Politician Archive
Thread: The New Correspondent (voting and proposals)
I'd like to show my support for Haji as well. I think he's right about the position requiring not only a mayor, but a player with a nice technical background. If we could get someone that knows both realms, I think that person would be a much greater asset to the politician community. Just my two cents =)
Wow....
Thank you all sooo much. 
I really appreciate your confidence, and promise to live up to expectations.
My fellow politician
I'm going to incite a bit of discussion here:
3 people have put said that they would like to be politician correspondent. My self Papi and hajihill. My question for all of you is what is the difference between the 3 of us? My answer is nothing.
In game we are relatively much the same. We all are mayors of very successful cites with a large citizen base that can post on the boards supporting us. This should be true of any politician correspondent.
The other profession that i follow closely is Droid Engineer for obvious reasons. We are on our third correspondent. When Sintrosi left in a day we had a multi page thread voting on who we wanted our new correspondent to be. Then when Drashk almost 100% of the DE's put our support behind TK-421. Each of the threads where we declared our support for one candidate or another reached six plus pages in a day. It has taken a few days for this thread to reach two.
This is thread illustrates one of the problems i see with our board. Complete lack of activity. How can the Devs get a clear read of what we want for our profession if the front page of the our board doesn't change in three days. When i can leave for work and come back and a thread I have commented on only drops four lines doesn't show am enthusiastic board.
This is one of the things i want to change if Thunderheart selects me as correspondent.
In recent memory we have only had two large discussion threads, the space expansion thread and the GCW thread, which both were lackluster. Player cities should effect every player in the game and I'm sure all of us have similar ideas of how we want to achieve this. If i am correspondent i will do everything in my power to make this an active board, I'm not saying were going to surpass the Jedi in post count or even the smugglers, but we have a profession in its infancy that can be developed into something no other MMO has and the best way to do that is to bring new people into the clique.
One of the things i feel that our new correspondent has to do is inspire the lurkers to post an idea or a thought. I don't think any of us here have done that, even if I'm not correspondent i am going to spend more time posting on the politician boards and perhaps get a good conversations started.
Plzurpilot...
You are right... we are a profession that gets little attention; however that is largely because our in-game role is not as expansive as it should be. We need skills and abilities that make politicians a valuable commodity; skill and ideas like those mentioned here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=31261
We need the ability to craft in-game content more easily, and affect peoples gaming experience; as suggested here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=31803
Also, politicians need better tools available to them. Web-based tools (ideally with the ability to query the game directly regarding certain types of information) for city web-sites, reporting tools for in-game city terminals, city planning tools to reorganize cities more easily, content tools that will allow player cities to have interesting and variable draws to them, mayoral resignation tools that will allow mayors to leave when they wish to,and a variety of other things related to the GCW and other games systems.
It is clear we need more activity here on this board, but until we are able to make the profession a dynamic part of the game, not something just occupied by a constant entity in each city that is doing a good job when you don't notice they are around, this will not be the case.
And lastly, we will always have less traffic as there are less of us, and this will always be the case. The most important virtue of an effective correspondent is, without a doubt, creativity and a desire to find innovative ways to solve problems. Because, as we all know, the politician profession is really about being a problem-solver. Whether between people in game, or finding better ways to address certain issues and fill in the gaps left by the game, we are a community of social architects, and we love to find great and unheard ofways to organize and overcome obstacles.
Actually we are brimming with activity in comparison to the PA board
One of the factors that somewhat makes comments here less often then in other professions is that we are actually limited to roughly6760. (max # of cities in the game) After the caps were raised I have yet to see any politician that wasn't a mayor, or already a mayor that just stepped down but their tag stays up for various reasons. We actually don't exceed 7k and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those were inactive mules or similiar. While true it is an open forum and anyone can post ideas, not many people understand PC's too much or what we can and cannot do (prompting pie in the sky posts that pretty much get labelled that and discourage any other posts)
When we get dev devotion to us then we'll be full of innovative and ingenious posts, but for now all we can do is wait and/or come up with even more ideas to get added onto a list. Same as with PA's which is why that board is dead. We don't have a likely change coming (all combat profs do, plus some crafters are getting attention soon) and our profession is so far reaching and things we want to change impact some of the core facets of this game that when we do get a change mentioned it will be a long time in being implemented. But still, it would be interesting to have a few fun threads to mull about in. Maybe help out the urban planners still planningetc.
hajihill wrote:
Plzurpilot...
You are right... we are a profession that gets little attention; however that is largely because our in-game role is not as expansive as it should be. We need skills and abilities that make politicians a valuable commodity; skill and ideas like those mentioned here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=31261
I agree with you also and the ideas mentioned in this post, Politicans need to be a figurehead or perhaps a focus point in the game. We are elected by the rest of the player base it should give us some kind of larger role in the game. We should be flooded with as many tells with "Master Politician" above our heads just as "Master Architect" or "Master Smuggler."
We need the ability to craft in-game content more easily, and affect peoples gaming experience; as suggested here: http://forums.station.sony.com/swg/board/message?board.id=Politician&message.id=31803
I also agree with you here, there have been mulitple ideas many people have brought up that i think that deserve a good look by the devs
Also, politicians need better tools available to them. Web-based tools (ideally with the ability to query the game directly regarding certain types of information) for city web-sites, reporting tools for in-game city terminals, city planning tools to reorganize cities more easily, content tools that will allow player cities to have interesting and variable draws to them, mayoral resignation tools that will allow mayors to leave when they wish to,and a variety of other things related to the GCW and other games systems.
