Politician Archive
Thread: How interested are politicians in having a combat support role?
In our submission for solutions to our number one issue, we included:
Political Powers and Abilities
- Buffing citizens with "morale raising speeches"
- Improve faction standing with NPC groups on behalf of other players (/intercede)
- Improve faction gained by group from combat and missions
The "political speech" buff was mentioned a few times in the suggestions thread, once by Jaspor:
"...is it much of a stretch to say that people could get a similar "motivation" or "inspiration" from listening to a highly charismatic Politician give an emotional speech?"
EmperoressPalpatine suggests that Politcians be able to manipulate faction standing on behalf of other players by allowing the politician to...
"...talk to different factions and basically buy faction (No Imperial/Rebel faction, but the other ones in game like Gungun, or Nightsister, etc...), which you could then delegate to others."
Slugeater called it "Masterful Negotiation":
"By contacting the leaders of various factions on the same planet as his city, the Mayor will be able to bribe them so they might be less prone to attck the citizens of his city."
The concept of a politician being able to directly affect the behavior of NPCs was mentioned as well, by Mkappus:
"Have npc characters come to town that create different political opportunities or problems. Have the leader of the local thugs or spice fiends come to town and look to be bought off. Or have a small mission of negotiation to keep them from camping your city and being a nuisance."
Dosadi went right to the extreme with this suggestion:
"...politicians should be able to get into the power structures of the facitons and have an influence of where NPC troops are directed and where battles are fought. Why not have politician fighter templates? There could be a lot of game play involved with this and I think it would be a blast. Any ideas on skills though? Maybe like a creature handler for NPCs?"
I'm sorry not to be able to go through the entire thread and mention everyone who posted something regarding some combat or faction-politics support role for Politicians, but I did want to quote from a variety of the posts that came up to show that this is apparently a popular and widespread idea here.
From one extreme to the other...
I can easily see how the politician buff idea could be implemented, although the devs may argue that such an ability steps too heavily on the toes of the other buffing professions. We'll see if we get any reaction to it when they respond to our top-five.
I'd like to get your opinion on Dosadi's direction toward making Politicians have the ability to control NPCs, something like an Illusionist in a fantasy MMORPG, or something like a creature handler in SWG, but perhaps with only temporary contol of the NPC instead of ownership in the datapad, rationalized by something like a "bribery" or "persuasion" ability. Is that going to far from the gameplay you want and expect as a politician? Or do you agree that it would be an exciting new ability in combat that does not overlap with anything offered in other professions? Something that would make the profession fun for non-mayors, and would give value to some of the unused skill-boxes?
A middle-ground solution, NPC "crowd control"
What about using the suggestions regarding Politician ability to manipulate faction standing and reactions, and without going as far as making the Politician into a NPC-pet-control profession, interpret that faction intervention capability as a "crowd control" ability for use on NPCs?
Successful execution of this ability might turn a group of agressive NPCs non-agressive, while a non-successful attempt would aggro all targetted NPCs.
Successful use of this ability against already non-agressive NPCs would keep them from assisting one of their group members if one is attacked, until they are personally attacked themselves. Again, unsuccessful attempts would turn the non-agressive NPCs aggressive.
The politician's role in a combat group would then be much like that of the Illusionist in a fantasy MMORPG, "mesmerizing" groups of NPCs so that his own group can attack them one by one, which certainly sounds like something a particulary adept politician would be able to do, sowing the seeds of dissention amongst and enemy group, bribing some members, making promises to others to keep them out of the fight.
Would you want to see the profession go in this direction?
The big question isn't dreaming up the system, and it isn't up to us to determine whether this can or will be implemented, but what you need to let me know is whether this is the kind of thing you want us to spend our "attention capital" on. I've posted many times that one of the things I love about the politician is that it is a unique profession in SWG, without grinding, missions, crafting or combat. Does this change the role of politician in a negative or positive way to you? On one hand, there is no NPC crowd-control profession in the game currently, and it is a MMORPG group-combat role that would add extra tactical interest to the combat sphere of the game, without stepping on the toes of any existing professions, and still maintaining the uniqueness and political flavor of the Politician. On the other hand, it moves us out of our core activity, community relationships and civic development.
