Politician Archive

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MTolwyn wrote:

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Pappi wrote:

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MTolwyn wrote:

1) fix city caps

there are several large level 3 cities with 70+ citizens out there waiting for 10+ months now to advance and just get the weekly "Screw you!" mail

2) master box

3) city get s a percentage of the mission payouts and also of money the trainer charge for their training

4) factional city decorations

5) message board in the city hall where citizens can post mesages

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hon, there's nothing wrong with the city cap itself, rather the server's not updating them correctly. you can ask them to implement char purging and let these (well deserved) cities have their rank, but raising city cap isn't an option.

also, anything factional would probably be covered in the GCW revamp, which *should* happen before the poli one if ours happen.

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with fix city caps i didnt necessarily mean to raise them. GM or TH (not sure anymore) mentionend a long time ago that they are going to change the city advancement system.
The character purging would help a lot but will never happen, and without inactivity rule and unlimited cross server citizen supply nothing will change ever in the current system.
And in case the miracle happens that a city fall like we had on our planet, the servers screwed it up and didn t update the cap count.

ok replace factional deco with deco (general & faction)

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cool, just making sure you knew

I can remember a dev thinking out load (or was it our correspondent reporting) about the politician skill tree having more a pyramid form, effectivly reducing skill costs. Although I don't think reducing the skill cost to zero would be a very good idea, since it could lead to very unstable city situations, I do think the game shouldn't "punish" the socialisers so much (thanks again for lowering the lot costs for PA-Halls - although it was only a result of the way MP ships are implemented). After all, at least for me this is the one field that distinguishes SWG from most other MMORPGs (except that it's Star Wars).

But if the skill are going to cost the person playing the mayor something, then they need to be worth something. They shouldn't be "through aways" to use only once. And they shouldn't only be to drop or maintain civic structurs, but they should really help in being a mayor and improve the fun factor of this profession.

What I can also see in this field is the "post-master" content. Being able to use experience to improve the city ... or to use them in "politician quests" or even in elections to buy votes for (very small) corrupt advantages of experienced mayors over "newcomers".

On a side note: I love the new voting system, because it actually puts the mayor in an active (RP kind of) role to collect votes to stay in power and to gather experience. But I do think you should get 3x or even 5x XP per vote (since it's only every 3 weeks - and it's much harder to ask for active votes).

Something new "worth while" skills could do is create more player city content. Being able to generate creative multilevel quests would add so much to the role of PCs in this game and would allow cities to really differ from one another.

But content shouldn't stop at "only being mayor". Mayor isn't the profession - it's called politician! So what's with those who are politicians but not mayors? Or who are mayors and who want to earns some extra credits + XP? We really need politician missions, involving diplomatic relations between the many factions and NPC settelments in this game. This would also add so much depth to the game world (of course it would also require tons of work).

A long time ago there were thoughts of politicians being able to do something simulare to what image designers can do now - keyword "faction migration" - politicians that earn certain faction points for the many factions in this game should be alloud to tweak the faction settings of other players to a certain extent (not including rebel/imperial)

Of course player cities also have to look like cities in SWG. We need to be alloud to place far more items. I hope with the database clearings (that should have come by now but might be posponed - deleting of 6 month old characters was set back) we might have a chance for this. But decorations shouldn't just be looks - I would really like to actually sit on a bench or a chair in my café.

Further more PCs are visually still not much than a lot of cloned looking houses next to each other - mostly with a lot of spare space between them (especialy on tatooine). A fealing of roads through pavement would really bring the biggest city resemblance in my opinion (and I distinctly remember our first correspondent telling us this was in consideration by the devs). But also the tools in NPC cities are missing in our cities - especially crafting machines.

Worth while skills could also be access to better interfaces. A detailed finance report is what many have already said, or the ability to see who's the owner of a structur. Better decoration placing abilities, or maybe even the skill to place buildings outside the normal grid (offset or rotated).

Ways of better communication would be a blast. Of course ingame message boards might be a bit far fetched (although they were once on the "features of SWG" list pre-release) - but the abbilety to system message citizens or everybody in the city boarders - or to add a little phrase to every structur sign in the city radius ...

