to cast a vote. For that matter it will make it simpler for people to cast the votes in the city as well.
Removing auto votes would be hard on the politicians who are actually trying to run a city because of the XP issue. One work around for that is to give All the XP for the non-voting members of the community to whoever wins the race. Effectively the same XP progression as now as just Non voters are not counted towards the results of the race. The only time the XP would be different would be if the current mayor was unseated (much more likely to actually happen now). The new mayor would possibly get a nice XP boost for the non-voting block. This would add some intrest to the political races at the same time not running the risk of crippling mayors due to voter apathy.
You wouldn't have to vote but you would end up helping whoever won even if it wasn't someone you liked.
I think we have to have auto vote.... why?? think of this scenario
ok.. you are the mayor.. your PA loves ya.. no problem. you are it.
well.. everyone else is now busy doing other things.. when my PA was on tatooine.. I get to see my OWN PA member like once a month... do I need to force them to come home and vote each week? what if they can't? what if they are on vacation? I am still going to be mayor, but I won't get exp cause they have to cast it.
What if they can't get on at all cause their PC died..... you can't just hope on the public PC transportation and vote (like you can in real life.. call a taxi.. take a bus.. ride a train.. call a friend.. welll I guess you can call a friend and log on then but that is a lot of trouble for a GAME!)
While I understand a lot of people do not like the "ghost voters" who cross server and such..... why? well some feel it is not fair.. some do not have their own friends doing it (since they are on the same server) etc etc.. who knows.. who cares.. let them have their votes...
While I also understand that this may effect the city growth (when the new caps are in) it is up to you to get people into the city and start working on it before the time is up..... (I'm behind in 20.. so I am worry too.. but that is my own fault)
I have some casual friends (who play less than me) per MONTH.. like maybe 10 hours at most.. it would be not so nice of me to ask them to spend 30-40 min travelling across the galaxy and vote and head back.. while they can use that time to play what limited time they havae...
Granted the reason behind the "remove ghost vote" is valid.. this is a game.. and Plinka said.. it shouldn't be work.. it should be fun...
(when I can carry around a laser rifle in real life and blast people away without getting into trouble (i.e npc) in REAL life... then we can compare it to real life)