Politician Archive

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Brutus_TOD wrote:

You all may think its a dumb idea, but what if we took it from a banker point of view.

After several warnings, time period, whatever, the dead house can be SEIZED by the mayor. Much like a bank would do to an unpaid mortgage. Have it so that after all the warnings and such go by, the mayor is notified that the house is up for Seizure and he is added to the Administration list, but with the power to also redeed and/or destroy the house. I think taking this approach would also help get rid of dead houses and malls. And the items inside do not get destroyed. Just my two cents

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The problem with this one is that the devs will consider it griefing. I think the best solution to lost items from a destroyed structure is to put the items into a temporary bank account of sorts. Allow me to explain for those of you who missed the first page of the thread:

-A player structure will decay according to the current rules on the live servers. Once a structure hits 0 condition, the structure will delete itself.

-Upon deletion, all items within the structure are transferred to a temporary safety deposit box at the nearest bank.

-The items will remain in this temporary safety deposit box for no more than say... 7 days (maybe even 30 days). If a player does not withdraw all items from that temporary safety deposit box within the 7 day time period, the safety deposit box will delete itself, along with all items inside of it.

To me, this seems like one of the fairest methods for dealing with dead structures. So, if you forgot to pay maintenance on your harvestors and they go poof, your resources are in a temp safety deposit box. Or, if you didn't put enough credits into your house for the weekend and it went poof, your items are still alive in the safety deposit box.

Sure, this isn't a quick fix. But, it is a solution to both sides of the problem. On one hand players won't lose their stuff if they forgot to pay their maintenance fora few days. While on the other hand, mayors are only forced to deal with the existing decay rules.

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Trean wrote:

Mainly, this will be a cop out for the devs. They will push Politician revamp to last because it doesn't cost people anything to get it so they shouldn't be complaining as much about it.

Yeah someone sniffed this one out way back when the 0 pt theory was first introduced, and now here it is, hey we don't know how to make your profession worthwhile nor do we want to expend the effort at the moment so lets just make this useless profession(a little exageration) worth nothing literally.

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Folks, Trean hit the nail here. Zero skill points is a true cop out by the devs. We get the same old cities with same old ability for zero cost now.

People have posted that griefingcan occur with thecurrent way the politician is set up. True. Butnow with 0 skill points it opens the flood gates. Now ittakes very little effort. There is no checks and balances in the game to prevent a new mayor destroying a city hall.Anyone care to bet we won't hear some screaming later frompoliticians or residents about this being a bad decision? Those that argue that majority rules or you weren't a good enough mayor to get all the votes, well, that is hogwash. Majority rules DOES NOT equal the best. Any good mayor can lose an election if his/her supporters forget to vote or take a few weeks off from the game.

I agree with skill point reductionAND at the same time a change in the skills that politicians have to mean something. I have argued for a pyramid structure of the politicianprofession.

To be honest, I'm not sure I agree with the 0 skill points for politician. In my mind, politician requires a fair amount of dedication, which is reflected in a requirement for skill points. I fear that looking at this as politicians some will fail to see the greater implication. While this will allow politicians to gain more skills, it will also allow everyone to pick up politician on the side. Without having to sacrifice anything for the ability, I fear that many will run for office and become mayors of cities without any thought of how difficult they are to maintain. Citys could be taken over by the popular citizens with little interest in making them better, and by the time they get back into the hands of someone that cares they've become a shambles.

Furthermore, I see a number of complaints coming from people who become politicians for the heck of it, but can't place a city due to planets reaching their limit. Planets are already quite crowded, and I fear that the developers might cave in on this and suddenly you won't be able to travel more than 500m without entering another city. In my mind the number of player cities has already made the planets seem too small due to the lack of wilderness. I remember back when krayt hunting was an adventure with the long walk from Mos Entha, whereas it's now just a shuttle away. It's like they're destroying much of the content based in adventure in an attempt to create more.

I'm more a fan of having a few good player cities with a few dedicated mayors. I fear removing the skillpoint requirement will go against both of these things. One of the best points of the politician community is that there are a few knowledgeable people that care about more than grinding the profession in it. The threads on this board always seem to be on topic and generally helpful. I fear that when this change goes into effect there will be many that enter the profession on a whim and ruin cities due to their lack of real interest while posting thread upon thread about how to grind the profession for l337 tags instead of trying to create content for their citizens.

Not trying to sound confrontational about this, but I hope people balance the utility of this change to their own politician characters with the implications for the politician profession as a whole.

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Chavabegga wrote:
I support the no skill points. I am one of those guys who have wanted to play politician but have not wanted to spend all those skill pts on something of limited use.

