Politician Archive

I like it! Only problem I would see is if the politician did not have any faction standing with the group being targeted, or even a negative rating. Would be hard to convince a group to leave another alone when they hate you to begin with.

Actually, the only other way to do this would be a jedi mind trick.

The political buff could work like this: Mayor make a speech where he rise the moral of the citizen in questionand incresethe damagerate or diffrent defens stats, like meele or ranged. As you rise in level you can give more efficient buffs.

This would also be a other way to gain political exp.

• Nothing new but the abilty to change direction of terminals like you do with statues would be great.

Now I'm looking at all of this, trying to figure out how to boil it all down to a nice one-sentence issue statement and a one-paragraph solution, nice and succinct for the devs to digest.

One thing to remember is that this top-five is not a one-shot thing. This is not our only chance to communicate our needs to the devs. What do you all think of coming up with one single thing to ask for, something that we could really get implemented on a shorter time frame, something that would have some small but immediate positive impact on the gameplay of politicians? The message of the day feature? Something like that?

Bringing this giant issue to the devs is fine for letting them know we are dissatisfied with the abilities and gameplay of the profession, so that we can start building that little grain of awareness in their minds, but as an issue that we would like to have addressed, "Politicians need more gameplay," is much less addressable than "please implement a'message of the day' at master politician."

What do you guys think? How do we press our concerns in a way that isn't so overwhelming to the devs that they just ignore it and push it out to 2005? What's the one thing you'd be delighted to see on an upcoming patch for Politician abilities?

I think the easiest thing to emplement would be allowing Politicans to buy faction (like Smugglers), but for all the minor factions. It could be done using a terminal for now. (In the future it could be something much nicer).

Personally I like Politican and find it to be alot of fun. Why does it surprise everyone that Politican is a bunch of administrative duties, like granting zoning rights, and adding members to the milita. Tailors make clothing, Dancers dance, and Riflemen shoot things.

Anneke Rose (Mayor of the metropolis of Sanctuary)

I would actually have to say two things - a tie.

1. Bazaar capabilities (gets people to cities)

2. MOTD

Those would be for now. However, for long range planning - I concur with many others that to increase the abilities of the politician gameplay to negotiate, Planetary Senate, Interplanetary Senate (For Mayors to convene) is an excellent idea.

Great ideas all. Good to see that so many are putting so much time and thought into how to increase the pleasureand quality of the profession.

Many Thanks.

From a technical point of view, I think MOTD is a good start, and would get a lot of bang for your buck.

Shouldn't be TOO hard to add some text to the entering message (it already pieces together a string including the city name, size, and specialization) and add an option to the City Maintenance Terminal to edit this string.

And if they can remove the skills from the Master Politician box so easily, surely they can add the "Set MOTD" skill to one of the boxes just as easily... Right?

Thanks, guys. Keepcoming all day today with your thoughts on the one small, implementable feature you'd like to see advocated for politician skill/ability/gameplay enhancement.

As far as all the big pie-in-the-sky stuff, I'm thinking of phrasing that something like this:

There is a great desire in the Politician community as well as numerous suggestions for ways to get politicians interacting with other politicians from other player cities, from planetary councils, to diplomacy systems, anything that will provide ongoing, player-to-player politician gameplay beyond placement of facilities and granting of permissions. When the development time is available, the Politician community is extremely eager to suggest profession design solutions that will make us more than just facilitators and give us some real on-going gameplay.

I also see a couple of posts here, from HiroBlack and Slugeater, among others that suggest the Politicians have some way to play around with NPC faction standing, that are very interesting to me. Slugeater's "Masterful negotiation" skill and HiroBlack's faction "intervention" on behalf of a citizen strike me as the kind of thing we are looking for in terms of granting every-day gameplay opportunities as well as being very valuable.

If you like those, they are more ambitious than something like "message of the day" but there are more concepts we could forward to the devs. What we need is a big "idea bank" to hold onto all of these for the day when the devs say, "ok, politicians up next. what do you guys want?"

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Bajeezus wrote:

Now I'm looking at all of this, trying to figure out how to boil it all down to a nice one-sentence issue statement and a one-paragraph solution, nice and succinct for the devs to digest.

One thing to remember is that this top-five is not a one-shot thing. This is not our only chance to communicate our needs to the devs. What do you all think of coming up with one single thing to ask for, something that we could really get implemented on a shorter time frame, something that would have some small but immediate positive impact on the gameplay of politicians? The message of the day feature? Something like that?

Bringing this giant issue to the devs is fine for letting them know we are dissatisfied with the abilities and gameplay of the profession, so that we can start building that little grain of awareness in their minds, but as an issue that we would like to have addressed, "Politicians need more gameplay," is much less addressable than "please implement a'message of the day' at master politician."

What do you guys think? How do we press our concerns in a way that isn't so overwhelming to the devs that they just ignore it and push it out to 2005? What's the one thing you'd be delighted to see on an upcoming patch for Politician abilities?

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Well I think although we have a lot of very nice "pie-in-the-sky" ideas here (am I getting hungry from that word) ... we have to get back to concentrate on what is realistic ... not only for a Top 5 suggestion .. but for our #1 ...

I guess it boils down to ... make Politician fun ... make him mean something ... make the 77 skillpoints worth getting.

So in our first pase we should concentrate on very simple things ... "fixing" or balancing the specialisations is one ratherquick thing for me (no new code, just different modifiers) ... MOTD seams at least to be an easy to implement and fun tool ... bazaar access might go into THs just announced "Changes to bazaar" ...