Edit: Oh my ... I forgot to add /citywarn. I really think we need a form to execute the law of our communities. And I for one am totaly against simply raising the timer. The 30 seconds where already a drag for anybody who wanted to seriously roleplay a city conflict through the function of the militia. /citywarn should simply not work in cities with a certain distance to special POIs, and visitors should be warned properly (the way the devs once introduced the feature pre-release - a pop up with details of the recent /citywarn numbers)

I'm not at all for lowering maintenance costs, I'm for offering various possibilities of financing these costs. Of course sales tax have to be fixed. Without them cities can't realisticaly cover the maintenance with the city features we are given. But cities could again differ so much from one another and set their tax levels individually to their needs if they had more sources.

Missions were already mentioned. It's working with faction bases ... What about trainers? Or insurance? Cloning?

Oh ... I already mentioned missions for politicians (not only mayors) to earn money for themselves - they can also donate something

1. Actually looking like a city (more decorations that really define a city)


2. Missions for Politicians (Money, XP and above all FUN not only for mayors)


3. Tools for Communication (system messages - mass-tells)


4. Skill cost vs skill value (can't really break this one down as it all plays together)


5. Tax variaty (missions, trainers, fix sales tax ...)

Edit: Dang - grafical editing created unalloud 'styl=' HTML codes - and HTML editing destroyed layout

Edit 2: can't even write "styl3=" in text without getting error

Edit 3: forgot to add /citywarn - though I find the other topics more urgent

Message Edited by DaQuilla on 11-24-2004 10:57 AM

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Scoooter wrote:

1) Fix taxes/specializations/reduce weekly maint. A Half million credits for a city is a *huge* credit sink that is 26 Meeelion credits a year for a city that (realistically) is only 80 or so players- what "palpable" benefits are there to this enormous *waste* of credits?!? Give us something for our credits!!!!!!

2) Ability to see structure owners

3) Ability to evict/remove old structures in a non grieving fashion

4) Place back double specialization in master box/make politician skills cost either nothing like pilot skills *or* reduced like FS skills-politicians now are doomed to being either alt characters or gimped in combat/crafting/hunting with the politician skill point *albatross* around their neck.

5) A report that details the where the city income is coming from durring a cycle. Donations, which taxes or frees brought in what amounts.

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Alternatively, the decorations being fixed as well, having streetlamps *not count* towards total.

*And numbers 2 and 3 above could be combined into one Issue under "house/lot management/city planning" or whatever.

Also, the issues added on to point 1) may make it count for two issues...

Lastly, give Scoooter a hand everyone for putting the best of the issues together! *cue applause*

Good luck Pappi!

**I just saw where Pappi mentioned that GM is working on sales tax, but with my additions to it I let it stand**

I would love to have the specializations work and I would like to see the weekly city cost lessened , there is no sound reasoning why it needs to be so much, its a huge kick in the bo jangles each week.

Message Edited by Finnean on 11-25-2004 09:30 AM

1. Reduce Skill point cost
Politician is a profession without personal gain. We cannot make money with this skill nor contribute anything in group hunts or similar. And I can't see a possibility to make something up for this, it would never fit this profession.

2. Outside Placement of Items
Allow structure owner to place Items within the whole footprint of their structure, including balcony/roof area. Dunno if this is technically possible. In addition, the mayor should be allowed to place items in/on civic buildings/parks. Oh and fix the "Mission terminal drops through the floor" bug while you're on it.

3. Fix the Skilltree
At least 2 Skills are completely useless: Stronghold makes no sense without /citywarn, oh and does someone mentioned the Master box already?

4. House Movement
For better City planning allow citizens to give a special /consent to the mayor so s/he can rotate and even move whole structures without getting all items out of it first. Of course the mayor must drop it again within city limits. If he fails to do so after a short time, the house returns to its original location. After the drop, /consent is removed automatically.

