Politician Archive
Thread: The Politician Skillpoint Question
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cnlfailure
Mon Nov 29, 2004 3:16 am
#1
In our current Top 5 there are many politicians asking for the skillpoint cost to either be reduced or removed entirely so I thought I'd take this opportunity to make a counter argument.
Don't get me wrong, for the abilities you get with politician right now the skillpoint cost is harsh in the extreme, effectively reducing your skill pool by a third, yet I don't want to see the cost necessarily reduced or removed. There are two basic reasons for this :
1 - it would open the doors to "less dedicated" politicians. Right now you have to demonstrate a certain amount of dedication to take on the role of mayor as there is personal sacrifice required. Diminishing the skill point cost would open it up to everyone, rathing than keeping ita specialised profession. The likelihood of griefing organisations who existed purely to take over and destroy cities would also increase, as there would be no personal cost involved.
2 - it gives the devs a cop-out to developing this profession. Rather than introducing a purpose to the politician class, which it sorely needs, reducing or scrapping the points cost would be far simpler to implement and personally I'd far sooner have more powers to provide entertainment and activities for my citizens based on the profession.
Scrapping the skill cost, while not introducing further political abilities would further demote this profession to the least developed in the game, and for me that would be a great shame as it has the potential to be one of the most interesting.
Anyone got any other views?
Malitevv
Mon Nov 29, 2004 4:07 am
#2
I agree. Removing skill point costs is a cop out. I'd rather see the profession enhanced and fixed then see it converted into a non-profession.
Dawney
Mon Nov 29, 2004 4:31 am
#3
cnlfailure wrote:2 - it gives the devs a cop-out to developing this profession. Rather than introducing a purpose to the politician class, which it sorely needs, reducing or scrapping the points cost would be far simpler to implement and personally I'd far sooner have more powers to provide entertainment and activities for my citizens based on the profession.Scrapping the skill cost, while not introducing further political abilities would further demote this profession to the least developed in the game, and for me that would be a great shame as it has the potential to be one of the most interesting.Anyone got any other views?
My problem is that i cannot think of any additional abilites added to the politician without making drastic changes to the system. Which means we will not see such a change anytime soon.
/emote points to the smuggler profession where anyone with a sane mind can think of lots of abilities to add to the smuggler
Most politicians are probably on a second support-only account already. I would like to keep it on my main char; and i would also like to get a reason to skill it back up to master again. Failing to see that such a reason will come along in 2004 or even 2005, skill point reduction may be a good thing.
However, the basic 15SP cost for the Novice should stay to discourage an "everyone is politician" scenario.
Khristen
Mon Nov 29, 2004 9:40 am
#4
I disagree that "most" politicians are on a second account. There are a lot of dedicated, active mayors out there.
There are many things they could do for the politician profession. Yes, it means work for the devs, but I would much rather see an increase in politician skills than a decrease in skill point cost. Make the profession worth something rather than worth nothing--which is what it would be with no skill point cost.
Some possible skills for politicians:
Connections: allows a mayor to receive discounts on repairs, travel fees, and chassis brokers as well asdiplomatic immunity from Imperial scans. They can also get an increased payout on mission terminals. Maybe be able to give "morale bonuses" with a rousing speech. Lots of possibilities here.
City Planning Tools:allows mayors the ability to see a larger "placing screen" for structures, give mayors the ability to create temporary-use schematics for things to customize gardens and civic buildings (optional components for architect schematics) that act as a "city contract" for construction, the ability to customize PA Hall banners on structres they are admin on (in a manner similar to merchants being able to change sign styles). I doubt we'll ever see things that alter the terrain (other than placeable items that cannot be placed over) simply because of the coding, but there are many things that can be added to help city planning.
Communication Tools: city signposts that can have city information on them, message of the day tools, treasury reports....I've read several posts with these kinds of things here and in the PA forums. Lots of excellent suggestions.