Having contested elections allows for the chance for new life to be breathed into cities. People may start caring about their cities if there is a chance someone could replace their mayor. Thats always been a possibility but now people might actually try. Much more fun that way.

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What if I am one of those guys who always wanted to play a Pistoleer/Swordsman/Armorsmith/Doctor/Politician/Smuggler? Should I really push for all those professions not to cost any skillpoints?

This change is bad. Politician is a serious profession. To have a successful city, you absolutely don't have to be a Master Politician. You can reduce the skillpoints needed to invest in this profession by choosing the skills your city really needs.

If you consider Politician to be an alt/mule profession, why are you even interested in having a Politician character then? Wouldn't it be better to find a proper player who is actually interested in the profession to be the mayor of your city and cooperate with him/her instead of pushing for such silly 'fixes'? What's in the next patch, nothing costs skillpoints, everything around you dies when you push the 'kill' button and all new players get a money printing machine?

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josslyn wrote:

What business is it of ours or anyone for that matter who drops a city?
It is not our business, however if 90% of us care enough (like i would think we do) about this Profession and the future development of this profession then we better damn well start speaking up and voicing our concerns. Setting the SP at 0 is a COP OUT... plain and simple. I'm sorry, but I have a great deal of passion for this profession. This is a profession that MANY of us that have spent months and some over a year on because we have wanted to. NOBODY forces us to pick it up.. it was our choice. You don't want to spend the SP then don't pick it up.. simple as that. Like you stated above, we all PAY to play the game... so if someone feels they have been "wasting" their SP on this "dead" profession, by all means drop it. Play your game how you want to and quit making those of us that actually care about the future of this profession suffer.

And second off.. don't ever again imply that I don't take pride in my city or everyone involved in the creation of my city. Everyone that knows me on my server will simply state that i am the most well known MAYOR on Gorath. Not because of the pride i take, or the many lost hours of sleep to make sure everything was running smooth around the city.. but because i interact with everyone that enters my city or along my many travels across the galaxy. I'm sorry, but MY personal opinion (and last i checked we are all entitled to our opinions) is that if you get Player A thinking "oh boy, lets go start a city just because (not hard to gather up 10 players).. so these players create their fun little city and all go inactive (worst scenerio case) and viola we have another "dead" city. And honestly, the more i think about it.. I'm not even fully concerned with random players thinking they can drop cities.. i am worried about hostile takeovers. This is being made way too easy to do now.

Don't come in here bashing ppl for their opinions.. what one views as a good idea in their eyes may not be the case for another. As i'm sure all our parents used to say at one point or another "if you don't have nothing nice to say, don't say it at all".

Chasity
Force Sensitive TKM

Destinee
Solace City Mayor

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Now Solace rocks, I'll be the first to acknowledge that, but if the following occur:

1. Enough people that dislike you or DF or whatever gain citizenship in the city and one of them runs for mayor.
2. No one votes for you.
3. You lose the election.

You deserved it, beacuse at each and every point you could have done something.

1. Had you (and your militia) made sure that new citizens meshed well with the current populace via zoning rights (i.e. screening), then there wouldn't have been a problem.
2. Had you rallied your base and really got out the vote, you would have won.
3. Had the "loyal" citizens left the city to die, then they new mayor would have only gained a shell of Solace.

In an election, I don't see any hostile takeovers. If you didn't make sure that people who came to the cities didn't have it out for you and you didn't get the vote out, then you deserved to lose. It's not like there is a gank squad outside your RL house waiting to pounce on you, no, the people vote in an orderly manner and you may lose. If that's hostile, well bring the riot gear when I go drop my voter registration off.

But to bring this back on point, the idea of "hostile takeovers" is just silly with any kind of election. If the majority votes to kick you out, that's the game mechanics.

Lastly, while we have differing opinions about the skill point issue, this disscussion needs to also focus on the maintence issue. With a Politician community so divided over both things, the least we can ask the Devs is to hold off on the two changes until some agreement can be reached.

oookay, so the "concise", "short", and "respect" went down the hole... nope, I didn't read those posts, nor will I take them into consideration. if you can't be civil, don't post at all.

update on TC: the skillpoint refund seems to work now, however when I tried to go train I realized I ran out of (dev-given) xp, and TC was down shortly after. I'll check on it later today.



p.s.: this includes fonts/colors that hurts my eyes, as I've warned in the initial post... really really hard to read, and as you can see I have enough posts to deal with as is.

seems that TC will be flooded this weekend, so I'm not sure if I'll get to test anything. I'll have to see.

Message Edited by Pappi on 01-21-2005 05:24 PM

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furrycat wrote:
I want to add my voice to the "hurrah" column regarding skillpoint reductions. It was in my top five when issues were being polled and ended up in the community top five so to see a reaction from the developers is encouraging.