Would we rather focus on our core, make city building and administration as robust and fun as it can be at at the same time accept that one of our limitiations is no role in the combat sphere? Or would we like to branch out into another sphere of gameplay, as long as it can be done without giving up what is essential to the Politician? Let me know.
Message Edited by Bajeezus on 01-13-2004 02:35 PM
I would love to have any one of those abilities you quoted from the top 5 idea threads(and some of the others that didn't make the cut) since I'm a rifleman and have done plenty of destroy missions pissing off humanoids with factions to the point where I"m at -5000 on probably a dozen factions. This makes it hard to walk around without getting an aggro on some worlds, now since I've advanced pretty far these aggros are just merely an annoyance since I can 1 shot them, however it is an annoyance I can do without, and buffing is always a plus for anyone. I'd gladly accept some of these skills so we aren't restricted to inside city limit professions.
I would, however, prefer to see a few things get introduced before these. Primarrily new art/buildings for city specific homes, stairs, bridges, yatta yatta, and maybe even arevamp on the militia (like my thread from a few days ago), and just general bug fixes. I just personally feel that I might as well have my town "finished" and beautified before I spend days away from it giving speeches or making peace between John Q. Taxpayer and Swoopers.
I like the idea of buying faction and stopping NPCs in their tracks. The higher skill you have, the more NPCs you can stop.
Anneke Rose (Mayor of the Metropolis Sanctuary)
Um , yes!
That would be some comfort for the "sacrifcie" of skill points some politicians feel their tree is...
Being able to be useful for defense during a raid is great, being able to rouse your citizens to counter-raid - yes and yes.
Overlap with Squad Leader? Well perhaps, but to affect the citizens on a whole or influence faction - very nice supplement to the Politician tree.
My gut feeling is this won't fly, though some aspects of this proposal sounds interesting. Rather than get into the details of your post, let me just throw my 2 cents in from a personal game play style.
Let me preamble this by stating I run three accounts, lead a PA, run a website, maintain forums, and am Mayor of our city. So, my plate is pretty full which weighs heavily on my opinion as I have a full plate of activities already.
I veiw the role of Politician asa manager's position. Just like with any business or political system, most manager's or leaders don't actually get down there with the troops in combatnor do they handle alot of detail work that can be assigned tocapable folks to carry out assignments. I'm a politician because it is an extension of my managerial responsibilities to my PA which overflows to those outside my PA as a leader who can manage different players under one system. This is a huge task in and of itself.
Putting us into the position of pawn that controls npc factions will add to an already full role that has been designed to be a manager's position. I think the introduction of this concept would cloud our focus and direction that the politician's role was intended to follow.
I can see how this might be appealing to the politicians who feel as if they have 'wasted points' in a profession and to those who would like to play more of a combative type role, but to those politicians who do feel that way, I 'm thinking that maybe they are in the wrong profession 
I'm not completely opposed to some of the ideas presented, I justdon't think the devs are going to want to redesign the politician into something that was not intended in the grand scheme of things.
Bajeezus wrote:
Successful execution of this ability might turn a group of agressive NPCs non-agressive, while a non-successful attempt would aggro all targetted NPCs.
Successful use of this ability against already non-agressive NPCs would keep them from assisting one of their group members if one is attacked, until they are personally attacked themselves. Again, unsuccessful attempts would turn the non-agressive NPCs aggressive.
The politician's role in a combat group would then be much like that of the Illusionist in a fantasy MMORPG, "mesmerizing" groups of NPCs so that his own group can attack them one by one, which certainly sounds like something a particulary adept politician would be able to do, sowing the seeds of dissention amongst and enemy group, bribing some members, making promises to others to keep them out of the fight.
Wow ... this is exactly what I'd think the Underworld branch of Smuggler should be all about. I do however theoreticly see the politician being able to do this. In my opinion however, the politician should not be about fighting ... not themselves in any case. Politicians normaly let fight. They could give out moral-bust-buffs, they definitly should be able to do some more adjustments to combat-related settings inside a city (faction points earned in specialisation, setting city-owned-NPCs etc).
But I'd suggest to concentrate on the more peaceful and city or population related skills ... giving tools for organisating events and being able to easily create more player content. That's what I'd like ... after all, I suspect at least half of all mayors are more crafters or such than combat characters. But then again, that's just my thought 
/chant SKILL BUFFS! SKILL BUFFS! SKILL BUFFS!