Control over their city: grant mayor's the ability to appoint pre-set positions such as a city planner, secretary, or militia captain to assist with certain skills (similar to adding someone to the militia), give some form of /cityban that actually bans a player from a city (let the devs/CSRs deal with POI griefing on an individual basis; they're the exception, not the norm), the ability to examine house signs and determine the owner's name and house condition (just a simple addition of information on the examine window with owner's name and condition percentage would do the trick).
New structures/specializations: More benefits for a player city. Bazaar terminals, hotels, generic military buildings, public crafting stations, and potentially starports/chassis brokersfor rank 5 cities. Give back the old specializations (working, of course) and add a few more like factional cities.
These are just a few possibilities for mayor skills. I've heard many, many other good ones in other threads. Give mayors a benefit for their skill points rather than just eliminating the need for skill points.
HiroBlack
Mon Nov 29, 2004 11:10 am
#5
Cnlfailure, that is an excellent, well thought out counterpoint to the widely popular "remove the skill points" arguement. Having said that, I'm still not swayed to agree with your position. As an ex-Master Politician who was extremely active in running a player city (and I still am, just without the profession), allow me to offer an alternate view based on my experiences.
1 - it would open the doors to "less dedicated" politicians. Right now you have to demonstrate a certain amount of dedication to take on the role of mayor as there is personal sacrifice required. Diminishing the skill point cost would open it up to everyone, rathing than keeping ita specialised profession. The likelihood of griefing organisations who existed purely to take over and destroy cities would also increase, as there would be no personal cost involved.
The merit here is that you've identified an element of the Politician game that sepparatesthem from the crowd of PA leaders and less formal group leaders: You have to be dedicated (or perhaps obsessed) with building and maintaining your city to hold the Politician profession. As it stands this is an entirely accurate statement. I differ with you on the cautionary vision you offer on the potential future ofplayer cities were thereno skill points required for Politician. I'd suggest that the reality would be very similar to that of RL politics. Anyone who is whole heartedly destructive would never be voted into office over an even remotely serious candidate. Even if they were, the damage a Politician could do would be limited to the removal of a handful of structures- statues, parks, streetlights, shuttle port, clone center, and of course City Hall. Were the city "destroyed" in this manner (as does occasionally happen even now), all of the other city structures would remain intact. This would allow a new Politician to place a new City Hall right where the last one stood, and rebuild the city's fixtures as expansion allowed. Its not a positive scenario, but then, its not completely disasterous either. Moreover, the fault would rest in no small part with the voters in the player city for electing a jerk.
2 - it gives the devs a cop-out to developing this profession. Rather than introducing a purpose to the politician class, which it sorely needs, reducing or scrapping the points cost would be far simpler to implement and personally I'd far sooner have more powers to provide entertainment and activities for my citizens based on the profession.
Scrapping the skill cost, while not introducing further political abilities would further demote this profession to the least developed in the game, and for me that would be a great shame as it has the potential to be one of the most interesting.
Anyone got any other views?
I like this point because it cuts to the core of the issue. If Politician offered much of anything to a player once the city was built up I suspect I would have retained the role instead of recruiting a qualified PA member to take the position over.
The bleak truth of the matter is that Politician is now and ever has been extremely low on the priority list for the developers. I've read (and generously contributed to) any number of conversations in the community about what could be done to enhance the profession and give us a purpose. Having walked this road for a while there is little that anyone (not even one of those with the SOE or LucasArts logo next to their forum names) could say that would convince me that things would ever seriously change for the Politician profession. Its unfortunate (Bajeezus in particular had some excellent ideas I thought), but that is our reality. Smugglers have been paid lip service since launch (and perhaps before, in beta), and they are an iconic profession in the Star Wars mythos (as it could be argued that Politician is, but I digress). We represent a small fraction of the player base for the game. Holding our breaths until we turn blue in hopes that they will finally take up any one of a thousand good suggestions will likely just leave us unconscious from lack of air.
So, as it stands now, without a revamp/rebalanace/upgrade/whateverthecurrentbuzzwordis of the Politician profession, the best band-aid to reward Politician with additional gameplay would be to allow them the skill points to pursue additional interests.
