Politician Archive

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last week in politics

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I'm sure most of you have seen this by now, but here's a link for those of you who hasn't:

publish 11.2

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City Voting Rules Update

The system for electing a new mayor has changed. Voting is now held every 3 weeks. City maintenance still occurs every week. A citizen who registers to run may now unregister from the vote terminal. The mayor may unregister as well. Changes to the voting roster are only allowed during the first two weeks of each election cycle. The citizen with the most votes wins the election.

You MUST explicitly cast a vote in order to be counted. Abstentions no longer count as votes for the incumbent.

Experience point grants for winning votes have been tripled. The incumbent mayor also receives a weekly 750 point experience bonus.




Voting System Fixes / Changes

* Voting will change to take place every 3 weeks. City maintenance will be unaffected.
* Candidates, including the incumbent, will be able to opt out of the election at the city voting terminal. Everyone gets an email when this happens.
* You may register to run in the race during the first 2 weeks of the election. Everyone gets an email when someone registers. In order to block email spam abuse, players will only be able to register/unregister once in a 24 hour period.
* Votes that are not actively cast for a candidate will no longer be counted.
* The mayor will be elected by the majority of voters who participate.
* Politician XP for receiving votes will be tripled.
* The sitting mayor will receive a weekly Politician XP bonus of 750 points. This will allow mayors to advance if their citizens are apathetic about voting.
* A method for sending a city version update email to all city citizens will be added. This way each citizen will receive an in-game email detailing the new changes.

Bug Fixes

* Players that are banned will no longer be able to take a shuttle to the city they are banned from.
* Commands that allowed banned players to buy tickets and travel in cities they were banned from are now fixed.
* Structures will no longer be transferable to players who are banned from the city.
Public structures containing vendors will be transferable without requiring the vendors be removed

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I know not everyone likes this change, but you can only please so many people at once. These are much needed changes for many politicians. Player cities are communities; Therefore if you're a mayor paying for your city expenses and is worried about mission payout, prehaps it's time to talk to your citizens and work out a plan. Events like city-wide hunts or fundraisers are great for both the treasury and bringing your citizens closer.

We're not likely going to get any "feature requests" in any time soon. Feature requests are anything that have to be added into the game, as oppose to bugs and exploits. Suggestions are always welcomed, but please note the devs aren't monitoring this forum and probably won't see these posts. I read all the posts that are reasonable, but not every suggestion will make it on the list, especially ones that folks can't agree on. I will be polling our newest top 5 this week, since resignation is also off our old list as well as garages. please don't post them here though, this is still a "how is your city doing" thread.

now for news on New Unity:

aftering justG using Tiggs' computer to hunt me down and ask for my permission, GreenMarine did a "hostile" takeover of NU actually, it wasn't really hostile as much as just him changing himself to mayor with his dev-ly powers, but it was kinda funny. he "forced" a few elections to debug his code, but no treasury funds were used. TC was having some problems, and I finally managed to log in after he was almost done. he insisted that he transfer the city back to me, while I mentioned that I wouldn't mind him taking mayor for a while

That's about it for exciting events, I donno if the poli forum can take much more so how was your city this week?

note: the changes are in tomorrow, so get ready

The new changes may have heralded the start of the end for the city of Draicco.

After waiting many months for the chance, I decided that the new system would allow me to step down from the Mayoralship of the city (which I have held for over a year) and pass it onto another resident.

My wishing to leave the role is more to do with the stress associated with running a city for so long on a single account than a wish to see the city die. The stress I have found in running the city over the last 12 months, of the constant having to always drop and pick up skills when the situation dictates, of having to stop what I am doing at any given moment to look after residents needs, constant struggles with recruiting and with initially raising funds for the treasury so we can maintain our tax-free environment has taken its toll on my enjoyment of the game, even to the extend that I had to take a break for a month to regain my sense of enjoyment in the game.

An initial email went out to all of the residents asking that someone nominate themselves and we would arrange for the citizens that are left in the game (not that many sad to say) to come and vote. To date though no one has expressed any interest in doing the job. Most of the senior residents have been approached about running but all have said they can't do it without seriously affecting other aspects of their gameplay. They are all aware of the penalties (both to a players financial status and from a gameplay point of view) involved with being a mayor, the issues surrounding the new xp granting regime and the loss of much needed skill and ap points needed to pickup novice. And I must admit I can't really blame them for their opinions.

The current discussion now is centred around setting up someones 2nd account as the mayor and running it as a collective. It's sad that the game mechanics surrounding Player Cities is in such a state that the role of Mayor is seen as being such a poisoned chalice and is a role only worthy of what essentially will be a MayorBot (which is funny as it increasingly looks like our resident dancingbot will double as the MayorBot ).

The alternative to this is the destruction of the city and the wasting of its 42m in cash reserves, numerous parks and gardens - and the ending of one of the oldest player cities on Valcyn.

With JtL, Player Cities are fast loosing their influence amongst players, especially given that all space based activites now centre on the NPC cities. Many people are drifting away from the cities and the most common reference to them now is that they are irrelevant, a waste of space and an unneccesary expense. For most, having a house 1k from Theed, Coronet, Bestine or any other major NPC city puts you 2 minutes away from being in space. Living in a Player city puts you at least 10 minutes away with an added overhead. Combine this with the group nerf and players are less willing to part with money in the form of taxes to live in a city that now only offers them half of what they can get by living in a single house on the outskirts of a NPC City.

The lack of support that devs have shown to the remote planets like Talus, Rori and Lok means that any player cities on these planets will struggle to survive. On Talus this is especially true. I have spent so long trying to sell the benefits of the planet that I was succeeding well - until JtL relegated the planet to a station hanging off the planet of Corellia. Now it is easy to fly from any point in the galaxy to anywhere else...with the exception of Talus.

And that more than anything else has mean't the slow death of our much loved city.

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krigo wrote:

No changes in my city this week. All the XP I was supposed to get today was lost due to the "upgrade". So, this can be repeated for the next three weeks.

"I know not everyone likes this change". I've met very few who do. Established mayors have nothing to worry about. New mayors are the ones getting screwed.

"but you can only please so many people at once". Who are you pleasing exactly? Oh I forgot, this game is only about Jedi. The rest of the careers are just an experiment for the developers. I would drop mayor in a heartbeat, but no one is stupid enough to pick up the burden after this trainwreck.

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hon, I don't work for SOE, and don't get paid to read complains. I don't make final decisions.

I'm also not the one starting petitions about being able to resign. people asked for it, and they got it. talk to your city about your situation. if they care enough about the city they live in, voting once every 3 week should not be a hassle.