5. More Decorations
Must-have Top5. Give us more lamps, statues and parks, and make up some new decorations. Fences, Gates, Hedgerows would come to mind for that. Make Walls/Fences adjusting their size up to a max if you place them between obstacles and create doors automatically to prevent griefing.

1. Player craftable missions. I love the idea of setting up adventures for my citizens (like the excellent "Clue" game suggested here), but atm this requires co-ordinating real players and asking them to stand there and repeat the same line ad naseum. Let mayors set up NPCs with simple scripting as part of temporary city adventures. Allowing limited placement of interior objects in exterior city locations would also be very helpful (I want some beach chairs on the beach!). This would allow mayors to really customize their cities and have running adventures for those who visit. I know for sure that this would have saved several of my citizens who have since left for the "content" of WoW. If SWG is supposed to be carried on player created content, then give us the tools to create the content!


2. Remove or greatly increase (at least double) the decoration cap for streetlights, and add street signs.


3. I understand that deformable terrain is out of the question, but some kind of "road" texture would be nice. At the very least, collidable flora should not be rendered in city limits.


4. Beef up /cityban further - banned individuals should be warped outside of city limits when they attempt to enter. Of course this will never happen because of the POI boondoggle. We can't move one single city and then fix the problem by making POIs no-build zones becuase that would inconvenience the bunch of griefers who decided to screw everyone else by building their city around the POI in the first place. I'm glad to see the Devs still have their moral compasses pointing due south.


5. Until these and a few other things happen, reduce or remove the skill point cost of politician.

I have (and will probably continue to for the foreseeable future) supported this game and this profession because I see the tremendous potential both hold. Sadly, it's getting harder and harder to do so. I see many of my citizens leaving (eight in the last week) for what they perceive to be greener pastures, and all I can say is "WoW... you're leaving too?" One can only hold so many speeder races, scavenger hunts, PvP contests and lotteries before even those start to get stale. if I had the tools to make the city into what it should be and create compelling content, I would, but as with the POIs, I don't see anything like that happening, because the devs obviously can't figure out how to develop a game system that isn't subject to exploitation by every 13-year old jacka$$ that figures out how to twist it for their own immature benefit or amusement. If I sound bitter, it's because I am, but mostly I'm tired of feeling teabagged by the very people who are making this game.

As always, thanks for your work here Pappi, you know that none of this is directed at you. In fact, I'm sure you feel some of the same things I'm feeling. Please let me know when they stop kicking us in the proverbial pills.

Message Edited by Reggi on 11-25-2004 05:11 PM

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Reggi wrote:

1. Capital City Certification (Master Politician Only) will allow the city to expand another 100M in Diameter.

a. Must have 200+ Citizens

b. Must have Master Politician Skill

c. Grants Mayor the Ability to Place the Capitial Building

Good idea, but 200 is far too much, because not every city is built on flat ground. I could never, even with small houses, get 200 residents in the cuttent location without a flattening tool. Also, another 100 m is a problem if two cities are close together. For example, Farpoint and Farpoint Valley have 1000 m from City Hall to City Hall. If Farpoint became Capital (on Tatooine, Bestine will degrade ) Farpoint Valley could never grow to Metropolis because of the 100 m city distance limit.

2. More Diverse City Structures

a. Bridges

b. Walls (can be flown over with a speeder, like the walls in Nashal) - The wall much have an entrance / exit if a wall encirclesastructure or city.

c. Road Tiles

3. Double City Specilization at master

4. Enhanced City Security (And possibly making your city an Imperial / Rebel Strong hold.. which would have to be coordinated with the Mayor and a factional recruiter and involve the exchange of Money (bribe) and Faction points. Would place Storm Troopers / Rebel Commandos on city streets for security and allow the Mayor to place turrets and faction scanners in the city).

5. City Communication (For example like in a PA the Guild leader can communicate with all of the Guild members by send out a guild mail.. an equivelent is needed for mayor)

6. Need to determin who lives in what house (We should be able to radial menu the house sign and determine:

a. Current Maintenance on the House

b. Who is the Owner

c. Who uses this house as a residence

Yes, that would copme handy

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