The argument that zero skillpoints will open the floodgates for hostile takeovers and people starting cities just to get the Master Politician badge does not hold water. A Novice can already defeat a Master in an election for an expenditure of 15 points, which people who really do just want to grief your city are already more than happy to pay. Politician skillpoint costs are NOT a barrier to entry for dabblers. They ARE a barrier to progress for fulltime mayors who have to sacrifice other parts of their template or forever drop and relearn Politician boxes. Bring on the change and let's see how many cities are taken over or how many Master farming outposts spring up: my guess is no more than now.

At the same time I must put myself in the "boo" column on the maintenance issue. Just as our enthusiasm for the changes which allowed inactive mayors to be voted out more easily was tempered by the reduction in XP gain for many mayors, so again we are presented with something we asked for alongside something we didn't ask for and don't want. Whilst having maintenance automatically paid into houses when the owner walks in will prevent active players accidentally losing their structures (a good thing), the negative consequences of abandoned buildings staying in the world forever have been much discussed. Several people have posted ideas on how to tackle this problem. Any one of them is better than what was posted in the TC patch notes a few days ago.

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If a melee stacker wanted to grief a city by running for mayor and winning and then destroying the city hall, they had to make a sacrifice to their character to do this. The other option was to buy another copy of the the game. Now for the real dedicated person, this would not be a deterrent, they would do it. For someone wanted to do it but did not have fanatical dedication to do this, wouldn't do because it will be too much of a sacrifice to their template. No with zero skill points, there is no sacrifice. So no the uber combat template can pwnd NS during the day and then pwnd the citizens of city once elected. How many mayors out there now are going to be much more cautious in allowing new citizens in? And if we begin to become more cautious and start turning future residents down, it does not help build any sense of community in the game.

The bottom line, this DOES NOTHING for player cities. NOT ONE DAMN THING! This is nothing but a quick and easy nerf in an attempt to appease mayors while not addressing the true issues that we as mayors face daily - something that makes our profession a worthwhile investment. Zero skill points just makes this profession more of a second thought profession that isn't worth much attention.

I'm still looking for concrete info on the maint change. Husband brings up an interesting point.... He recently had a fully maintenanced factory full of components and mats *poof* with no warning emails. CSRs, of course, claimed they could do nothing over 3 different tickets. He's 99.9999999% positive that it had at least 5K of maintenance in it.

So, in that light, I can see that this is a semi-good thing. Or at least, OK. I think that if you look at it in that light, the maint is a cop-out as well. Instead of taking the effort to track, find, and fix the bug of funded structures popping, they're just going to make them pull from the bank for a while. Which hamstrings poli's. Which runs the very real risk of cluttering our cities. Especially if there's no notification to mayors when a structure is "condemned".

I don't know. I want some more details before I comment fully on the maint changes. I see why they're doing it, and it looks to me as a Software Quality Assurance Specialist that they're (Dev) not doing their job. An issue has been identified, and we're getting the "It's too much work to figure out why that's happening, so we're going to code a work-around."

Message Edited by Moonkat on 01-21-2005 08:21 PM

Although the thought of getting my skill points back makes me excited, I don't believe the Politician profession should be able to be entered so easily. Mayors have shown dedication to their cities by delegating their skill points. However, the return on this investment is not always seen. Mayors put more of their money into the cities than most other citizens usually, and mainly do not take salaries. I'm happy for the reward of skill points, but also feel like this may be "open season" for the Politician profession. The positives is it will force Mayors to be more active and attentive. I'd like to see some requirement above the 500 AXP. Reduced skill points? Maybe a quest? Just some other thing to show to the voters that a potential candidate is serious about the election and the prospect of running a city.

As for the housing maintenace issues, I also can see the good and the bad about the proposal. I think having housing maintenance debited from the bank is a good idea. One thing I would like to see is admins of the building given the ability to enter a condemmed house and settle its bill. SWG has always been a good game for people who are not hardcore, because they can take time off when life needs it, without having to worry about too many reprecussions. I know many players who have needed to leave the game for various RL reasons (cancelling accounts short term, and remaining on paid hiatus). These players have been able to maintain much of what they accomplish because they designate stewards to watch things for them. I would hate for SWG to become one of those games that you MUST play, not because you want to, but because conditions dictate you HAVE to.

Most of all, my wish as a Politican would be to gain new abiilities. Like many of the previous posters, I think it would be a good thing if mayors were granted some kind of options or powers over the condemmed buildings. I would much rather GAIN abilities to help my city then to LOSE requirements.

Message Edited by LaurieNabierre on 01-21-2005 09:55 PM