Politician Archive
Thread: Voting System needs change.
Karniv0r wrote:
You don't look at it from a point o trying to oust a mayor who is never their.
In fact I do. I had to overcome this exact problem in order to take office and even with the incumbent sending out a citizen wide email declaring he did not wish to be mayor and requesting they vote for me and pointing out that he himself would vote for me, I still only made it by one point.
But it changes nothing about xp. The fact is you are trying to make my xp dependent on the actions of others and that's simply not fair. If they take away incumbent auto voting then there has to be an alternate method of gaining xp for politicians.
You can't make my entire profession and game dedicated to begging people to vote. Anyone who thinks it's easy to get real live active citizens to come to the city hall and cast their vote is dreaming. Even real live active citizens are nearly impossible to cajole into spending their own time worrying about your xp.
People log in and do their own thing, or don't log in at all, or don't bother to even read emails from the mayor. It's pretty easy to blame ghost citizens or lack of initiative on the part of the mayor when the only side you are seeing it from is your own desire to get elected. I've been on BOTH sides and I am telling it is not right to take away the only existing and already weak method of gaining political xp. Again, it is you yourself that indicated the problem is apathy or laziness on the part of the voters and not a failing on your own part that is preventing you from being elected.
Our town has real live citizens. Citizens that you can bet care about whether any city improvements are being placed or how fast or well the city is progressing. But you can't make my xp dependent on convincing them to generate it for me and that's just as plain as it can be. It's reality, it's life, it's the truth. You can theorize all you want about this or that, but I am telling you first hand truth about human nature.
People won't go and vote every single week, and that is why you can NOT take away incumbent auto voting without putting in an alternate method of gaining xp for politicians.
Sounds like a bit of cross server citizen swapping. You sew what you reap.
BlindTyldak wrote:
I've heard of several mayors having this problem. Our city is full of active people, and I know if they had to vote weekly they wouldn't complain . . . but what seems to happen is that Mayors went out and filled up0 on ghost citizens and then went AWOL, and the legitimate citizens now can't get rid of the Mayor. I know one situation in which the Mayor has even quit the game and the people are trying to save the city and can't, because there's 50 ghost folks in town and only 25 or so real people. They can't overthrow the incumbant at all.
You can't make my entire profession and game dedicated to begging people to vote. Anyone who thinks it's easy to get real live active citizens to come to the city hall and cast their vote is dreaming. Even real live active citizens are nearly impossible to cajole into spending their own time worrying about your xp.
I don't look as politician xp as "my xp." Forcing people to vote would mean that their politician would be more advanced and would be able to get cooler stuff for their city and maybe some neat specializations. It certainly doesn't benefit me personally, as mayor, to have their votes. My skills effect the city as a whole.
Down the line, however, I do see this as being a way to open up problems. Consider once your politician is master and you don't care if people vote for you if you're the only candidate. But then one person in the city borders wants to grief and waits until the moment before the election to vote for himself. Since the politician was master and no one else cared to go vote for him, the only vote cast was for the griefer and he wins by simple majority of votes.
Wish there was someway to get around this. Like maybe only allowing the candidate to register within 48 or 72 hours after the city update (the mayor would auto register). And after the time period is up, send out a city email about the candidates that are available to vote for.
In any case, I think it's a cool idea to force people to actually vote for a candidate every week.
Karniv0r wrote:
Well zen that defeat the purpose of Mayor. Well if he is active he will get votes, he ned to keep his campaign active and not be lazy.
That is ridiculous. What's more, I could easily turn that right around on you. If you are so keen on getting elected, campaign and don't be lazy.
What's that you say? You ARE campaigning? You ARE being active?
You AREN'T being lazy? Well neither am I. You aren't even trying to discuss this logically. You're just mad that you can't elected and are happy to screw good mayors out of xp for your own benefit. I already explained multiple times about how your proposed 'fix' is a screw over but you don't care. I've already shown you the hypocrisy in assuming that my failure to get votes would be my fault even though you think your failure to get votes is not your fault.
I am telling you that you can NOT expect to get a bunch of players to go vote every week. It's an unrealistic expectation. People join player cities as citizens to reap the benefits of being a citizen, not to add responsibility to their game time. It doesn't matter if you sympathize with that fact, it is still a fact. If you make their citizenship dependent on activity, and MY XP dependent on their activity, you are screwing over the vast majority of players. And all because you're frustrated at a little trouble getting elected. I had to get elected by overcoming an incumbent, as I described above. I did it. Since you are so quick to judge other mayors as lazy I'll be just as judgemental and assume that you can't get elected because you aren't a good politician.
You're so happy to blame the system when you have trouble, but blame the mayor when the mayor has trouble. Totally two-faced.
