Politician Archive
Thread: Progress on Top-Five response:
HB: I understand the impatience. You do deserve a response, and that is why I wanted to put out this partial response. There are items that might help address some of this issues in the top five that I know are on a "soon" timetable, but since they didn't make it into the current patch notes, and with the devs being very, very careful about indefinite promises, I can't yet make any announcements regarding those.
I am pursuing a response to the problem of the missing master politician abilities. I posted a thread here that I would like to get some response to so that I can take it to the devs in requesting that this be made a high-priority for them. As one facet of our number one issue, it should be a high priority for at least a response if not a fix.
I'll be back with more response as soon as I can get something for you.
The mayor should beable to grant certain players the right to /grantzoningrights, /cityban, /citywarn, withdraw from treasury, add to militia, and so on to certain individuals on an individual basis.
I think its cool the devs are thinking of the city and new ideas for it
but what about the politician profession? when a politician becomes a master it means nothing
I have read most of the posts on this forum and i can tell you out of the top five problems: the number one problem i have read is that the politician works the hardest!! i can honestly say that its true!! what rewards do we get? most people i know that started out as mayor have asked the citizens to have someone else do it because there is no reward for being a politician Politicians in the real world have alot of perks= WE DO NOT!! why is that? i think the politician should get payed a certain percentage of the city maint. , doesen't that make sense? how many politicians get payed=ALL OF THEM!! also i think maint. in the cities are to high 90% of the politicians pay for maint. on the cities as it is what good is it to get payed (which we dont) when we are just putting it back in the city anyways Iam a master politician and i am really sad about all the things i have to do on a daily basis and what do i get? i get the same thing everyone else does but i have to do all the work and be at the citizens beck and call!! this profession is not rewarding at all!! i think the devs need to concentrate on the profession before they start adding new things to the city!! thanks for listening
Rannd Anthroe - master politician
intrepid server, planet- rori city- Barsaive
Bajeezus wrote:
I have just finished giving Thunderheart some extra information and some clarifications on our remaining top-five items. I'll have the response out to you as soon as I can get something from them that is more than just a question or a promise to look into something. But they are looking at our items, they are not lost in development purgatory.
Any estimate on when we might hear something? I was saddened to find Master Poli with no skills and the cloning bug still not fixed in this patch. So anything that gets done will most likely be Publish 8 (can you say May)...
Bajeezus, is the slow down because we did not respond quickly enough or is TH just maxed out? It seems like we had our act together here in the forum with your good guidance. And I imagine TH is just slammed with all the professions, heck if he dedicated a day per profession it would take more than a month to get a response.
Bajeezus, do you find the 'Correspondant' forums more active on Poilitician issues or are we just on the back burner all around?
It seems this class is pretty hard to dedicate energy to from SOE's point of view, there is a max of maybe 2,500 of us total based on city caps etc. But it worries me they don't realize the back-lash from other people who know how messed up things are for us. Those players number 80 times more than the number of politicians... Any thoughts on the priority issue?
Message Edited by Jarob on 02-16-2004 05:05 PM
We of Spired rock have made some progress and I know that I effect around 50 out of my 70+ citizens we have our teamspeak server and a website. woot!
Vivyan wrote:
An issue I'd like to see in the top 5 soon is:
Special rankings for the Militia!
The mayor should beable to grant certain players the right to /grantzoningrights, /cityban, /citywarn, withdraw from treasury, add to militia, and so on to certain individuals on an individual basis.
I would like to have a large militia to defend the city, but I do not want all the members to beable to /grantzoningrights. If the militia rankings were setup like the guild ranking, where you could set each person up with different privilages, It would make a mayor's life easier, then sending out mails reminding everyone the rules, and to follow them.
Are there any others that see this as an issue also in their cities?
Vivyan
I'd like to see the Militia dropped altogether, and instead have Council Members, Aldermen, or some other title to signify folks that can issue zoning rights. Granting Zoning rights should have nothing to do with a militia.
Once (if) there is some system where fighter-types of a community can actually defend or police the community, then by all means, add the militia back in.
As it stands...it's non-sensicle.
Jarob wrote:
Any estimate on when we might hear something? I was saddened to find Master Poli with no skills and the cloning bug still not fixed in this patch. So anything that gets done will most likely be Publish 8 (can you say May)...
Bajeezus, is the slow down because we did not respond quickly enough or is TH just maxed out? It seems like we had our act together here in the forum with your good guidance. And I imagine TH is just slammed with all the professions, heck if he dedicated a day per profession it would take more than a month to get a response.
Bajeezus, do you find the 'Correspondant' forums more active on Poilitician issues or are we just on the back burner all around?
It seems this class is pretty hard to dedicate energy to from SOE's point of view, there is a max of maybe 2,500 of us total based on city caps etc. But it worries me they don't realize the back-lash from other people who know how messed up things are for us. Those players number 80 times more than the number of politicians... Any thoughts on the priority issue?