It is clear we need more activity here on this board, but until we are able to make the profession a dynamic part of the game, not something just occupied by a constant entity in each city that is doing a good job when you don't notice they are around, this will not be the case.
And lastly, we will always have less traffic as there are less of us, and this will always be the case. The most important virtue of an effective correspondent is, without a doubt, creativity and a desire to find innovative ways to solve problems. Because, as we all know, the politician profession is really about being a problem-solver. Whether between people in game, or finding better ways to address certain issues and fill in the gaps left by the game, we are a community of social architects, and we love to find great and unheard ofways to organize and overcome obstacles.
I agree with your reasone for less traffic; however the Droid Engineers, didn't have content for months and somtime we went countless weeks and months with out a dev post, but what kept the DE boards (and im only using them as an example becaue its what I have dealt with on the same level as a master politican) alive during the downtimes was good corespondents that kept hope alive with good ideas and conversations to overcome thier obsticals. And if I am politican correspondant I will try my best to do this.
Oh, and 11 v 7 with Haji leading in the polls by a somewhat comfortable margin, even comfier depending on his desk chair.
Of course this is only an exit poll and we are expecting to have a recount considered in case the voting form was too complex or had a few hanging chads.
This seems like a real problem to me... I don't doubt you are right, but I think the best time for ideas is now, when we still have plenty of lead time before our "love" from the devs comes around. If we start making tons of suggestions after that we'll have even longer to wait before these new needs and ideas are addressed. With an accomplished correspondent we will have that list in place when the time comes. And this brings us back to innovation and creativity as ideal virtues in the perfect correspondent. With innovation we will build upon the good ideas we have, with creativity we will polish them, and with he organization inherent in the members of this player class we will present them in a meaningful way. This, I think, is the heart of a good correspondent.
PsychoticChipmunk wrote:
When we get dev devotion to us then we'll be full of innovative and ingenious posts, but for now all we can do is wait and/or come up with even more ideas to get added onto a list.
PsychoticChipmunk wrote:
Actually we are brimming with activity in comparison to the PA board
This is true
One of the factors that somewhat makes comments here less often then in other professions is that we are actually limited to roughly6760. (max # of cities in the game) After the caps were raised I have yet to see any politician that wasn't a mayor, or already a mayor that just stepped down but their tag stays up for various reasons.
Whe should be more active, becaue the potential 6760 mayors should have power that affects each and every player in the game. Every player should have an opinion on what we should and should not be able to do. However this is not the case, as any canidate mayor will tell you.
We actually don't exceed 7k and I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of those were inactive mules or similiar. While true it is an open forum and anyone can post ideas, not many people understand PC's too much or what we can and cannot do (prompting pie in the sky posts that pretty much get labelled that and discourage any other posts)
Again im refering to the Droid Engineers again, becaue its the only other profession i have had. but we have had a few pie in the sky posts. Talking about planetarty survey droids, droids that pay maintenacne on structures, infact these very droidconcepts were told to be impossable in the current time frame by Thunderheart. Now look whats comming down the pipe for publish 8.
Us politicans shouldn't discurage the pie in the sky posts. Infact I have made a few my self. These are what the basis of our profession could be.
When we get dev devotion to us then we'll be full of innovative and ingenious posts, but for now all we can do is wait and/or come up with even more ideas to get added onto a list. Same as with PA's which is why that board is dead. We don't have a likely change coming (all combat profs do, plus some crafters are getting attention soon) and our profession is so far reaching and things we want to change impact some of the core facets of this game that when we do get a change mentioned it will be a long time in being implemented. But still, it would be interesting to have a few fun threads to mull about in. Maybe help out the urban planners still planningetc.
I disagree, we should be prepared when its our turn. When thunderheart comes and says, hey mayors your turn, the politican correspondent should be able make a single post in the correspondent forums with links to all of our ideas. Also i feel the GCW revamp is a good point to get some player city attention becasuse I feel its safe to assume that most faction bases are in a player city and that player cites are more and more battlefields that the GCW is fought on. I belive that Jest3r will be open to many ideas from us.
Lets not forget that it only took one of us to bring down the galatic senate.
Message Edited by Plzurpilot on 04-23-2004 01:46 AM
Well if we're doing voting...
/corre hat off. /citizen hat on.
I live in Pappi's city. It's a wonderful city. She's done a fabulous job. And she's had to deal with all sorts of adversity being on TC such as disappearing this and that. She's one of the rare politicians who plays the class. We get 3 characters on TC - she's always on the politician, helping place houses, working out citizen squabbles, and other things.
I vote for Pappi.
I think all Mayors need to look good in hawtpants!
especially when investigating why my house fell off the server.-T
Hmmmm, just to give you a little insight into the mind of someone who was once a fairly avid poster on these boards, im not sure if my feelings are at all representative of other people who now post less or not at all on these boards or just my own personal apathy.
The simple reason i don't bother coming here is because the things we talk about on these boards seem to have practically no noticable effect on our profession, the devs rarely come here and post , even to say "okay were looking into that well address it in 5 publishes time"
We have continuously put together requests and reports at the Developers requests and these have, despite promises to the contrary simply not been addressed or in many cases even acknowledged
Life is far too short for me to waste any of it here discussing and hashing out stuff that simply wont affect my gameplay experience
or so it seems
sorry if this is a negative post but as i said its to give a little insight into the mind of one man whos pretty bored with what appears at this stage to be largely a waste of time, perhaps some of you feel the same ? (im not arrogant enough to assume you do) perhaps im isolated in my views (in which case feel free to ignore me)
regards