PSchirf wrote:
My solution would be to count the non-votes for the incumbent when xps are being calculated, but only count the actual "cast" votes in determining who won the election.
This combined with making the mayor register every week would solve the entire situation.
It's easy enough to think of. But it seems some people would just rather cast aspersions on mayors they know nothing about in situations they know nothing about.
You realy have no clue do you. Not only is being Mayor the most BOORING thing I have ever done...It'sa thankless job that gets you 0 income and 0 fun. All I do is chat with people and place trainers and terminals, and Wait for thursday.
You Could try and email your mayor...but then again...What would that do...The mayor gets about 100 emails a day in a decent sized town...so that is useless...Here's a thought...
MOVE! Nothing sais you cant pack up and move or start your own town. City Halls are cheap. And when you DO move and your current town starts to lose city structures then the other people in the town will want to move as well and you will have hoyr new town all ready with open arms.
I depend on that XP. Every single vote. If you make it so you have to vote then that means you have to be online. I know in my town there are people wno dont play once a week and some who play even less. And when you get to the 3rd and 4th tier boxes....every vote counts. I'm not trying to be harsh, just fair. To BOTH of you. Politicians NEED that XP but then again they NEED a city too.
It is a "vote of no confidence" system with an alternate candidate. If more than half the population feels that the incumbent Mayor isn't worthy of holding the post they can put forth a candidate and unseat him/her. They have to actively campaign and work to remove the Mayor.
When everything is good or the majority of the people don't feel the need to cast a vote to an alternate candidate I don't see the harm in the incumbent candidate getting the experience and votes for the citizens that don't want to see him/her gone. If the incumbent Mayor is deposed the new Mayor will have that same exact advantage.
The problem isn't that default votes go to the Mayor; it is when there are ghost citizens. That is to say, citizens that is on the server and town exclusively to pad the population. They and the Mayors cadre of supporters could effectively hold a lock on the city.
Removing a Mayor is difficult. If they depend on large numbers of ghost citizens or haven't lost the confidence of a large number of citizens they will be hard to depose. In the former case you could vote with your feet and let the fiscal overhead of the city crush the Mayor and in the latter case you can get some experience, be a good sport, and campaign for another try.
Bottom line is, I disagree. Reform of the voting system is attacking the symptom and not the cause and would serve to punish all Mayors by a sizable drop in their experience earnings. It isn’t a perfect system but I think there are more pressing matters that need to be addressed first and foremost.
Feliz Gizmacher, Mayor of Dune Retreat
Perhaps instead of voting every week, its once a fortnight or once a month. The voting period is active for a week, and during that week you can vote, run for mayor etc, because you are asking for people to turn up every week to vote, and I know a lot of my citizens are offworld collecting resources or hunting, and they don't return home for long stretches of time. This is fine by me, but I wouldn't want to be kicked out of office because my supporters were doing necessary things for the guild/city/merchants/crafters.
The second issue is voting and citizen XP. I do believe the two are seperate and should be treated seperate. Politicians running for office should get XP based on the number of votes they get. Politicians in office should get XP for the number of citizens (or the size of the city) that they have. This solves a lot of problems. Maybe the Mayor XP is only 10 XP per citizen or something, where the vote XP is 100 per citizen...that might balance it out.
Either way, I still think it is necessary to create city councils so that more politicians can be brought into the game and present themselves as valid alternatives to the very very few politicians out there.
Why are you trying to run against your mayor? Trying to steal the work another man built?
I'd have you exicuted publicly if it were in my city, but then again i do that all the time.
I have to agree with Fidgiter on all his points. The system is shaped in such a way that if everything is fine and dandy you don't need to worry about it at all. The problem comes in when people subvert the system (ghost citizens) or when people are unhappy in their city, but they don't want to leave.
If the situation is that bad, and you can't get elected then it is because the city is full of dead weights that are either not there or they are happy the way things are. In this situation your only alternative, and the alternative for the people that feel like you do, is to move somewhere where the situation is more favourable.
Maybe that means putting another city hall down elsewhere. Maybe it means joining someone else's city.
My city is full of actual players and alts, no ghosts from other servers. I live with the knowledge that if I don't perform there are other people that also want to play politicians that are waiting in the wings for the right moment. However, there are also a lot of players in my city that don't want to return home every week to cast their vote, and these people support me. Your system would almost guarantee that one unhappy citizen could have me replaced even though I have a much larger chunk of support than he does.
Unless my citizens want me to stay on, my term is pretty much up as soon as I hit master. Why? Because I had fun, I built my guild'scity, I've done what I want to do and due to the screwed up way the devs handled this, its only fair for me to give other people a go at being a mayor. I won't be scrapping my skills, I won't quit the profession, I'll always be there if I need to step back into the role.