I hope to see something every time I refresh the correspondent's forum.
I think one thing all of us on the posting side need to keep in mind all the time is how very slowly game development moves in comparison to how quickly the game and the forums move. I know it seems like there has been a slow down, or that we missed out on something, but think about the fact that the Imperial Crackdown and chef improvements that we just saw in the last update have been in the works since at least November. That update gave a largenumberof players an enhancement tothe GCW, the centerpiece of SWG, as well as some attentionto one of the most neglected professions, chef. Next we have the "Droid Invasion", something that will address what most players would have to agree is a serious issue with the far-too-diminished role of droids in the SWG setting. And after that, the devs get heavily into the combat re-design, the Jedi re-design, the Space Expansion, etc, etc, etc... ...
I think you have to take into account here that as much as I am advocating for improvements, fixes, enhancements, and I have been trying to make myself into a particularly bothersome little bug on the issue of getting our Master Politician abilities restored, that Politician is working pretty much as intended. We are by and large not a broken profession. Many of our specializations need a balance and tweak pass, and at Thunderheart's request I just emailedhima complete list of the specializations and the cost-benefit analysison them that you guys all helped come up with way back in January, so we know that they are looking at that for us. But, we are one of many, many professions that could use some balance and tweaking. The core of our profession, building and administering player cities, works and has been an enormous success for SWG in terms of player involvement and enjoyment. And it is not a minor game system.
Look at something like battlefields, overall, a game system on par with player cities in terms of complexity and scope. Pulled from the game simply because the way they were designed didn't interest players, and players weren't using them and having fun with them. In comparison, player cities are used by a huge number of players and have had a massive impact on the game since their implementation. You have to look at player cities, and by extension Politicians, as a success.
Yes, we are rather one-dimensional, and we would like more variety to our gameplay, but to some degree, that is the nature of any single profession in SWG. Riflemen shoot things. TKAs hit things. Doctors heal and buff. Yes, they have lots of content aimed at the combat play style that we don't have, butI would compare us more to the crafting or social professions. They build armor, weapons, droids, or socialize while healing mind wounds. We build player cities. We are much different than any of the other professions, and I would always want to keep that difference, which is, to me, our biggest attraction as a profession, but like them, we do one thing, and fortunately for us, that one thing by and large works.
So, I'm going to keep hammering away on our Master Abilities, on getting something done for us regarding city financial reports, I was just asked last week to clarify what it is we are asking for with regard to the "resignation" feature, and I just helped TH get some first hand experience with how frustrating it is not to have any /linecommands for the city hall, so we keep on pushing and working to make this profession better, but realize two things, development is grindingly slow business, and as a profession, we are reletively lucky.
Bajeezus wrote:
Jarob wrote:
Any estimate on when we might hear something? ...
I hope to see something every time I refresh the correspondent's forum.
Well it's sad to think they aren't at least having a "dialog" with you on the correspondents forum. I thought that was the whole idea for those forums.
I think one thing all of us on the posting side need to keep in mind all the time is how very slowly game development moves in comparison to how quickly the game and the forums move.[...]
I've been in development for 20 years, I know how these things work. But NO INPUT is not good, we asked ten questions, other professions received answers, we received nothing. And we're not really asking for the devs to make proposals on how it'll be out in the next publish etc. We just want some "Oh yea, that looks borked we'll try to address it, maybe publish 11" or whatever. Silence is not golden in an environment like this.
I think you have to take into account here that as much as I am advocating for improvements, fixes, enhancements, and I have been trying to make myself into a particularly bothersome little bug on the issue of getting our Master Politician abilities restored, that Politician is working pretty much as intended.
You must not be mayor of a "Crafting City". I get /tells and E-mail several times day from my citizens about the combined crafting bonuses. They keep saying things like "You said when you got Mast Poli we'd have these, why don't you turn them on?" etc. People just don't understand.
So, I'm going to keep hammering away on our Master Abilities, on getting something done for us regarding city financial reports, I was just asked last week to clarify what it is we are asking for with regard to the "resignation" feature, and I just helped TH get some first hand experience with how frustrating it is not to have any /linecommands for the city hall, so we keep on pushing and working to make this profession better, but realize two things, development is grindingly slow business, and as a profession, we are reletively lucky.
Yes we are lucky and unlucky all at once. There are many challenges with this profession, and much of it works, but the parts that don't cause us grief because they EFFECT OTHER PLAYERS. This is really different then when say a rifleman can't use some new /OneShotKill ability or whatever. They do not have to deal with 90 other people sending E-mails and /tells to them. Meanwhile we will never be a "large %" of the population because of the sheer fact that city caps pretty much guarantee there will only be maybe 2,500 total poli's across all galaxies.