Respectfully Yours,
Acroyear
(former Master Politician, leader of the Guild of Descendants)
PsychoticChipmunk
Mon Nov 29, 2004 2:14 pm
#6
What is the correlation of skill point cost to content? How is that causality justified? Same goes with the "personal burden" that we mayors have to take on. If you want to be a master you chose that, otherwise you can go up the tree and place everything then drop back down to 0/1/2/0 and even that is assuming you have a changing plan. You could easily just drop the most likely/most used trainers and then never change them. The militia could become a restrictive group only involving the upper echelons of society (PA leaders and trusted advisors) so you only need novice politician to run the town. 15 skill points is nothing to any combat build, hell it's novice medicso now you're reliant on a doc.
The simple answer to your statement is simply this, do them both. Lower our skill points and give us more content.
Why and how would that be difficult? (Well more difficult then just adding content anyway) I'd be happy to have either and would love to have both.
The lowered skill points is much more realistic (and easy) to implementand itopens up more avenues for me to have while retaining my 3/4/4/4 standing. How is that a bad thing? Increased skills that allow us to go and create missions or control our area with more ease or babba ga noush would also be welcome. I'd be more then happy to get some new content I could create and have fun with my citizens beyond going out on guild hunts with them. Hell I really need to kick up my content anyhow since as it stands I'm inactive compared to some of you guys. And this is my only account!
DaQuilla
Tue Nov 30, 2004 1:57 am
#7
It's not like this discussion is new. And the devs have responded to this issue on fanfest. They are thinking about less skillpoints for the profession, but it will cost something. Aparantly there was a pyramid form in discussion.
I am also against completly getting rid of the skill point loss. Why are people even complaining? As it is now, you don't need to spend a lot of skillpoints on an efficiant mayor anyway. 0-1-2-4 is all you need (and only if you're planing on doing a lot of gardening with exotics). That's half of what a profession costs. And if you've been mayor some time you can even drop more skill boxes, since you can always buy them again with your stored 60k XP.
I do think however that a full 77SP for a master politician with the functionality he has now is totally over the top. I'd really like to see this "pyramid shape" in the game. But as Kristen has already pointed out, I think even with a pyramid shape, the spent skillpoints have to go into features the politician can really use again and again for himself to do his job better.
And I don't think you really need such a total overhaul of the system. Being able to see the owner of a house (maybe by examining the structure sign) was already in discussion. This would be a skill you'd have to keep if you want to use it (and I think I could use it pretty often).
Giving out system messages to people is already a feature the squad leader has. Also a skill that might come in really handy many times to help you as an organizer of a community.
At the moment I have only some politician skills (as they don't really aid me in entertaining a community) to save some for master merchant. With the 12 vendors I can put up I create city missions. If you could use variants of these vendors (vendors that don't sell anything - simply have text items in stock) you can create huge quests with the systems in the game already. This would be worth a lot to me (it's worth 92 skillpoints to me at the moment ... that's almost 3x my politician skill point cost !!!)
Of course I'd also love post-master and non-mayor content. I'd like to be able to spend politician XP for special things. Maybe changeing my faction standing (everything but rebel/imperial) also as non-mayor, improving chances of winning an ellection ("buy" 2-5% of votes with sevaral 1000 XP - but only once), maybe cut down maintenance (although I'm rather against lowering maintenance, I'd be happier to see a city being able to come up with the money through taxes from all citizens and vistors via sales, mission, trainer tax etc.) ...
But HiroBlack is definatly right about us being a very low priority. Before we will see any dev time there are still several focused publishes on Combat andGCW in front of us, and then those professions waiting even longer than our relativly new profession will want to finally get their long promissed share of changes. Unfortunalty, since Holocron has left the SWG project the dev focus has gone more and more away from the once so differing field of "player created contant for player communities" (not including Pex and his Event team, of course ... but unfortunalty they have little influence on the real game system developers)
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