Only thing I'm missing here is how to make politician fun and usefull for non-mayors with little effort?

I'm not sure I could decide on just one change. I think there is a need for many changes and additions that do not put a great deal strain on the devs.

Here's a list of suggestions so far which I would consider to be relatively simple and concrete changes that the devs could make:

• MOTD
  
• City chat channel (with option to make it public or private for citizens only)
  
• bulletin board terinals
  
• ability to place bazaar terminals
  
• master politician gets discount on maintenance fees (10-20%)
  
• master politician gets to pick two city specializations, not the hybrid ones.
  
• changes to structures to make city structures actually desirable:
  
  
  
  • no wound healing in houses has to be hospital
    
  • no BF healing in houses, has to be cantina
    
  
  
• Mayors could zone a area and give it a name on the local map, merchant district, entertainment district and so on. Would make it a bit easier to find stores, and homes.
  
• Street signs, or city signs, like the ones you can find in npc cities with the city name.
  

Now whether these get put in the master skill box for politician or not is fine by me. I would just like to see them available and I think it worth suggesting to the devs in a ranked list format.

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There is a great desire in the Politician community as well as numerous suggestions for ways to get politicians interacting with other politicians from other player cities, from planetary councils, to diplomacy systems, anything that will provide ongoing, player-to-player politician gameplay beyond placement of facilities and granting of permissions. When the development time is available, the Politician community is extremely eager to suggest profession design solutions that will make us more than just facilitators and give us some real on-going gameplay.

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I like your wording here, but I think it important to provide links to some of these great "pie-in-the-sky" (this is turning into a politician buzzword) suggestions and ask for some dev feedback. Is this the sort of thing they would even consider or want to see? I've seen a lot of great posts on making the politican an everyday profession as well as ways to bring people into player cities and make them more desireable, fun, and exciting.

• Politician offshoot: Diplomat
  
• Concepts and ideas to improve player cities, militia and the politician profession
  

I like the message of the day idea since it will not only help people randomly walking around into towns from not getting blown to smithereens but also because it should be quite simple. One request with that however. Currently when you walk into town it says You have enteredPetersburg (City, Research Center)...now is it just me or is that idiotic? It should say You have entered the (City) of Petersburg (a Research Center) then tack on all the MoTD stuff. Just a little thing but it's the little things that make up life.

Oh and as for asking to get placable Bazaars I back that as well, however I'd like it even more if we got to place crafting stations and patio furniture. It would be fairly simple to implement as well. Just make all the existing furniture into "decorations". We can already place streetlamps and statues and fountains inside of homes and outside because they have those few extra lines of code so why not do that for all furniture and the crafting stations. I plan on placing all 4 (of the highest possible quality) in my town but as it is now I'll have to bribe someone to just let me use their home as a storage space for them.

Idea #2 Intercity politics

Give us the ability to interact with other mayors. Let us negotiate treaties or have hostilities with other cities. Make us negotiate direct shuttle flights between NPC cities. Discounts on services in other cities. If we can have guild wars, why not city wars?

Ding Ding Ding-You win!

Bajeezus -

Your last few posts have given us a lot to think about. There one item in particular you've mentioned that grabbed my attention, and I have some feedback on it.

Bajeezus: One thing to remember is that this top-five is not a one-shot thing. This is not our only chance to communicate our needs to the devs. What do you all think of coming up with one single thing to ask for, something that we could really get implemented on a shorter time frame, something that would have some small but immediate positive impact on the gameplay of politicians? The message of the day feature? Something like that?

Were wetalking about something other than our number one issue I wouldfind myselfa lot more likely to fall into step with you on that idea. As that is not thesituation I must respectfully disagree, despite finding myself in agreement with the vast majority of your suggestions in the past. My feeling on the matter is such:

The developers have asked for our issues in order of priority. Putting forward areadilyimplementable suggestionas a solution to our primary issue with Politician for the sake of rapid attention, as opposed to presenting a comprehensive detailing of theprofession's main issue and our suggested fix, leaves us appearing to be making much ado about nothing. Our #1 issue of Politiciangameplay and skill valueis not going to be addressed with a single skill alone, no matter how incredibly desirable that skill is. The problem is deeper and the answer must match the depth of the issue. I would respectfully submit that we need to state our problem (Politician skills are typically one use only and remain unused shortly after being gained, thereby leaving a sense of an imbalance of skill point value versus gameplay value, making retaining the Politician profession less desirable) and suggest a solution of equal depth.

As much as I like the MOTD idea, Slugeater's suggestion, the Politician buff idea, and of course my own contribution, there has really been only one suggestion with that kind of depth. Your Diplomat idea. Perhaps the MOTD would make a more satisfactory line item in the #4 or #5 position, but it would not be suitable to address our true main issue.

I appreciate the need for concise communication. I also seewhy we need to present the devs with an idea that they will not instantly be put off by due to the volume of work it represents. If you need to edit your idea, trim it down to a palatable morsel of information, I would rather see us work to that end. Perhaps the devs will put this solution off and maybe they won't, but they need to understand the depth of the problems Politicians feel they have with the profession. Moreover they need to understand that we know what we want in the way of gameplay and can suggest comprehensive solutions as well as small, cleverones. And, frankly put, the sooner the idea is planted the sooner it might see implementation of some kind.

And I do hope you aren't too taken aback by my above statements Bajeezus. I understand your reservations and yet respectfullydisagree. I do hope that you aren't put off.

- Acroyear

- PS - Thanks for the kind nod toward my own contribution.