I don't want to sound like you are not doing your job, I just don't want you to feel we are "Lucky". As our advocate you are the only connection we have with the Devs since they seem to refuse to even post in our forum. Meanwhile they DO spend quite a bit of time in other profession forums and they DID answer the TEN questions from other professions.
Keep pushing and let us know if there is anything we can do to help you get our voices heard. I have often wondered if I shouldn't tell all my citizens to submit a /bug report or CS ticket each time they contact me on these issues.. would we suddenly get a response then, after the devs realized how many people are affected by these seemingly "small" issues we have with our profession?
Greetings fellow Politicians!
I am very pleased to find this list, and agree with everything that Bajeezus included. Most everything was addressed in the list, except Delegation.
After all, what must a Politician do in order to effectively govern a large city? Communicate and Delegate. The "militia" does not provide even the same level of delegation that any Guild Leader enjoys. We need a set of permissions which can be granted on a case-by-case basis, at the very least as sophisticated as that available to Player Associations. My city has MANY resident PA's and they must wonder why the more we grow, the more we plummet into chaos.
Not being able to remove militia members (perhaps unless they are in the room with you, by the city terminal) has made it impossible to restructure the guild following the removal of /citywarn. When it became clear that it was an unrealistic goal to attempt to maintain law and order in a game that favors faction conflict (we are a decidedly Neutral Commercial city), many of the militia became concerned that they might end up fighting the battles of the various resident factioned guilds in the course of their police duties.
Now, back to Communication. I am very much in favor of the suggestions already on the list for this category, but I noticed that nobody seems to have a good answer regarding the Trainer Dilemma. We get only 15 (while cities like Coronet somehow manage 2 or more of each!). One of the biggest problems we now must somehow overcome is the dismal state of trainer coverage on our planet, let alone in our city. I feel the list overlooks a persistent planetary channel which only city mayors can access. The Planetary Council idea may include this, but the need for effective communication does not end there.
We are in serious need of a simple means of disseminating information, both to our citizens and to our city's patrons and visitors. Especially in the case of commercial cities is this vital.
One method for solving this problem might involve building some radial menu functionality into architect-crafted Data Terminals. Make them configurable by the owners with basic functions, such as a simple database which could list trainers and locations, or several data fields. Customizable as multi-purpose community terminals. Public or private flag could be set, or just give the thing an admin list if you have data contributors and wish to keep management of the data terminal private but let the public use it to obtain local information.
Another method is the simple PRINTING PRESS. Give us paper (parchment?), let us write decent-sized news or articles or information of any kind (city newsletter, secret plans, etc), and give us a device to duplicate the finished paper product....with words on it! I don't mean to be crass about this, but if you've tried working around SOE's neglect of Politician's communication and delegation skills by setting up external forums, then you probably know the pain of trying to drag 130 players out of their immersive 3D world to slog through some forums. You know how small the actual ratio of players who post on the forums is. You know how much smaller still the active poster to passive browser ratio is in these forums.
Still on Communications, I'd like to know what you mean by a City MOTD. Would this message of the day be in email form to citizens only? Or would it be something everyone sees when they enter the city limits? Visible to visitors?
Clearly the Mayor needs to be able to use a simple MAIL ALL CITIZENS button. Using the Treasury Withdrawal once per day to send out a fortune-cookie-sized blurb is certainly raising more questions than it's answering. But there is a definite need for Mayors to have the ability to disseminate information to both Citizens and Visitors alike. I would keep both functions separate, but both are certainly needed.
Between having to micromanage my city by word-of-mouth, not being able to remove miltia or delegate authority except by a single catch-all militia appointment (which cannot be revoked once grainted in most cases), and having no way to get information to anyone about anything, and finally the crippling lag on Dantooine driving my most prominent merchants and citizens and visitors away, I'd say Politician is in fine shape. If your sarcasm detector is billowing smoke, there is a reason.
And let's not forget Bazaar Terminals, along with proper location nomenclature... I'm tired of references to Reilig Steppes when the waypoint to the item i just purchased is clearly in Sedoo, not Reilig Steppes. If you want to talk about what Player Cities still need to even hope to compete in an environment that is still clearly not designed to allow them to do so, it's Bazaar Terminals. We've got to have a commodities market to be taken seriously. Especially in places like Dantooine, where we can't even compete with players who planted their shops 30 meters from Imperial Outpost before they put no-build buffer zones around NPC cities there.
In short (too late), I have invested millions upon millions in my city, months upon months of time, but I'm just one person. I cannot BE the city for my constituents. If we are not granted at the very least some rudimentary Communiation and Delegation tools, and right quick, this non-paying full-time job of waiting hand and foot on hundreds of folks while they get to go out and PLAY THE GAME... is going to get a whole lot less appealing.
Thanks for your good work and everyone's input on this topic.
Arsheba Silmaril
Master Politician
Mayor of Sedoo
Dantooine, Flurry