Seriously, you can allready have all 9 stats buffed by 3 different professions. Add chef into the mix and you can enhance those even further. BE can make clothing to enhance stats.
So how about this:
Politicians get to create their own speaches, stored on datadisks which need to be crafted using hard to find resources. Each speach can affect up to +25 for any skill and for up to 2 hours. It would work like a dancer or musician buff where the person has to target the politician and /listen for up to 8 minutes before they get the maximum effect of the buff. Buffing would also work in a group and would probably be the best way to do it. The politician could do some sort of "speaking" animation while giving the speach.
Super awesome buffs that people would flock to see their local mayor for include:
Creature Level (not just taming, but actual CL! Imagine being able to pull a CL 95 Rancor, even for just an hour!)
Any Defense skill
Any Marksman/Ranged skill
Good day,
I agree with DaQuilla that the "Illusionist-like" abilities make more sense as part of the smuggler line. There isn't much difference between a smuggler bribing and a politician making contributions, but there's a huge difference in the way the two professions progress.
The biggest problem I see with this is that people in-game have been wanting some form of crowd control. If this ability is given to politicians, it will basically make us very desired in combat groups (some would say required). But then you would have lots of people trying to find any way possible to get that branch of the politician skilltree so they can be crowd control. Since politician xp can only be gained by leading a city, I can see some cities voting out a "good" mayor (who is working hard to make the city prosperous and attractive to crafters, etc)so they can cycle through people to gain them crowd control skills.
With combat being the centerpoint of this (and every other) MMOG, the crowd control aspect of the profession would soon be the highest priority and will overshadow any minor issues like not being able to track taxes/income. ...OK, perhaps a bit dramatic, but it would completely alter the profession and attract a very different type of player who may not care one bit about governing a city. This isn't a combat profession any more than hairdresser is. Mastering it still leaves lots of skillpoints for gaining combat skills too.
Now, having said that, I think allowing politiciansto negotiate faction "adjustments" outside of combat could add a lot to the profession. Spend xx amount of creds as a contribution to the Hidden Daggers' Widows Quilting Circle and they'll be less likely to attack your citizens. This would unfortunately require a fair bit of coding, I think, as you wouldn't want the citizens' faction itself changed; you'd want an additional modifier on top of any personally acquired faction changes. Move out of the city, and you lose the city bonus. I'd also say it should last onlya set amount of time - balanced against the cost of the bribe needed.
This could be seriously exploited if not done carefully though. There should be no way to get good sandpeople faction and then waltz through Fort Tusken killing without penalty, etc.
Perhaps a variation on this could be used for non-mayor politicians as well. Contracting to a PA to help them with faction ina similar manner - the bonus would apply to the PA as a whole. Or a city mayor could contract out to another politician to perform this service. The only reason I see this as possibly necessary is for anyone that gets politician as a holo profession *shudder*.
Well, enough rambling from me for now...
Oweh Ga'pra
Mayor of some unregistered city doomed to never get a shuttle
"We're only 3K from a spaceport, you can get here faster on swoop than waiting for a shuttle load anyhow..."
1) Why do peoplenever correctmy typos when they quote me lol.
2) On a more related topic, no, I wouldn't like politicians to be able to do combat buffs. Politician benefits should revolve around influence, what happens before the fight, talking to NPCs. Not do a speech to incite bravery in combat, we're not bards, please!
Or enchanters for that matter and Oweh is right while it would be a nice ability to have in this game if it was given to Politicians everyone and their brother would be trying to get up just that tree with no regard for city management. The underworld tree for smuggler would be a nice place for this though I think.
Or enchanters for that matter and Oweh is right while it would be a nice ability to have in this game if it was given to Politicians everyone and their brother would be trying to get up just that tree with no regard for city management. The underworld tree for smuggler would be a nice place for this though I think.
I lean toward keeping the devs attention span focused on tools to make city management and developement should be the top priority. Roads, signs, and things of that nature are what I'd like to see happen. However, if I had to pick one I'd still go with the idea of politicians giving a speech resulting in a buff of some kind of mod. The CL was a nice suggestion and perhaps extra dmg mitigation or something defensive. Also the idea of being able to bribe NPC "pets" into fighting foryou for a short time sounds interesting but again may fall into the "charming" category and draw people not really interested in politics.